Archive for the 'Smokin’ Guns' Category

Yes, you read that right. It’s sad, but it is likely that Smokin’ Guns will have to change, not only its site, but its name too!

Time is short since “our devs” are working hard in site migration.
This is an urgent call for proposals about a new, pertinent, sexy name for our beloved game.

As you probably know there have been huge problems with master servers lately (see: Master Server, This is the end…, and Serverlist of Monsterbrowser). With the going offline of ID Software master server the situation has become dramatic because the builtin server-tracker of all SG clients is now useless (as are MonsterBrowser and XQF), and it’s complicated for newbies to figure out how to join an online game. If this situation would last for long, SG would be at risk of extinction.

In these last few day some new master servers have been created by ricochet and Joe Kari, while barto (with his batchfiles connecting directly to single servers), dansh (with his precompiled binaries) and a.k47 (with his video tutorials) tried helping players in configuring their clients in order to connect to online games. Thanks to all of them for their efforts (I hope I haven’t forgot anybody … it’s not simple to follow a discussion that spreads along three threads).

So now we have an official master server to query: master.smokinguns.fr. In order to be able to get in-game server list you have to edit your q3config.cfg adding the line: seta sv_master1 "master.smokinguns.fr" [I’ve already updated our FAQ consequently].
Warning: not all servers are reporting to these master servers yet (due to mysterious problems, BB, SB and TN are not listed yet, for instance). If you have added servers to your MonsterBrowser manually, some of them might disappear when you reload the server list.

Latest news: given these problems and given the fact that most part of SG developers is inactive at the moment, Joe Kari took the initiative to start distributing a new SG version that should bury both SG 1.0 and SG 1.1b4 under 2 meters of soil. The new release is named “SG 1.1 beta 5a unofficial“. Read Joe Kari’s call for help and download the new release here: A CALL to the community – SG 1.1 beta 5.

Waiting for a better hosting service, at the moment the download is slow, but keep in mind that it’s not just a simple update, it’s a complete SG binary ready to be run. No Windows installer until now, simply unzip it to some place in your hard drive, enter the directory and run smokinguns.exe.
It’s probably better if you backup your q3config.cfg before running the game.

Until now I don’t know of any server that is ready for SG 1.1b5a, so you can test it only in single player mode or in LAN.
Once you have played some games you should also vote in the poll about your experience with it.
Smokin’ Guns lives as long as it has a community behind him, and you can take part into it by helping with tests. Hopefully, SG 1.1b5a will soon evolve in a stable SG 1.1!
Get 2 coffins ready for SG 1.0 and SG 1.1b4!

[Click on image for full strip. Source: A Fistful of Dollars ]

Stay updated, because it’s a rapidly evolving situation.

I have to share with you what Joe Kari said of our clan in SG forum. Joe Kari? … you know, that man behind the best SG map ever: Alamo!

“That being said, everything is not so dark.

There are some new faces that do a great job. Baller Bude team (*LAME* clan for example) are really good guys, even when you pop up with an unknown nickname (like I do all the time). Few gunfight with you guys (and girls, Sarah is really challenging ;)) remembered me the good old time: nice skillz but just for fun.”

[Full Kari’s post is here: http://forum.smokin-guns.org/viewtopic.php?p=23046#p23046]

Thank you very much, Joe!

@spi informs us about a planned power maintenance in the building that hosts the server for BallerBude, SpecialBude and Terra Nova on Friday 24 February 2012, from 16:00 till 18:00. For around 2 hours those SG servers will be unreachable.

I have an indecent proposal for our Thursday clan deathmatch of tonight: a game in TheUgly style. That exactly means “dyna only”, not “insults only”. 😉

The reason behind this is that I want to obtain a client crash in Terra Nova to debug SG beta’s random crashes.

Since it seems that crashes occur more frequently in crowded games, I tried adding a lot of bots to the map, but without being able to produce a crash. I’m starting to think that crashes occurs in crowded games, but only when someone is using dynamite. This is plausible since dynamite had a similar bug in past times.

I think you understand my proposal now: I need many players, using dyna. Possibly in a not so big map (Tijuana should fit very well the purpose).

Do yo agree to help me in crashing my client?

The second game of the deathmatch might be another Winnies’ fight in Greenhill Lake, or something totally different in another map.

In the meanwhile have fun with this 2 minutes short … “Ugly Thursday”!

Music by: Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com/)

Sounds by: Benboncan, Erdie, Nikolino, Robinhood76, Syna-Max, davidou, fonogeno, joedeshon, juskiddink, klankbeeld, schademans, shawshank73, simon.rue, soundscalpel.com (http://www.freesound.org/)