Game Servers

This is part 2 of a guide to show you how to increase the popularity of your game server and optimise on the potential visitors that may want to connect to your game server.

Part 1 can be found here: Part 1 to Increasing Popularity

Now in the first guide, the main focus was on optimising game servers to prospective visitors that have not even joined yet - although several 'onserver' options were mentions, this part 2 of the guide will primarily highlight the requirement for adding as many features as possible that the users want to see and some very advanced configuration options. (Only to be created by experts).

So, lets move on to part 2 of the increasing your game server popularity guide.

Game Servers Management

The most important thing is to have a smooth and well managed server. There are lots of possibilities for lots of different games that make this alot easier; Mani Admin Plugin, Matties Mod, AMX Mod etc.

I advise every game server to get atleast one of these admin management mods on to the server and make sure you have enough admins that will mean that there will be regularly admins on the server. Its important to make sure that admins are connected so you can ban or kick potential idiots (which are abundant on any popular game server).

What is the benefit from having Matties Event Scripts, Mani Admin or Meta Mod? 

Mani Admin

To list only a few benefits with Mani Admin you can provide admin capabilities to anyone which means that you will be able to regulate the game server more effeciently and keep it running smoothly. It has a lot of features such as, changing maps, setting next map, kicking a player or banning, using global speach, easy execution of configs or music sounds, but something that most people like is stats.

Why use Stats? 

Having stats on your game server will mean that regulars return to your server to make sure that their stats arent wiped after a certain time of not playing but also will mean that their 'progress'  and activity is saved. For someone people that don't like stats you may find that they dont play on your server, but I can assure you, these numbers are a lot less then the people who enjoy playing with stats.

What type of stat systems are there? 

Well, there are three main ones that are used by the majority of servers. Mani Admin has a built in statistics module which displays adds very effectively to anyone who wants them. It records rank and any other stats. Matties Event Scripts has several variations also, but for the best you should look on their website as there really are dozens and one of the most comprehensive is HLStatsX, this addon parses through your game server logs and records every single bit of imformation to make sure that all the stats for your game server are recorded. You get everything then displayed on a website displayed in a very aesthetical table.

MetaMod

MetaMod has a lot of possible modifications that you can add to your game server to increase its popularlity. For Source its called SourceMetaMod, the available mods can be found on the Mods Page

One of the mods that was recommended in the previous part wa Fake Clients.

Fake Clients is a plugin for SOurceMM which will fake any traffic on your game server. It creates fake clients that are in spectator mode that will leave when players join. ; other mods include

ActionCS : This is a great mod for servers that run gun game and want to add an additional degree of difficulty. With it you can alter the damage of a weapon or increase run speeds. 

IRCRelay  If your clan has a IRC channel, with this plugin you can forward any player events to the IRC channel to receive updates of game play in your IRC channel.

 There are a lot more possibilities that you should check out. 

Mattie Event Scripts

The benefits from this mod was documented in another article that can be found here

As you can see, the posibilities with this are endless.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this guide, two severs are better then one and I will explain why this is the case now.

For those of you who want a busy server, but struggle, I will show you the easiest way to populate two servers. As I explained, the most popular server that I have ever ran, was a custom server with Deathmatch installed on it. This is a mod which creates fast action packed gameplay by never having new rounds, when you die you respawn. In addition to this mod I installed RPG Mod for Counter Strike Source and only played the map aim_ag_texture the benefits from this was incredible and if you replicate the exact server configuration you will see that it populates in a matter of minutes. People love deathmatch and the RPG Mod ads a new dimension to gameplay.

However, you are probably asking, I don't want to run Deathmatch or RPGMod and why do I need two servers?

Well, because I knew that there were people queuing the join the server all the time, I maximised on this point and exploited it. By installing Mattie Event Mod on the server and creating my own script, I would redirect anyone that joins the server to a new server depending on the slot number. So for anyone who joins the server when there is only 1 or 2 slots left, they would automatically and smoothly be redirected to the second server, which is for standard gameplay. 

This meant that both the servers were regularly full and I enjoyed running popular game servers for some time. This technique is advanced and you will need to create the mod yourself or download an equivalent from Matties Event Script site.

 Part 3 for tips to increasing popularity : Coming Soon.