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Good News is Rust server is gaining players

Why isn't "No" an option?

Because sadly, it isn't an option in real life.

Actually no is very much an option. A person does not have to vote for either. They can vote for all other issues and positions but they do not have to vote in either.

Another option is just writing in any name you want.

Neither, Gary Johnson for POTUS.

This guy had my attention after Bernie lost the Primary. However I just don't agree with 90% of where he stands on the issues. I really feel he is trying to capture a lot of those who don't want Hillary or Trump and I just don't think it will work.


I do not think either choice is a good choice this time around, that being said they are the choices I am given and I always suggest to everyone to look at where the individual stands on issues and how they align with how you think. Remember we are voting for who we think will best run this country and not on how TV famous someone is or because of their gender.

6 Glorious years. Glad to be a part of all of it.

I would but I was just looking to kill some time while waiting on the Rust wipe. Now I am back to Rust

I tried playing and it keeps telling me to make sure the server has the latest updates. But that was before the wipe so I will try again.

Old fart? Wait until you are 39 with less than 6 months to your birthday! Then you start to count the decades you have lived and reflect on what you have done.

How does one get sponsership on a voting site....

I go to work for the day and I come back to all this!

I didn't mean that we are a solely minecraft based community, I meant that we cannot be a solely based minecraft community because it would not work. Sorry if my statement got mistaken in my message. I think the context got lost and some might have tl;dr;

@Jyncs - If rust starts working out we can find a better host for it.
The reason we hosted it on the windows machine was because the rust dedicated server for linux was broken when I tried.

I only said those things because the point I was trying to make is it takes time for servers to build up, not because it was a bad thing(we are getting players that we might not get if it was in a different location).

I think SFT is going in the direction it needs to. People complain that Survival is boring and needs to be spiced up, so we add plugins. And then it's too many plugins. It's impossible to please everyone. But one thing seems clear, SFT is primarily a Minecraft community and that doesn't seem to be changing anytime soon. What Towelie's been saying is right; there aren't many games like Minecraft with such customization and server potential. The ones that are out there- Ark, Rust, LiF- aren't getting many players since our community as a whole attracts Minecrafters, because that's what we do.

Personally I'd love to get back to the actual survival aspect with a Vanilla server that's maintained well. I think it'd be a nice change after having everything you could possibly want at your fingertips on Survival. Especially for me, I have zero challenge in Survival anymore.

I think SFT should focus on the thriving servers it has and its cut losses on what's not working. And we've done that in a sense. We're doing the best with what we've got, and that's all you can do.

I'm going to be perfectly honest with you, if it wasn't for Rust I would probably not be writing this right now. There is nothing attracting me to stay with a gaming community that focuses solely on Minecraft any longer.

This community has attracted a large player base because of Minecraft. I've been here since the beginning -2 months. I've played minecraft. It has nothing to do with the mods, it has everything to do with the fact that I have done everything and the mods either only make that easier or do not add any real content for me to return playing Minecraft.

Minecraft will die eventually. There will always be stragglers but if we only focus on Minecraft the community will die with it. Are you going to say cut our losses then? This game has been out for over 5 years now(first release was Classic on May 17, 2009). That is a long timespan for any game. Player base is going to drop. Nothing we can do.

Building up player bases in the other servers is not going to be an overnight success like it was with Minecraft. Even Minecraft was not overnight. We started with 20 slots and it slowly increases at first and then it skyrocketed at the height of Minecraft mania. In Rust I have plastered the SFT website everywhere and we are getting a lot of EU players but 0 US players due to the high ping. It is going to take it longer to build up a player base but we are. It takes time sometimes and is not always an overnight success.

The age of the player has shifted too. It used to be more adults and teens and now it is more kids like my son who is 10. What servers does he play? He plays on minigame servers or creative servers that appeal to him or his favorite YouTuber plays on(DanTDM is his favorite). We don't have that "Wow" factor anymore or the popularity of the game behind us to keep the player base high like we did before. This is due to the popularity of the game declining.

As for a vanilla server that is well maintained I will say it again. We have had them. I maintained two of them. One of those times we fought the ender dragon with the entire 5 player base on which was fun. They are popular for about 2 weeks and then people quit them. They stop joining back to it because of the survival aspect of it. It happens every. Single. Time.

If we simply "cut our losses" and we focus solely on the popularity of Minecraft then we will die as a community when the game finally dies. I understand they are adding new things to it but it is still not that "wow" factor it had in the past at the height of it's popularity.

I should note that I have been drinking so if none of that made any sense I apologize. Just ask what I meant and I will explain it better tomorrow.

We've had several iterations of Vanilla Minecraft. I know because I have admin'd two of the iterations. People think it will be cool, play for a couple of weeks and then quit leaving only 2-3 people playing on the server.

I think the problem is that Minecraft in general is just going downhill in popularity.

We are all reminiscing about the good old days of the servers but it was different then it is now. Before we were just happy to have a server to make awesome builds on together. Then we were happy when we had mobs on the server. Then we were happy when Leaves would decay. Then they added new items and we could make more epic builds. Then we got the nether which was new and cool! Then the ender and the ender dragons! Somewhere in there we had Bukkit and some really cool plugins came to the server to help enhance it. We had a lot of "firsts" with the game for those of us that have been playing it for a long while. Our first time joining a minecraft server with a supportive community. Those firsts are no longer there for us. There are new things being added but they are not like we experienced in the past which makes us nostalgic. It was kind of a mini "Age of Encoding" for us.(video for help explaining it https://youtu.be/JDh6XMyseQ8?t=3m8s)

That being said it is harder to convert the minecraft players over to other servers. They played minecraft and on this server for a reason, but they might not like the other games we have to offer.

With our Rust server when it first started this time there were about 10 SFT players on it. I was excited. Towelie, Combine Sniper, Dpa, Staryii, Battle, IPwn, Rally and myself all playing on the server and attracting other players. Once the initial "newness" wore off(and yes there was some drama that contributed) people stopped playing altogether and/or moved on to other games they found more enjoyable. We have had a steady 10-15 players per day join but they are not from this community and don't necessarily join up to the community. I have created events for it a lot to the point that one person even got mad because I made "too many" events(on day steam was being slow for me and caused it). Every time I make one of those events no one shows.

Ark was doing well but then I heard it started dying off. No clue how LiF:YO is doing either.

I think a large problem is trying to convert players over to our other servers from Minecraft which is not easy at all.

My theory is that your presence on the servers makes a difference. I know you spend a lot of time on our Minecraft server(s) because they are the most populated. I think that they stay the most populated because of you. You are the leader of the community. People know that. People want to play games with you. If I say Play Rust with Jyncs! no one really cares, I am not a big enough name even though I have been around since the beginning. Dpa might draw in some players because he has a big enough name a lot of players know him. Towelie I think would gather the most players into the game servers if they knew you were playing it. They want to be where the owner is, the guy who is running all of this. Whether it be they think you will give them something that will help them be better in the server or if it is just playing the game with you. Be it Ark, Rust, LiF, Don't Starve, etc. Again that is just a theory and I have no facts to back it at this moment.

Overall I somewhat think we are heading into the right direction. As the Admin over Rust as long as we have a small player base of players joining every day I see that as a positive that we could grow to be bigger. I just wish some of our current minecraft player base would transfer over but the Rust server has such stigma of being a very combative server. However I have not seen that even though I see a lot of raiding going on. Even when people get raided it is still easier to get back up and going better than vanilla Rust. It is hard to make a balance of the right mods and I am still working on it but with some players help I know what tweaks I need to make for next weeks wipe hopefully to make game play a little better.

The side of me that does not see us heading in the right direction is as I said many times in this post, not being able to convert Minecraft server players over to our other servers.

You should! If you own Rust you should check it out. I have made it easier than vanilla rust to survive! Makes the game more fun

[Your current level:12]

Update!

Your current level:12
Your Team:Valor
Your highest Pokemon's CP:834
Your rarest pokemon:VilePlume
Number of pokemons:55
Eggs you're currently hatching:2
Your proudest achievement:Defeating a Mystic Gym(about 30 minutes ago) Though Instinct Sniped it from me before I could claim it.

Well I was wrong on the wristband, but it does let you catch them from the wristband without having to open up your phone. However you don't know what it is or what level.

Even if it is reversed engineered, I think this person said it best in this reddit thread https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/4tsdh6/discussion_how_do_you_feel_about_pokevision/

"Using your Nearby, you can see about 200 Meters out from what you are. This I tested by using the Pokevision. 200 Meters can easily become 400 and then 600 and more, using the Nearby System as it was when it "worked". I've personally wandered all over the town looking for a rare spawn never to find it. There's never a trail to follow to show a direction those "paws" are going - like real hunting. You can follow droppings, blood, sound, smell, etc to track your pray. You have no breadcrumbs of any sort that means anything other than "It's close".
...
Using a radar is a must to me and I do not consider it cheating. Sure. I know 'where' it is, but I still go outside and run to it or walk to it. I still have to toss the balls, and hopefully I catch it. Sometimes I don't catch it even knowing the location."

Maybe we should make a separate thread to discuss all of this so as not to detract this one

https://pokevision.com/


Click on your locations, click the find pokemon close to you, profit

I hope niantic can prevent such a site from working, really takes the fun out of the game and I know everyone will be using it too.

It's the equivilent of using X-Ray to Mine in Minecraft. It does kinda ruin the "explore" element of the game and seems to just turn it in to die-hard catching.

I'm fine with that. Their tracking is severely bugged right now. I can barely log in sometimes because their servers are flooded. If I am able to log in and I see one close that I need and I think I can make it within that time frame I am off to it.

If you look at it, it also has how long until they despawn. In most cases you won't make it unless it is right by where you are.

And this doesn't include Lure's or Incense.

Also Niatic created the API. How is that cheating if the company that created the game allows people to the information this website is providing?

If you think that is cheating I would love to hear peoples thoughts on the wristband that they sell which automatically catches pokemon for you.

https://pokevision.com/


Click on your locations, click the find pokemon close to you, profit

I feel like this is cheating... But I love it xD

If they didn't want you to use it, they would not have built the API to allow such things like this to pop up. So definitely not cheating.

https://pokevision.com/


Click on your locations, click the find pokemon close to you, profit

[Your current level:8]

Your current level:8
Your Team:Valor
Your highest Pokemon's CP:Scyther 365
Your rarest pokemon:Tangela ? or Meowth?
Number of pokemons:52  currently
Eggs you're currently hatching:2 with 7 waiting
Your proudest achievement:Defeating a Mystic Gym with lower levels

Now, GMod still has a pretty okay playerbase. If we wanna branch out from minecraft more, I'd say getting that TTT server up would help. That was a very well loved server.

My problem with TTT / Rust / etc and games like that is that they don't allow the needed level of communication for players to form a community. When you're busy killing each other all the time, it's hard to make friends and care about servers.
Also, it's not really possible to make that server "your own" (aka one that people won't find anywhere but on your server)

Actually the next update with Rust will hopefully help with helping others out. With the XP system players can earn XP from other players using tools they crafted. That is the basic of it, it gets deeper as the items they craft with the resources they got from that tool you crafted you also get XP.

In a sense why kill someone when you can give them tools to use to give you more XP.

I'm hoping this new update and the mods I have planned for it will attract more players.

Don't forget Rust!

http://rust-servers.net/server/74898/

Things you should know if you are going to be a developer

Data Types
Variables
If-Then-Else
Functions/Methods
Overloading
Classes
Overriding
Inheritance
Object Oriented Programming

Late to the game on this but I love that song and group.

Listen to Migraine and you will know how I am most of the time

It doesn't have to be one person. We can collaborate. Having more than one dev will help make better mods. At work we do a code review as a group to help make each other better

Meh, it's not a problem working with people. I'm an SE major at college, we work in groups all the time
It's more of some people working on this server really don't like me so I would rather not intrude here.

But, I'm working on this in C# right now, since it seems to have the most support with the Oxide API. But, you could use Python, JS, Coffeescript, and lua as well.

I encourage you to work on plugins. As a current Software Engineer you can always use the practice. There are many places when you go to interview that want you to do sample coding and you want to be prepared.

As for the other languages, they are ok however I would focus on .Net if you could. I know my company is always hiring new developers and is a great company.

It doesn't have to be one person. We can collaborate. Having more than one dev will help make better mods. At work we do a code review as a group to help make each other better