JakeCake Servers history

[Hudson633]

Name, tag:

JakeCake Servers
[JCS]

Servers:

Server	Gamemode	Date
Half-Life 2 Roleplay	HL2RP	2014
Sandbox / Build		Nov 2014

Launch:

JakeCake founded the community in 2014, attempting a DarkRP server before finding a playerbase for HL2RP.

Funding:

Initially the 13 slot server was funded by JakeCake's "birthday cash" for a year. He explained about later funding: "I also remember people wanting to make donations to my server which I first was reluctant about before I agreed. Didn't get much though but I invested it into the server." Donators were given "A respected rank which allows votekicking" on the HL2RP server.

Culture:

The community had a Steam group that had a peak of 80 players, and a forum. Admin abuse reports were to be sent to the owner directly. Part of the overview of their Steam group reads: "JakeCake Servers started out from a small group of friends with a big idea, to host a hopefully sucessful Garry's Mod server with the main goal of letting people have fun and have exciting memories on the server. We are rising slowly but steady to becoming a big server focused around HL2RP."

Server foundations
At the time, DarkRP servers were becoming bloated and often ran badly, so the initial JakeCake server "started out with vanilla darkrp" aiming to provide good performance for cheap computers, but this didn't take off. JakeCake explains that this "went on for about a week with 0 count until I saw NutScript being released to the gmod community and with it a standard HL2RP gamemode which was entirely free.

So I took that gamemode and mounted it. And to my surprise it worked and the entire framework which was a direct competitor to Clockwork was very easy to adjust. So I set that up, and my first players along with friends joined. The counts were usually 3/4 people on some weeks."

HL2RP server culture
People enjoyed the laid back culture, with easy applications, and likely avoiding the chaos (and certainly lag) of larger servers. The 13 slots were sometimes filled up, and a few players joined the staff team. Eventually an idea to move to a 32 slot server was toyed with, but the majority of the servers run was on the "trusted 13 slot server." It was described as a casual server, but JakeCake notes: "I tried my best to avoid it turning into rebels vs metrocops and incorporated some RP." An announcement mentions the importance of painRP and references PKs.

Some plugins were added. A headbob plugin was received poorly, and removed. While JakeCake describes that a plugin for "scrap/trash to be spawned and put into a recycling machine to receive tokens was very popular. So that was turned into a regular activity for citizens to do. They went to a trash house where a lot of those trash items spawned, put them into the machines and repeat under civil protection supervision. I wasn't really aware of how much those machines were outputting in tokens because before I knew it some citizens became extremely rich."

An FAQ on their Steam group explained that players could get into Civil Protection by earning 80 Loyality Points "then get authorized and checked." A changelog notes that a "Vortigaunt enslaved faction" was added, but JakeCake notes that Vortigaunt plugins were missing. Their HL2RP server content included a day / night mod, Half-Life 2 Beta weapons, and a playable piano among other addons. Their website showed a screenshot that included citizen, Combine Overwatch, and Administrator classes.

JakeCake explains a particularly memorable moment: "Best HL2RP event that I can recall was actually on video when people were messing around and someone paradropped a shipment with J.I. Defense mod which then opened a sea mine. Then some CP walked up to the sea mine and whacked it with his stunstick which blew everyone up."

HL2RP maps
The server content pack included rp_c18_v2. A Steam group announcement from July 2014 mentions a change to industrial 17 and their website links to the Workshop page for the map rp_industrial17_v1. A vote held in August 2014 to change the map to outlands or coast had 7 no votes against 6 yes votes.

Second server
A Sandbox server was mentioned in announcements from November 2014, which had "sporadic use and was eventually dropped."

Culturally significant events

A draft of a "Metrocop guide" that was developed in the community was later released as the popular Metropolitan Police Force: Behavioural Guide (Combine Guide for HL2RP) published on 28th Sept 2014 and was rated at 5 stars with 12,237 unique visitors by Feb 2022, making it Gmod's 2nd highest rated roleplay guide.

Challenges:

There's mention of "internal staff squabbles" and a player that was misbehaving to the extent they had to be banned, but before they were banned they stated that they knew a notorious mingebag, and said he "was gonna have him visit [the] server." But this troublemaker never showed up. Complaints were made about an admin, and their role was revoked, but they sabotaged the server by deleting some files.

Describing the end of the community, JakeCake explains that "counts per week became less and less. Sometimes I tried making events with ingame prizes but that didnt see a lot of visitors at all. I then tried a secondary server as MilitaryRP, but I couldnt get that to work so I abandoned it." When the server renewal date arrived, it was simply decided not to renew it.

JakeCake made announcements for members "to either visit what Zenolisk created with his HL2RP gamemode/community or another community that I forgot. And then February 13, 2015 was my announcement that I pulled the plug." Part of one comment on the announcement read "I will miss it, and i will also miss how it was the only Hl2RP server where i got to be a Civil Protection."

References:

Their Steam group, founded 10th May 2014, and notes a milestone of 80 members, and still had 49 members by Feb 2022, and still 49 by Jan 2023 and Jan 2024:
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/JakeCakeServers

Their website, announced 16th May 2014, which had 6 members, and was still up as of Feb 2022:
http://jakecakeservers.webs.com/

A screencap of their website from Feb 2022:
https://i.imgur.com/MHFBRAe.jpeg

An artwork hosted from their website:
https://i.imgur.com/f85qmTf.jpeg

Their forum, down by Feb 2022, and had no known captures on the Wayback Machine:
http://jakecakeservers.freeforums.org/

Communities index

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/gca1/discussions/0/1698294337765867799/