Game Over

Posted 68 days ago by Dr Pepper

Our server went dark earlier this morning after three great years of service.

We’ve received many fantastic messages of appreciation since we made our closure announcement, and we thank everyone for what they’ve written. Its been immensely satisfying to for us to see how many people hold the SPS and it’s philosophy in such high regard. I think we can safely say we achieved everything we were hoping for when we started three years ago.

Thanks for playing, you’ve done us proud.

All Good Things...

Posted 79 days ago by Dr Pepper

…must come to an end. The Self Preservation Society has the sad duty of announcing that our Day of Defeat server will not be renewed when the current subscription expires. We don’t yet have an exact termination date from our GSP, but we expect that the server will go dark on or around the 2nd of December.

Cola, Ama & I are closing down the server because we feel that the time has come to move onto new things. DoD has entertained us well for many years, but it’s an open secret that we’ve been looking for a new game for the SPS for a long time. We hoped to transition from DoD to <insert game here>, so that the closure of the DoD server wouldn’t mean the end of the SPS community. Sadly we never found anything that really hit the spot.

We want to say thank you to everyone who has helped to make the SPS what it was – never the biggest of gaming communities, but definitely one of the very best. We thank all of our regulars for their constant friendliness and good humour, and we salute those outstanding community members who joined the ranks of The Society to provide admin support on the server over the last three years. In alphabetic order, those fine folks were:

Billy, Bob’s Your Uncle, Bourne (aka -_-), Danwhy, Dave the Brave, Dire, Easy Target, Ecco, Fantomet, Frank Lucker, Fug, Headlander, Jimmy Jazz, Jonny (GIMP), Mac, Nik Oms (too many aliases to list ), Oddball, Oo Did Dat, Pilgrim_UK, Pvt Kairis, Ratcatcher, Roxymoron, Shooter, and Steve.

All that remains to say is best wishes to you all, and that the forum will remain open for some time after the server’s demise, so that regulars can keep in touch and tell each other which servers they have moved to. We hope you take a bit of the SPS spirit with you wherever you play.

All the best,
The Self Preservation Society

Dr Pepper – Smokin Cola – Amaterasu

Map Rotation Overhaul

Posted 239 days ago by Dr Pepper

As promised last month, we’ve done a massive update to the server’s map rotation. We’ve included many of the new maps added recently plus a good number of our existing maps that used to be played by request only. For extra variety, we’ve even included the objective maps that we’ve ignored in the past!

The end result is that the new rotation contains more than twice as many maps as the old one, and custom maps outnumber standard maps by more than 2-to-1 :D

Click here for a full listing of the new rotation and the request-only maps

Mapfest!

Posted 274 days ago by Dr Pepper

Its been a while since we stuck any new maps on the server, so we’re putting things right in grand style this month. No fewer than 20 (count ‘em!) new maps got uploaded yesterday, with a mix of styles to hopefully suit all tastes. Grab your copies from our download page :)

Here’s a rundown of the new additions…

dod_boulevard_b2

dod_cabinfever

dod_carentanbob2

dod_cherbourg

dod_clervaux3b

dod_cr44a

dod_depot4

dod_exercise_b2

dod_fabrik

dod_grubbenvorst

dod_heutau_b1

dod_jocund1

dod_june11

dod_kirkenes

dod_normandy

dod_propaganda

dod_reprisal_b3

dod_saisie_b1

dod_snowcity_v3

dod_vire

There’s no point adding custom maps if they never get loaded, so we’re going to expand the rotation dramatically to include many of the new additions and older, off-rotation maps. Post in the Field of Combat forum to let us know what you think of the new stuff.

New Members: Headlander and Mac

Posted 287 days ago by Dr Pepper

I’m a little bit late posting this, it happened about a fortnight ago (sorry)…

Long-time server regulars Headlander and Mac have joined the Self Preservation Society team, helping to keep the virtual streets safe from evil-doers. They’ve been around the Society long enough to need no introduction from me, save to say that they’re a fine pair of blokes who we’re proud to have join us. Welcome to the society Headlander, Mac!

New Members: The Three D's (and Billy)

Posted 421 days ago by Dr Pepper

We’re very happy to announce that three more community regulars have made the leap to SPS admin status! In no particular order we welcome Dire, Dave the Brave, and DanWhy into The Society, and say thanks to them for helping us to maintain the high standards we’re known for.

We’d also like to say a belated welcome to Billy, who actually joined us some time ago. I just scanned through the news articles and realised that I forgot to make a public announcement at the time (sorry mate).

Second Anniversary!

Posted 434 days ago by Dr Pepper

Exactly two years ago to the day, a new Day of Defeat 1.3 server was brought online. To many it seemed strange – DoD:Source had been around for a year and conventional thinking said the newer game should be the future. The Self Preservation Society thought different and decided to write its own future, a retro-inspired community experience harking back to DoD’s golden era.

Two years on and we’ve achieved everything we set out to do and more. Our community is successful, with a friendly and loyal bunch of folks who have a good sense of fun. Our server stands out for it’s good atmosphere and uniquely British flavour and enjoys an international fanbase. We’ve got a superb admin team who make sure lunatics don’t take over the asylum and we’ve welcomed many, many brand new players into our great game. Job done ;)

Our plan for year three? Lots more of the same. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it (I’m talking to you, Valve…). We want to thank all our regulars for helping to make The Self Preservation Society a truly great community. Cheers guys!

Summer News Roundup

Posted 526 days ago by Dr Pepper

The summer holiday season is pretty much over and everyone’s going back to work, so it’s a good time to have a quick catch-up with the events that have happened in the Self Preservation Society in recent weeks. First and foremost, EasyTarget has become the Society’s newest member, and is the first member we’ve recruited from outside the UK (Sweden, to be precise). Välkommen, Easy!

Oo Did Dat has been busy mastering DoD’s mapmaking tool, Hammer, and has already completed 2 whole maps. dod_oo_did_dat is a tight, fast-paced map with stacks of close-quarters combat opportunities. It’s proven very popular and has even been added to the rotation over on Average@Best. dod_eye_did_dat will get it world-premiere outing on Sunday 7th Sept and great things are expected :D

Speaking of A@B, over the summer they’ve kicked off a regular series of Battle Royales – 45 minute extended plays on maps not normally played on either SPS or A@B. The next is on Sunday 7th and the featured map is Oo’s latest and greatest so arrive early or you won’t get a slot on the server!

The Society has also introduced a number of new maps to our server and had a re-jig of our rotation. Commando, Flash2_b1, Fury, Harbor_b3, and Seg3c_b2 were added to the server, and the rotation has been expanded to feature 30 maps (15 official, 15 custom). We now have more than 60 maps on the server (full list here), and even more additions are planned for the next few weeks. As always, if you like a map that we don’t have yet just let us know (via our forum) and we’ll take a look at it.

Web Hosting Transfer

Posted 598 days ago by Dr Pepper

At some point before the end of this month, The Self Preservation Society will be switching web hosting companies. This means the website, forums, and (members only) email service will suffer a small amount of disruption while we shift over.

Our game server is not changing host and won’t suffer any downtime. However, during the switch we might have to take the custom maps off rotation because there could be a short time when we’re unable to provide fast map downloads. We don’t know how long that period might be, but we have another domain we can test with before we shift the real website.

During our downtime, we’ll post status updates on our Steam Community page

UPDATE 26th June: Hosting transfer completed.

New Member: Oo Did Dat

Posted 664 days ago by Dr Pepper

The strength of The Self Preservation Society continues to grow as community regular Oo Did Dat joins the team! Oo’s a scouser, so we’re bracing ourselves for a load of “hide your valuables” gags

Welcome Oo!