Tf2's New Drm

[Lemon Jelly 26]

This is pretty interesting thread on the SPUF With the latest update, only Valve-approved servers can run certain mods.

The last update bought a new 'feature' (I call it DRM) that ties servers to steam IDs. This allows valve to block certain servers. The update also purposefully broke many mods that attaches models to players, and mods that gives new items. A message from the admin of OzFur:

Quote:

With that said I contacted Robin and Gabe last night and got a reply. It reads:

"Hi Leon.

Another feature in yesterday's update was the server-steam-accounts. We'll be using that to provide good servers (like yours) the ability to continue running their mods, while preventing bad servers from cheating the item system. We wanted to spend more time on it to have it all ready to go at once, but the recent arrival of some server mod's forced us to move faster.

Robin."

That's right, valve purposefully broke mods, and only valve-approved servers can run them.

I had a new weapon idea, I want to implement it on my server! You can't with the update, unless your server is Valve-approved.

I want to give donators hats! You can't with the update, unless your server is Valve-approved.

I want to run mods that changes the appearance of the game! You can't with the update, unless your server is Valve-approved.

I want to nerf this overpowered weapon and buff this underpowered weapon! You can't with the update, unless your server is Valve-approved.

Because other servers were selling custom skins without permission from authors for real money, for use on their servers.

Hence your bolded section there.

How will this "feature" effect the lotus servers? if at all? like for example giving donors access to any hats. or even are beloved payload horse.

[ePsoN 47]

Our servers are already Valve-approved and we can use our donator status.

[Mana 3,867]

How will this "feature" effect the lotus servers? if at all? like for example giving donors access to any hats. or even are beloved payload horse.

I can't say what this means yet. Currently steam server ids are optional so I won't even bother adding them to all of our servers.

This could also mean that we will simply have less servers. I wouldn't mind that, when Valve breaks things updating all these servers is quite a chore.

I'm rather curious to see how they will implement this and how people will try to work around it.

PS: This will do wonders to the sourcemod/modding community.

[El Phantasmo 56]

Ill tell you what it means. Lotus Servers are now 87.6% Crashtastic!

[Mana 3,867]

My guess is that this new approved server system will simply be for editing items/weapons and using attachable models. So not being approved means none of that. But the rest will do fine.

I just don't see them disabling ALL plugins on all servers except the white listed ones. Not even bans will work (we are ignoring the shitty built in ban system that loses bans!)

That's why you dedicate a day to writing bash scripts to make your life much easier. Example script:

UploadMyPlugin.sh

#!/bin/bash
scp myplugin.smx srcdsuser@host1:/home/srcdsuser/srcds/orangebox/tf/addons/sourcemod/plugins/myplugin.smx
scp myplugin.smx srcdsuser@host2:/home/srcdsuser/srcds/orangebox/tf/addons/sourcemod/plugins/myplugin.smx
scp myplugin.smx srcdsuser@host3:/home/srcdsuser/srcds/orangebox/tf/addons/sourcemod/plugins/myplugin.smx
scp myplugin.smx srcdsuser@host4:/home/srcdsuser/srcds/orangebox/tf/addons/sourcemod/plugins/myplugin.smx 

And how would that be helpful exactly? I didn't need to recompile anything .smx related.

The amount of time it would take to build a list of changed files based on game (TF2, CSS, DODS), server configs (UK, US) and then put them in a script and... well it would take more time to make the script than it would to SFTP a .gzip file.

There's only 1 game install per box and only 1 sourcemod install per box. Everything is shared to make the servers as fast as possible.

Ill tell you what it means. Lotus Servers are now 87.6% Crashtastic!

Good news is that it's crashing in Valve code. So there's literally nothing for me to fix. Yay. (I disabled anything of ours that was contributing)

The best part is how Valve's own crash dump uploader now has a very good chance of crashing and further delaying/preventing the servers from restarting.

[El Phantasmo 56]

Good news is that it's crashing in Valve code. So there's literally nothing for me to fix. Yay. (I disabled anything of ours that was contributing)

The best part is how Valve's own crash dump uploader now has a very good chance of crashing and further delaying/preventing the servers from restarting.

Most of my crashes have be on the client side. Full crashes of HL2.exe out to the desktop. Its weird that it happens at the same time as other players on the server. Both Deja and I crashed the HL2.exe at the same time while the server stayed running with most people.

[DrkEagle 15]

Nerds. lol j/k!

I vote part of the donator money goes towards a plane ticket for Afronanny to fly to Valve HQ and enough leftover to buy a baseball bat!

[Mana 3,867]

That is all thanks to Valve's newest untested game coordinator code. Now Valve has made it so people crash at the same time. They should rename it to "crash coordinator" as opposed to "game coordinator"

You'd think a mufti million dollar game developer/publisher giant would have developers that have some sort of a grasp on memory management?

#0  0x4a2fec7e in _int_malloc () from /lib/libc.so.6
#1  0x4a300e97 in malloc () from /lib/libc.so.6
#2  0xf77ac1d3 in operator new(unsigned int) () from bin/libtier0.so
#3  0xf77ab126 in operator new[](unsigned int) () from bin/libtier0.so
#4  0xf458bca3 in KeyValues::RecursiveLoadFromBuffer(char const*, CUtlBuffer&)
   () from /home/srcds/orangebox/tf/bin/server.so
#5  0xf458bda1 in KeyValues::RecursiveLoadFromBuffer(char const*, CUtlBuffer&)
   () from /home/srcds/orangebox/tf/bin/server.so
#6  0xf458eced in KeyValues::LoadFromBuffer(char const*, CUtlBuffer&, IBaseFileSystem*, char const*) () from /home/srcds/orangebox/tf/bin/server.so
#7  0xf458ef10 in KeyValues::LoadFromBuffer(char const*, char const*, IBaseFileSystem*, char const*) () from /home/srcds/orangebox/tf/bin/server.so
#8  0xf4038c8d in CBaseEntity::PrecacheModelComponents(int) ()
  from /home/srcds/orangebox/tf/bin/server.so
#9  0xf4038fe6 in CBaseEntity::PrecacheModel(char const*, bool) ()
  from /home/srcds/orangebox/tf/bin/server.so
#10 0xf3d99831 in PrecacheGibsForModel(int) ()
  from /home/srcds/orangebox/tf/bin/server.so
#11 0xf440d96d in CTFPlayer::PrecachePlayerModels() ()
  from /home/srcds/orangebox/tf/bin/server.so
#12 0xf440dacc in CTFPlayer::Precache() ()
  from /home/srcds/orangebox/tf/bin/server.so
#13 0xf422d61a in CBasePlayer::Spawn() ()