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Welcome to the second edition of the INC Gaming Clan Newsletter!
Recently, we've had lots of new faces apply to join the ranks of INC, so I thought I'd let you know who to keep an eye on, and give you an insight into the trial from the applicants point of view.
Recent New INC Members: Bountyhuntress, Cam, NME, blade, WaRloRd, meh, m3cha, Mario, Luigi, Eilyk, Snoopy and Frank Lucker.
Trialist’s this month: Flik, MumeliMies, Colley, Shake, Cursed, Convicted
This newsletters trialist interview was: Flik
When speaking to flik, its very obvious that she's having a blast on our servers, and can be a really good laugh to speak to and to be killed by!
When asked what enticed her to join the clan she said: “Well, I started playing when Fizzy mass-added everyone on his steam list to the INC steam community and thought it'd be silly to accept and not play. My brother uses INC servers and invited me to a few games and so I got to know a few INC-ers, liked you all and decided to join. Plus I've been lurking there for months.“
Comments given about her experience on our servers: “…..everyone has been incredibly friendly and helpful towards me. Quite often they'll give me pointers on how to improve, or if I ask very nicely they might stand still while I kill them.”
Her best server experience: ”Haddow trying continuously to knife me on Inferno but managing to shoot him every single time. :3 I ended up with 8 kills and at least 5 or 6 of them were him. That made me very happy. He's already managed to knife me at least 4 times.”
When asked who her favourite member of the new events team was: “Um... I guess since I've spoken to Skinner the most out of the remaining three, I'll have to say him for fairness. (Although I do wonder if people are nice to me just because they don't want Fizzy to beat them up sometimes!)”
The INC clan leadership, most commonly known as our men in red(MIR) announced the new Events team on Sunday march 21st. The events team consists of 4 people; DJ renegade, Skinner, Fizzy and Half-bak3d.
The idea behind having an events team, is in part to supplement and help the MIR, but its much much more than that. The position of being on the events team is one of responsibility. They are ambassadors for the clan, organising events, helping actively recruit (not decide on who gets in, but rather advertise and help people with the process) and generally leading by example.
The process of choosing the events team was not a simple, draw out of a hat type thing. It involved many weeks of applications, which involved the applicants explaining what they'd do in situations, their understanding of the services INC provides, and how they exemplify the standards expected from an INC ET. Some such standards or attributes given were that they need to be sociable, knowledgeable and tactful. They needed to be excellent at communication, and also be resourceful so they can do their role without constant outside assistance.
Its early days (at time of writing) for the Events team, but they have already set up a new podcast, which can be found on the official INC YouTube page, or view through the forums. With an emphasis put on hard work and dedication by the MIR during recruitment, it will be exciting to see what the events team can bring to the clan, and how much fun can be had when INC gets together! If you want any further information on the events team, you can contact them at events@inc-gaming-clan.com
An interview with Half-Baked, one of the new ET was carried out:
What made you apply to be a member of the E.T team? “I always wanted to help out and after being in other clans I know how hard we have to work to get a successful clan. INC is already an amazing clan to be in but with the E.T we can become even better.”
What do you think of the other members of the ET team? “I think it is defiantly too early to make a call on what they are like! However from the small amount of time we have been together I think we will work really well to make INC even more awesome than it is!”
Tell us some more about yourself? “Currently I am at college but am also working as a manager of a pizza place. At university I am doing a HNC in computer games development which shows in some of my posts on the forum. Musically I am not gifted in playing but I do listening to it. However never ask to borrow my MP3 player as it contains everything from Rap to Frank Sinatra, but if you have an interest in music at all come and have a chat with me!”
Quick fire questions:
Favourite
gun:
Deagle
Favourite
map:
Nuke
Favourite
form of CSS: Standard maps
Favourite
thing that has happens: Playing on aztec , at the bridge I shot snotfang once,
jumped back behind the box, jumped out again and both Snotfang and a teammate
where there so I shot snotfang and his team mate with an amazing headshot.
Favourite
song: Rock n Roll chainsaw by ‘Maximum the hormone’
Favourite
thing outside CSS: Anything to do with art or reading!
Any words of wisdom to leave us with? “Never forget CSS is always about having fun!”
· We have held two successful GunGame nights this month with the server being full each time and each night going down very well. A lot of people have commented on how much they miss GunGame and this will likely become a very common occurrence.
· We had an evening of server testing which saw many INC on one of the servers to help test out new features and performance. It gets tough to do this as our servers are always busy now, so test servers are needed before things go live. It was essential we fill it up and test it whilst it is under load and everyone pulled together to do this, great job!
· Tomorrow Lev is hosting a GunGame night on our GunGame server. This will start from around 7pm so try and get on if you can. INC was initially started up using members from GunGame servers, so this is going back to our roots a bit. We would like to have the GunGame server busy as well as the other servers, the others keep themselves going with our bot plugins and continued presence of random people on them, but GunGame takes a little more work. Here’s the discussion on this: http://www.inc-gaming-clan.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2901
· On Saturday April 10th there is an INC meetup in Sheffield, UK. This is our third meetup in this location and we are expecting to see lots of old faces as well as some new ones. This is a member and associates only event I’m afraid but so far I have heard rumours/confirmations that the following members may make it: Grandma + KF Turtle, Leviathan, Glaze, Elay, Skinner, Translucent, Icedragon + 1, LastGunslinger, Dangerous Raccoon, Flaming Badger, DJ Renegade + Jess+1, Fizzy, Flik, meh, Frank Lucker + 1, Aemon, Fredz, SnotFang, Blade +2, Rich Cranium. As you can see, this means we’re likely to have around 20-30 people attend! We’ll be going bowling afer meeting up and then back to Grandma’s house for the evening. There’ll be a large selection of foods and snacks available as well as mixers, people are able to buy whatever alcohol they like on the night from the shop across the road. There’ll be plenty of people in the kitchen and living room again and we’ll have some singstar/guitar hero going as well as everyone having a chance to talk plenty in person. Like last time, I’ll ask each person to chuck in roughly a tenner on the day – I’ll have used this money a few days before to buy tons of food (veggie and meatie), salad, snacks and mixers – alcohol can be bought by anyone who wants to drink it from the tesco’s across the road. Plans are still subject to change. You can look at this (if a member) at: http://www.inc-gaming-clan.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2654
· We are intending on hosting another of our famous GunGame competitions with some real prizes for you to get your hands on. Keep an eye out for more details on the forum and steam announcements, there will be at least one month from this date before the signups close.
· There will be another caption competition going up on the forum, so get your thinking caps on and give us all a taste of your wit.
· We intend to bring you the first INC TeamSpeak quiz night, this will be running on a fairly frequent basis and will give you an opportunity to test your knowledge. The TeamSpeak element will ensure that you are unable to use Google whilst playing.
· This Friday (April 2nd) we will be hosting an event on our Standard maps Server. We have partnered up with a gaming radio station whose shows you can now listen to on all our servers by typing !radio. They are launching at 7pm and will be doing some INC mentions on the evening. We want everyone to come on the server and listen to the radio with us, especially whilst we put the map ‘Dust’ on the rotation. This has been requested by a number of visitors to the server and will have a trial run to see how it fares. This will be launched on the server at 7pm also on the Friday.
· Bozz was wished a fond farewell, the night went well with everyone using P90’s only in honour of the Bozzira. To top it off, he was the top P90 scorer for that day too.
· INC shows its skills, by keeping AWP off the servers! A lot of the players have been practicing plenty with the scout and this shows as the aztec bridge is still hotly contested and nowhere is safe on port!
· You may have noticed that a lot of the regular players have gone, such as BA|Grapefruit. These were actually our bots, and have been renamed to give us a bit of variety! So keep an eye out, our bots are probably behind you!
· INC hypnotised by Flik, willing to stand still and die at her command. Flik has been asking people to stand still so she can shoot them, especially in the case of gungame nights. Oddly, people seem to be willing to comply!
· Warning: the water on port is hazardous to your health! Many people seem to have forgotten that you can’t swim in CSS and port has provided a quick for many bodies to sleep with the fishes recently.
· INC community taken over by their better halves: recruitment starts with the family! A lot of INC wives and girlfriends have started joining in the fun and throwing themselves into the fray recently.
As any other clan or society will tell you, it costs money to run things. INC has to pay for our gameserver, our webserver, our statistics and occasional one-off fee’s that crop up. No INC funds are ever used for anything that is not directly related to the community and no-one has ever taken money from that pot for themselves. INC competitions have typically always been paid for by the person who arranged that competition too. It does all cost a lot of money and INC does require a bare minimum of £130 or so per month to keep running as we currently do, upgrades and new stuff cost us more money in some cases though.
Here’s a list of people who have recently contributed to the clan funds (in no particular order):
Leviathan, Smithy, Elay, Flaming Badger, Skinner, Nusse, Snotfang, Haddow64, Grandma, Half-Baked, Meh, Duck_Boy, Translucent, Glaze, DJ Renegade, Explodie, Rambo, Eilyk, KF turtle
Every donation helps and INC is prospering at the moment, this can only continue with sustained donations though. If you can afford to send a minimum of £5 our way each month, you’ll massively be contributing to the continuation of INC. If you think about how much time you spend on the servers and forums and how much of a community aspect you get from it, bear in mind that £5 is the equivalent of 2-3 pints a month, it’s not too much. Think of it as buying your INC buddies 2 pints a month to share between them and to keep it all going! I hope we can continue to get more subscription donators to ensure INC can survive! http://donate.inc-gaming-clan.com
We have tried to increase income to the clan by taking up some other avenues open to us. So far the shop has raised roughly £45 for the clan. The Google adsense is proving a hit, we are getting an average of £15-£20 a month from that. I would encourage you to not click on this repeatedly though, too many clicks on this that appear to come from the same IP in a short period of time will show as unusual behaviour. However, please relate to our private topic here for more tips: http://www.inc-gaming-clan.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2669
Our shop is proving a hit with many of you and we hope this trend continues, we’re getting a good amount of referral revenue and everyone is getting some great quality products. This has brought us in a substantial set of funds. Keep it up and get something for yourself if you haven’t already! http://store.inc-gaming-clan.com
We have 6 servers at the moment, these currently need some tweaking to reduce lag and to improve performance, but they are seeing a great amount of traffic and are often quite full around the clock,
Standard :- 89.145.94.60:27045 (Sourcemod)
Dust2 :- 89.145.94.61:27015 (Sourcemod)
Office :- 89.145.94.61:27025 (Sourcemod)
Italy :- 89.145.94.61:27035 (Sourcemod)
Scoutzknivez :- 89.145.94.60:27035 (Mani Admin)
GunGame :- 89.145.94.60:27015 (Mani Admin)
Some of the following commands can be used on these:
rank, statsme, weapons, top10, next - all of these commands, when typed in chat will show you your statistics in-game.
!ts, !teamspeak - these commands will connect you to our Teamspeak 3 server without exiting the game if you already have Teamspeak 3 installed on your machine (Sourcemod only)
We’ve completely re-installed the servers this month. We had an opportunity to have a new OS put on our server box (Server 2008R2) and to also move over to a game panel that would bring extra features to the clan. It gives us the ability to meter out access purely for rebooting, gives us performance monitoring and reporting, easy automated creation of blank server installs without downloading. The ability to separate performance from one server to another, providing a layer of security, an additional firewall and the automated restart and recovery of servers that have closed down. All of this has given us improved performance and less lag. This was done at a time that would inconvenience as few people as possible and required a good 12hours work to be put in by Grandma from 3am onwards on a Friday night. We have already seen the benefits of this as the MIR are not getting called in to restart servers so often! This does have a small financial impact on the clan and does add an additional 10% to our overheads, this was funded upfront initially by some donations and will be built-in to existing costs.
Due to unforeseen circumstances, the work we were intending to do hasn’t yet been completed, but there has been an awful lot of work still put into the following items over the past month.
· Over the coming month Glaze will be editing the custom maps bot navigation files to make them play without becoming stuck on ladders and all over the maps, this will specifically focus on gungame maps to start with.
· You should also hopefully notice clan advertisements popping up across maps played on all servers over the next month in the forms of graphic decals, these will be sparsely placed in strategic locations and will advertise INC and INC Resources.
· We hope to have the Deathmatch Battles Server ready for public release in the near future. This is an INC exclusive server, a mod that Allstar has written from the ground up. This mod will ONLY be available on INC servers!
· On the cards is INC own level designs for all game types
· New servers to add to the current repertoire, possibly including Slide, Hide and Seek, Climbing and Surf. These will be studied for feasibility first and playtested thoroughly.
This month has been a dry one in terms of updates. There is a new edition of PHPBB3 out, but as it contains no major features or security enhancements we have not yet applied this, we will possibly wait for the next version. The new website is waiting on some outside elements and so has not progressed. Once the outside elements are completed work will resume and we anticipate a short spell after receiving that work before we get it off the ground.