FAQ and method

An independent check of CS 1.6 server promotion. We poll the servers ourselves and show how many live players they really have and what changed while a promotion was running on a monitor.

No. We do not sell promotion and do not take money from monitors for a place in the ranking. The ranking is computed the same way for everyone from what can be seen from outside.

Most servers and monitors run on Moscow time, and services are sold by it. This way the hours on the chart match the hours in the service description.

We poll every server ourselves over A2S, the same protocol the game uses to build its server list. Bots are subtracted: only live players count.

A server with players is polled every minute, an empty or suspicious one every 15 minutes, a silent one once an hour. If a server stays silent for a week, we stop polling it.

We do not count bots, and monitors often do. Besides, a monitor shows the number of players the server claims, while we also check its player list.

It has more than 32 slots: that is the CS 1.6 limit, and 64 slots or more is a sign of inflated online.

It reports live players but does not return their list three checks in a row, or the list has template names like player01, player02.

The same player list is on another server at the same time. That is what a mirror looks like.

Such servers are left out of lists and rankings. If you open one by a link, the reason is shown at the top of the page.

A server that shows someone else's online in the list and sends the player to the real server on connect. Mirrors exist to take more places in the server list.

We spot a mirror when the same group of players appears on two servers within 10 minutes: the mirror is the one whose IP hosts more servers. If an address has three or more caught mirrors, all its servers with players count as mirrors.

We find servers on monitors' master servers and in Steam and refresh the list every 6 hours, so a new server does not show up at once.

It can also be missing from the lists if it is marked suspicious, does not answer queries or is hidden by the administration. The server page still opens by the direct link /servers/address and shows what is going on.

The server does not answer A2S queries. Usually it is flood protection that cuts frequent queries or all queries from unknown addresses. Check your host's DDoS protection settings and the query limits in ReHLDS.

If the server answers only now and then, the chart will have gaps: we do not draw over holes longer than half an hour.

For every promoted hour we take a baseline: the median online of the same hour over 7 days, counting only hours without promotion. The effect is the actual online minus the baseline. So night is compared with night and day with day.

Connects are the number of joins a monitor publishes about itself. It is the monitor's own data and cannot be checked from outside, so we always label it as the monitor's words and compute the effect from our own polling.

Stars go to monitors with at least 3 service-days. We split them into five groups by median connects. The rest have grey stars: there is not enough data yet, and a rating would be random.

The plugin confirms the online from inside the server: such a server cannot be mistaken for a mirror or inflated online. Among servers with the same online, the one with the plugin ranks higher, and it shows exactly how many new players a promotion brought.

Player joins and leaves, time played, the map and the online. SteamID and IP are turned into an irreversible hash right away; they are not stored. The plugin does not touch chat, commands or server files.

Sign in with Steam, add the server in My account and put the code you get into the server name or sv_contact. When you press Check, we poll the server, see the code, and an archive with the plugin and keys appears in your account.

The engine does not put all cvars into the A2S_RULES reply, only a limited number in alphabetical order. If the server has many plugins with their own visible cvars, sv_contact never makes it in, and changing the map will not help. Verify the server through its name.

You need AMX Mod X 1.9 or newer and the Easy HTTP module. Check that trueboost.cfg is in addons/amxmodx/configs and holds the keys of this very server: after an owner change the old keys stop working.

Add the line trueboost_debug "1" to trueboost.cfg and change the map: the plugin will log every send and the server's answer to the AMXX log, which shows what is wrong. If the log says the server clock is off, the plugin has already corrected for it.

No. You sign in on steamcommunity.com, and Steam only tells us your SteamID. TrueBoost never asks for your Steam password.