March, New Servers, VIP Giveaway

Hello all!

March has been an incredible month for GFL! Things have really picked up and because it’s been a little bit since we released a newsletter, we thought it would be a great time to post an update of sorts.

GMOD Zombie Survival

Today GFL Zombie Survival is making a comeback! GFL previously had a successful Zombie Survival, however it was ultimately cut due to a decline in its player base. You can now once again play this classic gamemode on GFL servers thanks to the efforts of @k2nod, who will be managing the server, and the GMOD Division Leader team (@Zebra). You can join the server by searching for “GFL Zombie Survival” in the server browser or by typing `connect 92.119.148.5` in your client’s console.

CS:GO Jailbreak

Another beloved gamemode that is making a comeback is GFL’s CS:GO Jailbreak. The Division Leaders, @Leks and @FrenZy, have once again decided to give the gamemode a try. Starting on the first of April, you will be able to connect to the server by typing `connect 92.119.148.3:27015` into the console. We hope that this run is JB’s longest yet!

The Backend

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been gradually migrating various services over to our new web machine. The majority of our core services (site, API, bots, and the database server) have been successfully migrating and we’ve already noticed huge improvements in speed and our capacity to handle load. Our new web server is capable of running circles around the old one. The new server has a Ryzen 3800X (16 threads @ 3.9 GHz), 64 GB of RAM, and 1x2 TB of NVMe SSD storage and is running Ubuntu 18.04 LTS at this time. To further capitalize on the improved hardware, we’ve also re-architectured the backend and are now utilizing a container based setup (as opposed to VMs) backed by a ZFS mirror pool in hopes of reducing overhead and improving performance. I did a lot of the setup and moving, but I’d also like to give a shout out to @Roy for helping out with the networking stuff.

Discord

Over the past couple of months, our public Discord has been growing like crazy. As it stands today, we’re only 100 members away from 9000 and we’re on track to hit that number during the month of April. To celebrate, we’re giving away 3 months of VIP to two members. The only requirements are that you are currently a member, are in the public discord, and that you have played on a GFL server for at least 2 hours in the past 30 days (or you are otherwise active in the community). Current VIPs and Supporters are welcome to participate too and more details will be released once we have hit this target.

Community

Three days ago on March 28th, GFL had 953 concurrent players, its highest player count to date. This tremendous milestone shows how much we’ve improved over the past year and we’re thankful for all of our staff and players! Unfortunately, it can’t all be good news. It’s no secret that Roy has been getting burned out over these past couple of months, so it likely won’t surprise anyone that Roy has decided to pass his responsibilities as GFL’s benevolent dictator for life on and has sold the community to @rapperdan, who has decided to incorporate GFL into his existing community, Games for Dan. All of the staff at GFL are excited to work alongside the GFD staff to make this transition as smooth as possible. The staff at both GFL and GFD will continue to be committed to providing a quality experience both in and out of game and we don’t intend for this to change that one bit! We intend for this transition to begin on April 7th. The goal is that everything is transparent to the player and that nothing about the servers themselves change.

Rust

Finally, we’ve had some drama with Rust this month, but we’re happy to announce that we’ve got it sorted out! Thanks to a ton of hard work by @ACanadianAsian, the servers have been back up for a few days and are doing great! 

If you’ve got Rust and you’d like to check em’ out, here are the IP addresses:

Vanilla: 92.119.148.57:28015

Modded 10x: 92.119.148.57:28015

Modded 2x: 92.119.148.58

Thanks again to all of our staff, donators, and members. We had a great March and we hope that April will be even better!

Cheers!

Xy