Hey guys,

So this morning I got on the server and had something very strange happen to me. For some reason, my experience bar was gone and my console was getting FLOODED with console errors, all which were pointing to the experience addon. I asked others on the server if they were having problems with it, and everyone said it was working normally for them. So not only is my console getting flooded with errors, but my HUD actually completely disappeared. I couldn't see what role I was on my screen, what weapon I was taking out, anything. It was very strange. 

Shortly after this, I stayed in the server for a while and some strange things happened the next map. The dead/alive glitch triggered (where people who die can still talk to live people), and it took a map change to fix this. I think the experience addon is likely the reason we've experienced this sort of glitch in the past, and I also believe it's probably a heavy contributor the lag we are experiencing on the server. This is a very old addon I got forever ago, which may or may not have even been written all that well. It's entirely possible that it has some flaws and could be causing issues. Also, it doesn't support storage on a database, so all of the information is stored on the server, which could be slowing things down. 

So I've decided it's probably time to switch experience addons.

I've found a new plugin I want to use, and fortunately, it does have mySQL database support, so we wouldn't have to store it's data locally. There is a downside, however, in that it does not give players new ranks based on levels, so for Member and Master we would have to find a way to promote them based on time (most likely add utime back and find a utime based auto-promote system - which would also apply to Regular).

EDIT: One thing I forgot to add is that the new XP system has a leaderboard section for the top 20 people, which is built in to it's own UI panel. The panel will be openable by pressing F6. Someone please just beat Lycan.

I know this is a very sudden change, and I'm sure many players will still be confused about what's going on when the old experience system is gone. For those of you that view this, please try to explain the situation to the players who are confused.

I'm not sure exactly when I'll be making the swap, but it will most likely be sometime today (9/25/17).

Yours truly,

Dinkledad

Hello everyone,

Just wanted to inform you guys that the overflow TTT server that I mentioned in my prior post in News and Announcements is now up and running!

Here's the IP! Spam this everywhere that you can:

74.91.127.19

For those of you unaware, I made this server a carbon-copy of the current TTT server. Pointshop and ULX ranks are all on the same database, so they will be shared throughout the two servers. The only things that will not be intertwined between the servers are wins on the scoreboard and experience/level. 

If the server is full, hop on over there! Take your friends with you!

Can't say how much I appreciate the loyalty of my players and staff. None of this would be possible without you guys.

Trait on,

Dad

Hello everyone,

I'm sure many of you have noticed an upsurge in my activity, and I'd like to share with you guys my plans for the near future.

1. First thing on my agenda is resolving the issue with TTT lagging.
Now some of the very recent lag (high ping and spikes) is happening because I recently moved the server over to a VDS (dedicated machine). To my dismay, I found out that this isn't ideal for hosting Gmod servers, and I'll be switching back to the regular hosting for the servers I moved over (ttt,darkrp) at some point today (Friday the 22).

We have concluded that the cause of the connection lag and lag at the start of rounds is both utime (little box in top right corner that shows your time) and Pointshop2 combined. I've figured out a way to fix Pointshop (I think), so after some testing that should be fixed. 

Utime might be a different story. For some reason this current version of utime causes a good bit of lag when people connect to the server. I've been trying to figure out a solution which involves us being able to keep utime, but haven't been able to figure anything out as of yet. I'm still searching for an alternative. If worst comes to worst, utime may have to be removed in order to have a lag-free server once more.

2. Vanilla TTT..... Clearly this isn't shaping up to be what I thought it would, so I'm gonna go back to my original plan B. I'd like to make the vanilla server into an exact carbon copy of the regular TTT server right now, and maybe name it something like "Dinkleberg's TTT 2" or something like that. Essentially, this server would exist for times when the main server is full, and the overflow of players trying to join could go there instead. If it ends up being empty all the time, I'll just take it down, but this seems like it could be very useful in primetime hours when we have lots of people who want to play. Everything would transition and be intertwined between the servers (including exact same pointshop on the same database), the only exception to this is the experience addon. This data is stored locally and therefore would be individual to each server, however ranks would still carry over.

3. After TTT is done, I'm gonna transition over to PropHunt and try to tidy up a couple things there. One of the main things I'll be focusing on is the chat. I'm either gonna fix the team chat issue or if I can't get that to work I'll probably end up switching back over to the *non-enhanced* version of PropHunt. 

4. I'm gonna do my best to be more active on the forums and try to disperse my time between servers as best I can.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, long live Dinkleberg's Gmod.

-Dad