Log in

View Full Version : Velusion's Games (Server Upates, Rules and FAQs)


Velusion
March 26th, 2007, 05:44 PM
I'm going to use this thread to post notices about my game server and rules to follow in my hosted games.

Current games affected:
http://www.ArsNotoria.net/dominions3/stats.php

Rules
There are only a few rules to follow when playing in games I host. They are simple "Well Duh!" rules that should be easy to follow. Breaking these rules could get removed from all the games of mine you are in and banned from future games I host.

Thou Shalt Not:

• Excessively remind people to do their turn or hurry up.
• Exploit known bugs on Edi’s bug list (see main forum sticky) or obvious bugs that aren't on Edi's list.
• Threaten or harass players with consequences outside of Dom3 games.
• Hack the game files or my server in any way.
• Access or Play more than one nation in the same game - this includes even when the other controlling player gives you permission.
• Abandon your nation without letting anyone know or without putting yourself to computer controlled (AI).

Exploits:
Exploits not in Edi's list are a gray area - but basically we don't allow them. This includes the following:

• Using the copy/paste orders + Bogus to target commanders with non-Bogus leaders.
• Spamming items to another player with the intent of filling up their lab so that their forgings will fail.
• Casting a battlefield wide spell continuous spell with a mage and then immediately running away - causing the spell to last forever. This is on Edi's list but is difficult to avoid. The comprise: All mages that cast a battlefield wide enchantment need to stay on the battlefield for 5 complete turns. The very last order can be to retreat.

Subs/Replacements:
Substitutes and replacements can be used for missing/departing players.

• If you are going to be gone for an extended period of time and your nation is doing decent/well it is usually expected that you will look for a substitute or replacement player in the AAR/MP forums. If you fail to find a substitute or replacement player then it is considered kosher to place your nation on AI. It is your responsibility to look for one. If your nation is doing poorly putting it on AI is considered acceptable.
• If players do not locate a sub after the second stale the nation will be placed on AI.
• I reserve the right to turn an abandoned nation to AI immediately if I deem the position to very poor/hopeless.
• I might or I might not advertise for a sub to be found if the missing/departing player does not. If I do I will always take first come, first serve. If the departing player does not want me to find a player it's his responsibility to tell me so.
• Players still in the game may NOT sub for another nation, under ANY conditions.
• Due to the frequent scarcity of subs previous players from within the game that were eliminated are allowed to sub unless specified otherwise by the departing player. Because of this it is recommended that players play a friendly game.

Winning Conditions:
• Unless specified otherwise all games can only have one winner.
• Though I will not disallow players from calling a game with an "alliance win" I will simply consider this an abandonment of the game.

New Player Etiquette & FAQ:
This is just a compiled list of aspects of MP Dom3 that new players often misunderstood or have questions about.

• NAPs (Non-Aggression Pact). An x turn NAP *usually* means that each player must give the other x turns of notice before attacking the other player. The NAP will exist forever unless notice is put in by one of the parties or it is broken. Always clarify that the other player has the same definition (whatever it is) when making a NAP.

• People often have different ideas of what is allowed in a NAP. Having anything other than a scout in another NAP player's territory *could* be considered "aggression" by many players.

• If you feel a winner is inevitable it is considered acceptable to resign. If all the other players feel the same way, the winning nation is crowned and the game is over. If not everyone agrees you may still put your nation on AI after you have solicited for a replacement player (unless you are doing very poorly - then go strait to AI).

• Games (at least those I host) rarely go until the very end. In order to be crowned the winner all other players must surrender or you must have met the victory conditions. This means that if one players still disputes your victory you must force him to surrender or outright win.

• Rehosting (restoring from backup and processing the turn again) will usually only happen if the host screws up or the entire game has corruption problem. Rehosting usually is a hassle for all the players and will be avoided. This means that it is possible for a nation to be selectively screwed by nation specific corruption/bugs. While I feel for you - the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Unless it is a small game, please don't expect the game to be rehosted because of player-specific problems.

• The early turn schedule will almost never be changed. In the late game turns can be extended to 72 hours or longer depending on the amount of time it takes players to do their turns. The hosting schedule is never up for a vote and is completely controlled by me to prevent a minority of players from getting screwed by the majority.

• Please do not ask for pauses in the first 20 turns as they will not be granted. Stale turns are a part of the game, you'll have to deal with it. In smaller games with less than 10 players I will allow pauses, usually of less than a day provided I have access to the server.

Velusion
March 26th, 2007, 06:54 PM
Update: due to complications The server will not be up for another 2 hours.

Velusion
April 8th, 2007, 12:36 AM
I will be shutting down the server to move it to new hardware. The games will be down for about 2 hours. This will reset the game timers on some games - see below.

Epiphany - Timer Reset
Radiance - Turns due 1am Wed (CST)
Eventide - Turns due 1am Wed (CST)
Tempest - Turns due 1am Wed (CST)

GAME TURNS ARE DUE BY THE CLOCK IN THE GAME - NOT THE GAME STATUS PAGE.

Velusion
April 12th, 2007, 09:17 AM
New hardware had OS configuration issues causing the system to restart - which have been resolved. Setup the games to autostart on reboot now http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

All games should be up.

Baalz
April 22nd, 2007, 11:26 AM
Server seems to be down.

Velusion
April 22nd, 2007, 12:39 PM
My internet connection seems to be on the blink (lots of timeouts) so people might have trouble connecting. If it continues like this for the next couple hours I'll reset the game timers.

Velusion
April 22nd, 2007, 01:23 PM
Seems to back up and stable now.

Velusion
April 23rd, 2007, 02:23 PM
Updated the main post with "Well Duh!" rules to follow when playing in games I host & participate in.

Velusion
May 2nd, 2007, 10:30 PM
Server is down to power outage. I expect to have it back up when I get home in a couple hours.

Velusion
May 3rd, 2007, 12:51 AM
Velusion said:
Server is down to power outage. I expect to have it back up when I get home in a couple hours.



Server never went down but I had to restart the router for connectivity. All fixed!

Velusion
May 3rd, 2007, 04:10 PM
Once all my games have completed a host I will upgrade the server to 3.08. The games will go offline once everyone's turns are in until all of my games are ready.

For right now finish your turns with the old 3.06 version.

DO NOT connect to any of my games with a patched 3.08 client. I will let everyone know when you can upgrade.

Velusion
May 19th, 2007, 08:12 PM
Serer is down. Not sure why as I am at work. I'll be home in a couple hours and will figure out whats up.

Velusion
May 31st, 2007, 01:36 AM
I am rebooting the server. The following games will have their timer reset:

Radiance
Tempest
Afterthought
Discordance
Perpetuality

Lingchih
June 12th, 2007, 11:43 PM
Ludus is down. I hope we get a reset, since I won't be able to take my turn now til tomorrow night.

Velusion
June 13th, 2007, 02:30 AM
Lingchih said:
Ludus is down. I hope we get a reset, since I won't be able to take my turn now til tomorrow night.



It got hung trying to send the update emails. It will reset the clock - so you don't have to worry about that.

Lingchih
June 16th, 2007, 05:05 PM
I think Ludus is hung again.

Velusion
June 16th, 2007, 05:36 PM
fixed.. I'm using a new backup script for my games, so I'm still ironing out the kinks

Lingchih
June 16th, 2007, 07:24 PM
Hmmm. I still can't get in.

Velusion
June 16th, 2007, 07:31 PM
Restarted the server - try now...

Lingchih
June 17th, 2007, 03:32 PM
I really hate to be the bearer of bad tidings again, but I think something's up with Ludus again. Status page says 51 min until host, with everyone's turn pending, and it hangs again on waiting for game info.

Velusion
June 17th, 2007, 03:45 PM
fixed again... sheesh I'll get it right sometime...

solo
June 17th, 2007, 05:47 PM
Ludus is hanging for me now.

Velusion
June 17th, 2007, 09:30 PM
solo said:
Ludus is hanging for me now.



Hmm... I can get in fine...

Now it will appear to hang for a few minutes immediately when it hosts the turn...

Lingchih
June 21st, 2007, 01:34 AM
bump

AreWeInsaneYet
June 21st, 2007, 08:38 AM
Ludus's down. Again.

Velusion
June 21st, 2007, 10:59 AM
I've removed the backup script that it is attached to for now.

I'm stumped as to why this one game out of all my games hangs on it. If I run it manually it works fine, but if I run from the -postexec or -preexec switch it hangs.

solo
June 21st, 2007, 11:13 AM
Ludus probably stops to wonder "Where is Velusion's nation?"

Your games may not behave properly unless you are a participant!

Velusion
June 21st, 2007, 03:29 PM
Ok, I think I've used the right switch this time. The same thing happened to my nuance game, which helped me troubleshoot the issue.

I'm going to turn on the backups again - please don't hesitate to PM or post here if you have a problem again.

Lingchih
July 5th, 2007, 01:01 AM
Sophistry appears to be down.

Yucky
July 5th, 2007, 01:44 AM
I can't connect to Perpetuality or Nuance, is it me?

Velusion
July 5th, 2007, 01:46 AM
Fixed

Lingchih
July 7th, 2007, 03:20 AM
Ludus seems not to be hosting. All players except AI are shown to have completed turns.

Velusion
July 7th, 2007, 03:29 AM
Lingchih said:
Ludus seems not to be hosting. All players except AI are shown to have completed turns.



I show that Pangaea hasn't completed thier turn when I login to the server. When in doubt always actually log into the game rather than relying on the status webpage.

Lingchih
July 7th, 2007, 03:43 AM
OK. I see the same thing. Seems strange though... I would think he would have taken his turn by now. No big deal though. If it's buggy I'm sure it will work out over the weekend.

I'm just antsy because we have a big war going on.

AreWeInsaneYet
July 7th, 2007, 06:47 AM
Ludus' down. on the email notification phase it seems..

lch
July 7th, 2007, 08:15 AM
Velusion said:
I show that Pangaea hasn't completed thier turn when I login to the server. When in doubt always actually log into the game rather than relying on the status webpage.


Sounds like "Quit without saving". Do you use the --makecheck thing?

Sandman
July 13th, 2007, 03:26 PM
Afterthought still seems to be down.

Sandman
July 13th, 2007, 03:31 PM
Oh wait, it's not. But the turn doesn't seem to have gone through.

Velusion
July 13th, 2007, 04:18 PM
Its still waiting on Ulm

LoloMo
July 14th, 2007, 11:07 PM
Afterthought seems to be down

Velusion
July 18th, 2007, 11:09 PM
The server is going to be undergoing having some work done on it tonight. It will be down intermittently.

All timers will have to be reset back to full - so no one will get shafted for time.

Sandman
July 22nd, 2007, 06:15 PM
Any chance of a time extension on Afterthought? It's getting quite complicated, and two major players have staled this turn.

Szumo
July 23rd, 2007, 11:36 AM
Status page shows just:

No input file specified

instead of the game list.

Velusion
July 23rd, 2007, 12:43 PM
It will be later today or tomorrow before the status pages are fixed.

LoloMo
July 29th, 2007, 06:17 AM
Afterthought appears to be down

Hadrian_II
August 3rd, 2007, 10:39 AM
The filelinks dont work, i am not able to download the mods, i need to connect to your games.

Velusion
August 3rd, 2007, 05:20 PM
Link should work now

BigDisAwesome
August 3rd, 2007, 08:24 PM
Sophistry Status Page is down.

Velusion
August 3rd, 2007, 09:57 PM
Yea I need to fix the status pages still...

BigDisAwesome
August 3rd, 2007, 10:15 PM
Oh, my bad.

Sandman
August 5th, 2007, 05:35 AM
The general consensus is that R'lyeh has won Afterthought.

Velusion
August 14th, 2007, 05:57 AM
Server is being restarted for maintenance. This will reset all the timers.

Lingchih
August 30th, 2007, 12:54 AM
Err... what's up with Ludus? It says -14 hours now till host on your Games page. I see Helheim has not taken his turn. Are we holding up for him?

Velusion
August 30th, 2007, 01:03 AM
There was a request to delay the game for 48 hours... I forget from who http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

Velusion
September 21st, 2007, 01:09 PM
Apparently my internet connection is flakey at the moment. Connecting to games is taking players awhile - as is uploading turns. However, though slow, apparently everyone can eventually connect.

I can't access the server until later tonight but at that point I'll look at reseting the router.

Velusion
September 21st, 2007, 07:03 PM
Should be fixed.

Velusion
September 26th, 2007, 02:11 AM
Server got jacked up by a rabid aardvark. All the games have been reset!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Lingchih
September 29th, 2007, 10:47 PM
Might want to look at the game clock on Perpetuality. Ingame it says 28 hours to next hosting.

Velusion
October 7th, 2007, 03:42 AM
The server is getting restarted for maintenance. All game timers will be reset.

Velusion
October 9th, 2007, 01:34 PM
All games have been taken off autohost in preperation for patching to 3.10. The patching will take place Wed at 10pm CST (approximately 35 hours from now).

Please DO NOT connect to these servers with a patched 3.10 client until the server has been patched. Continue to use 3.08 until the server is updated.

Velusion
October 22nd, 2007, 04:30 AM
I'm in the processes of moving around some of my hardware. Dom3 hosted games on windows are quite sensative and have locked up a number of times - forcing me to restart - reseting thier timer.

I'm planning on moving the games to another server soon (couple days to a week) which should be more stable - until then I apologize about the delays some games are taking when the timer resets.

Velusion
October 25th, 2007, 02:12 AM
I've updated the Rules/FAQ to include a small section on exploits that aren't in Edi's list.

lch
October 25th, 2007, 03:16 PM
You still haven't upgraded to the latest stats script version though... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif It doesn't require any new configuration, in fact it will finally be damn accurate with no false positives or negatives and doesn't need the "makecheck" thing anymore. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Velusion
October 25th, 2007, 03:18 PM
I was waiting for the server move that will happen in the next two weeks. Server is already built but needs to be configured...

Velusion
November 3rd, 2007, 06:12 PM
The games will be moved to different hardware tonight at around 11pm CST. Expect the timers to be reset while this happens. I had to reset them now to change some settings in preperation of the move.

Velusion
December 8th, 2007, 11:54 PM
Server lost power for most of the day. All the games will be back up soon.

archaeolept
December 9th, 2007, 12:13 AM
oh, this is the thread I was looking for http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Velusion
December 31st, 2007, 01:40 AM
The games have been moved to new hardware.

The status pages will be up once I figure out how to make PHP play right with IIS7 :s

archaeolept
January 2nd, 2008, 10:30 AM
server (evermore) down?

archaeolept
January 4th, 2008, 10:40 PM
hiya vel

games seem to be held up on hosting again

thanks

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Velusion
January 17th, 2008, 05:31 AM
Unfortunately I've had no getting PHP installed and working with IIS7 (Vista Ultimate) so I'm afraid the status pages for my games won't be working anymore http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Szumo
January 17th, 2008, 06:30 AM
Why don't you just install Apache on that Vista then?

Velusion
January 17th, 2008, 06:43 AM
Szumo said:
Why don't you just install Apache on that Vista then?



I could try that but my impression is that it is a problem with the PHP install on Vista. Whenever I try to run PHP it states it cannot locate the required dlls even though they are in the right spot.

I've already uninstalled and reinstalled PHP with no luck.

Thrawn
January 22nd, 2008, 01:46 PM
Because of my own ineptness I staled the first two turns, which really makes me mad. I'm setting Marignon to AI. Good luck everyone, sorry for the delay on the first two turns.

Evilhomer
January 22nd, 2008, 02:29 PM
2nd turn is not done yet, so you only stalled once. stalling the first turn makes little difference, since people seldom expands blindly.

archaeolept
January 28th, 2008, 05:03 PM
server's been down for a few hours... at least for Evermore. You probably already know this, but just in case... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

lch
January 28th, 2008, 10:24 PM
Velusion said:
Whenever I try to run PHP it states it cannot locate the required dlls even though they are in the right spot.


It's a feature!

*waves Ubuntu CDs in front of Velusion's eyes*

Velusion
January 28th, 2008, 10:57 PM
Server is up and patched.

Got the status page working as well.

archaeolept
February 15th, 2008, 10:55 PM
hiya Vel. Evermore has been set to host every 7 hrs... which is perhaps a bit speedy for those few still left.

: )

Velusion
March 3rd, 2008, 11:49 AM
Server is down due to power issues. Hopefully I'll have it back up this afternoon.

Velusion
June 1st, 2008, 01:42 PM
I won't be hosting anymore games as I'm taking a break from dom3 for awhile. Maybe sometime in the future!

P.S. The two games that are still hosted (Fallacy and Figment) will still be supported until they come to a conclusion.

Xietor
June 1st, 2008, 01:44 PM
I will do my part to bring Fallacy to a rapid conclusion Old Friend!