Worst game servers in Europe #2: [BlER]Wiese >>> Italy [ONLY] <<< [css] Counter Strike Source

Name: [BlER]Wiese >>> Italy [ONLY] <<< [css] Counter Strike Source

IP address: 94.249.194.112:27015

Reason: Decided to do some casual shooting after years after abandoning the fps genre ... First time joining in that server and instantly detected one wall-hack cheater in it. Got kicked when pointed the obvious

Dyson Sphere Program - optimization training game

Dyson Sphere Program

Warning! Shortest review ahead!


Goal - eat all planet resources and build Dyson spheres

Pros - trains you in optimization techniques. Players doing OCD-layered buildings don't realize the power of spaghetti code

Cons - not fully automated and half of the time in-game camera tries to cut your nerves

Conclusion - The game is not bad, it's a casual production simulator at galactic scale. Give it a try (around 100-120 hours of gameplay to first finished sphere)

Recently started to play Eve Online and already regret for that

Just a couple of random links:
The Real Reasons Player Population Is Declining
Eve Online Steam Charts
Bots Are Threatening Eve Online's Economy And Players Are Fed Up

Add to the equation too much clutter in the interface and that most of "successful" players are in fact already in large in-game groups where they multi-account and stay only for selling in-game currency ISK/PLEX/goods for real money gave me a big smile on my face :) This game called "Space simulator" is dead. DEAD.

BAN all cheating Russians

If you have admin rights for a game server or a hosting a game which offers checking player's nationality with high accuracy - BAN all cheating russians. Two days ago finished my research how many of them must be banned, and the numbers (sorry, details are not available due to the techniques used in the research) are around 95% from all gathered player accounts. They feed, they spam in chat, they use exploits found in the games, they use all types to break the system. Just ban them. Thank me later

Decline of Dota 2 and maybe the genre

What the player will think when he or she starts to play Dota 2 (one of the most popular MOBA titles that has a History), and finds the following (I will try to make the list very short):

1. Toxic behaviour of (I will say a lack of) community, where people are offended when someone explains their mistakes during a match, and as usuall they report him. For example the notorious commend system put people with NORMAL behaviour in single draft low priority punishment queue, where the player must win only 1 match to be freed and where the average matches lost are maybe above TEN. And this happens only because ...
2. ... there's no ban-list system per user, we are still in 2017 and there's no better than WC3 BanList. It's weird that VALVE, the company developing Dota 2, has a perfect solution incorporated as ban feature in CS Source/GO server. They must only add this in Dota 2 with synchronization of banlists between players and we are good to go.
3. Balance issues. A lot of people told me through years that the heroes and items are balanced and the problem is in me, but if a normal person analyzes the matches he or she will definitely find a pattern in successful game-play styles which include same items and skill combos used 10-15 years ago. This means that the fastest gold collector in the game is usually the winner - first big and powerful item assembled changes win chances a lot for the bearer

Well, probably will say a nice harsh words and go play outside :)

...

Yeah, if a normal player is playing every day, for example 2 to 5 matches with 1:1 win-loss ratio (the majority of players (even the best ones) have this ratio (I'm not kidding), and crash into these problems, he will try harder with increasing the matches to try different strategies and this automatically means MORE matches lost and generate MORE frustration. To the level where he or she refuses to play Dota 2 anymore or similar games

Vintage3D.org - cool site for benchmarking old videocards

Vintage3D is a web-site, dedicated to remember and find new information about first generation of gaming 3D cards.

Short review from the creator:

This page is to remember and find new information about first generation of gaming 3D cards. What is first gen? Well there are many definitions, common one would probably define three early generations of early 3d gaming chips: first geometry accelerators like Millennium or Imagine 128 II, than first texture mappers like Gaming Glint or Virge and finally "mature" architectures like Verite and Voodoo. I want to cover all of this range from very first accelerators (if possible) to anything released before Voodoo2. From there on 3d chipsets were having more and more comprehensive reviews and are therefore well known. I want to show barely tested chips in extensive collection of real games. The benchmark suite currently consist of around 40 games from 1996 to 1999 and 2-3 artificial benchmarks. Reviews are not done from user perspective. I am trying to examine and compare performance, which means no proprietary APIs. Cards are tested with latest or best available drivers and in a system saturating video accelerators with power unreachable at that time. In the future I might build a low end rig to examine performance in budget PC. Main purpose is to learn about chips which where not reviewed extensively in ways we are used to now. In fact, information about gaming performance of most first generation cards is remembered almost only through word of mouth. I am not professional hardware reviewer, neither graphics technology expert, but I will try to do my best to reveal real capabilities of vintage 3D cards.
My benchmarking practices are definitely not the best. I don't run the tests more times unless the results seems off. I simply don't have enough time. Also most of the old boards lack the option to disable vsync despite trying various tweakers. Because of this I run all the tests with vsync, unless the application itself can disable it. This shouldn't be much of a problem with some high speed CRT, but I have only LCDs now. Therefore 75 Hz is used. Still the results have value, since vsync is almost always on by default and most of users don't change video settings. The performance corresponds with user experience, however speed differences between cards can be skewed. 

A very useful article about game programming

Game Programming Primer

For everyone started to wonder how things are done in games. Thanks, Randy Gaul !

Worst game servers in Europe #1 - noAim.eu

One of the worst game servers are those administred by http://www.noaim.eu staff.
Just a small example what you'll find in their Counter-Strike: Source cs_italy server:

• not working anti-cheat system(s) - there is constant wallhack/no-recoil cheaters. EVERY SINGLE ROUND
• not properly working high latency kicker - allows huge drift in latency for long time. Also doesn't ban the laggers after 3-4 times of joining
• server has bad hit registration - sometimes bullets don't hit the target from close distances, sometimes the models pop from nowhere/will not be rendered; no matter if the player(s) has very good connection (low latency and no chokes/lost packets)
• votekick/voteban system used by players without sense - for example a random player becomes the last man standing of his team, and one of the best tactics is to barricade himself somewhere. THIS IS WRONG! The other players just can't stand the pressure of waiting the round to end - they put the guy directly on kick list ... Funny because at least 75% of the voting idiots* are low to mediocre players
• missing proper autoteambalance plugin - it is common to see players from a clan to join in different teams, of course this just screams in your eyes "TEAM SPEC CHEATERS!"
• throwing a HE grenade and hitting an enemy brings the damage done to center of your screen. Is it supposed to know that you actually hit someone and how much health points he has?
• speaking of throwing the nades - they put a plugin that disables team-flashing. Is it working? Nope. In fact you are flashed for around half an second ... The other bug is brought by the transparent models plugin which blocks players stucking in each other. Well, guess what happens when someone throws the smoke grenade through your model :|

* - I seriously think to write an IQ plugin that will block a part of people with polished brains to joining the servers

The list is longer and is in rule for the other noAim.eu servers ... So don't expect something cool to happen there. I warned you!