[ANY] Capture The Prize Contest Referrer Message
 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...7/CTP-Logo.png

Capture The Prize is a FREE to join and FREE to win monthly contest that helps build communities. It drives traffic to your servers by giving players a chance to win prizes and server operators can win prizes by referring players. $1775 USD has been won so far. 40+ multiplayer games and all mods are supported (Garrys Mod, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike GO, DayZ, Minecraft, Starbound, etc.). Installation of this plugin is purely optional (but suggested since it announces the current prize and your referrer URL). We also have a Garry's Mod lua addon available (you can download it on the Referral List page on our website). On our website you can even see a list of every player you've referred as well as other stats.

Capture The Prize predates other revenue generating systems such as Pinion (we predate Pinion by 3 years). We also do things very differently that the rest. Rather than bombard your players with annoying in-game motd adverts, the only thing they'll ever see in-game are text messages with the current prize and your referrer url (see screenshots near end of this post).

Contest Information
June's server operator prize is $200 USD and the player prizes are $75 USD.

• Server Operator Information
• General Information
• Previous Winners List (You can contact them if you want as a link to their steam profile is included).
• Other Information (FAQ)

Server List | Player List

Odds of Winning

• The server operator with the highest eligible referrers will win one of these. All of your referrals must have activated their account, sent their steamid and gained at least 4 (four) active points. If multiple server ops share the same highest amount of eligible referrers, then from these tied server operators, the winner will be chosen at random.
• For the Player Point prize, it depends how many eligible players there are. A winner will be chosen at random from all eligible players.

Instructions

1. Register an account at our website here (See red note at the bottom of this list for an important thing you need to watch out for). Also unlike similar websites, we don't ask much personally identifiable information; we just ask for your email address, if you're in a banned location, age range and gender.
2. Do step 2 of registration: Link your SteamID to your CTP account (click the link presented to you after you log in, sign into the steam website and Valve will send us your SteamID).
3. For players to gain points on your servers, the CTP tracker needs your server IP(s). Please fill out this form and we will add them to the tracker. If "this form" link takes you back to the main page, then your account is a player account and you will need to submit a support ticket on the website to have your account changed to a server operator account.
4. Go to your Referrer List page to get your referrer ID (its next to "Your Referrer ID"). Take note of it.
5. Install the plugin and open "cfg\sourcemod\plugin.CaptureThePrize.cfg ". Set sm_ctp_id to the referral ID you got in previous step and optionally change frequency of message with sm_ctp_timer (csay message displays every 10 minutes by default).
6. Install the required Socket Extension here.
7. Restart your server.

NOTE: Make sure you sign up as Server Operator if you have your own server(s). Otherwise you sign up as a player and you won't be eligible to win the server operator prize and your server won't appear on the public server list (when you submit it).

You can tell if your account is a Player account or Server Operator account by the access you have.

If the second menu on the left looks like this:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18722727/player.png

Then your account is a player account and you will need to submit a support ticket (on-site) to have your account changed to a Server Operator account.

If the second menu on the left looks like this:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...7/serverop.png

Then your account is already a Server Operator account. You still need to send us your Server IP(s) so that players gain points on your server(s). You can submit them to us from this form.

It's also suggested that you make a news post on your website about the contest.

Screenshots
Chat Message | Csay Message

Dependencies
This plugin also requires the Socket extension. Download it from:
https://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=67640

Changelog
History
I've been operating my own game servers for the past 12 years for my clans and gaming communities and the same thing keeps happening at random times; traffic dies. This can generally be attributed to hundreds or even thousands of other servers popping up (TF2 popularity after hats were added), server ip changing, hostname changing, vacation season, etc. This can be murder for game servers and hosts are left with a difficult decision. Keep hosting and try to build back the player base (which can take a long time and even be impossible at times) or just shut down their server. I came up with Capture The Prize because i wanted a unique way to bring players to my game servers but then i figured why not share it and let anyone take advantage of it. And so Capture The Prize was born. Capture The Prize started around July 2009 as a small scale beta to test viability. It operated for a few months before being taken down. Around January 2012 development began on Capture The Prize again. It took 2 more years of development, tweaking and testing to get it to its current status.
- PAL-18 (Founder of Capture The Prize)

Re: [ANY] Capture The Prize Referrer Message
 

You can add a command with popup? For example:
Copy and paste in games is very tedious.

Re: [ANY] Capture The Prize Referrer Message
 

I will try this on 2 of my servers but I have to say it.. I hate the idea of players needing to visit the link plus include the refferal id.. gamers are lazy and I don't see this being the most effective way.

Re: [ANY] Capture The Prize Referrer Message
 

Thanks for the suggestion. We'll look into including it as soon as possible.

It is doable, a couple of the servers in the past who won the big prizes got anywhere from 40 to 100 sign ups in a month. On average a very popular 16 slot server will have around 4000 unique players on it each month (im basing these statistics on some game servers i run that are unrelated to Capture The Prize).

Re: [ANY] Capture The Prize Referrer Message
 

Well.. there is nothing to lose and it's a lightweight plugin so I guess time will tell. If anything it'll be a good experiment to see how many people on my servers take the time to visit an external link and sign up.

Thanks

Re: [ANY] Capture The Prize Contest Referrer Message
 

I noticed some new signups of players. Make sure you sign up as Server Operator if you have your own server(s). Otherwise you sign up as a player and you won't be eligible to win the server operator prize and your server won't appear on the public server list (when you submit it).

You can tell if your account is a Player account or Server Operator account by the access you have.

If the second menu on the left looks like this:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18722727/player.png

Then your account is a player account and you will need to submit a support ticket (on-site) to have your account changed to a Server Operator account.

If the second menu on the left looks like this:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...7/serverop.png

Then your account is already a Server Operator account. You still need to send us your Server IP(s) so that players gain points on your server(s). You can submit them to us from this form.

NOTE: If "this form" link takes you back to the main page, then your account is a player account and you will need to submit a support ticket on the website to have your account changed to a server operator account.

Re: [ANY] Capture The Prize Contest Referrer Message
 

Yea I was just reading that on the site https://capturetheprize.com/main.php

But some of the links are dead.. like the one used to send server ips

For example:

Then your account is already a Server Operator account. You still need to send us your Server IP(s) so that players gain points on your server(s). You can submit them to us from this form.

When you click this it just reloads the same page youre on.


I added my 2 server ip's last night but now they don't appear to be in the list.

Re: [ANY] Capture The Prize Contest Referrer Message
 

They wont appear on the list when your account is a player account. Please see my previous post for information on how to tell what type of account you have.

When the "this form" link reloads the page, its because your account is a player account and not a server operator account. So "post a question" on the website and i'll fix your account (and then youll be able to go to the form page).

Re: [ANY] Capture The Prize Contest Referrer Message
 

Ok I just submitted a "Post a question"