There's nothing wrong with MP servers in terms of performance. Perhaps issues like lack of full control of FTP etc are quite annoying but they are the best provider of TF2 servers for the price most likely. Unless you get a dedi.

People don't set correct rates - this is a fact. I know you shouldn't have to, but this in my opinion is an issue of valve rather than MP. I've used several providers for css servers before and MP is perfectly fine. I also don't ever have lag on the MP TF2 server. So I can't say I face any problem with this.

Whilst a dedi is nice, you have to think about are we getting value for money. Yes we can get a lot of games running at the same time, but would this really be used? CSS server would barely be used imo. Minecraft would be, but it would still work out cheaper for seperate servers in that instance. Remember lack of contributions and use is why we got rid of the dedi

The real good thing of dedi imo was the flexibility of community friday but that hasn't happened for a while now. Maybe it's something to look at bringing back.

My opinion is that MP offer the best value for money regarding a tf2 server. I don't get lag so I don't ever understand any issues regarding that .

Schlurbi, I'm for a dedi, BUT...
It needs restarting. Dedi or MP, we still need Si or Met to be on to restart it, yesterday you wanted it restarting and Si had been on for ages, yet you didn't ask ;D

John isn't a dick. Far from it.

Money = Dick.
John =/= Dick.

14:06 - Sarah: in your post on the forum... you calling john a dick or not having enough money?
14:06 - [TCHS] 5chlurbi: Money is a Dick

He was inferring that Money is being a dick, no names were mentioned what so ever.

Either way I can't remember the last time I gave money, Things are tight for me atm anyway, But i'd be able to give a bit when my loan comes in. I would 100% support getting a dedi back if it means we can do Fridays/Saturdays host more games and things.

RIGHT!!!!!!

I may be able to pay a bit towards the server but i will have to look into costs first

Oh Money? Yeah he is a bit of a dick with his papery attitude and metallic sense of humour.
Agreed John isn't a dick. A bit of a cheesy faggot with his 1basemuta (pot calling kettle black I know) but he's not a dick.

Ban.

On a more serious note, Schlurbi was clearly referring to money, but sadly a slight lost-in-translation issue here is with the 'it' and 'he'. Lets not dwell on it, okay? (ie DON'T DERAIL THE THREAD ANYMORE OR I MIGHT GO BANICIDAL).

The reason the server keeps being down is because it seems to be shutting down/crashing and NOT restarting like it should be. This appears to be a Multiplay issue and I will file a support ticket once I've checked out the server config/logs and so on.

With regards to any lag experienced, what Markus said about rates is quite correct. I myself experienced lag because a rate of some silly low number doesn't cut it. Crank it up to 50000 and suddenly it's fine. I've half thought of admin slow-hacking that number in so that people don't experience lag, but I don't know if this would work for everyone (ie some people might be fine with a default low rate number for some reason).

Either way, to give an idea of the costs. The old dedicated server was £60 per month. The current TF2 server is £8 a month. I don't know how much the web server currently costs (but I believe it's under £20), but the web server also runs a Minecraft server fairly nicely as well).

If people for some reason want a dedicated server up, for whatever reason, and I'm not saying it's necessary although it was spoken about a little in the past, then look for some yourselves and recommend them. And then it'll get talked about/rejected/be accepted as the best thing since sliced bread, which may not happen as I personally think things are fine as they are right now.

Thoughts? Suggestions, etc?

In my opinion we don't need a dedicated server because we're not active enough as a community to warrant paying a larger amount of money for something we might not actually use. Community Friday/Saturday was popular at first, but then it quickly died out. The same thing can easily happen again and then we'll be back to square one again.
As for lag issues, no lag issues if you set your rates properly. Have it maybe said on the blackboard thing of TF2 to remind people to do so or something to help with people saying to do so.
And as for solving the restart issue, we can probably give all staff and extremely active server users that power (people like Lamsey for instance can be trusted much like a staff member) so that we don't rely on 2 people out of everyone we CAN rely on to do restarts etc.

I personally read it the first time to be meaning money is a dick, but that confusion is over now

I am also tight for money, and £60 a month seems like a huge increase from what we're currently paying (though there may well be a difference in the cost if we shop around).

The community fridays thing again would be really fun and good imo, but that's a huge cost increase for what could be only say minecraft / random mod once per week.

But if we were to do this it would need to be more than a one off payment from lots of people say, it would need to be a consistent pay into the pot kind of thing....and even then, how many games get played nowadays? Can the costs be justified when say TF2 is only £8/month currently with a mumble?

I'd be willing to help contribute though, could give a nice added flexibility, but like I said, it's a big cost rise and we need people to be willing to commit to it

It's been mentioned and spoken about in this thread. I was chipping in my own part.


Do people play other games together regularly enough to warrant getting a dedicated server? That is a big question along with who would be willing to regularly contribute (note: REGULARLY, this isn't a one off thing).


Is this a regular occurrence? And even then, people are going to be going back to Uni/college/school/jobs so even less people than usual will be around during the day.


Assuming the 7 techious members are willing to contribute money on a monthly basis.


I never said I didn't want it, I just said I don't think it's a good idea. What we have at the moment seems to be working fine anyway so there doesn't seem to be any problems.

I'd say we're active enough to warrant the current setup of a TF2 server and a Mumble server, and a Minecraft server running off the web server. I don't know if we need drastically more than this, I hadn't noticed any demand for more. With CSS that has been happening a few times, Si's hosted it himself in the evenings.

If there is a major demand for a particular service or game server, then it needs to be stated so that it can be factored in to the possibility of getting a better dedicated server that can run all these things.

And cost is definitely an issue. £60 a month is a lot, and even split between people, not everyone can afford £X per month.

I never said it was about server lag, I was just giving my opinion over the matter as Wynney "threw it in ". My point stands regardless; it was mentioned so I chipped my part about it in.



You've already said what games people can play. The question is whether they can/want to play them regularly enough to warrant a dedicated server. If they can't/don't want to, there's no point in having our own dedicated server- there are plenty of public servers out there that can suffice people's needs as and when they can/want to play said game. For CSS recently, Si hosts it and it seems fine from what I've played. Minecraft's already hosted on the website server and as far as I know is fine apart from a few theft issues(?) and things going bump in the night.
How is L4D2 better on our own server?
Will people be active for Community Friday? It was around at one point, but it died when people stopped playing for whatever reasons they had.
Any TF2-related events can easily be done already on our server. CSS-related events can probably be done with Si hosting the server.



How many are offering regular payments?

When I tried sorting something like this out last time, there were like 4/5 people willing to regularly donate.

That's the opening line of the thread - reads about MP problems such as lag to me.

But can we get away with this issue of lag please. It won't go anywhere. Already hear enough about it (along with whining about MP) whenever I play tf2 anyway so I can look forwards to it there instead.

Assume a base cost of £60, if people are willing to contribute on a fixed basis, i.e. monthly towards such a cost please let it be known here. Then we can see if enough people support this.

Those who aren't interested don't have to. Noone is being forced to.

As Harry has said before this idea has be thrown around a few times and nothing has really come from it - even in the days when the community was more active playing more games (i.e. people who left were playing source all the time for example) and community friday was popular we couldn't support this idea.

I've seen things like bad company 2 get supported for 1 months worth of payment then noone contributes anymore.

So, who is willing to pay in every month (and not just a one-off) to support this.

Right, I figure I might aswell pop in with some info about Money etc:

As someone has already pointed out, current costs (per month) are £8(?) for the TF2 server from Met, and £8 (pre VAT, I think that's the one Si is on) for the VPS, which hosts Mumble, website and MC (to my knowldege)

A good dedi (quad core, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD) from our old host (who were one of the better valued providers at the time, atleast those with a decent rep) would be £160 setup then £55 per month (both numbers excl VAT).

This is a similar cost to in the past, which (even after the LAN support) I ended up paying 1.5x as much as the largest donator, and it was a lot of issue keeping the donations to a reasonable level, especially as people were often unreliable for various reasons or dubious about value. Bear in mind this was getting people to donate £5/mo for a bunch of stuff, including webhosting and admin.

However, there was also some talk of a dedi at the LAN, particularly from Lamsey and Suggestive (possibly Siggs aswell). With those onboard and a few others (and the leftover LAN money, of which I must assume there's a reasonable amount) it may be possible to get a dedi.

Here's my suggestion; make a list of people who are willing and capable of reliably and regularly donating to the cause and the amounts they would donate (per month) to the extent that it would cover at least £60 of the monthly server costs (and some initial donations for the setup, which could possibly be partly covered by LAN extra money) such that Si's costs would be minimized. Find what, if anything, these people would want from the dedi to be worthy of their donations (game server admin, webspace, a particular server are fairly easy to fulfill). Take this to Si, discuss whether it is reasonable then get all the potential donators together to iron out the details.

Note that I do say reliably - this is important. When I was in charge of the dedi there were a lot of people saying "oh yes, I will donate when x" and then never donating (I had at least one person promise to contribute for 3 months then turn round and say they didn't feel like it). This means the people have to have a stable enough income that they can give this much money and be upfront about any problems and sort any issues quickly (be willing to have a run around some other people if they're incapable for a couple of months). This is a lot of money to spend, especially for someone living off a student loan, and relying on random kindness doesn't really cut it, especially as it leads to the rather demoralizing task of pestering people for donations.

TL;DR: Get list of donators who can reliably provide enough money. Talk to Si.