A few weeks back we posted a news item on a new experimental server for L4D2 (see below). Now a few weeks further it’s time for a status update.

When running L4D2 modified servers we found that it’s extremely difficult to modify this game without creating a million and a half new bugs. With every new thing we changed or implemented 10 others broke.

We now arrived in a stage were the servers are pretty much stable and were the basic modifications work (more or less). Sometimes we still see occasional crashes and mass disconnects, but way less than at the beginning.

Some of the basic features which now work and caused a lot of troubles are listed below:

-          Fixed extra medpacks not spawning for extra survivors
-          Fixed super Tank HP not being set correctly (Tank now spawns with 15000 HP)
-          Fixed mass disconnects at game end (map switch bug from final stage in last campaign to the first stage in the first campaign)
-          Removed smoker cloud damage (plugin has a nasty memory leak)
-          Fixed ability to move around as smoker while holding on to a survivor
-          Fixed ghost spawn in some final stages
-          Added AFK manager (You’re permitted 20 sec AFK time before move to spec, then 4 more minutes before getting kicked)
-          Added !team and !idle commands (idle time cannot exceed kick time by AFK manager)
-          Added 2 more servers based on 10 vs 10 (Servers can be joined trough the steam group or the quick links in the server monitoring module at the right side of this page)

We’ve also send out a mail to VALVe requesting an unlock of the network settings. The rates are currently limited and it prevents us from adding more zombies and lowering the overall pings. We received a reply that they will investigate the request.

We’ll still be working on the servers continuously to add new features and fix existing bugs. We’re also working on implementing reserved slots for the servers and porting over the SpA points system to L4D2. If required we’ll setup more modified servers and perhaps also with different type of configuration settings.

Enjoy playing and keep an eye out on this site for more server news and updates.

We’ve split off the private servers on MrBlonde from the main fork. The private servers now run in a separate fork of 4 instances. This permits us to play around a bit with the settings without messing up the public servers.

Some changes we’ve made are;

- Permit 2 spectators per server (community request)
- Permit normal ghost spawns during finale (community request)

The server still requires testing and feedback. The server can be reached using the temporary search key “specialspec” (sv_search_key specialspec). Connecting to the spectator slot is most likely done by using the following command in your console: connect 85.17.60.96:29034

#edit
These changes have been rolled back. Their not suitable for normal L4D2 servers.

After having sponsored us room on a rented server for several years, SpecialAttack member _9mmNL_ has decided to cancel the subscription due to needing his money for a newly bought house (congratulations on the house by the way  :D ).

This means our remaining 4 public L4D1 servers will be shut down. We’ll still host a few private L4D1 servers in case anyone wants to play a game (which doesn’t appears to be so, all people seem to be hooked at L4D2 anyway and we got plenty of servers for that  :P ).

We would like to thank _9mmNL_ a lot for letting us use his server. The machine first served as TF2 server, and later on it hosted our 4 highest ranked and most active L4D1 servers.

We've added some more L4D2 servers for you to play on, enjoy!

85.17.60.96:29031
85.17.60.96:29032
85.17.60.96:29033
85.17.60.96:29034
85.17.60.96:29036
85.17.60.96:29037
85.17.60.96:29038
85.17.60.96:29039

85.17.102.13:29016
85.17.102.13:29017
85.17.102.13:29018
85.17.102.13:29019
85.17.102.13:29020
85.17.102.13:29021

We have shut down the left 4 dead 2 demo servers and have prepaired for the launch of the full game.

As soon as L4D2 gets released our servers will be available on the following IP’s:

MrBlonde:
85.17.60.96:29016
85.17.60.96:29017
85.17.60.96:29018
85.17.60.96:29019
85.17.60.96:29020
85.17.60.96:29021
85.17.60.96:29022
85.17.60.96:29023
85.17.60.96:29024
85.17.60.96:29026
85.17.60.96:29027 Private - “sv_search_key specialattack” only
85.17.60.96:29028 Private - “sv_search_key specialattack” only
85.17.60.96:29029 Private - “sv_search_key specialattack” only
85.17.60.96:29030 Private - “sv_search_key specialattack” only

MrWhite:
85.17.60.102:29016
85.17.60.102:29017
85.17.60.102:29018
85.17.60.102:29019
85.17.60.102:29020
85.17.60.102:29021
85.17.60.102:29022
85.17.60.102:29023
85.17.60.102:29024
85.17.60.102:29026
85.17.60.102:29027 Private - “sv_search_key specialattack” only
85.17.60.102:29025 Private - “sv_search_key specialattack” only

Enjoy playing!

#edit
It appears the game has been released already, enjoy!

#edit 2
Added 2 more community only servers

We have launched 12 servers for the upcoming left 4 dead 2 demo release. Servers 1 - 10 are open to anyone, servers 11 and 12 are private servers which can be joined using sv_search_key specialattack or by using the mm_dedicated_force_servers 85.17.60.96:29027;85.17.60.96:29028 command.

Due to a problem in L4D2 Linux servers we are currently unable to externally query the servers. As soon as this gets fixed you will receive a live server status in the left4Dead section on our website.

List of server IP's:
85.17.60.96:29016
85.17.60.96:29017
85.17.60.96:29018
85.17.60.96:29019
85.17.60.96:29020
85.17.60.96:29021
85.17.60.96:29022
85.17.60.96:29023
85.17.60.96:29024
85.17.60.96:29026
85.17.60.96:29027
85.17.60.96:29025

Enjoy playing!

We have launched a couple more Killing Floor servers, you can find the servers below. Server 4 is a password protected server intended for the Special Attack community only. The password for the server is "carrots".

Enjoy playing!

85.17.60.96:7707 Specialattack.net ::: Killing floor #1 :: Normal :: Long
85.17.60.96:7807 Specialattack.net ::: Killing floor #2 :: Normal :: Long
85.17.60.96:7907 Specialattack.net ::: Killing floor #3 :: Hard :: Long
85.17.60.96:8007 Specialattack.net ::: Killing floor #4 :: Community server

We're going to move our domain, specialattack.net, to a new host. Our wish is to run primary nameserver for the domain ourselves but that's not supported at our current host. The new host will allow us to run primary nameserver and have them as secondary backup nameserver.

Because of this move the domain might be unavailable for several hours somewhere in the next week.

 

Today we've upgraded our web/database/etc/etc server with some new memory modules. The server was upgraded from 4GB(4x1) non-ECC @ 800Mhz to 8GB(4x2) ECC @ 1333Mhz.

The upgrade should give a performance boost to the services running on the machine (websites, databases, mumble, VMware, exchange etc).

During the upgrade MrBlonde (main gameserver) accidently got crashlanded in the rack so it required a reboot which resulted in some downtime on our gameservers, sorry for that :) .

Thanks to our donators for making this upgrade possible.

Saint did it again!This weekend our techteam will be spending its time in the datacenter upgrading our main server with 4 new hard drives for a RAID0+1 setup. The current disk is quite buggy and so we want to replace it before it's too late. The RAID system will ensure that we'll have always a backup ready in case of a single disk crash. As all the data gets mirrored the other disks will ensure no performance lost because the data gets stripped too. This is the magic of RAID0+1. :) The replacement requires a complete re-install of the OS and all systems and services running on it. This means that the following servers/services will not, or partly be availible during the weekend; - Website - Forums - sBNCs - Mumble - SpA points / Reserved slots / Spray paint permissions etc. - Admin rights - Fast ingame downloads - MOTD on the TF2 / L4D servers - Psychostats (website + ingame) - specialattack.net email accounts - ctf_bball server #1 - Private L4D servers (8x) The following servers will be available (with the limitations above): - All normal TF2 servers - ctf_bball server #2 and #3 - Public L4D servers (32x) So please excuse the downtime. We'll be online with all our services asap if Saint doesn't brake anything again. Update: The downtime yesterday (15th January) was not due to the maintenance. The soon-to-be-replaced harddisk doesn't want to be replaced and so died in a diskcrash. Therefore all webservices were down untill we fixed that issue in the evening. Now everything should work as usual, but the webservices will go down on the weekend again for the regular maintenance.