INX game servers blog

At last, after rigorous testing, we are happy to announce that you can now safely switch your game servers to and from Insurgency! We are also accepting Insurgency orders which will be setup instantly via our automated system.

If you already have an account with us, here’s the quickest way to install the game:
1.  Log into the Server Control Panel
2. Click on ’switch game’ next to the game you are currently running.
3. Select ‘Half-Life 2: Insurgency’ from the list. Do not tick the ‘install game’ box, just click Switch!
4. Back on the main page you will see an ‘Update’ button. Click this then restart your game server.

Please note that although we have tested the game thoroughly, Insurgency may not work perfectly for all customers. The game itself is still in beta so do not expect it to be bug free for at least several weeks. May I remind you that the game takes a good 30 seconds to load after you click the Start/Restart button; there is nothing we can do about this, it is the game itself causing the delay!

Happy gaming

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)!

On Thursday our third and fourth Intel Quadcore machines arrived from Dell! These sexy (expensive) beasts are being used for almost all new game server customers, which, might I add, are now being setup instantly! Olly was lucky enough to have the privilege of taking the new servers out of their boxes and putting them into the racks; no wonder he’s been so happy recently

You complained, INX-Gaming heard you!
We’ve been dropping a few hints here and there and a few rumors have been flying around about this! The main, if not only reason people complain about INX is that the game servers take too long to setup. And quite right too; we agree that an average wait of 3 days is far too long! So, following on from our successful instant setup voice servers, we present to you instant setup game servers!

After trialing our automatic game server setup system for over a week now, we are confident that we have ironed out all the bugs and that everything is running fine. Many thanks to the customers who signed up during the trial period; we know there have been a few hickups but thankfully it’s all smooth sailing from here. The far majority of new customers are setup on our new Quadcore servers for maximum performance; and of course, all orders are setup instantly.

With so many things now automated, we have far more time to concentrate on the ‘true’ support requests (as Olly put it). In the past week we’ve seen the release of the long awaited re-install feature alongside the amazing fix-me tool. Many customers have mentioned just how helpful both of these tools are, and how the fix-me tool in particular has been a real life-saver!

If you haven’t already got an INX-Gaming server, we cannot force you to buy one, but after reading about all the industry-leading features we have to offer, you would be mad not to!

Carl
Online Services Manager