Gamespy Emulation is Shutting Down June 20th, 2017 @ 12:47AM ET
https://www.qtrac...m/news.php :
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Well, I started off this evening shutting Qtracker down.
After playing Ark for a bit, clearer heads have prevailed and I'm just shutting down my Gamespy emulation. Unfortunately the minority is ruining it for the majority and my Gamespy servers have been the target of many attacks within the past few years. This has resulted in downtime, lots of wasted money, countless wasted hours (that could've went towards the new version of Qtracker), and tons of stress.
So, all of Qtrackers Gamespy emulation servers will be shut down on 8/1/2017. This should give mod authors plenty of time to move to other solutions.
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anyway, if there will be no other solution to see serverlist, there will be still an ability to join online Vietcong servers via direct connection IP, or via Favorites Bookmarks in game menu or via vietcong1.eu - in this time I dont know how many information in vietcong1.eu will be public as vietcong1eu server is based on qtracker
after quite a long time, I'm back on-line and still interested in Vietcong of course.
I want to find a solution to the qtracker issue as soon as possible.
I'm already in talks with a few people and we're discussing some things:
Should we leave server & game unmodified and just host our own gamespy emulation server, as qtracker does?
I don't know yet how to do that and how long it would take me to implement it. Maybe the qtracker admin can help?
We could also pay him to keep the service running another few months.
But the old gamespy network protocol is also being used for attacks, as stated in the qtracker announcement.
Should there be VCStarter & VCGuard updates?
Then both server & game could be modified, allowing to replace the gamespy protocol with a new, more robust one.
Also, no more hosts file editing would be necessary (which can be an issue on newer windows' and can only redirect to an IP, not another domain: whenever "master server" IP changes, players need to edit again).
But it would require everyone to use VCStarter & VCGuard.
Or should there be separate tools just for the serverlist?
Then noone would be forced to use VCStarter & VCGuard.
But it could be difficult to use them together with the separate tools.
I think if you find the way to use a new protocol this is the best solution, and will solve forever the problem.
The fact that having to use VCStarter & VCGuard is not a big problem, and nowadays almost all of them use it.
June 20th, 2017 https://www.qtracker.com/news.php:
Qtrackers Gamespy emulation servers will be shut down on 8/1/2017. This should give mod authors plenty of time to move to other solutions.
That doesn't seem like "plenty of time" to me.
I think that more time is needed for sure. Unless we can somehow notify most of the players (info server, fake HradBa download, ...) just in 2 weeks, which is very unlikely.
I agree with integration into VCStarter and even VCGuard. VC is in most cases unplayable without VCStarter on Vista and up.
1) Gamespy Emulation Server - how long will it work? More than 5 Years? What about the availability? What about server raids?
2) An inline modification or "update" - who could use it? Who knows all about. A group of "knowing" players must write a real easy "how to use" or "manual" - and it should be work with VC-Demo too. (we need fresh players!)
3) A different "Servertool" - an AddOn to get "all" - mmm, you planed something like a "community starter"? (my wish, should replace "Starter/Guard" and contain 1.6 Demo)
Option 3 would be my favorite, it would be better for all players - worldwide, also outside the community - easy to use
WEZ wrote:
(...)and it should be work with VC-Demo too.
(...)and contain 1.6 Demo
Who needs VC demo anyway? The game has been without any official updates for more than 10 years and it's not like anyone at T2 cares about VC. They never did and that's why community had to step in and fix the game by themselves. Well, mostly by Brchi anyway.
VC has been abandonware for a long time now. If anyone want's to play, they can just go ahead and download the game. No need for demo. And here in CZ/SK you can't even buy VC (since 2015/16?). I doubt you can buy it anywhere.
1) Gamespy Emulation Server - how long will it work? More than 5 Years? What about the availability? What about server raids?
The easiest way would be to run the emulation server on one machine (centralized). I still have some free resources on my VPS. There would probably be some restarts now and then though.
Should I stop hosting it one day, someone else could take over. However.. remember I still want to create the Community Hub
Server raids?
I was thinking about a decentralized solution as well. Everyone could host an interconnected "master server", for a single serverlist. But I'm not sure if that's important now.
2) An inline modification or "update" - who could use it? Who knows all about. A group of "knowing" players must write a real easy "how to use" or "manual" - and it should be work with VC-Demo too. (we need fresh players!)
An updated VCStarter & VCGuard that contains the serverlist functionality.
It would not work with the Demo.
3) A different "Servertool" - an AddOn to get "all" - mmm, you planed something like a "community starter"? (my wish, should replace "Starter/Guard" and contain 1.6 Demo)
Just some simple tools for server & client modification, like VCStarter & VCGuard but only for serverlist functionality. So that the protocol can be upgraded and work together with a new "master server".
However the separate tools would probably not work together with VCStarter & VCGuard.
But the new serverlist functionality could be included in both VCStarter & VCGuard and the separate tools. Then players could choose which ones to use.
+1 for second option - maybe there could be fixed some vietcong bugs. If you think that i could be useful with some reverse engineering, then i am at your service.
Homi wrote:
If the master server would continue to emulate, I would like to join, at least two independent sources, if this is the easiest way.
Maybe this is really the easiest & quickest way for now. But only a single source.
For this we need a server with static IP which should be highly available (~99% uptime) for the next few months at least.
(I can't host on my vps because I'll probably switch to dedicated soon, so IP will change)
I will see if it's possible to create our own emulation server within time and tell you about it tomorrow.
sonic wrote:
+1 for second option - maybe there could be fixed some vietcong bugs. If you think that i could be useful with some reverse engineering, then i am at your service.
What bugs specifically?
I still have some things written down for VCStarter, will look at that.
Brchi wrote:
Maybe this is really the easiest & quickest way for now. But only a single source.
For this we need a server with static IP which should be highly available (~99% uptime) for the next few months at least.
(I can't host on my vps because I'll probably switch to dedicated soon, so IP will change)
I will see if it's possible to create our own emulation server within time and tell you about it tomorrow.
All servers have static public IP addresses, availability is 99.97% of the last 182 days.
If this is possible, I do not have the problem to provide VPS reserved for this purpose only.
I'm having troubles creating the gamespy emulation.
There's an encoding function already: http://aluigi.altervista.org/papers/enctype2_decoder.zip
It encodes the IP:port pairs (=serverlist) which should then be interpreted by the game engine. However, it doesn't seem to work. @Plissken is having a look at it too now.
I already sent a mail to Ron from qtracker, but the clock is ticking.
Actually, I would prefer method 2: update VCStarter & VCGuard to support a new serverlist protocol (and forget about that gamespy crap forever..).
And I think VCStarter is really a must, especially on newer windows..
I agree. VCStarter is indispensable for new SOs, and now the transition to windows 10 is most common.
The performance improved considerably, I talked about it quite well in other tread.
So if it's not too complicated for you to believe that this is the best way, the process is still reversible if something is better.
The subject is too complicate for me to give a wise opinion and to know what is the best solution...
However, the only thing I'm thinking about is, at least, to have a solution that will not "stuck" the game and the community in case of new changes in the future. I mean, for example, what will happen if the person(s) who "own the knowledge and the tools" will leave the game and its community? Will it be still possible for the others to replace the person(s) now gone without problems and rather easily? I'm just wondering...
A solution to the encoding issue has been found.
I'll try to create an emulation server within the next 1-2 days.
My plan is to host it at Hetzner, I think they have a good network and ddos protection: https://www.hetzn...os-schutz/
A VPS CX20 (8 Euro / month) should be sufficient for this job.
@Intruder
You're right, and I was thinking about that too. I don't want to be the only one responsible.
With any "centralized" system (emulation server now, hopefully hub-masterserver in future) there could be a "chain of servers", hosted by trusted people.
So if the first server goes out of service (permanently), clients could connect to the next server in the chain.
However we will have to think about the exact procedure / mechanism.
What I can offer for now:
Share the emulation server with trusted people. There should just never be more than one server running or it could split up the server list.
x 1
x 1
x 1
x 1
x 2
x 1
