Improvements

1. Rented new server from nuclear fallout with latest CPU and an SSD for vastly improved I/O and less lag.

2. Installed windows 2003 server instead of windows 2008 for less attack surface and better handling of 12-year old ET game code.

3. Transferred FUNBOY (FLIGHT SCHOOL) to this new platform as ASYLUM (BEGINNER). Silent has many advantages over jaymod. 

4. Added flamethrowers to all players on Asylum. Many other changes made to weapons and gameplay.

5. Improved the ddos filter for better connections with no choppy lag.

6. Uploaded 40 maps to Asylum server. 

7. Renamed all omnibots.

8. Added files to stop "dynamite planted" voice spam.

9. Began penetration testing for vulnerabilities. Several vulnerabilities closed.

10. Began recruiting desired admins for Asylum.

11. FBY clan officially disbanded.

12. FUNBOY (BEGINNER) IP address migrated to Asylum server. Old server is retired. 

13. Unwanted FBY admins revolt and form new clan.

14. Asylum is announced and forum is remodeled with new red look.

15. All FBY rules and bans removed.

16. Asylum becomes instant success.

Asylum is Awesomee

I don't think some of us revolted.  Just had nowhere else to go more than likely since beginner suddenly died and no clue as to what was happening.  The atmosphere conveyed was that everything would be shut down and be no more.

There was a lot going on behind the scenes. I was told by one admin that he wanted to beat me. Other people told me that I was hated by everyone. I was also ordered not to see my girlfriend in real life after she was unfairly banned from all the servers.

So I feel a lot better now without FBY around. And OldMan I see you on Asylum all the time and I never bother you. I don't bother anyone I just like running ET servers.

Awesome server man. You did great with it.
Thank you Obit.

Welp time to say goodbye to the old Tags and think i will but the first tag what i had back.I was away for so long and missed out on so much.I even remeber the day i first joined the FBY server and found out how much fun it was.And obi was one of the best headadmin for me in a long time.But everything good ends and something better starts.
Keep up the good work like always Obi

I have been out of pocket a lot. Not playing much (just for now). This thread is good to see. I will keep in touch off and on. I hope to see you soon.

I'm glad to see a lot of returning players like you Mike.

I've seen a lot of old names on Asylum lately. A lot of people who had quit beginner because of lag or drama have returned.

I think Asylum will quickly become bigger than Beginner was. It has been going up the gametracker ratings steadily.

It's been a bit of a balancing act for me to simultaneously disband a clan and a "brand name" that was hated by so many people, while building a new server platform to outperform it. It was bittersweet to see so many people express their remorse over the loss of FBY while I was personally experiencing a great deal of relief that it was over.

There was some duplicity required to get the most drama-inducing players to trick each other into leaving and taking the other drama queens with them. But the plan worked well.

Performance is key. Retaining highly talented admins is key. Making the most efficient use of each person's skills is key.

Anyway back to actual technical improvements.

The grenade issue on the allies has been fixed. Axis and allies all get 9999 grenades now.

The original goldrush map has been removed from the vote list since we have super goldrush and goldrush-gals.

I have also removed battery and railgun from the vote list.

I am working on removing the sten overheating and the panzer delay. I am approaching it several ways - lua, .weap patches, or direct binary modification. I'm leaning towards lua at the moment since .weap patches get distributed to clients and I dont want to train my competitors. And binary editing needs to be redone with each new version of silent mod.

01011001 01100101 01100001 01101000 00100000 01100010 01110101 01110100 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01100010 01101001 01101110 01100001 01110010 01111001 00100000 01100101 01100100 01101001 01110100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00101100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100111 01100101 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110011 01101000 01101111 01110111 00100000 01101111 01100110 01100110 00101110

smuck wrote:01011001 01100101 01100001 01101000 00100000 01100010 01110101 01110100 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01100010 01101001 01101110 01100001 01110010 01111001 00100000 01100101 01100100 01101001 01110100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00101100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100111 01100101 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110011 01101000 01101111 01110111 00100000 01101111 01100110 01100110 00101110

01000001 01100111 01110010 01100101 01100101 01100100

01101100 01101111 01101100 00100000 00100001 00100001

01010010 01100101 01100001 01101100 01101100 01111001 00101100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101101 01100001 01101011 01100101 00100000 01101101 01100101 00100000 01101100 01100001 01110101 01100111 01101000 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100010 01101001 01101110 01100001 01110010 01111001 00100000 01101101 01111001 00100000 01100110 01110010 01101001 01100101 01101110 01100100 01110011 00100000 01101100 01101111 01101100 01101100 01101100 01101100 01101100 01101100

You can reverse engineer the qagame files with hex editors to make changes at the binary level. There are a lot of free tools for this. Some display it as 0 and 1, some convert it to hexadecimal format, and some (like ollydbug) convert it to assembly language.

You can use the ET source code (released in 2010 if you want to google it) and dig out any patch of text you like and convert it to hex or binary. Then search for that binary or hex sequence within the converted qagame file. Then edit it and save the qagame file.

Half the time you wont find the text you are looking for because the process of compiling the source code into a binary adds extra bytes and your desired piece of code may not be intact.

There are some free tools from Redsector out there that automate this process. But they are specific for certain versions of jaymod so they are useless for any other mod. With the security holes in jaymod the mod should no longer be run on a public server unless you enjoy fighting aimbots and rcon hacks and banning the same people 30 times.

The best way to approach binary modification of qagame files is to make a hex version of a small chunk of code, say a single cvar and its numerical value (lets say a rate of fire for a weapon) using the weapon table from the source code. Keep it as hexadecimal instead of binary. Then you unzip your qagame file into hex and search for the hex code. You can even do this in Notepad 2. Hex is better than binary because it is much smaller and easier to copy and paste and search. Then you just replace the desired code and save the modified qagame to run on your server.

If your editor does not allow you to modify it while in hex format then you need to note the memory addresses of the desired bytes and then re-open it in binary code and do the switcheroo in binary.

The main advantage of qagame modification is there is nothing to distribute to the clients. The modded qagame does not affect any other files. Nobody can reverse engineer your qagame to duplicate it and pretend like they invented it. Also it is an extremely lean way to alter the game as you dont need enhanced mod or lua or any pk3 files.

obituary wrote:There was a lot going on behind the scenes. I was told by one admin that he wanted to beat me. Other people told me that I was hated by everyone. 

I want to beat you Obit -- in game!!  Bwahahaha, bring it on old man!  Or wait, shouldn't I be saying that to OneOldMan?   Anyway, I haven't been playing much lately anyway, real life stuff and all .  And honestly, if you kill me in game, I have to fight down the tendency not to hate you.  It's hard to forgive someone for killing you, I don't like the idea of being killed.  Wait, that's real life!  Oh, well, in game, bring it on!  I need to find time to get back in sometime soon, Asylum is a fun server.  And I don't hate you, Obit, and I've always liked your servers.  Obviously *everyone* has liked your servers, that's why people keep coming back, with relief after most thought the game was gone forever.  Most would be quitting ET all together.  

~Hash

Well Im glad someone likes me lol!

Next improvement - added PPSH to all classes of players on both teams. You now get the PPSH by default in addition to whatever weapons you choose. This is in addition to the panzer and flamer for all.

Enjoy!

The panzer firing delay has been removed. The panzerfausts now fire like they did on the old funboy beginner server.

The sten overheating has been removed. The sten rate of fire has been increased to 1200 rounds per minute. The stens are now like they were on the old funboy beginner server.

So now everyone gets a panzer, flamer, ppsh and satchel. All weapons have double damage and 9999 ammo. The sten and panzer are like the old server. 

Enjoy my asylum you psychotic bastards!

The mp40 and thompson rate of fire has been increased to 1200 rounds per minute (same as the old funboy beginner was). The accuracy has been increased to the same as the sten (bullet spread -> 200).

The mg42 has been made more accurate (spread set -> 400 from the default 2500) and the mg42 overheating has been removed. It is now actually a useful weapon instead of a bad choice.

All pistols have been made as accurate as the sten.

We all self commited here.
We Mad, We mad! ing mad I tell you!

I too miss panzer jumping.  Yes, it can lead to rushing, but without it, you can't defend against rushers.  And with the gravity settings (which I think are even less than they were in FBY beginner), a smart rusher can still jump levels.
I think No Rules may be worse than Too many rules.  I see a ton of staking (ex 6-1), back-planting, wall jumping, etc. now without consequences.
What I really like about asylum is the Trip mines. I missed those.
Also really happy to see oasis, fuel dump, millennium falcon, etc, back in rotation. Long time, no see.
What I am not a fan of:
- No Gas
- Knife throwing distance seems shorter
- No (or very limited) falling death.  I have had to use /kill a lot on minas, because I fall several levels and don't die.
- No Molotovs - If we can all have Flamethrowers, why not molotovs?
- No 'self death' tripping your own mine, etc.  Plus the bots constantly trip their own teams trip mines.

LtDan wrote:I too miss panzer jumping.  Yes, it can lead to rushing, but without it, you can't defend against rushers.  And with the gravity settings (which I think are even less than they were in FBY beginner), a smart rusher can still jump levels.
I think No Rules may be worse than Too many rules.  I see a ton of staking (ex 6-1), back-planting, wall jumping, etc. now without consequences.
What I really like about asylum is the Trip mines. I missed those.
Also really happy to see oasis, fuel dump, millennium falcon, etc, back in rotation. Long time, no see.
What I am not a fan of:
- No Gas
- Knife throwing distance seems shorter
- No (or very limited) falling death.  I have had to use /kill a lot on minas, because I fall several levels and don't die.
- No Molotovs - If we can all have Flamethrowers, why not molotovs?
- No 'self death' tripping your own mine, etc.  Plus the bots constantly trip their own teams trip mines.

I can fix the tripmines in the silent mod config. Thanks for the comment.

I prefer not having rules. I don't really like rules in real life. Most rules get broken all the time anyway, so you need an army of people to enforce the rules, and then you need another smaller layer of people to watch the enforcers. It's a big hassle. From the player's perspective it sounds crazy, but from the top-down it makes more sense to make technical adjustments to fix problems rather than creating "rules". 

We have only had to ban one player. I think we have muted two or three people, just grumpy old regulars who troll everybody with hostile and insulting comments. Otherwise most people seem pretty content without rules and people telling them what to do.

Yeah the rushing is picking up. You are absolutely correct. Yesterday I raised the gravity from 200 to 400 (from one-quarter of normal to one-half of normal gravity). But last night we still had Minas get rushed and then a few people started complaining about it to me, how we need a "rule" or a banner against rushing, and all that tired old drama, as if any of those solutions were effective before.

So there are three technical solutions to decisively prevent rushing now, before it gets ingrained into the culture in Asylum. 

One - write individual mapscripts to block every possible rushing exploit. Two - remove all the maps which are easily rushed. Three - just set the gravity to 800. Obviously these are in  decreasing order of difficulty. I don't want to write a ton of mapscripts, and I don't want to set the gravity to normal, so removing all the rushable maps is the best technical solution.

So tonight I will be removing about half the maps and we will simply prevent the rushing. It's an easy problem, much simpler than editing weapons or dealing with clan drama. 

No rules or admins required.

...sadly, I think the best maps are the ones that can be easily rushed.  

I would hate to see maps like Minas, Oasis and Fuel Depot go (those are a lot of people's favorites).  I know there is an existing script out there that can set a time limit before an objective can be completed, but don't ask me where.  I know there is also a setting to prevent bots from completing objectives.  I have seen both on other server maps.  
I think the stacking issue may be temporary.  I remember from the original ET days players would compete against an all bot team, because it was a way to increase XP and stats.  I think after a while, even the biggest stackers will get tired of just fighting bots.

I'm a bit sad to see Minas taken out too, but it makes sense with how SO MANY people think it's funny to just end the map in 5 minutes by rushing.  I got really annoyed, I'd be like, "STOP RUSHING!"  And they'd say, "No rules."  So then I stopped getting annoyed.  Instead, I made it my personal mission to harass rushers for the next several maps, shoving them around and off edges, getting in their way, anything.  And then they'd inevitably stay, "STOP!  LEAVE ME ALONE!"  To which I'd reply, "No rules, bitch."      Ahh, it always gives me such a laugh to get to that point with those people.  Anyway, that said, I'm actually not really missing Minas.  It takes to long to get around that map without rocket jump, like I'm running forever.  A bit boring.  Or else it just gets rushed in the first 5 minutes.  So good call.

Hash

So far Ive removed fueldump, oasis, minas, marrakech, beach, mlb_ carnage, northpole, caen, bremen, pirates, saberpeak, and a few others for rushing. As I see a map get rushed I simply take it out of the mapcycle and add it to the list of maps excluded from voting.

Today just now chateau and raiders got rushed and are being removed. This was all with half-gravity, not the one-quarter gravity.

This system works just fine, we started with about 50 maps and now we have 22 remaining that are increasingly difficult to rush. So we still have plenty of maps.

I just want to point out that this is working. Instead of playing cat-and-mouse games with rushers and having a ton of pointless drama, I am eliminating their ability to rush maps. It is like artificial selection. I am starting with a huge population of decent maps and letting the rushers apply negative selection pressure against the maps that are retained.

Its not just rushing. A lot of maps have a single exit for a spawn point and it only takes one player to camp the single exit to render the spawn impossible to leave. So those maps get removed too.

Down to 20 maps left lol.

We are going to have a lot of maps like baserace_desert and ctf_face, and also maps that involve vehicles like castleattack, eagles, capuzzo, venice, supply that require teamwork.

Now this is hilarious!

People are like wtf where did the maps go?

I keep telling them, if it gets rushed it goes away. Think of it as a ban but for the map instead of the player. This works a lot better than trying to change human behavior.

If you like the map then dont rush it, or perhaps you could try defending the objective. If it ends in less than five minutes I take it out.

Nobody has been banned for rushing a map on Asylum. The technical solution is more humane. 

With less bans comes less drama, less repeat offenders, less retaliatory ddos, less angry admins overreacting out of frustration, etc.

Its a better system. It works immediately.

There's no admin sitting in spec waiting for someone to break a rule so they can abuse you.

Only one player has been banned in an entire month, and that was a pro botter I have been dealing with for a long time.

Removed special delivery and frostbite tonight for rushing.

I think we've got rid of all the problem maps now (I hope lol) and we still have 18 left.

This is good, we wont have to deal with rushing every hour going forward. A little pain now and the future is better.

No complaint, if so.  Just curious if it's my imagination or not.  I've been off my pills for a while.  

/\ Crap forgot to sign in.  That was me.

Its reduced in quantity, but it still has double damage. So its nerfed in how much you can use, but its just as lethal as before. Its set now so it recharges every twenty seconds instead of ten seconds (ten is default maximum). Oherwise it was non-stop spawn arty on every map and people just leave.

Its great fun for the guy doing it. Not much fun for the six players getting artied from a camper on the other side of the map. We had this same situation on the old server, after months of debate I had to reduce it there too.

The Asylum Overkill server has maximum arty at double damage, more bots to kill, friendly fire is on, and all those rushable maps are there too. If you want to get 500 kills per map then Overkill should be perfect for you. Its usually empty lol.

LOL thanks for responding.  I think that you're right on mitigating it somewhat, and I'm a frequent abuser.  I'll take the full server with reasonable arty for $400, Alex.

I'm just glad that it's not my imagination this time.

Here's a secret trick for those of you running enhanced mod on your silent mod servers:

You can control the ppsh gun in the ModEnhConfig.xml file by using the name WP_GPG40 instead of WP_PPSH.

So you can add ammo or give the gun to other classes or whatever other tweaks you need.

I was wondering why I could not add a ppsh to all classes. GPG40 worked great   Thank You!!

I want to give a big "thanks!!" to all the players and admins who stuck out the problems in our community the past few months.

I appreciate that you have hundreds of other servers to choose from but you return here year after year.

I really feel like we have turned a corner the last couple weeks now that we have the fast weapons back and the drama has gone quiet. There's a better vibe on the forum and the servers. 

I value the community I have attracted here and I try to reward your loyalty with the best ET servers I can design.

Obit

Since the submachine guns and panzers have been sped up, there was an increase in server usage followed by a recent drop.

I have asked a few players about this and the general feeling is that now everything is just too powerful and you die too much.

So tonight I reset the double damage back to normal, so all the weapons are at the default ET settings for damage (rate of fire is still 1200 rounds per minute like the old fby server).

I played a few hours tonight with the normal damage and there was not one complaint. So it works fine. Also it was a lot easier to get objectives, as anticipated.

The Asylum Overkill server still has double damage of course.

I am speeding up the FG-42 and making it as accurate as the sten. It will have the same rate of fire (1200 rounds per minute) as the sten/mp40 etc.

The FG-42 scope still has some recoil which needs to be fixed later.