The RPS TF2 Server: A News Thing
Deep in the bowels of Castle Shotgun, in one of the many lost rooms, forgotten testament to Jim’s Escher-like grasp of architecture, a light flickers into existence. It takes a few minutes to fill the scene, the first flutters of red doing little to illuminate, but slowly, as the seconds pass, it becomes stronger, until finally it stays constant. Machinery whirrs into life behind it, something grand, huge, and majestic, returning to operating efficiency.
The RPS TF2 server is back online. And it’s going to be busy.
Multiplay have provided us with a twenty-four man beast of a server, and over the past few weeks we’ve been refining it into something that has everything for every man. What have we done? How has it all gone down? What’s with all the hat-based puns? Have a seat and I’ll tell you.
I’ve been trying, (really really hard) not to go mad with power and having a purely custom map rotation, uploading my entire music library onto the server and having it play Elma Fudd everytime someone fires a weapon, and instead I’ve actually been letting people have their own say. But where on Earth could they do that? Why, on the RPS Talk-o-Tron. Here, specifically.
Instead we’ve been having civilised discussions on map rotation, which plugins to install, what powers admins should have, all that sort of stuff. It’s all been terribly polite, and really, the only thing stopping the server from being a tea-fueled, delightful box of fun is my inability to properly manipulate the server back end. Which I guess is where you come in.
Because the Map Rotation is probably the most important part of the server, I’m going to include the current set up below, complete with links so you can download the custom ones without having to wait for them to pop up on the server.
Anyway, here they are:
Dustbowl
Badwater
Gravelpit
Cashworks
Redfort
Frontier
Broma
Harvest (Event)
Glacier
Granary
Wildmire
Thundermountain
Yukon
Upward
Lighthouse
We’ve just about got Rock The Vote and Team Scrambling on the server now, but I’m sure there’s a tonne more that we could do with, and we just lack the direction of what exactly to install. Whether it be in the comments here, on the forum or just on the server during one of the events, please provide your opinions. This server is for you, after all.
Speaking of the events, if you’re a member of the RPS Steam Group, you would no doubt have been exposed to our near-daily events. I’ve been setting them at around 6:30pm, trying to make them accessible to those productive people who have jobs, but maybe that isn’t the greatest time? Here is your chance to voice your opinion. Servers are only as good as their community, after all, so be good! Let’s get some discourse going, and we can continue to refine and reiterate.
Things have hardly been silent, though. When actually on the server people chat and kill one another with an almost alarming joviality, not to mention the fact that a few people have become infamous for their frankly disturbing about of skill. I don’t care if I’ve backstabbed my way to the top of a leaderboard, that really doesn’t make it ok for that Pyro to start juggling me against a wall while making sure I stay on fire. It’s just so.. undignified.
One thing that seems to be a talking point is the question of whether to password the server. At the moment, during my intermittent checks during the day, the server is usually somewhat empty until an event hits. Due to this, it seems as though, when it does fill up, it’s filling up with the right sort of people, rather than all those dirty pubbies. As such, it’s probably best to leave it unpassworded at the moment, if only because we don’t have a need to lock anyone out.
So, apart form offering up a daily prayer of thanks to Multiplay for their continued generosity, what would you particularly like to do on the server? Is there anything currently missing from it that you’d like to see? Anything you don’t like about how it’s currently operated? Let us know below, or on the forum, or somewhere. Just be aware that if you start writing messages on your wall, we can’t see them very easily.