For those that are unfamiliar, the title of this thread is a "Steam URL" which should (in theory) launch Steam and connect to the
CSR-Louieville game server when clicked.
That's right, CSR has a Counter-Strike server up and running again! This is due to some incredible generosity on the part of one of my business associates who manages a big law firm in downtown Chicago. They have a 100 Mbit
BACKUP internet connection, and my associate has donated a fraction of this bandwidth to us, along with a decently powerful machine to host the game from. I've been spending a lot of time trying to relearn how to set up and administer a Steam-based HLDS server again, and we do now have a functional CS server.
That's not to say there aren't some issues. Currently, the server doesn't appear in the Steam Game Browser, so we won't have any guests that don't expressly know about the address. I'm still trying to find a solution to that problem. Additionally, I need to make it incredibly clear that the hardware and the bandwidth for this server is
donated and can be removed or repurposed at any time, for any reason that our benefactor sees fit. His first responsibility is to the law firm he works for, and should the system itself be needed, or should the bandwidth usage suddenly become unacceptable, I have no doubt he will pull the plug. You must also realize that if he decided to change the IP address for any reason, he's within his right to do so without needing to notify me ahead of time.
With these "heavy" disclaimers out of the way, there are still some major tasks I have left to complete. The server is running more or less "stock" right now, so there are no custom maps, no AdminMod, no StatsMe or HLstats, or anything else that is an "accessory." The server will remain this way until I have time to install and configure the additional components. I will be happy to entertain requests, but please understand that my time is incredibly limited now, and as much as I'd love to do nothing but run this server for everyone, I have a job and (as of this weekend) a wife that are more important to me.
Unfortunately, because of where and how the server is hosted, I can't give
anyone else access to the box for administrative purposes. if it were my internet connection and my computer, I would probably be begging people to help me manage the thing, but as it stands I have to respect the security needs of the person dishing this up for us.
Now for the fun stuff: this is a really freaking fast connection. From the Chicago area, most of the Wumpas are pinging less than 15ms to the server, and a college friend of mine in Seattle is usually sub-50. I expect people on the East Coast to be equally pleased with the response. Additionally, because HLDS is the ONLY thing we need to run on the box, I can use as much of the CPU horsepower as I want, so the server is currently running at a 500 ticrate. If the box can handle more, I'll happily increase that up to the 1000 maximum.
Additional things I plan to work on including (in rough order of importance & likelihood to happen):
- Re-loading the custom maps from the old Recongamer era Phoenix server
- AdminMod
- StatsMe to report damage
- HLstats (if our benefactor decides it's okay to open port 80 for us)
- Fast HTTP map downloads
- Recreating a new CSReloaded.com website
EDIT:: This BBcode parser plugin really sucks. Time to learn Markdown.
Comments
My Gmail account can handle big files. Grounded if you wanted to volunteer to put the map files together into a single zip file and email it to me along with the mapcycle you want, I'll download it straight to the server and extract it into the cstrike folder for you. beporter (at) csreloaded (dot) com will work nicely. All *I* ask (as my own personal desire) is that you include deuceball in there twice. (It's already loaded on the server.)
Perhaps we could try to schedule a single game a week? I'm not sure how much time we have in common, but it would be better than nothing I suppose. My schedule is absurdly busy, but if I can always plan to slack off once a week.
Please include me in any communication related to game times.
Best email to reach me now is chris@printernational.net
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This is awesome news people, I've recently been getting back into CS and I've yet to find a public server/community which could quite match up to the CSR experience. Looking forward to some deuceball! Well done Porter and congrats on the nuptials!
This is all hypothetical for the time being though, because until the house Jenn and I are building is finished in November, we're both staying with her parents, so I won't have my pc and neither will Yuna. I've been staying at MY mom's place up till now though, so maybe I can leave thing set up there and just commute to my gaming rig once a week.
Anyway, I think the best time may be something like 1:00pm (central) on Saturdays. That way it's not too late for our overseas participants. We all obviously won't be able to make it every week, but hopefull we can pick something that gives everyone a good shot at catching it occasionally.