Rodo Abad

Many game server admins are asking me why is it that the AMX Bans that I’m using is different from their AMX Bans and the new AMX Bans Reloaded. Well the simple answer is even though we basically have the same AMX Bans at its core, the front-end (website) part of our AMX Bans is pretty different especially if you take into account the different enhancements that Luis (SquarePants) and I did to it. And as far as I’m concerned, you can call it pretty much a fork of AMX Bans.

Yes! Finally! I JoinPGN.com get’s to have 8 sitelinks! I remember the first time my website had site links. I was happy about it but I was a bit disappointed because of how the site links were generated because it did not have the forum link. So I did a couple more rounds of SEO and then bam! I checked the SERP today and look what I found!

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This is just plain awesome! For webmasters getting Google Sitelinks usually means that your website is getting popular! This just makes me feel good after going through a test which I did bad. But oh well, things happen and you just have to deal with it.

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After staying with the four column layout for JoinPGN.com for almost a year, I decided to scrap the leftmost column making the it a three column layout. I really like it better this way…check it out yourself.

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Aah finally, everything’s back to normal again in PGN. I really hate it when people tend to just rush their decisions without actually thinking what will happen next or what will the effects be after. I thought it was going to be chaotic again, good thing I didn’t publicly intercede.

Hmm after waiting for a while, someone was kind enough to do all the hard work to compile eAthena on a 64 bit GNU/Linux system. That’s awesome! So I decided to give Ragnarok Online another try. And since this is a compiled version already, all I have to do is configure stuff and that’s what I did! Did I tell you that it’s working? Hahaha! How awesome is that? I now have a working private Ragnarok Online server. It’s far from having the PGN touch that I always do which is do customize almost everything and keep it clean and organize. Right now it’s all about just getting the stuff to work properly and although I can connect to the server just fine, I still have to figure out how to properly distribute the client once I get it to work and patch automatically. This way PGN RO players would just run the client and boom! It automatically updates itself.

To add, looks like I have to transfer split joinpgn.com into two portals, one for FPS games and one for MMORPG…I dunno though, I like it to have one central website which is joinpgn.com and then just different forums and other stuff to handle it. But we’ll see. With the volatility of the FPS community, we’ll never know. PGN RO communities are much more stable when done right compared to FPS communities which PGN currently has right now.

So hopefully everything turns out well before Fall 2008.

I was having a problem with PS31’s Live Server Stats due to the fact that it’s not reporting VAC Secured HL1 servers as secure.

Thanks to [MUPPETS] Gonzo in the Psycho Stats forum, I was able to fix it! All you need is to edit a file. Here’s the steps that I did.

Go to includes/PQ/halflife.php. Open it and go to line 197. Then add the following line.

$this->data['serversecure']     = $this->_getbyte();.

Save and reload your page.

It should show the correct VAC status now.

As soon as I check my e-mail this morning, I saw a ‘Branzone’ e-mail. It was about the Zombie Mod server taking too much resources and they asked me to take it down and choose a different mod. Since they’re the ones providing the server for free…all I could do is say yes to them. I don’t mind it at all don’t get me wrong, Branzone is awesome man…they’re one of the best.

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Scratch that one out, I don’t think I’ll be able to host a Ragnarok Online server anytime soon. Because of this stupid 64-bit problem with it. I’m not going to downgrade to a 32-bit operating system just for the sake of a Ragnarok Online server. No way…

Well, overall it’s a good news so let me first start with some drawbacks.

Right now, the PGN servers are hosted as Optimized 512fps game servers by Branzone. And well…since the servers are popular, it takes a huge amount of processor power from the dedicated servers hosting them. Branzone has sent me an e-mail informing me that they’d be changing them to their normal 128fps servers to save resources. I told them that it’s fine so we’re just waiting for them to change it.

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I got an e-mail from Brandon Miller, CEO/President of Branzone about how the PGN servers are stressing out the Branzone dedicated servers that host them. He told me that they would not be able to run the PGN game servers at 512fps because of the stress it’s putting in the Branzone dedicated servers. He then asked me if I would still like Branzone to sponsor PGN and if it’s still a ‘Yes’, then they would run the servers at the normal 128fps performance level instead of the more optimized 512fps performance level game servers.

I promptly replied that I was actually thinking of asking them to do those changes for me. This is because I really don’t see any huge advantage in running a 128fps server versus a 512fps server. It is after all…a public server. So I told him to just change all the current PGN game servers to 128fps. I doubt it would affect our rank, let alone the vast amount of player overflow we get.

It got me thinking though that maybe I should off on the other servers from Branzone. I was going to ask them about expanding to Texas, Virginia, Georgia, New York, and London…so I’ll probably wait until May. I could also try to find another game server sponsor to cover areas that Branzone can’t cover yet. To add, I was about to ask Branzone if they could give me control over the Texas server which sits at 20/20 right now and is basically…a ghost server. No one even plays there at all, let along joining it. Of course I will have to ask them nicely to convert it to a 32 slot server. I think it’s running at 512fps right now, so I’ll also ask them to change it to 128fps to save them some money.

So yeah, looks like the big expansion has been put to hold one more time. Hopefully things work out well in the future. I still have faith in Branzone, if you look at their website…they basically get a lot of new customers everyday. This should just be a temporary hold…hopefully.

HL Guard still doesn’t work with AMX Bans, I don’t know why and I’m still asking in the AMX Bans forum about it. Hopefully I could get it to work later this week. It would definitely help with when there’s no admin around. The AMX Bans list is a big help in organizing admin bans as it shows who banned who and why, at least now I’ll know who are the lazy admins.

One of the head admins ‘Bait’ has really gotten himself in big trouble, everyone in PGN thinks he will be the next CUJO (A former head admin who abused his power so much that he gave PGN admins a bad name). I already told him numerous times and warned him about a potential permanent ban if he doesn’t straighten up. There’s really nothing wrong with him being uptight and stuff. But this is PGN, it’s a gaming community. You have to adjust yourself a bit, and he clearly doesn’t and he gets offended almost every time, even on light jokes. I hope he does change after I told him yesterday that it was the last and final warning. A permanent ban after removing his admin will be the final act.

Boosted Servers has finally enabled Steam/No Steam/Crack on the PGN server they are hosting. This will definitely improve their sales since the No Steam and Crack server admins would like to rent a server from them. I wish Boosted Servers good luck on this one.

So Game Rail decide it’s time to bite the dust. After a few days of dropping the servers, they posted a message in their website that they are closing now.

It is with deep regret to announce that the GameRail network has been discontinued at this time. Thank you to the gamers who have participated in the GameRail trial and support of its development as we worked to solve the issues of latency and network quality and their impact on gaming. We believe that latency and network quality will continue to affect the gaming experience and while we are still believers in the GameRail concept, the market does not appear to be ready to support a standalone network for gaming at this time.

I don’t feel bad at all other than we’re losing our game servers from them. We’ve been sending them good traffic as far as my website stats are concerned. And I’m pretty sure there’s a lot more websites that were sending them some good traffic too. But they didn’t ignore those game communities…Game Rail however decided to ignore us. Oh well, what’s done is done. Good riddance.

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Yeah, I just said it, and this is about the Game Rail sponsorship that we got from them when they were just starting to go public with their Game Rail clients.

I got an email from Game Rail about them hosting public servers for communities that will help them advertise the brand. Basically, then give your community game servers and you have to at least put a ‘Game Rail’ word in the hostname. Dave Derington was one of Game Rail’s employees and he was overseeing the Game Rail events.

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Well I’ve downloaded the rag_setup0305.exe and sak_setup0305.exe on my desktop computer. I’ve installed rag_setup0305.exe and I’ve made the client update itself. I’ll install sak_setup030.exe later. Right now my desktop computer is idling while uploading the rag_setup0305.exe client, once I’m done with it I’ll upload the sak_setup0305.exe in my dedicated server.

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Aah, finally last night I decided to once again go ahead and try to make AMX Bans work in the PGN Servers the way I wanted them to work. It has always worked out of the box but I wanted something different.

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Well Branzone has delivered again and hopefully I can deliver what I promised back, which is that whatever kind of server they sponsor…it won’t be a ghost server where no one plays. I’ve manage to transfer the last server from the my dedicated server to the sponsor’s dedicated server. That is a huge huge huge pain off my back. Now I can finally optimize the dedicated server whenever I want. I don’t have to think about players getting grumpy because the server just timed out on them. Thank God.

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Half of me tells me to not care at all and the other half tells me to care about it. Game Rail has been hosting four PGN servers located across the USA and most of them half reached the top 100 status of popular servers in the USA.

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Well I just got a reply from the owner of Branzone Brandon Miller, that the servers that I’ve requested are put on hold right now. That means servers in Virginia, Atlanta, New York and London would still be on hold. I wasn’t told the reason for so all I can do is speculate as to what was the reason.

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