Resurrecting the blog: Act 2
I no longer know what the heck to do with the forums anymore. I'm not even interested in making it public anymore.
Instead, I just decided to resurrect this blog once again and make this as the "definitive" homepage for headcrab.monster.
There's not much to say.
Also yeah I ended up decided to close Crabturned for the 4th time (my gosh i'm starting to have a existential crisis with this halp). Soon I will also try to reactivate the SC 3.0 server but I have to reinstall the whole Debian 10 debootstrap once again and I don't feel like doing this right now.
Awful font rendering in Firefox 135 on Windows
I felt the need to post this after I updated my Firefox and saw that the fonts changed unexpectedly, as if I were using Linux.
In case you're someone like me who really hates this type of font rendering (and are using Windows), just do this:
Go to about:config in your Firefox search bar, accept the warning and add these values:
- "gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.force_gdi_classic_for_families" = "Arial,Consolas,Courier New,Microsoft Sans Serif,Segoe UI,Tahoma,Trebuchet MS,Verdana"
- "gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.force_gdi_classic_max_size" = "15"
Now restart your browser and voila, fonts are looking the same as before.
Thanks u/VoidYahweh for leaving a comment with the solution of this. I didn't know these changes were made literally 4 months ago. I don't know why Mozilla haven't made at least an annoucement about that in their changelogs.
Server updates (+ some future changes)
Well, as you may have noticed, I have decided to migrate the host again (due to instability problems I have been having in DataWagon), this time on a dedicated server with more RAM and located in Houston, Texas, which will improve latency for players in South America.
Sorry for taking so long with the migration, but almost everything is back.
For those people who had our gameservers added to favorites, add them again (srv01.headcrab.monster).
As for the blog, I've been thinking about closing it. I'm thinking of doing something similar to what used to be this website with that classic Slashdot format but without the need to create accounts and with the news being displayed on the homepage instead of a separate subdomain.
All entries in this blog will be migrated when this happens so nothing will be lost.
That's all I had to say, thanks.
Some updates on the Codename CURE server
After so many months, I've decided to make a small announcement about some new things I've been doing on the CURE server.
Sentries on Survival!
I've been creating a small SourceMod plugin (named "SurvivalSentry") that allows players to spawn a sentry gun on Survival maps. Actually what it does is to spawn an npc_sentry above the players (by using cheats because seems like invoking them directly for SourceMod is pretty limited on this game). I cannot managed to find the entity name that allows you to directly give the sentry as a grenade weapon just like Bomb Escape modes do.
Due to limitations I had to make it so that only one person can create a sentry (this is because the code handles global variables for all npc_sentry entities), as well as it is impossible to rotate it (it will always point to the same axis).
These are all the chat commands you can use on the server for this plugin:
- !sentry: Spawns a unique sentry
- !movesentry: Moves your sentry to another position (based on your crosshair position)
- !destroysentry: Destroys your sentry (useful in case your sentry is on the floor or if it gets stucked)
Kicking (and readding) bots
If the bots become annoying or useless to you on some maps, you can now kick them out using the following commands in the console:
- sm_addbot
- sm_kickallbots
Other stuff
- Added an map restorer plugin which restores the current played map if server crashes.
- Modified chat tips.
The Forgotten Lambda wiki is now back
This wiki which was formerly known as "Forgotten Half-Life Mods" is back after so many months. This time, the wiki now has a new name and a new focus, focusing only on multiplayer-only mods from now on.
Check it out at https://mods.headcrab.monster/.
3 years of the HLRally server
It's been 3 years now since I've been running an HL Rally server for the first time since Igloo Arena was still a thing. For a while it was the only existing HLRally server from 2022 until someone named MisterCalvin had opened his own server in mid 2024.
At first it was running on a crappy AWS EC2 instance through Wine (since at the time running this under Linux was giving me problems until I figured out how to fix them later) with a super old version of HLDS (because I was using it to run Sven Co-op 3.0), and with AMX Mod 2010.4 before I decided better to use AMX Mod X due to the small variety of plugins. Nowadays it's running without any other changes with ReHLDS on native Linux, with Metamod-P APG and with some custom maps I found on 17Buddies and some old websites like FilePlanet and ModDB (I really would like to make a map for this mod but it requires making "complex geometry" and my Hammer skills are still very much a beginner's skill). This server was one of the few in Igloo Arena to be the most active and popular besides Sven Co-op 3.0.
Here's a list of videos I've made on this HLRally server over the years:
- HLRally multiplayer - ab_summit [YouTube @GeckoF]
- HLRally multiplayer - rc_avalanche [YouTube @GeckoF]
- HLRally (2023-12-23) [YouTube @IglooCafe]
- HLRally 2007 Pro Race [YouTube @GeckoF]
And some screenshots I did:
I want to thank everyone who has spent time playing here, my friends who helped me doing some videos and tests and also to those YouTubers who mentioned the mod (as well as the server) like DeZolance.
Here's to many more years, and don't let old and forgotten HL mods to die!
The return of the blog and some new updates
Yeah, at the end of the day I decided to resume with this blog after such a long time. I'm no longer satisfied with maintaining a forum, seeing also how little activity there is in it.
I should have posted this thing days (or even weeks) ago but because I have been busy with other things, I have not been able to.
A new Headcrab Frenzy! server
A month ago I wrote a blogpost saying that saying that I couldn't run a server on this mod. Well I tried again after a while but I couldn't get it to work on the Steam version (it was returning “Segmentation Fault” errors), so I opted to use the ModDB version instead. While it worked without problems, this made many people unable to play, and because of this I opted to try once again to run a server on the Steam version.
After reading up on this post from the Steam community, I had to download a fresh copy of HLDS along with the Linux content from Headcrab Frenzy (on a Steam account that has HL1) and then moved all the files from Headcrab Frenzy to HLDS. I made the steam_appid.txt file read-only with the mod ID on Steam (354900) and it looks like that was it, but the version I had of Metamod-P APG doesn't work on this mod so I had to use the normal version of Metamod-P which solved the problem.
Unfortunately this mod has the master server list broken because it tells me to "update the game" but if you change the AppID back to 70 (of HL) the server will be listed again. To "fix" this I decided to leave a tiny public server with password which encourages people to type the server IP into the console to play.
And there you go. The server is now running with some custom maps and the same AMXX plugins as always.
UPDATE: I cannot believe the Steam version sucks ass LMAO. A lot of HL1 content is missing (like sounds and skyboxes), WADs don't preload and I have to do them myself with AMX, map details don't load either, ping usually goes up to ~200 from time to time, just a disaster. I was expecting something better honestly.
Sorry but I'd better go back to the ModDB version that was working without problems. Maintaining a server this way seems to me very annoying and with the previous version everything was going perfect.
I also created days ago this simple (but time-consuming to make) map I did for this mod which is about a giant duct (with a de_rats style) which is home to hundreds of headcrabs until with your presence they want to kill you at any cost...
The map is available to download on my personal webspace but it's also on the server's map rotation. It's not the best thing I did but considering the time I spent doing this crap it doesn't look bad I guess...
New website redesign
I got tired of that simplistic and bored homepage which used to be here so I decided to reconvert it to a classic vBulletin-styled website and written entirely on PHP (like always lol). It's not entirely done but most of the things I did are already done =)
Self-hosting issues
Back in the Igloo Cafe days, I had bought a Raspberry Pi 3B+ which was used to host user content outside the VPS (to avoid getting DMCA claims, losses or the like), but unfortunately the Pi almost always seemed to shut down very often to the point where it won't turn on anymore, so I always have to reformat the SD card or USB drive and redo all the settings from 0 over and over again. Days ago I wanted to reinstall Void Linux on a USB and it worked for a while until this strange problem happened (and no, the USB was not damaged, I can still access it) so I decided to remove everything and leave Raspberry Pi OS as the default distro (which I hate because apt-get is slow as shit).
And that's everything I have to say. I have more things I want to do here but I would like to write them on another blogpost. Have a nice day and enjoy.
New year, new content!
And we starting this New Year with some new things!
But not before showing that the server just reached 100 days of uptime just at the start of this year!
Reopening Snow-War
I just recently reopened the Snow-War server after being closed for a few months when I reopened the SC 3.0 server. For now everything is still the same as it was before in Igloo Arena. Unfortunately it's not possible to add a RTV plugin here because this mod doesn't have "slot commands" (I mean, those keys to change weapons in-game with the keyboard numbers), so as a solution of this was decreasing the timeleft to 15 minutes per game.
The IP and port is 172.81.132.160:27019 (just the same thing as the SC 3.0 server).
And that's everything. Have fun.
