I wanted to wait a while before posting this, because the way we do things have been changing around somewhat, and I didn’t want to have to keep updating this article.

Firstly, the old “rank” system is still in use - I have simply moved its functions to XP points. XP is what your prefix (Deckhand, Pirate, etc.) is based on, and Cap’n’s have access to exclusive functions which we should have time to expand in the future. XP is earned by killing tanks, specials, and by helping fellow team mates. To show your XP, the command is:


The new stats system stores your kills, deaths and so on, in our database. From this information your server ranking is calculated, and all your global stats can be displayed with the command:


If you want to see your stats just for the current campaign you are playing, you can instead use:


If you want to see how many points your session stats translate to, use:


Finally, you can see your server ranking, overall points, and the ranks and points of players around you by typing:


Pirate-of-the-game goes to the player with the highest points at the end of a campaign.

There are some things to improve, and a couple of bug fixes which will be addressed in the coming months. I will also add a !top50 command or something similar, so that you can see the top players in the server. I’ll update here when that goes live.

Merci beaucoup mes amis.

Morning

(Temporarily disabled)

Ladies and gentlemen..

The music player for the server is complete.

I had taken a break from coding over the summer to enjoy the outdoors and do some other activities, but my fingers have started to get cold so I’ll be getting back to pushing server improvements from now on.

Sadly, during testing it became apparent that, uploading all the music files to players on server connection is not practical for a number of reasons. The main reason being, that the sound files themselves total around 161MB. It might not sound like much but if I upload those files to every player who connects that adds up to a huge amount of data, and increases load times drastically for new players. That’s a big problem for a function which is disabled by default.

The good news is that if you want to download the files yourself and add them to your game folder, it’s pretty simple, and here are the instructions:

Download the music files here[bounty.infosystems.uk].

Extract the sound directory to your game directory. The default path for the sound files is:


Once you’ve done that, you can enable or disable music in-server using the command:


I turned the play volume down to 80% - I'll consider feedback if people think that is too quiet or too loud. It's also worth noting that if you really don't like a song, just delete it from the \sound\general folder and it wont play when the server triggers it.

Let me know if you run into any problems. Enjoy!

Morning

General server rules

What is not allowed:

- Abuse

We have many players of different ages, skill level, languages, ect. Some may need your help more than you need theirs. With that in mind, please treat everyone in the server with respect. Any abuse or threatening behaviour towards other people for any reason is not tolerated. If someone is abusive towards you, please don't be abusive in return, instead, report it to an admin.

- Discrimination

Any discrimination based on race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, disability, etc. is not permitted, even if it isn't directed at anyone in particular. This includes sprays and usernames.

- Griefing / Trolling

It's understandable that accidents happen, but it's against the rules to purposefully annoy other players. Molotov fire and incendiaries will always cause friendly fire, so please be careful. Don't spam doors or the vocaliser or the voice channel, ect.

- Adult sprays

For reasons of inclusivity for all, porn sprays are not allowed. Please do not use any spray which contains photographic or animated nudity.

What is allowed:

- Profanity

Swearing is permitted. Keep in mind that there may be players who don't want to hear it, and if you are asked to stop, please do so.

Game rules

Game rules in the Bounty are not always black and white. Development is continual, and this often changes the dynamics of game - and therefore rules. We encourage finding new ways to have fun and value good sportsmanship (playing fairly), so if you are doing those things it is extremely unlikely that you will be in breach of any game rules. Please follow the direction of admins and experienced players - if you disrupt gameplay and continue to do so after being asked to stop, a kick or ban is likely.

- Map glitching

Certain areas can cause issues with the AI tank behavior because of map limitations. A good example of this, are the two towers in tank challenge which are inaccessible to tanks, however players can reach it by teleport. Whilst these areas are not strictly off-limits, you should not fight from there and stay out of sight of tanks.

- Tank camping

When you are playing on the tank team as a tank there are certain places that you should not stay. You should never attack anybody if you are within 30 metres distance of a downed player, a player corpse, a helicopter, or a spawn zone. You shouldn't persue any foe into these zones, either. Don't enter the rescue cabinet or block the doorway. Never attack people who have started reviving or defibrillating another player, even from distance.

However, it is okay to camp in spots outside those zones and/or ambush players. You can also block a player’s route to the escape helicopter, as long as you do not persue them into the 30 metre zone. It’s okay to attack the helicopter with rocks if you are farther than 30 metres away. It's permitted to enter a 30 metre zone to kill a lone downed player or if you simply need innocent passage through the zone. When you create a new 30 metre zone (by downing a player or killing someone), you are allowed to continue to dominate the zone until the area is clear, after which you should leave the area completely. DO NOT BHOP AS A TANK.

It’s likely that I will write a plugin to enforce at least some of these rules in the future, but since it will be a lot of technical effort for something that doesn't add any fun new functionality, it is low priority for me. In addition, any plugin enforcement would be uncomprimisingly ruthless, but these rules should be as flexible as they can be.

- Hacking / Exploits

Anything that could compromise the security of the server or players is not allowed. However, If you are not interfering with gameplay, certain exploits are generally ignored by admins. Good examples of those are automatic pistol and bhop scripts. Speed hack and wall hack are prohibited.

Use exploits entirely at your own risk!! The server is VAC-secured and you could get an automatic and irreversible l4d2-wide VAC ban.

Thanks, all!

Morning

Updated: 07/03/2023

Greetings, tank-slayers

‘T’as been a busy few weeks, with significant updates across the board. Many of the changes that have happened are reflected in older (and new) announcements, so they’ve been updated and I’ll link to them here:

linux switchover
player limit reached
spectator slots

The main thing that I haven’t covered in those articles is the adaptation of the server and plugins to a saferoom-to-saferoom style of gameplay. Someone once showed me the tank run mutation, and, in a nutshell, it consists of the standard campaign maps - no mercy, death toll, ect, but instead of normal and special infected, there are only tanks. As I thought it would be nice to have some new scenery, I set about fixing weird behaviour that occurs when these maps are loaded in the Bounty.

Finally, the maps seem somewhat stable, and I have the tools at my disposal to modify the infected to be tanks-only. Currently, though, only common infected or specials will spawn, so it is unfinished; I figured now was the best time to update the group pages, since so much has changed in such a short space of time, and I’ll keep you all informed of progress on this subject as it is made.

The Passing and The Sacrifice show some extra-buggy behaviour, because we use all 8 characters on the server and it sometimes spawns survivors in the wrong place (up on the bridge) then crashes! I’ve disabled those for the time being.

Because many of us like tanks-only, currently the only way campaign maps can be loaded is by an admin, outside of our official uptime hours. Just ask one of us if you want to switch, and we'll get a better system up in the long term.

Enjoy!

Morning st

‘Sup all.

There’s been a lot going on behind-the-scenes recently, and, It’s been great. It’s often hard for me to see how things may have changed from an exterior perspective, so it might seem like not much at all to you guys. On the other hand, I appreciate it when people let me know when something that has changed, sucks!

With all the base features of HMS Bounty in place, we’ve been able to think seriously about moving the project along in new and fun ways. The first step along that path was always going to be a switch-over to Linux instead of Windows dedicated.

Linux is easier to manage as a whole system in terms of automation, and multiple services can be run for long periods of time from a single or cluster computer.

After a little bit of configuration, it was up and running. Everything went smoothly and even the plugins didn’t need recompiling. There were some metamod plugins that needed to be updated, and I came along a version of one which would allow us to crack the tank limit. Boom.

During the switch-over, I began testing on a dedicated host provider, and now, the bounty is running permanently over there. The new IP address/port is 213.171.209.217:27015 but it can still be connected to via the domain name at bounty.infosystems.uk

I also created version of the Bounty to use for development. It's is known as The Kraken[pirates] (at the old IP address or kraken.infosystems.uk). If you see it online that means I’m probably just testing some things and you are unlikely to get a game there. But feel free to pop in and say hi, if you like! Be aware that this server is running an old database which is redundant and your points will not count there, going forward.

I haven’t directly measured the difference in performance between the servers, but the CPU availability is much higher on the new, and the upload bandwidth should be too. We had fun stress-testing the new server by spawning hundreds of witches until it lagged the itself to death, but it’s hard to know what that truly means.

Next thing to work on when it comes to performance, will be testing the server at 66 and 100 tick rates. I’ll also start to play around with bandwidth rates and try to find a good balance.

I’ve been dying to get databasing and stats set up properly for a long time, but it was deemed too time-consuming when there were so many other important things to do first. It is moving up the list.

Any questions, give me a shout!

Cheerzez.

Morning st