the daily inxling!

Last night we committed some changes to the forum, mostly rearranging some existing forums, merging a couple together and adding one or two more.

What does this mean for you? Well not much really All the good stuff is still there waiting for you to add your 50pence worth.

To go into a little more detail, the forums have been divided up into two main categories.

The first is Community and Entertainment, which is for discussing everyday life, sharing a joke, or talking about that brilliant film you’ve seen and just wanted to share with everyone. You can discuss who won the latest football game or you can meet up with potential clan members or opponents if you’re looking for a match.

The second is Gaming and Technology, for discussing Gaming and Technology surprisingly enough Wanna show everyone the cool maps or mods you’ve got on your INX gameserver? Got a handy gadget you think everyone needs? Want to debate whether Counter Strike Source is better than Counter Strike 1.6? Well you can!

As ever, we always listen to suggestions, so if you have ideas for almost anything you think INX Gaming should do, please drop a post in the suggestion box.

Finally before you go and catch up on the forum posts, please sign our Battlefield 2/2142 petition. You know it makes sense

There’s been quite a lot of discussion on the forums about this recently. Basically, Electronic Arts are refusing to allow us to sell ranked BF2 game servers (because to do so you must be a member of EA’s trusted partner scheme). Every time we try to make contact, they either ignore us (and believe me, we’ve tried everything, even leaving people voicemails and inviting them out to lunch!) or they reply with a pre-written response along the lines of “the scheme is full”.

Battlefield 2 is going down the toilet. When ET Quakewars comes out, the toilet will be well and truly flushed. The only way to restore the game to its former glory is to have more stable (and cheaper) game servers online. Cheaper game servers = more people buying game servers, therefore the game becomes more popular; simple! And we hope to charge 99p per slot for a BF2 ranked game server, just like all our other games.

Please sign our petition by adding your name in a comment below. The more signatures, the better. We will then send it to EA, as a final hope that they will allow us (UK’s Biggest GSP, without BF2 servers!) to host ranked servers of their game.

We, the undersigned, would like INX-Gaming to become an EA trusted partner for the purpose of selling Battlefield 2 Ranked game servers at 99p per slot. EA, we have had enough of this idiocy!

This week we’re happy to present the User Manager tool, which has been released in addition to a new login screen. The user manager is very much a unique tool to our system. It allows you to create control panel user accounts for your team/clan members so they can login and access various functions of the panel that you make available to them.

So, say you want your team member ‘Bob’ to be able to restart the game server and edit files (such as game server map cycle) but nothing more… it’s simple! Click onto the User Manager page, click Add User and tick the game panel features that you wish Bob to have access to. Our system will then create an account for him so he can login; this will not only make the busy and stressful life of a game server owner much easier, but your clan members can enjoy using the panel too. In fact, maybe they could help donate towards the cost of the server if they get an account to login and control parts of it? The choice is all yours!

We had a brief issue yesterday when our central file server died! As this file server is a core part of our network, it contained some files that helped the control panel work, and as such many users experienced issues when running the fix-me tool or the reinstall tool. Luckily one of our technicians was at hand and the server was restored in under an hour after it went down. To ensure that this does not happen again, we are investing money into replacing the box with a more expensive and, naturally, more powerful machine; the hardware in it will be more reliable and far more redundant. Technology has advanced slightly since the central file server was setup, and it’s probably time for an upgrade!

Why am I telling you all this? Well, why not. As UK’s Number 1 game server host, we are proud to admit the little hickups we have here and there; after all, no-one’s perfect.

Where to now?

I remember back when sequals were released on my old Commodore Amiga 1200, and before that my 500, and proceeding that, less so my Amstrad 646 CPC. Less so because I would only have been at the most 7 years of age at the time. I was but a gaming young jedi at the time. If I were to print on our company website I was wet at the prospect of some releases, I am sure Del Monte will be dropping me an emailing owning me. ‘DO NOT talk dirty on our company website!’ I’m under strict instructions to remain professional in our game servers blog. And professional I shall remain.

And besides, no-one wants to read about a fat knacker getting moist over computer games. /me runs

Dino Dini’s Goal. Sensible WORLD of Soccer. Yes, I was a big football fan and this was really before any decent FPS could be played. The previews of these games had me positively salivating at the mouth.

Half Life 2, was the biggy for me. Every day I was reading the latest news snippets (often recycled). It was the trailers that had me *omg wowing*.

Remember that preview where Gordon walks across the bridge, with the Zombies coming out at him? It was next-gen. Special. ‘I can’t wait for this to be released’, I’m thinking…

What didn’t do Valve any favours, was that by the time Half Life 2 was released, many of the other developers had got a bit closer. Far Cry was a hugely under-rated game on the PC. I still love defending the house in COD UO. Magical gaming moments. Half Life 2 was a let down.

I am getting at that huge excitement with games. Generally you have about 5 minutes game play of one of those new games, before it all becomes the same.

Given graphics are now at such a level where the hardware is behind the talent of the designers, where can we go next?

John Carmack talks about mobile gaming. Please, pass me the sleeping pills. What I want is 50″ HD gaming. Near perfect graphics. Awesome AI. Seat trembling surround sound (no most jokes please).

What I do not want is gaming on a 4″ screen. The last level on Half Life 3000 being interupted by a txt from ma bezzie m8’s.

R u going up da yuth klub 2nite?

FFS, i was just bout 2 give Alex one innit. Now i is goin 2 shoot yu wit da gravity gunya mum buy me, ai.

Mobile gaming is a disaster waiting to happen. And please, don’t waste it on the txtspeak culture that will not appreciate it. Boring. Next, please.

I want gaming on a big TV, screen. Not fussed. If it’s FPS, it has to be with a mouse. Don’t tell me it works on a joypad. You CANNOT make lightening quick moves on an analog stick. Trust me, I’m pro at CS. Go from CS to Halo. We all said it sucked.

Looking forward ’scientists’, read corporations, have already developed the notion of 3D TV. TV that explodes in your face. TV that sits in the middle of the screen (like my Nan, ffs!). Amazing stuff. Although not for public release yet, this has to be where it’s going.

Increased AI (they never got it better than Far Cry IMO). Better sound? Doesn’t get much better than DOD Source for sound effects. Cinematic. Amazing.

If I am asked where gaming is going to be, and what game servers we’re going to be hosting in the future. The answer is, ‘who knows’?’

Whatever way, I feel as excited as I did when Sensible World of Soccer was released. Gaming is approaching the movie industry in terms of investment and revenue. With this, increased ‘movie budgets’ for games.

It’s only going to get bigger and better. And that’s fantastic news for us gamers. Enough to get the juices flowing.

We have some good news for all you game server customers out there! The game server control panel has been updated today with a fantastic new feature: a file editor! “What’s so special about that?” I hear you cry… well, this is no ordinary file editor; it features full versioning support, which means every time you update or edit a file, it saves it for you (with a useful name and a date stamp) so you can revert back to any particular version of the file at any time! It gives you control over many core game files for your game server, therefore meaning that you don’t have to use FTP. How handy.

I might well have confused you, so let me clarify: Say, for example, you update your server.cfg file with some new gravity settings, and after testing them on the game server you decide you don’t want super-low gravity, you can jump back onto the game panel and revert back to an older version of your server.cfg! Simple, eh?

Just another reason why INX-Gaming are UK’s Number #1 for game servers.

We are currently in talks with the developers of the up and coming game, Enemy Territory Quake Wars, the sequel to Wolfenstein Enemy Territory. We hope to be one of the first providers to host ranked game servers for the new game, which we predict will rival some of the most popular online games around today, namely Battlefield 2 and even Counter-Strike.

The game, which is to be released in a couple of months, sports stunning visuals and state-of-the-art game play. Check out the following link and track the progress of the game before it’s released!
http://www.splashdamage.com/?p=37

INX-Gaming hope to have some of the first game servers online for this game, and you will be able to too, thanks to our instant setup system, making it possible to have your game server online the minute the game is released!

Our Counter-Strike Source Public GunGame Server is now up!

85.234.148.30:27015

Feel free to come join us on the game server in the evenings for some GunGame fun on one of the most popular GunGame map rotations. We’ve got GunGame deathmatch running, so it’s constant action all night long. You never know, you might even see an INX staff member playing!

Wow, this week really has flown by. Lots of stuff has gone on at INX, but, as far as you guys are concerned: we’ve already completely filled one of our two new Quadcore game servers (Quadcore 4 is filling up with new game server customers as we speak!) and we’ve made a few panel upgrades!

You can now install *any* clan game server you wish via the panel. That’s right folks, if your clan fancies a bit of Counter-Strike Source in the morning, followed by some Call of Duty in the evening, we provide! Simply log onto your game server control panel, click ‘Switch Game’ and you’ll be faced with a plethora of game servers which you can switch between as and when you please. Other than that, nothing else major has been released; we’ve done some bug fixes to furthermore improve the stability of new game server installs and we’ve integrated our blog into the footer of the INX-Gaming homepage.

I’d also like to note that we are in the process of setting up some public CS Source game servers, namely a big GunGame mod server first. We’ll post the IP when it’s up and you can come join me and Olly in the world of online cyberspace. I must add that Olly is a big noob and it’s ever so satisfying owning him in the head with an AWP from long distance.

As usual though, we have plenty more features in the pipeline, alongside some big changes to our non-gaming side of the network (web servers, file servers, etc.); news about this to be released in the near future. Other than that though, we hope you enjoy your bank holiday weekend and make the most of it by relaxing in the sun or playing on an INX game server (preferably both at the same time)!

I wish I was a cat. Check this lazy, fat, useless mog out:

If I were the cat, I’d be playing on game servers. ALL day. EVERY day. Maybe laze in the sun for a bit after a spot of lunch (not Whiskers, mind you- pizza ftw). But all day, every day. I’d be gaming. Spot of Counterstrike Source in the morning. Hop on some INX DOD Source game servers in the afternoon. Yeah, that’d be the life. Instead, every day I fix game servers. But I don’t play on game servers. Sometimes life is SO unfair.

This week I am on ‘holiday’, staying with my mum, brothers and sister in Spalding, Lincolnshire. While they go to work / school / college, I am working from my mum’s home on my laptop. This cat sits here mocking me. While I’m fixing clan’s game servers all day long, the cat positions itself perfectly in the sun. It REALLY gets on my wick. Ziggy can’t even miaow. She makes this HALF-ars*d noise like someone’s sat on a crisp packet. AOOOYYOOOW. AOOOYOOOW. We bought some toys for ziggy. One a ‘tigger’ cat on a piece of string that goes *rattle rattle*. Most cats will chase this toy round the house. Del Monte and Eesha’s cats do. Does my cat? Does it..

If you pull the toy along side Ziggy, hoping for her attention she looks at you with this “WTF?!” expression. The cat cba to move. What a lazy, miserable cat. You have to dangle the toy in a position convenient to Ziggy, i.e. over the top of her paw, so she’ll play. What a waste.

So, if you believe in reincarnation, take very careful note. Become a cat. But while your owners are out, don’t waste your time licking yourself and eyeballing the dog. FFS play on some game servers. Preferably some INX-Gaming game servers, because it keeps Olly in a job.