ThatDarkRPServer

This has been anticipated for the last week or so, and it's finally now, here.

Welcome to our new Crafting system!

Crafting Station
Players now have the ability to upgrade gun dealer weapons using materials found through playing jobs such as Hobos, Lumberjacks, or Miners. Further recipes involve materials that aren't as common and may even require previous already crafted weapons to include in creating an even stronger final product. As of now, there is around a dozen crafting recipes and even more that will continue to be added over time!



Materials
You may have already noticed but Hobos now are able to collect unlimited amounts of Metal Scraps, Bolts, and Screws from Dumpsters along with the addition of Mahagony to the Lumberjack classes. Miners are now able to carry a maximum of 400 Iron Ore and 400 Gold Ore. Lumberjacks are able to carry a maximum of 400 Wood and 400 Mahagony. There is 1 other material called...

Over the last few days since our last update, we've added a bit more of additional content throughout this last weekend.

Adrenaline
A feature that many players had enjoyed was being able to utilize entities that influenced how much of the incoming damage they received would be able to affect them. Our new adrenaline feature allows a player that is quickly taking heavy amounts of damage to overfill their adrenaline threshold to experience a 15% reduction in all damage dealt towards them for 30 seconds. This is indicated by a sound as well as a notification in the player's chat that they have been affected by adrenaline. Regular users may proc this passive every 20 minutes while VIPs and above are able to proc this every 10 minutes when they have accrued enough damage to overfill it.



Events
As we continue to update the inner workings of our event system, we hope to include more refinement for the minigames within to keep...

Throughout late last night and early this morning up until now, we had a few changes made that Tim and myself had previously talked about.

Events
Management members are now able to use the command /eventnodrop that doesn't allow players to drop any weapons they pick up that have done /takeme to enter an event. This now opens up the possibility for players to test out rare weapons against each other during official events!

Gang Wars
Leaders and Co-Leaders of gangs are now able to declare war or accept offers for wars against enemy gangs. While within a war, enemies will be indicated with red text over their heads indicating they are an "ENEMY". To start a war, leaders of your gang and the gang you wish to war must agree to war each other. They are then able to KOS each other in the streets outside of the Safe Spawn. You may use "Start War" in the f6 menu as a leader or co-leader to initiate a war with another gang.

...

The cake eating contest has come to an end, and here's the final numbers:

First Place: Bigg Smoke, with 852 cake slices eaten.
Second Place: Solid Mcslapper, with 539 cake slices eaten.
Third Place: Sterling Archer, with 437 cake slices eaten.

Bigg Smoke will receive a free permanent custom player model of their choice. Solid Mcslapper will receive 25 credits in-game, and Sterling Archer will receive 10 credits in-game. Please contact me on Steam to collect your prize.

Thanks for playing!

Here's the top 26:

Sorry, they're Steam names.

This weekend marks our 6th year anniversary for ThatDarkRPServer! I thought about typing out a quick summary of our history, but there's just too much. We've had our ups, becoming the number one ranked Garry's Mod server for nearly a year straight. On the other hand, we've had plenty of downs, especially at the end of 2016 and the beginning of this year. We were at such a low point, we thought it was the end. Recently though, we made a huge turnaround. The community is growing larger each and every day, with no signs of slowing down.

It's been a long ride, and for the most part, I've enjoyed every bit of it. I look forward to the future of this community and what we can accomplish with this amazing rebound. I wouldn't be typing this if it weren't for all of you, though. Thank you for the commitment you've given this community over the past 6 years.

Throughout this weekend, expect many in-game events from our staff team.

Cake Eating Contest Event
Every 30 minutes in-game,...

A quick update for today.

Custom Player Models
After much discussion, we have introduced a new opportunity to stand out among the crowd. Private class models were very popular on the old server, and I wanted to bring them back. This time though, player models will be player specific rather than on a class. The price of a custom player model is currently 75 credits. Player models are permanent. Player models must be no larger than 12MB in size, and they must be hosted on the workshop. The first 5 users to purchase player models can pick them up on sale for 50 credits.

To order a player model, please create a thread in the support forums. Provide your SteamID, and workshop link to the model in the thread. Be sure that you have the credits in your shop to make the purchase.

Safe Spawn
I'm testing out a new safe zone system for us this week. The safe zone will be used in the area around spawn. With the safe zone, players cannot receive or deal damage in the area...

The server is back up and running!

Let me know if you run into any problems.

As you all know, our machine became the victim of a ransomware attack on Wednesday. This caused all of the files on our machine to be encrypted. All of them, even GModZ. Even our backup files were encrypted. Hours after the attack, there was no hope of us recovering. The method of encryption was too new and no one has found a solution to decrypt this method of encryption yet. There were two options here. We could restore a server backup from last November that I had saved or we could pay the ransom. The ransom was 1 bitcoin, which was roughly $2,400. After researching the topic, I learned that even after paying the ransom, most attackers never decrypted the files and the victims were now without their money and their files.

Thursday night, John and I decided to take the chance and pay the ransom. There was too much data loss to recover from this. It was a huge risk. Luckily for us, the attackers wanted to create a legitimate business out of this. We were emailed several tools to...

Roughly 6 hours ago, our machine became victim of a ransomware virus attack. When ransomware infects a computer, it will go through every file on the computer and encrypt it with its own special file encryption. The attacker literally holds your files for ransom and asks for money in return for your files back. In most cases, the ransom will be paid, but the files will not be returned.

Both John and I have been searching throughout the internet for a miracle to decrypt these files. Sadly, this encryption method is new, and there are currently no known methods to decrypt it. We're working with several sources to see what our options are.

In the meantime, the server will remain down while we further assess the situation. At this time I have no estimated time frame on when the server will be back up and running.

As soon as I have any more information, I will update this thread.

UPDATE 6/1/2017 8:13PM
Just to fill everyone in, we're still going through the data, and we hope...

A tiny update today.

Magical Mushroom
Nota has wanted this forever. We made it a reality for him today. Randomly every hour or two, a magical mushroom will spawn somewhere on the map. It's hard to miss. It's a glowing mushroom. Add it to your inventory or eat it right on the spot. When you take the mushroom, you'll be hit with it's effects. Your health and armor will jump immediately to 500/255. Right after that, your health and armor will slowly decrease by 1 every second until it finally stops at 100/100. Use it right before raiding, or use it at a club and view the world differently. It's up to you.

Other Adjustments
-GTAwards ranks will now display above player heads.
-The second door in the PD has been changed over to a shield door.

There a few other projects that were supposed to come out today, but we ran into a few snags. We hope to get these changes out in the next few days.