GameSpy closing down

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Dr.Flay
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Re: GameSpy closing down

Post by Dr.Flay »

Hmm, wonder if the 333 master or the browser can be made to filter them or flag fake players ?

OK. Separate idea, same topic.
How do we take-over the damned news section in UT ?

In Unreal 227 it gets current news from Oldunreal.
This may be our best direction, as UT99 is already part of the Oldunreal site.

Xbrowser already has various customised sections and may be a good way to provide an update, as the current config also needs to be updated for the same current problem.
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Re: GameSpy closing down

Post by noccer »

Dr.Flay wrote:Hmm, wonder if the 333 master or the browser can be made to filter them or flag fake players ?

OK. Separate idea, same topic.
How do we take-over the damned news section in UT ?

In Unreal 227 it gets current news from Oldunreal.
This may be our best direction, as UT99 is already part of the Oldunreal site.

Xbrowser already has various customised sections and may be a good way to provide an update, as the current config also needs to be updated for the same current problem.
Yes it can/could do so, which depends on Dark if he wants or not.

The news section is very interesting for me aswell, if epic would just allow us to use it, it would be awesome.
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>>You can't steal any ip (v4)adresses, there are exactly 4294967296 of them, and they will still exist when you wrote down all of them, or are stored in a (master)servers database ;)<<
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Re: GameSpy closing down

Post by rsbloom44 »

Filtering fake players would be AMAZING.
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Re: GameSpy closing down

Post by Tobibrocki »

Hi everyone, new guy here,

I'm not trying to be a burden on anyone but I am a bit confused actually on what exactly is going on at the moment with the whole server situation in regards to UT99 (and the others as well). Pretty much all I know is that there are Unofficial Master Servers and the Official one and that the latter is going to shut down, thats about it though, and reading up on these things didn't really make the situation clear for me, so, could anyone here give me a short summary of what is happening exactly and what a noob like me should do at this point in time? :?
Is there a easy to follow guide for adding additional Master Servers to the .ini file? And which one should I add?
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Re: GameSpy closing down

Post by UnrealGGecko »

Tobibrocki wrote: so, could anyone here give me a short summary of what is happening exactly and what a noob like me should do at this point in time? :?
To tell the truth... Ehmmm.... I need a quick summary as well. I mean I already have the 333networks master added, but other than that... :help:

Welcome to the forums btw ;)
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Re: GameSpy closing down

Post by Hellkeeper »

I'm not too concerned in the end.
Unreal has many masters thanks to OldUnreal and Hyper.
UT2003/2004 are hosted by Epic.
UT3 will be fixed
UT99 has a plan underway here, maybe Epic will even do something.

So in the end, Unreal lives on :)
You must construct additional pylons.
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Re: GameSpy closing down

Post by Dr.Flay »

Gather round. It's story time :wink:

...Once upon a time,
there were 3 wise masters.
unreal.epicgames, master0.gamespy and master.mplayer


master.mplayer.com was the weakest of the masters and died long ago.
Valiantly the 2 remaining masters travelled the long road together, until 1 day unreal.epicgames took an arrow to the knee and had to sit things out.

The remaining master, now overburdened with shiny trinkets and awards, got lost in the woods, as he did not think a map and compass was important.
To survive the days lost wandering around in the dark, master0.gamespy gradually sold off all his possessions to the bandits of the woods.

Weak and weary, finally master0.gamespy stumbled into a shadowy figure, in a smart suit, holding a smart-phone, in a smartly gloved hand.
"Woah ! Hold on" exclaimed the suit. "You look tired. Let me help you with your heavy load" he said, while rubbing his hands together.
This confused master0.gamespy as he looked down at his rags and bare feet.
"but I have nothing to carry" said the master. "Nothing of any value. Nothing, except..."
The master now realised the smart suit was looking at his thin and dirty hand.
"Nothing except for the precious !" cried the suit with glee.

master0.gamespy stepped back and let out a girly-shriek. Then clearing his throat he stammered "but, but you don't understand it's power."
Rubbing his hands again, the suit hissed slowly "Yes.. I.. do. It is the power that binds the Kingdoms, and creates the Empire".
Now horrified master0.gamespy pleaded, "but, but, it is of no use to you. You can only use the phone-magic. This arcane wizardry is beyond your control."
A broad grin now on the face of the suit, it raised its sleeves into the air and looking to the sky, it roared "NO BUT I CAN DESTROY IT !" (cue maniac laughter)

Reeling in anguish the master pleaded again, "You must be insane this would cause chaos all over the planet. You must let me complete my quest and I can give you the what you want."
"What is this quest?" spat the suit.
"I seek the wizard Darkelarious in the castle of the 3, 3s, and to send help for my fallen brother unreal.epicgames, so that after I die..." he paused for a moment, "and I know my time has come, as I am old and the world is now steam-powered, but there will be another trinity of masters..."
Glancing up, the master noticed a look of unexpected concern on the suit, and so he continued louder "...and who knows how many more masters there will be, once this power is in the hands of the ordinary people, united by the power of 3."

The suit stood still. Said nothing.
Feeling emboldened, master0.gamespy smiled at the suit and drawing himself up to his full height carried on;
"Imagine a world with... with an army of masters. A never ending flow of masters, all doing the bidding of the community"
The suit raised what could be described as eyebrows, and master0.gamespy got louder and raised a pointed finger at the suit;
"Imagine that ! Imagine every individual community with their own masters. More masters breeding more masters ! I got mastaz fo' yo mastaz bro, so what do you think of that !?"

The small clearing in the woods was quiet for a few seconds.
The suit spoke quietly "I think.." It paused and cleared it's throat with 3 short coughs.
"I can't make any money from you. I think you must die".

master0.gamespy turned to run into the dark woods, and even got as far as saying "..Oh shiiii" before a moment of bright light exploded in his head, before turning to blackness, dotted with pinholes of white stars.
A moment of disjointed awareness of extreme hot, or cold, or pain, or all 3, but then wondering why he could taste iron and soil, his vision came back with another bolt of pain as the suit flipped him over onto his back.
The master tried to gasp in pain as the suit put his knee in the middle of his chest.
"Oh no.." said the suit leaning into the masters ear. "...not that easy. not... quick". it hissed.
"I will cut bits of you off every month, until you finally die a slow and shameful death" the suit stood over the master, now gloating, and unzipping its trousers.
"I am going to do baaad things to you, little miss red riding-hood-lost-in-the-woods."
master0.gamespy dropped his hand to cover his face, and wished his sight had not returned.
A second later he also wished his sense of taste had not returned. He moved his hand over his nose and mouth, and kept his eyes firmly shut.

Now dazed and contemplating what little was left of his life, master0.gamespy noticed odd clicking and high-pitched sounds mixed with the laughter and... what ? what was that, the crazy suit was saying ?
"....aaAHAHA !! yeah ! this ones going on facebook! AHAHAA ! Oh yeah baby I'm tweeting it now! I'm gonna feed you to the trolls !".

Chapter 2

.... MEANWHILE ELSEWHERE, IN THE BATCAVE.
"Holy crapola Darkelarious, look in the sky ! A giant number 3 in the clouds. is that the bat signal ?"
(cue dramatic music, spinning pictures and words).
..."WHAT ?" came a booming echoing reply.
"...I said get off the crapper and get your ass out here, there's all kinds of crazy going on, and there's warning lights blinking on everything !" a shout went back.
"...WHAT DID YOU TOUCH ?" bellowed an angry voice. "IF YOU'VE..." the rest was covered by the sound of flushing water.

Hasty footsteps echoed down the stone corridor (because someone had used the correct OpenAL EFX preset). It sounded so cool in-fact, that Darkelarious stopped to fire off a few rounds of his favourite Infiltration weapons.
Mere moments later, Darkelarious is in his command chair flicking switches and pushing buttons, and looking serious at various things.
(cue tension music)
Once he has his seat at the right height and the coffee on, he looks at his screens.
"Ooo K. situation.n.n... oh, holy crappo.."
"Yeah I said that one already, but what is it?"
Darkelarious stroked his chin, stood up and slowly raised his cup, and equally slowly said "the last of the first-born masters is dying.." he took a sip, "..and it is not yet ready." another sip and then "..and seriously man, this coffee is sh*t. What are you trying to do to me ?"

"What ? what is...it ?" demanded whoever it was that just walked round the back of some technical-looking stuff.
Darkelarious put his fists on his hips just like every comic-book superhero, and pointed his chin at the horizon.
"I already have a plan ! You may call it plan-B, but I call it, um, maybe ROBO-MASTERRR !?"
A few seconds of echo filled silence was broken by the voice that was now by the door;
"...Now I'm serious dude, if you've been making a sex-toy, I am leaving right now !"
Darkelarious cleared his throat and this time more unsure "Faster-master ?... damn that is no better. It doesn't matter a name can come later."
This time sounding a little annoyed, but rising to a triumphant volume
"No it is not a sex-toy... although I do think it is kinda sexy... err, yeah I have actually been working on a new improved, faster, free-range, and fat-free master-server !"
The sound of the exclamation mark echoed with the satisfying sound of the stone-hall EFX setting.
"Oh..."
Darkelarious shook his head "Oh?"
"Yes oh."
"What ?" anger now straining Darkelarious's voice (I don't think there is an EFX for that)
"Yes what, what do we do ?"

Darkelarious turned back to regard the monitors,
"We..hmm..well I am going to drink a truck load of good coffee, because I'm not going to get any God-damned sleep until the end of May."

"OK. so what do I do ?" came the voice from the doorway.
"You?... You are going to town to buy me a truck load of coffee, and hand out as many leaflets and posters as you can."
"Oh poo" was heard quietly from the hall behind doorway, because the OpenAL surround-sound positioning was perfect.
Darkelarious shouted at the retreating voice "Yes poo ! .... Oh yes poo.. YOU BETTER GET TOILET-PAPER !!"
Sitting back in the command seat, he muttered to himself "this job is going to need a lot of toilet-paper".


....
And there you have it. Another true story from old Doctor Flay.
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Re: GameSpy closing down

Post by papercoffee »

uhu... toilet-paper and coffee.

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Re: GameSpy closing down

Post by Dr.Flay »

Damn! I missed another joke.
Well I hope it reads OK, and the stolen references are obvious enough.
That was just me, spilling my head onto the page, in a flow of fun and word-play.
No edits or anything, and I haven't even read it yet, so I hope it translates well.
Going to make a sh*tty coffee :( and read my stupidness.

Have to say I really enjoyed writing it, and it could easily have been twice as long.
Certain patterns became visible in my head, and my internal theatre started to play.
I stayed on topic and managed to cover the history of the masters, and I finished on a poo/toilet reference/joke
Me happy :mrgreen: :thuup:
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Re: GameSpy closing down

Post by Tobibrocki »

So let me get this straight and see if I got everything,

there were 3 Master Servers, mplayer, Epic and Gamespy. Mplayer shut down after only a few years, then Epic's is still online but very overlooked and kinda forgotten (technically working but also not really at the same time) and Gamespy is going to shut down at the end of next month.
And the guys at 333networks, the Unofficial Master Server for UT, are working hard to get their systems up to speed for next month to support the bulk of servers that might be left stranded when Gamespy shuts down and Epic doesn't do anything to fix their own master server in time or at all.

Is this the current situation in a nutshell or did I misunderstand something?

Probably a stupid question but has Epic mentioned anything in regards to UT99 so far?
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Re: GameSpy closing down

Post by Dr.Flay »

Bingo :tu:

And no, not specifically. They just state that the service will not be interrupted, but not that they will actually fix the broken old master.

...have pity on an old master sir !
my legs are weak, my nose is bent, my voice is feeble...
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Re: GameSpy closing down

Post by TheDane »

Noone gets the full Picture here, all we can do is guess. My guess is that when GameSpy shuts Down the masterserver (That is solid - it WILL shut down, the exact date is unknown, but the 31th is the latest day we can expect to see it online), then Epic's masterserver will be fully capable of taking over - with clients and servers having only to revert to default :-)

Darkelarious seems to have been creating a pretty awesome great looking master server project, but the rumours and methods are piling up in the background. I'm not going to add to anything by refering to what has been brought to my attention lately, but I can give you my opinion on how I think things should be regarding a master server.

A master server should only serve as a QUERY server, period. Meaning that when a client add it to his/her ini settings the client will ONLY get a list of the servers where THE SERVER ADMINISTRATOR HAVE ADDED A LINK TO THE QUERY SERVER. This Means that I do absolutely not want a master server send me server info about servers it has been adding to it's database in others ways. If a client adds the master server to his/her ini file and the master server then draws the server list from the client it is MALWARE! If anything client related gets tranfered from the client to the master server just because the client is online on some server or through the client itself just because he has added the QUERY server to the ini file, then my days as online player is over, period.

Also, there is a setting to a server where you can select if your server gets advertised or not, how will this function on Darkelarious master server? Will it be removed from the database if you change that setting from True to False as it does with the current master server?

And just to be perfectly clear, I will support anyone and everything that is beeing done to serve a master QUERY server if there are no more official master servers left, other projects I will keep out from if it doesn't focus solely on providing a Query master server only - messing with client and server privacy is not my ballgame. And for the record, I hate to see a game survive only in the hands of a private person.
Retired.
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Re: GameSpy closing down

Post by Chamberly »

LOOOOOOOL that story! Good job rofl!
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Re: GameSpy closing down

Post by noccer »

TheDane wrote: A master server should only serve as a QUERY server, period. Meaning that when a client add it to his/her ini settings the client will ONLY get a list of the servers where THE SERVER ADMINISTRATOR HAVE ADDED A LINK TO THE QUERY SERVER. This Means that I do absolutely not want a master server send me server info about servers it has been adding to it's database in others ways.
Example: You add your utserver to epic only, Gamespy clones the serverlist from epic and/or vice versa. This is not untrustworthy behaviour, it is redundancy. It is the same as google shows information about public stuff at ut99.org. For example: Google shows that the file DM-Asiapizzashop.zip is available on unrealtournament.info.
TheDane wrote: If a client adds the master server to his/her ini file and the master server then draws the server list from the client it is MALWARE! If anything client related gets tranfered from the client to the master server just because the client is online on some server or through the client itself just because he has added the QUERY server to the ini file, then my days as online player is over, period.
Did it ever with original masters? Well, like in internet essential, your client needs to transport his ip and the name of the game it requests the list for. It does not matter which masterserver you use, the information to be sent is always the same.
TheDane wrote: Also, there is a setting to a server where you can select if your server gets advertised or not, how will this function on Darkelarious master server? Will it be removed from the database if you change that setting from True to False as it does with the current master server?
Configure your ut server correct and it will work correctly. That means, it does that what you want, it shows servers which want to advertise and doesn't show these who don't want this.
TheDane wrote: And just to be perfectly clear, I will support anyone and everything that is beeing done to serve a master QUERY server if there are no more official master servers left, other projects I will keep out from if it doesn't focus solely on providing a Query master server only - messing with client and server privacy is not my ballgame. And for the record, I hate to see a game survive only in the hands of a private person.
I don't know if you mean private persons at all or just a single person? I would understand your thought if it is only one person which would hold the game alone. Of course, this is not how it actually is. However, you are invited to be one of another private person which could help as you advertised it and "get the total überpower" :D

You can have a look at the sourcecode and see what the software does, it is open source.

http://git.333networks.com
Last edited by noccer on Sat Apr 26, 2014 11:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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>>You can't steal any ip (v4)adresses, there are exactly 4294967296 of them, and they will still exist when you wrote down all of them, or are stored in a (master)servers database ;)<<
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Re: GameSpy closing down

Post by Higor »

@TheDane
What's your source on all that crap?

A series of WTF posts are piling up lately regarding the master server thing, and second:
-How is a master server going to 'malware' it's way into a client's Server List (?)... when clients do need a master server to get the server list first?
-If that's the case, why then get said list from the client when you can get it from the masters they're querying instead?
-And if a master server is querying another master server... doesn't that defeat the purpose of actually making a master server as a backup for an incoming shutdown?

The master server itself doesn't have the power to edit a client's query settings, that's only possible by downloading a mod from an actual UT server.
Also, if a server admin takes his time to adjust the master he's querying, said admin also has the time to update the IpServer.u to prevent intentional query crashes.
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