COGS Bristol

Hi, gamers!

Here are the games we’re timetabling for the LAN on Saturday. Naturally other ones will take place throughout the day (see the Forum thread for ideas and a chance to give your own)

12:00 – Shattered Horizon
15:00 – C.S.S. Gungame
20:00 – (or “after we’ve eaten pizza”) PVK2 (or, if it gets shouted loudly enough, some other source mod – install all that you fancy and state your preference on the forums!)

As yet there has not been much activity in the thread, but UT2k4 (especially Carball, but probably also TDM/ONS/Insta), Swat4, Killing Floor and SupCom are almost certain to have a strong following.

Hello everyone.

I have been beavering away on some shiny new features for COGSBot for a while now, and the time has come for another upgrade.  Changes follow:

• !whois has been overhauled.  No longer do you have to PM your requests to WildFire — you now can manage your own !whois data yourself!  You can change your !whois setting through the bot’s standard settings interface (i.e. !set whois).  As always with !set, typing just !set followed by the setting will tell you what you need to do (though in this case it’s pretty obvious!)
• As well as being able to update your own !whois status, you can now get more information about other users from their !whois entries.  You can find out their online status, along with their current spam prevention status.
• !tell has been implemented, which allows you to leave messages for people who are not currently in the channel.  The next time the recipient joins the channel, your message will be relayed to them.  N.B. a new setting has been added which allows you to customise how the bot alerts you to messages left for you (!set tell).  You can also disable tells entirely, so that people are unable to leave you messages.
• If a COGSGuest joins and types !help, they now get customised help content to assist them changing their nickname
• The bot can now !inform groups of people rather than just the channel.  I can send message to all the channel moderators, for example.
• [internal] Fixed some odd behaviour when dynamically reloading some plugins

As usual, the IRC statistics have been updated as well.  Along with updating these, I’ve created some new ‘Rankings’ which offer a more exciting view of the stats.  Click here to view them

The COGS Mumble server has been updated to 1.2.0 by our diligent Server Master, TP2k. The new server is not compatible with the old client, so you’ll need to go to http://mumble.sourceforge.net and update yourself. If you want to be able to connect from Ubuntu, there’s also a PPA to grab it from.

For those of you involved in our recent spate of “SupCom every night and then some” you will no doubt have heard that is customary to nuke Taters. This honour may well be dubious, but at the LAN we thought it necessary to nonetheless jog people’s memories by adding some reminders to Taters’ computer:

Each of those sticky labels carries a message such as, “Nuke”, or for the more creative, “Nuke here” or for the more polite, “Nuke plox”.

We must applaud Taters – not only for leaving briefly to lend us his XBox (thank-worthy in itself) and thus give us the chance to plaster his rig with our little messages, but also for doggedly (and somewhat reluctantly) bearing the sum total of COGS’ nuclear arsenal, verbally and in-game!

Hello fine LANgoers!

Here is a slightly advanced notice of some games we should play on Saturday:

12:00 – UT2k4. Make sure you have the mods TAM and Carball installed beforehand so you don’t have to wait for ages downloading them from the server.
15:00 – HL2:DM. Half Life 2 Deathmatch is a source mod many of you will be familiar with. If you don’t have it you can get it for free if you have an ATi graphics card. Or, you can get it for free if you have an nVidia graphics card. If you’re gaming on an Intel integrated card, you can log into Steam from another computer. Finally, if you have HL2:e1, you should have it already, and it only costs £3 on Steam. Toilet-tossing fun!
19:00 (or “after pizza”) – PVK2. After huge success last LAN we would be foolish to not bring this back.

Details for installation can, as usual, be found on the gaming guide.

In addition, there’s sure to be some Supreme Commander happening quite a bit, and we intend to have an OpenTTD server running throughout the day.

There is also this thread on the forums with more suggestions, some of which are sure to be played. If you like the look of them, get installing now to maximise enjoyment later!

Accounts on the website (for posting on the forums and for signing up to events) can now be modified after logging in.

Since most people had their data imported from the forums which doesn’t collect everything we do, it will be useful to have a look and make sure your details are correct. We had to fill in everyone’s name as their nickname, and if you need or give lifts you can fill in your address and phone number to save typing it in every time you sign up.

In other news, there is now a proper 404 page, a duff link has been removed and it is now easier for admins to reset users’ passwords.

Yesterday, the day after the LAN and with the memories of the past day’s gunpowder, mass and light-wall filled day still bright in our minds, a few brave souls ventured forth to The Tunnels, Temple Meads to listen to Jonathan Coulton. A good time was had by all, and after the show some members approached the man himself to explain COGS to him. In return, he penned us the following missive:

Thanks, JoCo – we’ll try! (Actually I think we might have done it once or twice already, but that does seem a little bit unlikely)

Hello from COGS LAN 2! After initial network problems (srsly: don’t plug switches into themselves!) we’re up and running and gaming is beginning. Here’s a loosish timetable:

All the time: Borderlands
Now: TF2
4PM: Pirates Vikings and Knights
8PM: Armagetron

Note that the latter two are free and you can find them online (check the Gaming Guide) or locally from a friendly sharer -
PVK2 Files are available locally on \\MARVIN\Music & Games\ISOs\pvkii\ – copy this folder into your steamapps\SourceMods\ folder and you should be set!

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for COGSBot – lots of work has been done.

• The bot is now pluggable. I can add, remove and upgrade features without having to restart the bot
• All the existing functionality moved to new plugin architecture
• Authorised user efficiency improvement
• Permissions system (i.e. deciding which commands people can use) improved/generalised
• !lan is back – once more it is integrated with the list of upcoming LANs and current LAN signup count
• !help has been improved. The list of commands is now alphabetical to make it easier to find something you’re looking for. Initial output of !help has also been simplified – now supports !help <topic> for more detailed help on certain things.
• !remind has been improved. You can now specify exact reminder times (not just delays). You can enter times in am/pm, 24h or military time.  You can also enter optional dates, for reminders on specific dates in the future
• !reminders added. Using !reminders, you can view an ordered list (by time) of all the current reminders you have set with COGSBot. You can also clear them all or delete a specific reminder if you don’t want it anymore.
• COGSBot’s topic handling has been improved to warn admins if they are going to set a topic too long. This should stop admins setting topics which get trunca
• Admins now have more control over lists – they can delete them for example

In addition to the above, the IRC stats have also been refreshed.

Greetings Freshers and Old-timers! Fresher’s week is here and we’re already getting to know some of you on our IRC – pop your head in and say hello by clicking here!

We’re getting ready for Fresher’s fair this Thursday and Friday – make sure to get over to our stall (MR5D/The Odlum Room, on the 5th floor) – if all’s going well you’ll be able to battle us and any random hangers on at whatever games we have going.

Also if you’re new you might want to have a look at the various bits and bobs of information lying around – you can whet your appetite in expectation of all the fun you’ll be having with us soon!