It was 3 years ago, but only recently did I learn that former BOOM! Minecraft Server Admin 36-year-old Andrew <a href="https://boomgaming.net/smf/index.php?action=profile;area=summary;u=62" [b]p00k4kk3[/b]</a> Burt passed away back in 2018 during one of the most devastating wildfires in CA history known as the "Camp" Fire. The fire leveled the entire town of Paradise, CA near Chico and killed 86 people. It is believed p00k4kk3 tried to rescue his elderly stepfather during the fire but both were killed because they were unable to escape the flames that trapped them on the only road in and out of the area.

p00k4kk3 was a good Admin and was heavily involved in moderating the player behavior in our very popular Minecraft server. I'm deeply saddened to hear of his death and wanted you all to know.

From a KRCR News Report:

"An online remembrance of Andrew Burt reads he "spent his final moments trying to rescue his stepfather Ernest Foss Jr. from the oncoming flames of the Camp Fire before both succumbed. But his devotion to those he loved long preceded that final heroic act."

From a KTVU News Story

Rest in Peace p00k4kk3. Thank you for your service to BOOM! Gaming and for your selfless sacrifice to save others.

Respectfully,
Mike Vail
Lt. Maverick

Greetings Friends.

Today I removed the ability for visitors to use their Steam Account info to logon to the BOOM! website. Please use your username and password to login from now on. If you don't remember that info, use the forgot password feature to recover it using your email address. If you need help getting logged in, you can send an email to the below address for help:

support@boomgaming.net

Take care,
Mav

Jumped on top see what was happening with my good old favorite game TF2 tonight. There are currently 1353 community servers online, down from nearly 28,000 when I shut down the BOOM! servers a year and a half ago.

Of those 1353 servers, 68 servers had real players in them and only 30 of them had over 20 players.

It's sad to see, but with Valve's departure from catering to communities that always supported them in exchange hosting their own servers, it was inevitable that TF2 community servers would take their place in gaming history (sooner thanks to Valve's utter betrayal to community owners) as so many of the games I played over the past 30 years have. But seeing the TF2 community fade leaves me particularly raw after the MANY years of fun and the great relationships it brought my way. Because of the hectic life I live coupled with the astronomical number of Internet trolls and cheaters who have ruined so many great games, I rarely, if ever, play games anymore. I hope someday another great game comes along that brings back the community feeling I enjoyed playing CSS and TF2, but it will take a rededication to community owners by gaming companies and real anti protection with still punishments in order for this to happen.

I'm glad to see people still play the game, but it's just not the same playing with total strangers through the TF2 match-making system. You never really get to know someone and sadly, the number hackers and trolls is worse than ever.

Miss you all,
Mav

Greetings fellow TF2 BOOM!ers!

Have you been missing the old days of hanging out, killing each other and trading on the BOOM! Minecraft server? Do you long for the days of jumping back on the a BOOM! Achievement Idle Server and and playing your old favorite map Achievement Idle AwesomeBox9? Well, I have some good news for you if you do?

One of our Admins, BOOM! Auth (AKA: Good Ol' Grandpa Sniper), has revived these two servers for our members to play on for a while. Below is the info to join them:

𝟏𝟖𝟓.𝟐𝟎𝟗.𝟏𝟕𝟕.𝟔𝟗:𝟐𝟕𝟎𝟖𝟓
BOOM! Achievement Idle
(achievement_idle_awesomebox9)

𝟏𝟖𝟓.𝟐𝟎𝟗.𝟏𝟕𝟕.𝟒𝟕:𝟐𝟕𝟎𝟑𝟓
BOOM! Trade/Minecraft
(trade_minecraftworld_a7)

The Minecraft trade server has a slightly different map, but unless you explore the hidden lava area through a portal in your spawn area, you would never know it's different. Besides, who wants to hide and not kill your enemy!

So grab a friend and jump into one of these servers if you want to go back in time for a visit to our past.

BOOM! will be hosting some weekend and evening reunion parties in the servers in the near future so keep an eye out on your steam for the announcements.

Many thanks for Auth bringing the servers back up for us to play on!

Take care and Happy Sunday
Lt. Maverick

Hello Everyone,


I just dropped by the site to say hi and check in on everyone. I'm working a lot since I'm a public safety employee. It's crazy to see how quiet the streets are. Hardly any cars or people around here in Santa Rosa, CA where I live and work. I hope you're all hanging in there and you're being safe. I have quite of few sick friends from this virus. It's very real and very deadly. Keep your distance from people and keep your hands clean. You never know where or when you could get this stuff. The only safe place is your home.

If you feel like checking in, hit the reply button and say hello. I'd love to hear from you guys on how things are going.

Take care!
Mav

Hello Everyone,


The Scream Fortress X TF2 Halloween Update has been released! Use the below link for details of the update. Hope to see you guys online so we can play. Get in Discord and idle so we can play together.

TF2 HALLOWEEN UPDATE LINK: http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=45049

Happy Halloween!
Mav

Hello Everyone,

Just a quick hello to you all and a wish for a great summer to each and every one of you.

Get out and enjoy some fresh air, stay active and play a few games here and there. Lead a balanced life and make the best of it!

BOOM! will be hosting a few community nights this summer for people to come play some TF2. If anyone wants to help coordinate one or more of these nights, reply and let me know. We have a server box loaded with CSS and TF2 and we can make it happen. We can also go play on some pub servers together as well, all we need to do is coordinate it.

Stay Tuned,
Mav

Hello Everyone,

After 12 years of running game servers and the BOOM! Gaming Community, I've decided to close all of our game servers for good on Sunday 12/3/17 at 9:00 PM PST. This decision did not come easy for me, but in weighing all the options, I feel the time is right and it's something I need to do.

REASONS:
First and foremost, the cost. - I purchased two dedicated servers for a couple thousand dollars about 5 years ago and have been running all our 30+ game servers from the boxes ever since. Due to number, type and performance level of the game servers I wanted to run, getting dedicated servers was the only way to go. The cost of hosting the dedicated servers in the LA Datacenter we use is $155.00 per month each + $15.00/mo for gameME stats. Add another $20.00/mo. for the websites and hosting the banning system and it's nearly $350.00/mo.

I've made repeated attempts to get people to donate over the years but most of those efforts failed except for a few generous donors and some kids who stole mommy's credit card. Yes, and one mom actually thought I hijacked her card because of her kid making a $10.00 donation to BOOM! She threatened to call the police on me if I didn't refund her. In the end, that ended up costing me $5.00 more that the donation I got and a lot of stress! Can you imagine how I felt having someone accuse me of theft when I'm a cop!  I Currently receive and average of $10.00 per month in donations from one person (Admin Chef) to help pay for the servers. Getting donations has always been a challenge, but after paying for everything myself all these years, it's time I stop. I considered running ads on the servers, but in all honesty, I don't want to do that. I hate ads and it goes against everything I believe in so I'm not going to do that.

Another reason I've decided to stop hosting servers is because I'm tired of dealing with all the trolls and Internet tough guys who come here and ruin the game for people. As of this very moment, we have banned 13545 players and blocked 24881 players from returning to our servers. This number of bans goes up by an average of 10 players per day. We have banned so many people that we are actually struggling to fill our servers. This is truly sad but a something we all must face. A lot of people are Internet terrorists and say stuff from their computer they would never dare tell you to your face. These people are pussies and wouldn't last 10 seconds in the real world if they told someone the stuff they say to their face. It makes me sick to see there is such an absence of parenting going on out there.

A third reason I've decided to close the servers is because of Valve's long lost commitment to the Gaming Communities that got them where they are today. When I first opened BOOM!, there wasn't a single Valve Company game server to be found. Valve relied 100% on communities to host and pay for servers to run all of their games. This brought balance to the Valve world, but several years later, Valve filled the server browser with hundreds of their own unprotected vanilla game servers and excluded Community servers from the menus of TF2 so new players couldn't find us. To add insult to injury, Valve directed all holiday release traffic to their own servers which means community-based servers are left to die during holiday events, many of which never recover and close. Valve eventually added community servers back into their game menus, but it was too-little too late for many faithful community server owners. If it weren't for the fact BOOM! has been around a very long time, we would be much worse off, however, we still get hurt by this and our player counts are way down from a year ago. This practice by Valve has hurt all of us in the long-run.

In closing  >>>>  I wanted to tell everyone that I've had great joy in running BOOM! Gaming Community. Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would be a 12-year run when I rented my first CSS 24/7 Funtimes server. I have no regrets and consider every one of the cool players I've met through-out the years as my gaming family. It's pretty cool to see a kid who started playing on our servers when he was 10-years-old now getting married and having his own kids. I also want to thank the great admins we've had over the years. Without their help, our servers would have been like every other cheater and troll-filled Valve server out there. You all did a great job!

The BOOM! Discord server (https://discord.gg/G98yaEq), Steam Community page (http://steamcommunity.com/groups/boomgamingcommunity) and Website (www.boomgaming.net) will stay online as a way for all of us to stay in touch. Once the server box is back here at home with me, I'll be doing some community fun nights for players who want to play some TF2 or CSS together. Stay tuned for more on that by way of announcements on the BOOM! Website, Discord  and Steam Group.

Happy Holidays Everyone,
Lt. Maverick - Owner
www.boomgaming.net

A short time ago I discovered the BOOM! Gaming Minecraft Trade Server (IP: 198.96.91.30:27015) was stuck in an endless reboot loop and kept kicking players off.

I have located and repaired the damaged files. The server is back online and running normal. Now get in there and trade some junk!

Happy Sunday,
Lt. Maverick
www.boomgaming.net

LAST REVISED: Friday 8/25/17 @ 1041 AM PST - FOLLOW THIS TOPIC AND STAY UP TO DATE!

Greetings all,

I have posted an ad to hire a map-maker on the http://tf2maps.net website. So far I've received 2 responses and I'm working on hiring someone. When I finally do, I need to be ready to move forward on the first map I want to make. The first map will be a revised Achievement / Idle fun map. 

Our players like the Achievement / Idle Awesomebox map so I plan to revise it and use it as the template for the new map. Before you make suggestions, I want to express the goals of the the map.

- The map should be fair and balanced for both sides
- The map should be free of exploitable glitches by design
- The map should remain relatively small so the focus of the map remains player vs player combat (the more chaos, the better)
- There should be a limited number of hiding places for non-Admins so there are always people to battle with
- The map should help people obtain TF2 achievements and promote leveling up of weapons and items
- The map should offer some challenges to improve player skills if they wish (eg: surfing, sniping, jumping, spying, market gardening, taunt killing, etc)
- The map should be designed to minimize the need for Admins to babysit to enforce our Community rules
- The map should be playable with 32 players on it, but still be fun with only a handful of players during the slower times.

With the above goals in mind, here are some of the things I plan to work into the new map.

1. Install doors on both spawns to prevent spawn camping by the opposing team.
2. Place a glass wall between both spawns that won't allow projectiles to travel to the opposing spawn
3. Make it so players can't the idle spawn areas. If you're in spawn you will be pulled onto the deathwalk no matter where you stand.
4. Make all glass walls so no projectiles can go around, over, under or through them.
5. Nerf the surf decks so multiple snipers can't hide so easily from players below them and dominate people as they work together. This could mean:
    - Lowering the desk so the players can be more easily seen from below
    - Making the desks smaller so less people can stand on them with out falling off or bumping into each other
    - Putting glass around part of the decks so grenades and rockets can more easily damage people standing on the decks.
    - Allowing players from the opposing team to teleport to the opposing team's deck by getting an achievement or some other challenge
    - Add a control point that when captured, cause explosives to drop on the opposing team's sniper deck
6. Make the Skybox more accessible, but still make it challenging to get to.
7. Remove the teleporters to the spawn areas from the Skybox or perhaps make the teleport to the opposing teams sniper deck or another part of the map
8. Spruce up the map with with some more cool props so it looks more pleasing to the eye.
9. Add cannons that launch players to the sniper decks rather than using teleporter to get there. Players would need to go through the cannon, perhaps surf a short distance to land on the deck.
10. Isolate the boxing ring with glass and a door, then force players to only use melee only when inside the ring by stripping all guns from them automatically.
11. The rules will be posted on the walls of both spawns
12. Our Community info such as our Steam group and discord info will be posted in various places on the map.
13. Since this is an AI map, I want to incorporate the ability to get TF2 achievements into the map. I need ideas on this from players


That's all I'm going to write for now. I will update the list above as things progress so this post may change. I put the revision date on the top so people can track the status.

I am asking for feedback from any and everyone on what they would like to see in addition to the above as well as their feedback on what is written. This is YOUR chance to create the map we've always wanted and I'm paying for it. So take the time to respond and let me know your ideas. Bear in mind that some things aren't possible and that I can't promise everything you want will be added. Remember, what one person wants may conflict with what other people may want. The goal is for us to compromise and make a map that's a ton of fun and still challenging for the majority of the players. To do this, we need to compromise when we disagree about a feature being discussed. There is more than one way to achieve a goal, so if you see something we can do differently, post your idea. I want positive input. If you don't like something you see, explain why and offer and alternative.

Lastly, if you see a feature you like on another map that would fit into the theme of achievement / idle for our new map, send me the IP:Port of he server and/or the map name so we can look at it and review the feature you're talking about. This is far better than just telling us about it.

Looking forward to hearing from you all and having a great discussion.

Happy Friday,
Mav

For those of you have haven't seen this, click the link here to read about the upcoming changes Valve is working on for some of the TF2 weapons.

http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=30147

Happy Saturday!
Lt. Maverick - Owner
www.boomgaming.net

Good Day Everyone,


We are in the process of merging our four TF2 Achievement / Idle servers. We have two servers running the map Achievement Idle Awesomebox 8 and two servers running Achievement Idle Awesomebox 9 (The version with surf ramps).The reason for this is to steer more players to the remaining servers and to make them easier to maintain, easier to administer and easier to maintain.


Effective today, we have effectively merged the servers running Achievement Idle Awesomebox 8 into the IP Address: 198.96.91.27:27015. It is now called "BOOM! Achievement / Idle #2"


We have also merged the servers running Achievement Idle Awesomebox 9 into the IP Address: 198.96.91.29:27015 and the server is now called "BOOM! Achievement / Idle #1"


Please update your favorites and use these IP addresses from now on for these servers. The other two servers have essentially been set to refer people to the new IPs and will be shut down on Friday 7/28/18.


On a side note, we are reviewing a new Awesomebox map to run.This map is better suited to prevent spawn-camping, which we know can drive some people crazy. Once our testing is done, we will release it to the community. We aren't sure if we will be replacing the Awesomebox 8 map or creating a new server and leaving the Awesomebox 8 map server alone. We'll keep you posted on this. We welcome your feedback here.


Take care,


Lt. Maverick - Owner
www.boomgaming.net

I set up a Discord voice server on our dedicated server box for all our members to use. I installed the Discord server status block on the right side of the BOOM! Homepage and I have posted a link to this on the left-side menu as well.


Our Admins will be idling in our Discord server, so feel free to reach out to them for help if you have a problem in one of our games servers. They are happy to help you resolve it.

Here's the invite to join the server: https://discord.gg/G98yaEq

If you have any feedback or need assistance, please reply here and let us know.
Mav

Check out this video of my 14-Year-old son shooting a turkey last weekend.


Enjoy,
Mav

All,


Valve is preparing to release a mandatory update for Team Fortress 2. They should have the update ready soon.

This is a significant update including some major code changes that will likely affect our server plugins. You should expect there may be problems with your TF2 client and TF2 servers with this update, but we hope for the best and work through the problems as they arise.

When the update is released, we will notify everyone that we are installing it on our severs as usual.

Stay tuned...
Lt. Maverick - Owner
www.boomgaming.net

All,

The donations module on the website is not working properly. Due to recent changes and updates to the site and our hosting service, the Paypal callback feature that imports the donation info from Paypal so it appears to everyone no longer works

Donations made through the donation button still reach us securely and until revised code is released to fix the broken callback feature, I will manually post the donations in the donation block on our homepage so everyone can see who donated. Please allow 48 hours from the time of your donation until I get it posted for public view.

Thank you to all those who donate and help me keep BOOM! alive. I REALLY APPRECIATE IT! 

Have a great day,
Lt. Maverick

Over the years, the BOOM! website code has fallen into a state of disrepair. the site looks good and runs ok, but much of the underlying code is outdated and needs to be brought current. In order to do this, I need to reload the site from scratch. I intend to make it look exactly like it does now because 12 years has shown what works best for us.

The site will be down while I do the work so please join our Steam Community Group where I will post news and status updates for the site while the work is done.

Take care,
Mav

ASSIGNED to Mav

During the upcoming overhaul to the BOOM! Website, I'm planning to change the fonts on our website to use the custom TF2 fonts. The fonts can be seen here:

http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Fonts

Stay tuned...
Mav

All,

For the past several weeks, Valve has been working on some significant programming changes to TF2. They anticipate releasing a major update to TF2 in the next week or so. Just what will be part of that update is not known to the general public.

What is clear though is that the update is significant enough that Valve is already working with the SourceMod community through Allied Modders to get the Source Code for many of the optional plugins our servers use up to date and compatible with the new TF2 game code coming out. Even though collaboration is occurring, I'm certan there will be problems when the Offical TF2 update is released and it's very likely there will be server and or plugin downtime as a result.

In preparation for this major release, tonight Valve released a smaller optional update that has already broken the ability for MAC Clients to play TF2. At the time of this writing, when a MAC player attempts to join a TF2 server, they will get the following error message:

"Server uses different class tables"

Several server owners have already notified Valve of the issue and I'm certain they are now aware hopefully working to resolve the problem. I have know idea what is causing the issue but wanted everyone to know in case they see or how about it and want to help others by spreading the word.

Once Valve releases a fix and I'm aware, I'll post and update to this thread.

Take care and stay tuned,
Mav

It seems that some people think the word douchebag is foul language and should not show in our server rules list.

The word douchebag can mean several things including the following:

1. It's a device for cleaning out a woman's vaginal area
2. It can refer to a person being a troll or complete jerk
3. It can be called a cuss-word by clueless whiners who don't know that it commonly refers to either #1 or #2 above.

BOOM! interprets the meaning as #2, which is what 99.99999% of all gamers know. But to appease the remaining .00001% of idiots, I have removed it from all our servers so people who get banned for cussing over and over can't debate it or cry about their bans anymore.

BOTTOM LINE: Our servers cost you nothing to play on. I pay for everything so I get to make the rules I feel are appropriate and that represent BOOM! in the best possible way. All you need to do is follow simple rules of decency and have fun. We really have better things to do than police people for cussing so we ask that you obey our simple rules and act like adults so we don't have to. If this too much, start your own server or play elsewhere. I really don't care either way.

There are 1000's of people who enjoy playing on BOOM!s servers everyday and have no problems following our rules that keep things fun and clean for all to enjoy. So why not just chill and play some TF2 instead of crying about things you can't control? There's no one stopping you from cussing your head off in your home or on a Teamspeak server. So have at it. Let your mommy hear you yell and scream for hours for all we care. But if you're so lame that you have to type all your foul words on a computer the screen for everyone read and then cry about it when you can't do it, you have issues.

Happy now?
Yes, I'm annoyed.
Mav