Dedicated Servers?

[Tourmalyn]

Are there plans by any idividuals/Groups to host dedicated servers for long term games? ie in the spirit of MUDs like Tradewars?

It would be cool to have long running games with 17 players involved. The only way you could do this would be to have a dedicated server up 24/7 so players could play their turns at their leasure. Turns could be open for a maximum of 24 hrs, but would advance if all players ended turn.

This is my first exposure to Dominions, and I don't claim to have an original idea here, so don't flame me if this is already going on in Dominions 1.

[-Storm-]

Yup, I would like to see a 24/7 server for Dominions 2. Maybe I will play some MP games, if I won't be flooded with other things.

[Gandalf Parker]

I guess I should check and see if the new switches really fixed the problem I had. If the host-mode can run completely without need of a GUI (graphic windowsy user interface which I leave off of my servers) then I could run many many games.

It would also make it really really easy for some web developer to create a web-page for creating the games and managing them so that nobody has to take a hand in it at all.

And, if some webmaster would like to pick up a domain name for Dom 2 Im willing to provide full hosting of the web site for free.

[Richard]

This is also somethign we may help out with if you guys can give us the details.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Richard:
This is also somethign we may help out with if you guys can give us the details.

help out with a Web page? Or a server?

Hmmm I had envisioned a page that would show thumbnail maps of the games they want to start, clicking the map would show a larger Version and a list of nations. That second page would update showing the nations that have been taken and allowing a browser to take a nation that is still open. This would be a good starting point and would be useful if we stopped there.

Added posibilities would be a script to create the game. Thinking like a SysAdmin Id say easiest would be just to script adduser to create a seperate account for each game. That could give it an email address, an ftp directory, a web page for that game, /etc /etc.

A cron job or a procmail script could manage the mailboxes so that incoming turns are retrieved from the email and moved to the turn directory. The nice thing abot this is it would give an archive of received turns so the game COULD be rolled back if someone REALLY needed to. This was something that came up in some Dom 1 games.

A cron job could watch for all the turns being turned in then run the dom hosting by command-switches. The turn files could be emailed out. Maybe made downloadable with a web-page link if people passworded themselves when coming into the game. Upload FTP directory could be managed with each player being given an upload password.

A cron job could check for turn files and update each games webpage. Also provice a "countdown" display for when the game will process even if someone hasnt turned their file in.

So.............. just as an example....
Lets say that www.dom2.net has a web page listing 30 games showing 30 little thumbnail maps. Some large, some small, some on equalized chess-board style maps, some on maps randomly generated. One of these is a high magic setting game to be called Academia. The www.dom2.net page handles getting all of the necessary players signed up.

The scripts would create a user on www.dom2.net named academia. The webpage for the game would be www.dom2.net/academia, the email address to send your turns to would be academia@dom2.net

Hmmm thats all I can think of off the top of my head. So far none of this is anything that couldnt run on a computer in someones closet because it wont run the newer games. You could run a hundred games off one machine this way.

[ November 01, 2003, 19:44: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Kristoffer O]

It is rather easy to setup a Dominions II server. We've have one running for our betatesting. The GUI-less Version works very well with linux.


Example: ./dom2 -STq --hosttime 0 22 --ipadr X.X.X.X. --port X
creates a graphicless server with an IP a port hosting as soon as everyone has connected and made their turns and at least every sunday at 22.00


If you do not feel like typing ./dom2 -h:


-i --nointro Disables the intro animation
-v --Version Print Version number and exit
-d Increase debug level
-g --host Generate new turn and exit
--verify Verify all 2h-files and exit (creates .chk files)
--statfile Create a statistics file after each turn (stats.txt)
--finalhost Generate new turn, send out final score msg and exit
******* Network Options *******
-C --tcpclient Connect to a Dominions multiplayer server
-S --tcpserver Start a Dominions multiplayer server
--ipadr XXX Use this IP-adr when connecting to server
--port X Use this port nbr
--postexec CMD Execute this command after each turn generation
-t --hosttime X Y Host on day X (0=sunday) hour Y (0-23)
--minutes X Set host interval in minutes
-h --hours X Set host interval in hours
--pauseday X Stop timer on this day (0=sunday)
-q --quickhost Host as soon as all turns are done
-n --nonationsel No nation selection when resuming a network game
--noclientstart Clients cannot start the game during Choose Participants
--uploadtime X Nbr of minutes before game is created. (default off)
******* New Game Options *******
--mapfile XXX Filename of map. E.g. eye.map
--research X Research difficulty 0-3 (default 1)
--hofsize X Size of Hall of Fame 5-15 (default 10)
--indepstr X Strength of Independents 0-9 (default 3)
--magicsites X Magic site frequency 0-75 (default 40)
--eventrarity X Random event rarity 1-2, 1=common 2=rare
--totalvp X Vic. points available in the world 0-25
--capitalvp One extra victory per capital
--requiredvp X Vic. points required for victory (default total/2)
--richness X World richness 1-3 (default 2)
******* Video Options *******
-T --textonly Use this with --tcpserver to get graphicless server
--opacity X Set gui opacity 0 - 100
-r --res X Y Set screen resolution / window size (default=800 600)
--animback Use animated backgrounds
-a --noanimback Don't use animated backgrounds
--fade Use fade effects
-f --nofade No fade effects
--nopopups No helpful popups
--fps X Maximum nbr of frames per second (default=50)
--filtering X Quality of OpenGL filtering 0-3 (default=2)
-x --fastgrx Faster graphics (use 3 times for best performance (-xxx))
-p --perftest Run a performance test and exit
******* Audio Options *******
-s --nosound No sound effects
-m --nomusic No music
--musicvol X Set music volume, 0-100
--clickvol X Set mouse click volume, 0-100
--arts Route sound through aRts (default)
-o --oss Use direct oss sound output (best quality)
-e --esd Route sound through the Esound demon


*Edit: there is no built in PBEM stuff unless you comes up with something. We hope you will *

[ November 02, 2003, 23:17: Message edited by: Kristoffer O ]

[Gandalf Parker]

Example: ./dom2 -STq --hosttime 0 22 --ipadr X.X.X.X. --port X
creates a graphicless server with an IP a port hosting as soon as everyone has connected and made their turns and at least every sunday at 22.00

(modified to run dom2demo instead of dom2 of course) I get this....
./dom2demo: error while loading shared libraries: libGL.so.1: cannot open shared
object file: No such file or directory

Debian Linux without Xwindows loaded. researching it now

[ November 03, 2003, 00:57: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Johan K]

You must have the X-windows and OpenGL libraries installed. You don't have to be running X-windows though. It doesn't even have to be properly installed as long as the libraries are in place.

[Gandalf Parker]

Found it. I downloaded and installed a package called libglib2.0-0 which didnt seem to do it. So after googling for the answer (Im a real good googler) I installed one called xlibmesa3 which fixed it.

Now to find a webmaster who wants to run a domain

[ November 03, 2003, 13:39: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Gandalf Parker]

By the way, the "run continually on a port" example was very helpful.

Do you happen to have an example of a "process and quit" command line for processing pbem games? Has anyone run one of these and have some experience trying to create and host a game without ever walking thru the menu?

[ November 03, 2003, 13:42: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]