Happy 2nd birthday, Castaway!

[random]

Hello, the week of June 11-June 18 is the official anniversary of Castaway's inception back in 2024.

If this is your first time around, this is our birthday week. This week we'll be celebrating castaway with a bunch of fun and wacky changes.

To start off with, here's the changes that will be global the entire week.

• Quake Sounds Plugin: This plugin enables quake sound effects for various events. You can disable it with the !quake command

• 32 player servers: To compensate for higher player counts, and just to add a bit more chaos, servers will be going to 32 players all week.

• Custom rotation: We will be running the custom map rotation for the duration of the week, with some additions (listed below)

• Randomizer: The randomizer plugin, described below, will be available to use all week and enable on a per-map basis via voting.

The additional map rotation is as follows:

• cp_oranges_rc1: A textured version of cp_orange

• mario_kart: The original version of mario kart. No additions.

• wacky_races_v2: Another map similar to balloon race, we ran this during april fools

• pl_minepit: Minecraft themed payload map

• cp_lazytown_lazydaze_b6: An edit of cp_lazytown just with a little bit better visuals

• tf2ware_ultimate: The most modern version of tf2ware using vscript only and no plugin. No idea how this will mesh with the reverts plugin

• harbl_hotel: Another classic map similar to mario_kart but much smaller and more meme filled

Note that for the map rotation, some of these were added via the workshop, so doing !nominate <name> may not work. You can still nominate via the !nominate menu

For the randomizer plugin, here is what you need to know

• Can be voted any time, a single player can start the vote with !voterandomizer or !randomizer. Requires >50% of the server to vote yes

• If voted, it will be enabled for the duration of the map, and disabled the following map. It cannot be disabled - think carefully before you do this.

• If the vote fails, it can be voted for again in 5 minutes.

• This will probably break tf2ware so I would advise against voting for it with that map on

And lastly, here's a weekly schedule for some daily events

• June 13th, 8pm EST: Castaway Movie Night. I will be showing Pirates of the Caribbean and Master & Commander starting at the regular session time for NA on Saturday. Unfortunately for EU players you'll need to stay up or wake up early to catch this, no better time really (which is why it's on Saturday). I encourage you to hang out in the server while the movies are on

• June 14-16th: Powerful Reverts. On these days we'll enable the "powerful reverts" which enables a few reverts deemed overpowered

• June 19th: 24h Session Starting on the NA session for June 19th, try to keep NA (or alternatively any server) populated for 24 hours. It may involve swapping to germany, but traditionally we've done it on one server only.

If I could recommend, don't burn yourself out on all the silly stuff immediately. You should play some regular maps every once and a while to give the silly maps a bit more kick (this extends to Randomizer too, try playing a full round of the map first before you turn it on!)

As of writing this, there's some issues with the revert plugin due to hacking it to function with the randomizer one. These issues will be ironed out over the next day or two

That concludes all the need-to-know information for this anniversary.

On the topic of running a server community

Now that we're two years in this seems like a good time to revisit my old version of this post that I made on the steam forums.

Castaway was created essentially on a whim, because I saw some people discussing making servers back in June 2024, so I thought "why not, I have the ability and the knowledge and it seems like an entertaining project" and decided to spin up some servers. NA was the first set of servers, followed by SG and then EU, both by request. I wasn't really expecting much out of the servers, to start out we had a lot of trouble filling sessions up, and regions other than NA were pretty dead. If you told the me then that we'd be this far today, I would certainly be surprised. The TF2 community server sphere was (and perhaps still is) pretty bleak - very few servers, what few existed had poor rulesets or insufferable communities, with only a few exceptions.

Reverts was never the goal of Castaway, we didn't have them for the first few months in fact, my goal has always been to create a tight knit community to play TF2 and have fun, so that I could hop on and play whenever I wanted. It's a fairly selfish goal, but I would say we've succeeded above and beyond what I'd expected. I think it was the correct decision to not chase raw player counts but rather to foster a group of dedicated players, who genuinely care about the servers and the community. These people stick with us through hardships, through ddos, server outages, raids, what have you, and they keep coming back. I thank everyone who is a regular player on the servers, without you we wouldn't be where we are today.

I suspect chasing players as a raw goal is the incorrect way to go about things. I think people who are dedicated to a cause are willing to go to much further lengths than those who come together merely out of proximity. We've seen it in this community, we have people who make art, animations, videos, maps, and spend hours and hours every day just because they're dedicated to the community. I think that for certain other communities, there's no "higher power" people can dedicate themselves to, so it just ends up being loose disconnected friend groups. When people care about the community itself, not just the few people they play with, it generates more dedication which cyclically helps create more of these people. For example, with something like Skial, I don't think anyone has any loyalty to Skial as a "community," or very few people do anyways. It's popular because they have a lot of servers that get filled, if people had alternatives they wouldn't care whether they join Skial or not. On the other hand, even if there are other weapon revert servers, I can be sure that the majority of our playerbase will stick here. Loyalty is not bought or paid for, it's earned - and I am glad to know that I've earned the loyalty of so many people. Our initial growth was due to some videos by our favorite e-celeb, but I don't think that's why we've retained players. I would say it is our playerbase which is why we've managed to stick around all this time. I fully believe in word of mouth advertising, I don't think we need banners and videos explaining why you should play. If the server is good enough, we'll get people over time.

My original vision for the servers was to have as little moderation as possible, allowing people to say or do whatever they wanted. I believe this was partially successful. I also believe this would have been fully successful had this been attempted 15 years ago. Unfortunately I don't think complete freedom is something that can be reconciled in the modern internet, never before have we seen people so dedicated to ruining things and destructive behavior as we do now a days, so such freedom isn't going to work for everyone. I think ultimately the solution was just to remove a few bad apples, take the reputation hit of not being completely permissive, for the sake of the community. It seems to have worked so far. I think certain people just care more about drama and stirring thing sup than they do about having fun and playing, and such people are easily identifiable. As evidenced multiple times over the course of our short history, if you remove the people doing most of this complaining about nonexistent issues, the problems vanish overnight as no one else really cares, they simply join bandwagons over whoever talks the loudest. I think we've reached a good place where there's not nearly as much animosity between people (with a few minor exceptions). In the end, there are a lot of people out there in the world, I don't think losing one or two people every once and a while is an issue and it can be beneficial. We have had community splits in the past, and I've likened it to excising a tumor, which is a little harsh but has mostly been accurate. I don't mind if people don't like our community, they are free to join others or start their own servers - we have plenty of people here who do like it, enough to fill a server up every day which is enough for me. These people go off and form their own servers, and it ends up being beneficial for everyone involved, and more servers are created in the community server sphere.

I am not on a crusade for anything personally - I just want to have a server I can play on and a community I can enjoy. I can't play on two at once, so whether we fill two at once isn't important to me. I don't really care about quickplay or casual anymore, I haven't played casual in nearly two years at this point and I don't ever plan to go back. I don't have any faith in Valve changing things, so I think the correct thing to do for the TF2 community is to just assume they won't, and to create our own game. We can create what we envision through community servers, we don't need valve. The experience I get on castaway is pretty close to ideal, so I see no reason to change it or the rest of TF2 when all my needs are satisfied. I wouldn't discourage others from campaigning, because of course casual being killed is better for the long term health of the game, but it's not something I'll do. I think that overall just sitting and leaving things as they are, letting our community evolve organically without needing constant changes, is the correct move and it hasn't driven me astray yet.

I am quite content with having reached two years, and I hope for many more to come. If we get to five years, I'll be very happy.

Happy birthday, Castaway

[Dillon]

Happy 2nd Anniversary to Castaway.tf. Despite any minor complaints I have, I have to admit that if this server never existed, I probably would have stopped playing Team Fortress 2 entirely by now. It's been great meeting all the regulars and getting to use the old weapons on maps I wasn't able to find games on before ~October of 2024.

[Mwa]

so on June 12th its my bday and Castaway Bday, so happy Bday to Me And Castaway.

[fox]

I remember the shill post like it was yesterday.

[SomethingSomethingSomething]

"Powerful Reverts" the only powerful ones re-added were the Tomislav, Sandman, and maybe the Backburner. The rest of the item set bonuses should be permanent, same with most the other "powerful" reverts tbh.
Happy Birthday Castaway

[ozymandias]

This birthday week has been some of the most fun I had with this game

[Buchou]

Happy Birthday, Castaway! 10,000 years!

[Suspicious Carl]

I share the same take dillon has, it's no secret i bitch alot, and i dont agree on certain aspects of the way things are run, but make no mistake- this is the most fun you can have online, at least its the most fun I'VE had online. Castaway is my reward for 7 years of putting up with C*sual, un**topia, and lord forbid even a few hours of Shitty pound, i knew it would pay off one day. Its the first time ive been in a tightknit online space i actually enjoy interacting with
Idk man i could write 10 more paragraphs going over every little thing i love, but i'll leave it here, BLESS!

[kritzburgh]

It's therapeutic to be able to play with genuine people and listen to the hilarious banter while experiencing again the way TF2 was meant to be played. I'm almost always laughing and having a great time. Happy birthday!

[huutti]

Happy birthday, working on reverts has been the first time I've contributed to a public code project

[Scout]

Today marks 2 years since I first played on Castaway. Back then, all I wanted was somewhere to play truly vanilla TF2 without bots, dumb ruleset changes, or draconian moderation. Having joined in 2019, I was never able to find a place that actually met all three criteria. When I opened the server browser that night and saw this community for the first time, I saw potential. I hopped on, played some ctf_well*, stuck around for probably another map or two, and saw even more potential. After the session ended, random created the Steam group, and I was one of the first to join it. I knew this place was going to go somewhere, and I was right.

Like Carl, I'm not going to write a whole essay about how awsome Castaway is, but here's a rundown of why I've stuck with it for so long:
- The Quickplay ruleset means I actually get to play the game. Everything about the ruleset is perfect.
- Weapon reverts have made vanilla balancing unplayable to me - if I can't use the Sandman/Flying Guillotine combo on a server, it's not worth even considering. On top of that, the reverts we do have are almost perfectly configured. I could probably count the amount of reverts we have that I wouldn't want to see in vanilla TF2 on one hand.
- The map rotation is excellent. I rarely get bored of any single map; there's plenty of variety. The custom maps are also really cool (for the most part, fuck Bitterroot)
- The lack of moderation means no one has to tiptoe around rules, and everyone gets to freely express themselves. Sometimes it's too unmoderated, which is the biggest issue I have with Castaway, but there aren't too many cases of that being an issue - I hope it stays that way.
- The community is just right. Lots of fun people, with just the right amount of spiciness. Sure, there are quite a few fags, but that's unavoidable with any community.

tl;dr - My Mercenary badge says it's from January 9, 2019, but it's actually from June 18, 2024.
* Fun fact: my first Castaway memory happened on this map that day - I joined during it, saw random talking about how map switching wasn't working, and said "i dont care" lol

[Mwa]

so far,the birthday week is fun.

[SomethingSomethingSomething]

In Defense of the Gas Jockey's Item Set Revert

Section 1.1

By all regards the diversity in Pyro's kit is lacking, not in the aspects of primary Flamethrower for which all are of great use, it is however in the combination of melee and primary that lacks in viable alternatives. There is no doubt that the Combo Pyro is a sense of skill expression and totally unique to TF2, this is what makes the Combination of the Degreaser and Powerjack intrigue. A 10% Movement Speed Buff with the intense trade off of 10% Bullet Vulnerability, regardless of whether the Powerjack is stripped of its existing 15% movements speed buff this down side along with the weaker combo potential of say the Flaregun (in comparison to the Axtinguisher) makes it a somewhat viable alternative to the former.

Section 1.2

Being fully aware that upon stacking both bonuses of the set and the Powerjack would place Pyro as faster than an unspeed-boosted Baby Faces Blaster Scout, by 2% but nonetheless, The extra damage and bullet vulnerability in this state clearly does not outweigh the potency and consistency of the Axtinguisher. For a very clear and explicit reason, Damage. The Degreaser does both less flame and afterburn damage, it's best usage is with other items in his kit none. It's pairings are what makes it a useful weapon. A Flamepunch doing 90 at Flamethrower Range, Max ramp-up Reserve Shooter Mini-Crit 120, Axtinguisher 195. But the Powerjack 65 unless it random crits, even the Back Scratcher doing 81 with its extremely generous health pack bonus has greater viability with the Degreaser.

Section 2.1 Conclusion

If the +50 Health Backburner hasn't taught us enough, Pyro's weakness is his health at close range. Unlike the Scout, once he is committed at close range he can't un-commit easily. The Damage Vulnerability when using this set does not significantly change that.
So why even ask for this revert? It's symbolic, I remember a time watching the Powerjack being a fun weapon not a roll out quickly to the point weapon. Just like Demoknight, it used to be a item set with high highs and low lows. A random dice roll that if you wiin you get a second chance at.

[Suspicious Carl]

In Defense of the Gas Jockey's Item Set Revert

Section 1.1

By all regards the diversity in Pyro's kit is lacking, not in the aspects of primary Flamethrower for which all are of great use, it is however in the combination of melee and primary that lacks in viable alternatives. There is no doubt that the Combo Pyro is a sense of skill expression and totally unique to TF2, this is what makes the Combination of the Degreaser and Powerjack intrigue. A 10% Movement Speed Buff with the intense trade off of 10% Bullet Vulnerability, regardless of whether the Powerjack is stripped of its existing 15% movements speed buff this down side along with the weaker combo potential of say the Flaregun (in comparison to the Axtinguisher) makes it a somewhat viable alternative to the former.

Section 1.2

Being fully aware that upon stacking both bonuses of the set and the Powerjack would place Pyro as faster than an unspeed-boosted Baby Faces Blaster Scout, by 2% but nonetheless, The extra damage and bullet vulnerability in this state clearly does not outweigh the potency and consistency of the Axtinguisher. For a very clear and explicit reason, Damage. The Degreaser does both less flame and afterburn damage, it's best usage is with other items in his kit none. It's pairings are what makes it a useful weapon. A Flamepunch doing 90 at Flamethrower Range, Max ramp-up Reserve Shooter Mini-Crit 120, Axtinguisher 195. But the Powerjack 65 unless it random crits, even the Back Scratcher doing 81 with its extremely generous health pack bonus has greater viability with the Degreaser.

Section 2.1 Conclusion

If the +50 Health Backburner hasn't taught us enough, Pyro's weakness is his health at close range. Unlike the Scout, once he is committed at close range he can't un-commit easily. The Damage Vulnerability when using this set does not significantly change that.
So why even ask for this revert? It's symbolic, I remember a time watching the Powerjack being a fun weapon not a roll out quickly to the point weapon. Just like Demoknight, it used to be a item set with high highs and low lows. A random dice roll that if you wiin you get a second chance at.

Dis is out of place brah put it in reverts megathread

[mjaded]

genuinely thank you for setting this server up and keeping it running this long. i haven't really played anything on tf2 except castaway for the last 2 years and i don't expect that to change. the whole birthday week event has been great. it kinda coincided with me having atrocious sleep, so i didn't play as much as i wanted to, but still i had a lot of fun. here's to hopefully many more. Happy birthday Castaway!

[loodie]

Happy birthday Castaway

[cyber]

Happy (belated) Birthday!

[Gabber]

Birthday week went far beyond my expectations. Some of the best sessions i've had yet were in there.

Since 2016 i have been scouring through TF2's server browser to find something that could make the game fun again. However, through some sort of black magic MYM not only ruined Valve servers, but killed any good community servers as well.
For about 8 years my experience with this game was characterized by constant frustration at trying to play the game that i first installed in 2012. Things that used to be normal and simple became next to impossible. Things like playing a map for more than 10 minutes, things like scrambling the teams when they're obviously fucked, things like switching teams so i could help balance the game, or duel a friend, things like gamemodes other than payload. Things like moonshots, cleaver combos, ambassador snipes, tide turner chains, axtinguisher combos, bison quad kills, base jumper redeploys and many, many, many NUKES. Things like RD_ASTEROID!

There were many things that were completely lost in this game until the stars aligned in the middle of the June of 2024 and Castaway came out of nowhere. Not only did this server bring back all of those things, it brought some that i haven't ever experienced before, like hydro, sudden death, arena, etc... My hope is that we never lose those things again.

For about 8 years there was nothing i wanted more than to go back to the good old days of 2012-2015. After 2 years and ~3k hours of Castaway being my only experience with TF2 i don't need to look back longingly anymore. These are the new good old days.
2024
2025
2026
These are the years where i've had the most fun playing this game out of the 15 that i've played, all thanks to this server. It's important to not take Castaway for granted, i can't stress this enough. There was NOTHING even close to this server for a decade, some people especially those who installed later don't really get just how special this server is. It took TF2 out of the fucking dark ages. Forget the reverts, you could not find a server that plays anything but fucking payload and dustbowl for 10 years straight. The fact that i get to actually play some 5CP every day is a gift that i still cherish, because that really was impossible before this server.
It's been a great 2 years. Here's to 200 more.

God bless our QVICKPLAY ruleset
God bless our reverts
God bless our varied maps
God bless our dedicated players
God bless our Castaway
And God bless OUR TF2.
AMEN!