I thought that they had been bought out last year and that their liabilities were acquired by a different company? What happens to the active servers that are reported in the game list currently? Thanks, DR^ GiGGLeZ
Well, basically nothing will happen to game servers and gaming itself. We just won't see any servers in the serverlist. I believe this is the situation where http://vietcong1.tk becomes really handy, because it serves as the alternative serverlist and it is capable of registering new servers (http://vietcong1....). Furthermore, it can register new servers automatically after one adds the following line to the PC's hosts file (see http://en.wikiped...%28file%29):
Code
46.28.111.198 master.gamespy.com
Actually, vietcong1.tk could be capable of also providing the serverlist to the in-game list if at least one of these conditions was true:
* if I knew how to encode the list to the format the game understands, or
* if the game could be made to accept some other, non-encrypted format.
As you can see, there's just a problem with the format, but actually it's quite a big problem for me now. So if anyone knows about how to deal with any of those two conditions, don't hesitate to post here or contact me.
Warning: if you want to try changing your hosts file, do it just as an experiment. Your server will be registered to vietcong1.tk, but not to the official GameSpy server and your game client won't get any serverlist. After May 31 it doesn't really matter, but until that you don't want to stay in this state.
Help, I need somebody
Help, not just anybody
Help, you know I need someone, help
When I was younger, so much younger than today
I never needed anybody's help in any way
But now these days are gone, I'm not so self-assured
Now I find I've changed my mind, I've opened up the doors
Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being 'round
Help me get my feet back on the ground
Brchi, please, please help me
And now my life has changed in, oh, so many ways
My independence seems to vanish in the haze
But every now and then I feel so insecure
I know that I just need you like I've never done before
Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being 'round
Help me get my feet back on the ground
Brchi, please, please help me
When I was younger, so much younger than today
I never needed anybody's help in any way
But now these days are gone, I'm not so self-assured
Now I find I've changed my mind, I've opened up the doors
Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being 'round
Help me get my feet back on the ground
Brchi, please, please help me
Help me, help me
So backup solution (till some better solution will be released) for connect to servers is add to favorite ?(after that you dont have to remember IP adress)
Thanks for watching out for this.
So this is really serious now. I will dedicate all my free time to this to find a solution.
@OndraG, we appreciate your work, but I think we need something more easy and direct.
I am thinking of a temporary platform, a "community hub", as an external application with at least the following features:
Multilingual, information about what's going on, links to a few websites, a serverlist, a chat and autoupdates.
Distribute by frequent server messages, the special fake-hradba method which can download the program by joining a server (which will not always work, because on newer Windows, for some users the Vietcong directory is not writeable), maybe extra info-servers and by telling it to everyone you know.
I want to couple vcstarter & vcguard with this, together with a simple user system, which could prevent fake servers, fake player names and ultimately, cheating.
Prove me wrong but when the gamespy masterserver was down in the past the program qtracker (http://www.qtrack...) always found servers.
I know its not the same as an ingame serverlist but it helps a bit.
Let me comment on the response related to adding servers to your favorites and trying to connect using the "direct connect" feature in the game. When the Gamespy server is down or your server is not in the list the "Direct Connect" feature in the game does not work. I repeat---It does not work. We tested this several months ago when Gamespy was having issues and our server, along with other known Clan servers were getting randomly dropped from the Gamespy list. We attempted to direct connect and it would not connect until our server reappeared in the list.
The major problem I see now is that when those who have been playing this game on demand no longer see the server list and are not aware of GameSpy discontinuing we will loose many on-line players. This forum will keep us (members) informed but it will drastically damage the VC Community
There needs to be a way of somehow pointing the existing Gamespy connection information embedded in the Vietcong software to a new common server hopefully managed by someone like BRCHI to insure on-going play and do away with the need for anyone playing the game to make physical changes.
I would ask BRCHI if there is anyway to contact GAMESPY and get any help with a solution that would be cosmetic and unnoticed to Vietcong users otherwise it's not looking good for the long term.
Direct connection will always work! I don't know why you had problems with it, maybe the server was "confused" somehow because the "show online" option was checked but the master was down. It will be necessary anyways then to uncheck that option or the server won't start up (iirc).
Yes, I want to replace the serverlist. Gamespy cannot help in this situation.
The communication with master.gamespy.com starts with the remote site (master server) sending the "\basic\\secure\<token>" line, the token being a random string. Then the game client (vietcong.exe) replies with two lines captured here as an italic text. Then, after successful authentication, the server sends list of IPs and query ports of game servers. As you can see, it's not very human readable.
According to my experiments using tools by Luigi Auriemma (http://aluigi.alt...), it seems the main content is not affected by the authentication token, but nevertheless it is encrypted somehow.
The state of vietcong1.tk right now is as follows: new service listening on TCP port 28900, thus acting as a master server, has been started. For every connection made, it replies with the "\basic\\secure\" line with an empty token (seems legitimate). Then the game really replies with its two lines. Then vietcong1.tk sends IPs and ports of online game servers, but in a simple format (IP1port1IP2port2...) which the game unfortunately doesn't understand.
As soon as I know the right format, vietcong1.tk will be able to fully act as an alternative master server.
Brchi wrote:
Thanks for watching out for this.
So this is really serious now. I will dedicate all my free time to this to find a solution.
@OndraG, we appreciate your work, but I think we need something more easy and direct.
I am thinking of a temporary platform, a "community hub", as an external application with at least the following features:
Multilingual, information about what's going on, links to a few websites, a serverlist, a chat and autoupdates.
Distribute by frequent server messages, the special fake-hradba method which can download the program by joining a server (which will not always work, because on newer Windows, for some users the Vietcong directory is not writeable), maybe extra info-servers and by telling it to everyone you know.
I want to couple vcstarter & vcguard with this, together with a simple user system, which could prevent fake servers, fake player names and ultimately, cheating.
Brichi Hope you will think of the little people in 1.01 as well If we can help let us know
{GR} Team
I have also written something in motion to those who have undergone a change of server several other old games.
Will continue to report what the write wait times.
I'm working on a very small info-map to inform more people about the GameSpy shutdown at 31st May.
The map has 3 boards where some basic information are presented in English, Czech and German.
I want to put it on my server.
EDIT: Thanks to Brchi and LDC-78 for their translations to German . (I'm not sure which one I'll use).
What do you think? Is it pointless or is it a good idea?
x 1
x 1
x 1
x 1
x 1
x 1
x 1
x 1
Hope you will think of the little people in 1.01 as well 
