Current State Of NotD

[|NotD| Wooki3]

Welcome To The Current State Of NotD

For those of you unfamiliar with this topic, this is where we release all the current stats for notd as well as future plans

First off thank you everyone for your continued support. we have been alive for nearly 3 years now since the shutdown. This would not have been possible without continued support from our community and players.

We have made quite a few changes in the past months with notd, new servers, shutting down others, increasing reliability, and implementing new tools such as the automatic donations system.

Speaking of which we currently have about 350$ in donations in the paypal account.

Which brings me to the next topic. We are currently planning on expanding into new games, and expanding to a single dedicated server instead of our multiple vps systems. We are hoping this will decrease lag and jitter issues with out current setup as well as giving us more room for expansion. With this expansion we will of course increase our monthly server costs, we are hoping we can try to increase donations to help offset the new costs. We are still looking at current server offerings from multiple companies but it seem like the bills will be in the neighborhood of 50$/month.
We hope that all of our members and players will continue to support us and help us to expand

I would also like to have your guys input on your advice for dedicated servers and any games you would like to see us add

I would also like to mention that as of now our css servers will be considered legacy. We still plan on continuing to hosts these servers for our legacy players but these will no longer receive any updates or new features. we will only resolve game breaking bugs

Again thanks for your constant support its nice to see this community still going strong after so many years

[|NotD| Wooki3]

tldr: more games bigger servers we need more money 

[|NotD| Doom8824]

morez moniez plz, but no really thanks everyone for the support for these past 3 years. It's been great to see us maintain everything this long from mostly the ashes of the old NotD. That being said we want to grow the community and give more back so let's keep it up.

[Bob The 3RD]

What kind of games are we talking about? Rust? Dayz? Minecraft? I know that people play those, but do we know where our player base is? Should we make a poll to see what they play the most?

[|NotD| MSgt_Loadtoad]

As someone who enjoys playing 40hrs per week, I would love to see the lag fixed first and foremost on both the CSS and CSGO.  I have played very little on the CSGO server as the 140-190 ping that I have been getting ruins the playing.  It was not always like this.

To get my CSGO fix in, there is a server run by "Dual-Gamers" and I really have enjoyed how they have that Zombie RPG setup.  It's not about surrounding yourself in cades.... rather more like a run & gun with one single class to upgrade but a ton of depth to the upgrades.  Of course, they have their bugs too as their top level is maxed at level 500 (programming issue) and the Ammo Regen is inop.  Fun concept though!

As far as other games go.... I don't play any others as my comp needs to be replaced first.

[|NotD| Doom8824]

As someone who enjoys playing 40hrs per week, I would love to see the lag fixed first and foremost on both the CSS and CSGO.  I have played very little on the CSGO server as the 140-190 ping that I have been getting ruins the playing.  It was not always like this.

As said in this announcement we are planning on upgrading to a dedicated server, which will hopefully reduce the lag issues. Currently we have many vps's running our servers, but soon we will begin a transition to a dedicated server which will hopefully give us more resources to reduce the lag.

[|NotD| Anathol]

Glad to here that the situation is pretty stable. But - to be honest - I dont think expanding will do any good. Ive seen a few communities breaking up after adding more but deserted servers. Usually it does not result in a growing community. Im sure a few (almost) full and well maintained servers are way better than loads of empty ones.
I dont want to sound like a pessimist but Im all about efficiency and plausibility. Does it make sense to hold a server that has 2 or 3 players at the same time - at best? Zombie RPG... OK. Zombie Classic... Not quite sure. Surf... Nah

Maybe its possible to hold some kind of reserve server you can modify occasionally. Switch game mode and/or game, make special events to get the community members actually together.

Stomping dead servers isnt bad. Holding onto them is. Offer should fit the demand. Thats why a poll for a new/changed/modified server is a really good idea. Check forum for frequently discussed games. Gather intel about what the people actually want. You cant expect to gain a shitload of new players and members - and donators - by randomly adding a new server or two.

It should be considered to stay low. If you have 3 nicely running servers its good. No need for dead meat you have to carry with you. You could even reduce the costs by getting rid of those rotten meat chunks. There is no point is wasting REAL money for literally nothing.

Just my opinion. Feel free to have your own. Do what fits you best like spending the cash on a HUGE wall - if you're mexican ofc...

[|NotD| Doom8824]

Glad to here that the situation is pretty stable. But - to be honest - I dont think expanding will do any good. Ive seen a few communities breaking up after adding more but deserted servers. Usually it does not result in a growing community. Im sure a few (almost) full and well maintained servers are way better than loads of empty ones.
I dont want to sound like a pessimist but Im all about efficiency and plausibility. Does it make sense to hold a server that has 2 or 3 players at the same time - at best? Zombie RPG... OK. Zombie Classic... Not quite sure. Surf... Nah

I will agree that expanding while keeping some server's is not a very good decision, I can say that surf is on the chopping block is likely to be dropped during the transition. Our zombie servers are the only ones that tend to maintain a population so far but with more resources we can being trial runs in other games possibly and if they stick they stick and if they don't we drop them.

Maybe its possible to hold some kind of reserve server you can modify occasionally. Switch game mode and/or game, make special events to get the community members actually together.

It may still be possible since we will have more resources compared to our current state.

Stomping dead servers isnt bad. Holding onto them is. Offer should fit the demand. Thats why a poll for a new/changed/modified server is a really good idea. Check forum for frequently discussed games. Gather intel about what the people actually want. You cant expect to gain a shitload of new players and members - and donators - by randomly adding a new server or two.

I would say this is the best option if forum activity was enough to validate it, unfortunately there is little to no community activity on the forums thus the reason we want to test the waters elsewhere to grow the player/member base. But we can still attempt some polls and topics to see what people want.

It should be considered to stay low. If you have 3 nicely running servers its good. No need for dead meat you have to carry with you. You could even reduce the costs by getting rid of those rotten meat chunks. There is no point is wasting REAL money for literally nothing.

Unfortunately with the dedicated servers we are looking into cost will increase regardless, of course we will no longer have the costs of the vps's but we will still increase our costs with one dedicated server.

Just my opinion. Feel free to have your own. Do what fits you best like spending the cash on a HUGE wall - if you're mexican ofc...

Of course we do not mind people posting their opinion as long as it's constructive and you had many good points.

[|NotD| Anathol]

Polls (like a google spreadsheet) and trial runs might be a good combo.

1) People might nominate some games/mods/... (spreadsheet - maybe with voting/priority)
2) Think tank might discuss the intel/possibilities/ressources/costs/...
3) Trial runs.

But someone has to take care of it all the time. Give it some time (1-2 months maybe). If community isnt responding toss that digital paperweight and take another shot. If no one is accountable no one cares. And if no one cares you got the next dead server.


PS: Dedicated server sounds nice. But dont burn all the funds on this option.  #firstworldproblems

[|NotD| Wooki3]

PS: Dedicated server sounds nice. But dont burn all the funds on this option.  #firstworldproblems

even with dedi wo should still operate for 6-7 months with no donations at all, if times get rough we have backup plans and i have enough money to sink into the servers to help maintain them

[|NotD| C0d3.Drrk]

As soon as we get access to the dedicated, we are going to get the csgo server going on it and run tests to compare it to the current server.

When everything is in one server farm, we will have decreased times for database access that will reduce lag for store and other databases.  Then this will prevent data loss because how the server requires sql connections to complete prior to running the sqllite connections.

I also am working on optimizing how data is stored in the rpg system for faster reading and writing.  IE all the class data when saving xp levels etc.

[NaNo]

As far as expanding into different games is going I agree we need to branch out. I do agree with anathol to an extent and I have seen my share of communities die because they expand to quickly and are left with tons of empty servers. But in reality, what is the goal here? From what I understand it's to create a stable community and bring people together, and we can't bring people together if there is no one to bring. We're in an all but dead game mode and the only thing we can bank on is a random increase and surge in numbers, which isn't something to sit around waiting for. If we expand, plan everything, and avoid cutting any corners we will most likely come out ahead. We will die sitting idle in a dead game mode hoping that we log on one day and have all of our servers full. We are making the right moves, we're fixing our current servers and improving them, we've had meetings, we are constantly looking for new games, game modes and things to do to make this community better than it's ever been. So instead of asking why we are expanding, let's focus on what we're expanding to.

[|NotD| Anathol]

Not sure if Im misunderstanding but just to be clear: I never meant to toss that plan. I just wanted to make sure there is a solid plan. 

[|NotD| Wooki3]

the plan is fairly solid, we are definitely going to upgrade. We just have to still look at our options, and we need some input to decide on where to expand to. we did some preliminary testing of the recoded rpg system today on using my desktop as a test bench to mimic similar to which servers we are looking at.
So far results are good, 6 players, constant shooting, and a few hundred props on the map and we were hitting avg of 60% core load, which is fantastic

[|NotD| C0d3.Drrk]

the plan is fairly solid, we are definitely going to upgrade. We just have to still look at our options, and we need some input to decide on where to expand to. we did some preliminary testing of the recoded rpg system today on using my desktop as a test bench to mimic similar to which servers we are looking at.
So far results are good, 6 players, constant shooting, and a few hundred props on the map and we were hitting avg of 60% core load, which is fantastic

This of course wasn't with the store loaded.  But the store itself suffers from the same lengthy lookup flaw (which was originally used because it had less bleed over of stats) but as we find out with the size the arrays are, we need to switch back to a statically addressed array vs dynamic.  We can enable the store on the test server and see what kind of stats we see with the players loading.

Wookie, did you get the error log files so I can start finding bugs? Put them on the uploader and send me a link.