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Server admins and files?

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 11:43 pm
by Sparhawk
Hello all,

I've been playing on the INV server (Chicago) for a while and was thinking about getting back into coding some in my down time (it's been over 10 years since I have done anything for UT). I'm not able to find the mutators (RPG mod primarily). That's used on the server. Was wondering if someone could contact me to point me in the right direction for the files or supply them to me.

Couple of my ideas:
Expand the RPG mod to break out player settings. It already displays the other players levels but it doesn't go past that. I was thinking that if you clicked on the players name from the list, it could display what the players settings are (health, ammo speed, what they bought, etc). It shouldn't be that difficult to pull that off.

Another (and yes I know there's a hack for this), I was thinking about expanding the weapons abilities. Meaning to code it to actually use both weapons abilities. So if you have two link guns (inf and piercing) it would truly be inf plus piercing.

Last item that I never understood. Both INV servers are on the same physical box. Can you (or I) write something to check the other server.ini, parse through the list of players, do a diff for the highest one then overwrite it to the lower one. This could be setup as a nightly job unless permissions are involved and even if that was the case, should be able to talk with the hosting company. That way I can play on both servers. :p

Thanks,
Spar

Re: Server admins and files?

Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2018 10:06 am
by Sparhawk
Limited responses so I'm following up on it. Just to clarify something. My intent was not to have these implemented on the servers. Although if it was used, great. My intent was to play around with some UT coding again but as a hobby. Looking for the files so I can decompile them then play around with that again.

Was hoping to get a response about the files to make it easier. Since these servers are still being maintained by someone, figured it was a no brainer to getting them.

Thanks,
Dan

Re: Server admins and files?

Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2018 10:36 pm
by DW_WailofSuicide
Didn't get around to following up on this last weekend, will try this coming weekend.

Re: Server admins and files?

Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2018 1:30 am
by Sparhawk
You were the "limited responses" that I was referring to. :p I didn't know if there was anyone else also.

Appreciate the help.

Re: Server admins and files?

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2018 2:19 am
by DW_Ant
There are a couple things to consider to expose rpg data to other players.

Bandwidth usage: It's a lot of information to collect. stats and abilities (and their associated levels). Monster Evolution was able replicate that information since it's smaller scoped than Monster Mash. In Monster Mash, there are more players and more monsters. Replicating that data may increase chances for packetloss especially if you want live updates.

UI Implementation: Building the UI for the player list and displaying their abilities takes time. It's not difficult, but it may take a solid weekend to build.


Regarding sharing rpg data files between servers, my main concerns are permissions and name conflicts. The servers are hosted in separate directories. An external process will need to run between the two directories. Assuming it has access to the directories, it'll still need to compete for read/write permissions since the UT process will have a hold to that ini file until it's turned off.

Name conflicts is the other concern I have. If Joe is on server I, but there's another Joe on server II (but it's actually a different Guid), should Joe on server II be replaced by the first Joe's data? Similarly, what about class differences? If Joe is a level 420 weapon master on server I, but a level 480 adrenaline master on server II, Joe just lost their level 420 weapon master :(

There are minor other concerns I have, but I won't list them for focus purposes.

Re: Server admins and files?

Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2018 9:47 am
by Sparhawk
Bandwidth, eh.. I used to be concerned about that but given that broadband speeds have increased dramatically over the last 10+ years, I wasn't too worried about that part of it. Just my opinion there though.

Correct, the UI wouldn't be difficult to do. Just some beer and a little time. It's already doing some of that functionality now, just need to expand on it.

You have good points regarding the automated sharing of account between servers. Was thinking that it would be good to have as an option. For the limited testing (with the only RPG mod that I could find) that I've done locally , this edits the server.ini. My thought there was to break it out to pull that section out into it's own ini so it wouldn't need a reset of the server.

All in all, what I wanted was the files so I can decompile them and play with the code. Since I made the post with limited responses, I focused on one of the applications that I'm writing for work. If I can't get the files to play with, I'm not going to worry about it. It's an older game and not worth stressing about. :p

Appreciate the feedback.

Re: Server admins and files?

Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2018 4:45 am
by Silly_Warlock
Is there some problem with getting the files from cache / redirect?

As for bandwidth use, I believe the practical issue Ant was referring to is exceeding configured UT server max outgoing data per player (which tends to be ridiculously low) resulting in dropping packets, players having to rejoin and maybe even server crashes. Note that monster gametypes from the get-go cause overly high outgoing traffic on servers.

Re: Server admins and files?

Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2018 3:36 pm
by Sparhawk
Extracting them from the cache didn't pull in the .inis or config files. Unless that changed since the last time I did that.

Re: Server admins and files?

Posted: Sat Mar 10, 2018 6:37 pm
by Sparhawk
One more thing that I thought of while driving. Toggling whether or not to copy the profile would be an easy fix and can be done per the user. In the ini, you can place a variable in it like bCopyProfileToOtherServer (or whatever you want to call it). By default, this could be set to false. Should the player wish to do this, they would check the box. The hard part would be figuring out how to automate the task remotely to perform the task.