Back in June we saw the return of Open Fortress, and immediately jumped at getting our server up and active. This has been a huge challenge, because we've seen activity in it to a degree we haven't seen in a long time. That has brought issues which we've been working hard to solve.
Our first is hackers. In order to help protect ourselves from hackers using cheats and exploits from the older version of Source, we have begun using a tool called StAC (Stephanie's Anti Cheat). This is a SourceMod plugin that does a fantastic job of finding players using nefarious settings + watching for suspect activity. We actually began testing this on Chocolate back in April with great success. To this date, we have not had a single person banned falsely.
In Open Fortress, we are using a version we modified ourselves to better match that game's unique environment. Again, we have not had a single incorrect ban. What we have seen though is a ton of bans overall. Cheaters, hackers, duplicate accounts, and more. Duplicate accounts use stored IP addresses, and we have checked every single one so far to make sure it is not an accident that someone was banned under a similar IP.
We also have more tools! I have created an "admin panel" of sorts built into our Discord, that allows admins to kick, ban, mute, gag, etc players without being in-game. To aid this whole "not being in-game" part, we've begun experimenting with SourceTV, a Source Engine tool that allows administrators to spectate the game without actually being in the server. I've also designed a panel for our admins to read through server logs / chat logs, as previously they were only kept in the server.
To help ensure privacy and to comply with privacy laws, IP addresses are not stored in logs available to admins. They are filtered out.
We intend to begin hosting Open Fortress events soon, we're just waiting to see how the first big update goes before we commit to events that may be shuddered by technical problems. There will also be more news this week, I thought it'd be best to space it out a bit!
There is currently a bug in TF2 relating to the in-game voting menu. Regardless of stock or custom through the use of a plugin. Right now, this affects voting in all servers, including MvM.
The issue is being looked into, but most likely the fix will come from Valve today. If a fix is not found quickly, an alternative will be used. Sorry for the troubles, we will report on this matter again soon!
Good afternoon folks, here to drop a quick message regarding some SCG goings-on!
Minecraft 1.19 is out as of today! And as always, it'll be a lil' bit before our server is updated. I'll take this time to state that we'll also be restarting the server with a fresh new world! There are also some other things in store for our MC server, things I've wanted to do for forever but have been delayed near constantly due to other things, I apologize deeply for this!
There will be a backup of the world made for downloading soon as well!
In other news, Open Fortress is also back! We technically have a server setup for it, though right now the game is going through some technical difficulties regarding installation and updating. Because of this, we are not hosting dedicated events yet, but hopefully this will change soon!
Thanks, and have fun! ^w^
Hello everyone! I wanted to inform folks that myself and a number of SCG staff are headed to Furry Weekend Atlanta this week! Because of that, it'll be a little quiet on the dev front. Folks are still welcome to inform me of any issues, the best way to reach me is via me telegram, "Rowedahelicon".
There may or may not be an FNG this weekend, depending on who is around, though folks are still welcome to hop on regardless! We'll see you all next week, and if you happen to be there, perhaps we'll see you there!
--Rowdy
Hello folks, here we are again for an SCG map test, however we're doing things a bit differently this time! Rather than have try and have a single map test event night and adding in what feels good, we'll have a few initial map events, weed out maps that are objectively unplayable, and keep the rest on rotation for the proceeding future. Then, as we go along, we'll strip out maps that just aren't popular and those that are will remain in rotation longer.
Additionally, we now have a ton of metrics regarding what maps get played the most, as well as the overall ratings of a map, as we go along adding more into our rotation (https://www.scg.wtf/stats/maps), we can strip off those that are not just unpopular, but also grossly overplayed, this allows us to have more diversity in the map selections.
Finally, the general "rules" for map nominations will be heavily relaxed for now. Anyone can pitch any map they'd like to be considered in a map vote and we'll give it a shot. Of course, if they're joke maps or generally unconventional maps, they probably won't make it, but I don't want to rely on initial interest for maps for now while we work on getting more folks active in the community!
The current list of maps up for consideration can be found here, you're encouraged to reply there, but you can reply here as well! https://www.scg.wtf/jb/d/7065-april-2022-map-test-details-within