Hi folks. Long time no news post, yeah? Well, I definitely have a news-worthy post to make. Both of our game server went offline this morning, and more than likely it’s gonna be permanent, if not for quite a long while. Boomhauer, one of Hardfought’s long-standing members, had graciously let me host both of my servers at his place of work back in August of 2006. I got a head’s up from him indirectly a few weeks ago that the place he was working for was about to close shop. I knew this was coming, I just didn’t know when exactly. I guess today was the day.

Soooo… yet again, Hardfought is without a game server. At this point, I don’t know if I will bring them back up or not. I had a sweet deal through Boomhauer, as I didn’t have to pay anything to have the servers hosted, and I really have no desire to pay for game hosting ever again. As I am still in this shithole known as Iraq, and will be here for another full 12 months at least, my options, as you can imagine, are very limited. In any event, it was another good run while it lasted. Team Fortress 2 was a helluva lot of fun to play, and when Call of Duty 4 came onto the scene, it was an instant hit. Crysis had so much potential, but from what I understand, the makers of that game finally ‘finished’ the game just a week or so ago with their 1.2 patch release. Oh well.

To all of ya that played on our servers and called Hardfought home - thank you. As usual, the website and forums are unaffected, and will always be up and running, so feel free to keep the discussions goin’ if you so choose. Who knows what the future will bring? We may decide to host another guild for another MMO, like Warhammer Online, or some other title. Time will tell.

Well, I have yet another mission to go on, which is typical on the ‘day off’ that we rarely see around here, heh. So, see ya around, or maybe not. Until then…

Happy Thanksgiving folks. Your mission, should you chose to accept it, is this: to eat as much food as you possibly can, drink massive amounts of beer, spend quality time with your family and other loved ones, and then pass out during the football game. Heh :P

Hope you all have a great Turkey Day weekend. I know I am… going over to friends house for dinner and drinking, plan on working on ‘The Beast’ the next morning with a buddy of mine, and then celebrating xmas early with Jenn since I’m outta here real soon. Soooo… have a fun and safe weekend, and maybe I’ll see ya on one of the servers. See ya!

This year has seen a shitload of new game titles coming out for the holiday season. We’ve got Call of Duty 4, Crysis, Unreal Tournament 3, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Team Fortress 2… the list goes on and on. You already know about our TF2 servers. I’ve recently added a few more offerings in the way of Crysis and Call of Duty 4. Our Crysis server can be found at 38.101.79.96:64087 - dx9 mode, 28 player max, ranked. And we’ve got two CoD4 servers, which can be found at 38.101.79.96 and .97, ports 28960. These are 24 and 32 player max respectively, game modes being Team Deathmatch/Search and Destroy for the 24 player, and straight TDM for the 32 player server. Both are ranked. CoD4 seems to be THE game this season, with several thousand people playing online at any given time. TF2 is hanging in there quite nicely as well, and Crysis is getting somewhat of a slow start, but is also picking up. Because of all these new servers, Hardfought has now had more people playing at one time than at any other point in its history. Have a look - picture link - not bad, yeah? ;-) Try these games out if ya haven’t already… Crysis looks absolutely amazing, with some unique fighting configurations and choices, and CoD4 is very realistic and fast-paced.

Other news - my wife and I just returned from vacation the other day. My last bit o’ relaxation before I head back Iraq next month for a fifteen month tour. We also celebrated our one year wedding anniversary, and Jenn got us tickets to see Van Halen in Long Island, NY. They were fuckin’ awesome, first time David Lee Roth has performed with VH in about 23 years. Was a great show… they extended their tour, so if ya get a chance to see ‘em, do it.

Alright, that’s all I have for today. Have a good one folks, we’ll see ya online.

Ooooh snap! Yeah, that’s right. Hardfought came into being on this day, seven years ago. And wow, it’s still here, with game servers and everything ;-) So, happy b-day Hardfought, and here’s to many more to follow. This is where I make the msgboard post on this news topic, and all the regs come out of the woodwork to reminisce… heh. Good times, good times. We’re overdue another HF LAN now that I think about it. Once I finish my last trip to the sandbox and become a civilian again, I’ll plan a good one for sure. Think 2009 for that lil shin-dig.

Touchin’ base on other news - TF2 is going pretty well. Both servers are seeing a fair amount of play time, and as new versions of Sourcemod come about, more functionality will be added to make your TF2 experience even better. Our UT3 vCTF server gets some decent play time as well, just not as much as I’d like to see. It’s playerbase is a lot less than TF2 is though, but this is the first demo release - once Epic gets their shit together, and fixes a lot of the glaring bugs with it, the playerbase should rocket upwards.

Special thanks to all of the regs who have stuck it out through thick and thin with Hardfought. You guys and gals make this place what it is. Have a drink for HF today in celebration, and I’ll see ya online :-P

That’s right. Not only do we have two TF2 servers up and running, we now also have a Unreal Tournament 3 demo server up as well. The IP address is 38.101.79.98:7777. It’s Vehicle CTF, 24 players, with the only included CTF map in rotation (Suspense). Using the in-game server browser, it will show up as k2_1971: Hardfought - UT3 vCTF. Both the name and the IP will change once the server clears out (it’s full as of this post) and I can assign the IP I want it on, as well as changing the username for the server. UT3 is a helluva lot of fun… you need a pretty beefy system to experience it in all its glory, with all the gfx settings maxed out. However, playing at 1024×768 with FSAA turned off, I can sustain 40-50 fps, and this is with a 7xxx series nVidia graphics card. Be sure to check out the official UT3 forums (http://utforums.epicgames.com) for tips and tricks for configuring your .ini files for smoother gameplay, and for answers to any questions ya might have with any bugs you encounter (it’s a beta demo, folks).

More gaming news to follow! See ya online…

In case you’re wondering why our msgboard is offline, it’s because I have initiated a conversion from our current board (phpBB2.x) over to phpBB3. As of this post, the conversion has already finished (database w/ posts, topics, users, etc), but there’s still a lot of work to do to ensure that all permissions carried over, that there are no errors or missing posts/topics, and so forth. Right this minute, I am rebuilding the search index. It’s CPU-intensive, so if ya notice the page loading up kinda slowly, that’s why. It’s pretty late right now on the mainland, so hopefully this wont affect too many of ya. The original board is untouched, so if there are any serious bugs or show-stoppers with the conversion, I can go back to our original board easily and quickly - everything is intact. Once I am satisfied with the conversion, phpBB2 will be disabled (the database will remain as a backup for a period of time), and phpBB3 will become a permanent fixture. The look n’ feel is going to be different - it’s gonna take me some time to get it to match the site, so bear with me in that regard. I’ll edit this post as progress is made.

Hello all. Once again, we’ve got another server offering, this time in the form of Team Fortress 2. Currently the game is still in beta, but is due to go gold on October 10th. A shitload of people have the beta however, and the game appears to have already become a huge hit. You can play on Hardfought’s TF2 beta server at 38.101.79.99, default port. This title is running on the second of two servers Boomhauer is hosting for me. Remember the dual Opteron CPU’s, mainboard, and memory I got my hands on during HF LAN #6? That’s the hardware. The server is already full (24 players) as of this post and is running smooth as silk according to a few HF’ers who have already played on it.

Some more good news to report - Suck. has returned from his year-long hiatus, and is now back full-time as an HF benefactor/admin. He’s the one who actually setup the TF2 beta server for all of us, so be sure to thank him when ya see him next. He couldn’t have come back at a better time, as I’m set to deploy back to Iraq soon, and I’ll need all the help I can get… and I can’t think of anyone better qualified than him. Suck will be running the show while I’m away. TF2 looks to be our new bread n’ butter (Crysis is the next one, whoa boy…), and I know Suck will need some help as well, so if you’d like an admin spot, get with either him or myself.

I’m still stuck here at Ft. Irwin til the 6th. As soon as I get back, I’ll get TF2 and play a few rounds with all of ya. Let us know how the server feels, and if there are any settings tweaks we should consider. See ya soon gang.

Hiya gang. I noticed today that the HF msgboard was not behaving correctly again. I have very limited tools at my disposal at the moment, as I am still stuck at Ft. Irwin. I was able to discover, however, that a couple key files were missing from the msgboard install. Then I checked my email and saw this from my webhost:

Hello,

Over the weekend, customers on host(edited for security reasons) fell victim to hacking attempts due to a recently discovered Red Hat root-level exploit. This exploit allowed files/folders containing the word “log” to be removed from the server.

The exploit, detailed here: http://lwn.net/Articles/252065/, has now been patched on all affected servers via kernel upgrades. No attacks of the above-outlined nature have occurred since this patch was applied, and our servers are no longer at risk.

Your pages can be quickly restored by re-uploading files/folders whose name had contained “log.” We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please know that we are continually working to stay on top of these vulnerabilities as they surface, and that our staff is here to assist you in every way possible to help ensure your site is fully-functioning and hosted with as little interruption as possible. Thank you for your business, and your continued patience with regard to this matter.

I can’t fix this until I make it back home I’m afraid, which will be sometime on or around October 6th. It’s an easy fix, I’m just not in a position to address it right now. Sorry folks. At least I know what the cause of it was, and that it’s been fixed.

I’ll post again as soon as things are back to normal.

EDIT - the msgboard is back up as of the afternoon of Oct. 2nd. Enjoy.

Yeah, we have a CS:S server *yet again*… you asked for one, so I put one up. The IP address is 38.101.79.98, default port. Boomhauer, who’s been hosting a couple of my servers for several months now, just recently performed a major overhaul/upgrade to the datacenter he works in, and the servers (you can only access one at the moment) have been relocated onto a new data pipe that has megabits of untapped bandwidth. Several of you that have already played on it since it went live a couple days ago are seeing pings in the teens, and even single digits.

The map rotation is pretty basic. The administrative backend script is now powered by SourceMod, which has finally been released as a beta. The first official version of SourceMod should be out soon. Plugins for SourceMod that are loaded include ATAC (advanced team attack control) to handle team wounding/team kills, and advert plugin, and of course an HLstatsX plugin that displays your in-game stats in real-time.

I’ve added a few admins already, as after this weekend I wont be around at all to administer anything for several months. If you’d like to be an admin for the CS:S server, lemme know in the thread that will be associated with this post. Any comments, requests, or ideas you have for the server are welcome as always. Have fun with it gang; this is just a prelude to bigger and better games to come. See ya online.

Heya folks, just a quick lil FYI - the messageboard is not working currently, and has been inaccessible for about 24 hours as of this posting. I’m working the issue with my webhost, so hopefully we’ll have it back up and running smoothly. At first I thought it was all scripts/processes that use MySQL, but if you’re reading this, then that hypothesis is not entirely valid, as my news-posting script also uses MySQL as a back-end. Anyways… check back soon.

EDIT - the msgboard is back up and 100% fully functional as of O-dark 30 this morning (June 20th). See the corresponding msgboard thread for the details.