TF2 server no longer being run, other stuff I've been doing
Hey all.
First of all - thanks for checking out the TF2 server! The fact I could get solid 2v2 or 3v3 matches most times I played was a lot of fun. We had some fun dicking around on Upward, Powerhouse, Hightower, Harvest and such. I had fun and I hope you did too!
That being said, the TF2 server is now permanently offline.
Namely it came down to 3 factors:
- Performance wasn't as great as I'd wanted it to be. It seems like the old Intel NUC I have can only realistically handle up to 5 or 6 people before it starts throttling and lagging insanely hard. Some of you took over 5 minutes to connect to the server or, when you did connect, had over 300+ ping for no discernible reason, even if you're connecting from the EU to the EU.
- Lack of server browser discoverability meant I am the one who had to do all of the advertising. And despite shilling the server here, on my Discord, on my livestream and on the TF2 forums, traffic wasn't all that I expected it to be. There were the few curious souls who jumped in but most never stayed for longer than a minute or two. Unfortunately, I don't have the audience to sustain something like this.
- Cost. I specifically mean electricity cost. Despite being a low-power machine, leaving it running constantly with the TF2 server in the background increased my electricity usage by around 15-20€. Considering that I'm jobless at the moment, it's a pretty big hit and I can't really afford to maintain this long-term.
So with those three reasons, I'm sorry to say that the TF2 server is no longer going to remain up. It was a fun experiment in learning something new but it's not something I can keep up long-term. It was always meant to be a temporary thing anyway, so I'm glad I had some fun with it.
Now then...what else have I been up to?
Back in 2011, my main way of playing video games was on my original Fat PS2. I remember back in the day watching YouTube videos of people soft-modding those things with FreeMcBoot and installing a hard drive to play games locally without the disc drive.
I distinctly remember seeing these videos and projects back then and thinking "man, I wanna do that too" but...considering I was 12 and not from a well-off family whatsoever, I could never realize that dream. My only other conceivable option was to get a modchip installed in it so I can play burned DVDs but I never ended up going down that route.
Well, fast forward 15 years and now that's exactly what I did. Not the modchip part, the hard drive one. Especially considering the fact that I still have that PS2 all these years later and the barrier of entry to modding PS2's has come a very long way since then. I have a FMCB memory card I bought in like...2022 or something that I never really used. My original intention for that memory card was to use it with a slim PS2 that I bought, funnily enough.
My idea was that I was going to keep my fat PS2 unmodded and fully in its original state that I've had it for over a decade, and the slim PS2 would be the one that I'd use for modding and such. But in 2026, that dynamic completely flipped.
My Fat PS2's disc drive is, unfortunately, not what it used to be. It still works for the record. I'm able to play a majority of my titles that I do own off the DVD drive, but some games do struggle to load. Particularly, my copies of Gran Turismo 4 or Midnight Club 3 DUB Edition Remix tend to fail to load more than they don't. Not to mention my CD-based games which don't load on my PS2 whatsoever.
But you know what does load them fine? My slim PS2 that I bought. Perhaps because that slim PS2 also had its laser replaced when I bought it by the person who sold it to me (who is a former co-worker of mine, fun fact).
So with that, I decided to finally put that FMCB card to use, bought a clone HDD adapter for my PS2 (a GameStar SATA HDD adapter to be more specific) and bought a cheap, used 500GB Western Digital Blue hard drive. And I decided to just rip my entire 41 game library to the HDD of my PS2 that I've installed.
And now I have basically the ultimate PS2 that I wish I had back in 2011.
There are a few things I still want to address with it, namely get a cleaner picture out of it. I heard people use something called a RetroTink to get much cleaner visuals out of retro consoles without resorting to hardware modification, and that's likely the route I'm gonna go as well, but that's for much later.
Right now, my focus is still finding a job. October 13th marked 7 months of me being let go from my previous job and...well, I'm still struggling to find employment, unfortunately.
The only thing that's different now is that I'm at least getting interviews. Previously it was a complete hail-mary - sent a CV, get absolutely nothing back, 2 weeks later receive an email that they're moving forward with other candidates. Or get nothing at all. But even with the current situation of at least getting the first interview, it doesn't sting any less to get rejected regardless.
At this point, I'm gonna keep moving forward at my own pace that I have been for the last half-year or so. But not gonna lie, it is getting demotivating and draining at this point. I've never felt more socially isolated than I do now, considering I don't even tend to go outside that much these days, unless it's to go to the store to get groceries.
My next big project I wanna work on is......I don't know actually. These things come so spontaneously that it's hard to know what I'm going to do next.
Maybe dust off my 1.6 original Xbox that I have and do something with it? I know that replacing the hard drive on it requires a child sacrifice basically, but I'm thinking of maybe bolstering my Xbox game library next. The main thing I'm on the hunt for is Midtown Madness 3 for hopefully obvious reasons.
That's all I wanted to really ramble about for now.
- huu