Plague Fest Forums: Plague Fest

There will be some downtime tomorrow, Tuesday 2/7 due to a new OS install on one of our boxes.

The services affected are: SourceBans, Fast Download, Minecraft, Mumble, Adverts, and anything else in-game that utilizes SQL.

The servers should remain playable and fine, though bans will not work. If you come across an individual deserving of a ban but can't, just take their info down and do a web ban once SourceBans is online again. If they're really being an issue and need to be gone from the server, ask a higher up to manually ban them via the server console/screen on any specific server. If it's a minor issue but still deserving of a ban, just grab their info and ban later as stated previously.

How long these services will be out isn't known, though I'm hoping it wont take longer than a few hours if all goes well.


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@HigherUp's, if you don't know how to ban via screen:

screen -ls (to see screen names)

screen -x server-screen-name

for IP:

addip <minutes> <ip address>
writeip

for Steam:

banid <minutes> <Steam ID>
writeid


then of course detach with ctrl + a + d

So after looking back at how ZombieMod was over the years, one thing hit me. When we moved away from Mani we lost our Quake Sounds! Well, after spending a couple hours of mindless copy pasting, hunting down a old copy of UT, we now have an Unreal Tournament Announcer. Changes between this and "Quake Sounds" is the fact that it's just like Quake except we have the Female announcer from UT. We have Round end times, Team Win/Lose sounds, etc. Dominating, Multikill, Head Hunter, the whole meal deal.

Anyways, I'm just rambling now. Type !announcer in game to activate it. By default, to prevent possible dissatisfaction, it's disabled. Your settings will be saved!

Huge thanks to everyone who tested the final product with me.
Kyle.

The new Fast Download server is now live!

After months of on and off research and development, we finally launched our new FastDL server. Running on our new services box, rather than our shared hosting plan, you will notice better speeds. Largely because the new server the FastDL web server is running off of has much less load and better hardware, in addition to a faster connection and in most cases better routing. In ideal situations, downtime should also be reduced. The current FastDL goes down on a regular basis, and the website, MySQL, and Source Bans services usually goes along with it when this happens. We are going to transfer the rest of the services (not game servers) to the new server here soon for this reason as well.

For the time being, the new FastDL is only on MiniGames and ZombieMod1. This is for testing purposes and will be applied to the rest of the server once we confirmed it's stable. However, we need you to tell us if you or any other players experience issues (Everything from missing maps errors, error signs, etc), that way we can know and address the issue.

To address a couple questions I know will be asked:

Q: What the hell is a Fast Download (FastDL) server?
A: A FastDL is the server which you download files from when you join a server for the first time. This includes skins, maps, models, sounds, etc.

Q: What does this mean for me?
A: This means you will spend less time waiting to download new content and more time playing when you join a server. Again, this will only happen when you need to retrieve a file you don't already have, such as a map. This will especially help when a new, large map gets added to the server and ~60 other people are trying to download it. Imagine opening 2 new lanes on a highway with a traffic jam. This will also help increase server population, as long downloads scare off new players.