Auto "AutoAdjust" Bots

I added a twist to the action today. I'm not sure how it's going to work, but it's an idea I have been tossing around in my head for quite some time now.

It goes like this: as soon as the point spread between the number #1 player and the number #2 player is greater than or equal to the winning score divided by two, the bots (if any!) go into AutoAdjust mode.

Meaning, of course, the bots will become as skilled as the best player.

When the high score is less than or equal to two, implying a new game has started, AutoAdjust shuts off. It will also shut off if no one is playing at all.

I'm not sure this is a good idea or not, but some players are just too fucking good. And it may not be good for Classic ]i[, which has low winning score.

I may clean out the firewall filters and shut off the ban hammer just to see how this idea plays out with cheats. Unfortunately, it doesn't kick in if there is more than one cheat, since the point spread between the number #1 and number #2 players wouldn't hit the maximum allowed.

There are also some variations of this that have been going around in my head, like turning on "Fat Boy" mode when the spread is too great. Or maybe adding more bots.

The possibilities are endless!

UT Map Switcher In Production

I got bored at work today and wrote the map switcher for Ban-O-Matic.

Now, after ten minutes of idle time (seems to be a lot of that lately), the servers will automatically switch to a random map.

Also, in the case of BOT House and EXP4, an update with the new map name will be sent to Twitter. These may or may not show up depending on whether or not I used my hourly tweet allotment.

FWIW, it looks like I may be upgrading the kernel on BOT House this weekend, since it went so well on EXP4. That means there will undoubtedly be an IP address change in the near future and your bookmarks will be fucked.

There are still a few tests I'd like to do first, but it looks inevitable.

I really hate changing IPs, but the upgrade is worth it.

StinkFly BANNED!

I got a complaint! Here it is...

If you are the guy cheating on your maps, known as STINKYFLY..then I am talking to a degenerate. If you are not him, then I suggest you please remove him. He is flagrantly winning games by cheating on your maps. Scores like 35 to 5 when nobody else is even close and they are good players. Show your class and integrity and kick his childish, cheating ass off. He spoils the game.

Well, jeepers. I never did like that guy anyway. He's one of "those" players who tends to make everybody leave, all at once. But I never caught him in flagrante delicto, if you know what I mean.

And I try to refrain from banning people who just happen to piss me off (except for Zodiac). I'm not a good player, even though I've been fragging away for the last ten years (my, how time flies) I just never got the hang of it (I still can't strafe for the life of me). I'm so bad sometimes it seems like everybody's cheating.

So I refrain from banning people - as much as possible - until somebody complains.

But I love to do it, because I've put a lot of time and effort into Ban-O-Matic and tying it into the firewall rules. And because it works so well (when it works - there have been no lack of problems with it over the years).

And since I migrated everything to the new server and put all the scripts on a network share it's easier than it's ever been!

Plus I get no small amount of satisfaction of watching the banned players trying to play. They sort of float across the map, if they can move at all, and they bitch and moan and curse their fate. Or they get paranoid and blame it on a Denial of Service attack from another player.

That's just precious.

Anyway, Stinky's gone. I may immortalize him as a bot ("StinkyFly" seems like a nice subtle twist, but "ShitFly would work, too).

But be forewarned, a lot of times they come crying back to Hinky, promising to play nice and never ever cheat again. And being the kind hearted old fool I am, I take pity on their worthless basement boy existence and usually let them back on (except for Zodiac).

So anyway, please feel free to complain! I do listen and I like playing UT with a good crowd.

Eliminate the ninnies and the twits!

Ban-O-Matic is BACK

And it's up to revision 3 at this point. I made several seriously schweet improvements that should be ported over to the other scripts.

Sorry that took so damned long.

An unintended casualty came in the form of _gabriel_chile_. He was an innocent bystander. He simply chose the wrong name. I'll have to straighten that out.

Sorry to make you put up with all those idiots for so long.

And speaking of idiots, I noticed Ranger was back. He's not in the KillFile but he used to be. The sucker is just too damned good.

I've had a few complaints about the new server concerning lag. It's hard to tell from here, but it appears to be OK. There may have been some other issues. Time Warner Telecom (TWT) got hit with a DNS attack last week.

How would TWT's problems affect us?

Well, it goes like this: Some poor schmuck on TWT logs in to the server while TWT's DNS servers are getting bombed. UT isn't affected by the DNS attack because there is no name resolution involved. No problem there, but as soon as this schmuck needs to download one of our UT mods, if he can't resolve www.mrhinkydink.com (the high speed server with all the mods), he's going to pull that mod off the local server (here in my family room) and subsequently consume most of the upstream bandwidth, which would seriously suck for anyone else who happens to be playing.

I'm sure that's clear as mud, but it is a possibility. We get TWT players here all the time and the local mod downloads have been a problem forever.

I did some other things to make the server more responsive. All the game binaries have had their CPU priorities upped.

Anyway, that's that for now. I hope everything's working out for you.