Dedicated Multiplayer Server

[admin]

Good news! I was able to get a “What Rocks” server up! 🙂

To be able to connect, the start line has changed a little bit.

For the vanilla server:
loader.exe -hsn "i-war2 GOG" -hip "i-war2.com:2313"

For the “What Rocks” Server:
loader.exe -hsn "i-war2 WR" -hip "i-war2.com:2314"

I chose to load the Academy mod by default, which is this nice baby here:

[spoiler]Academy Game:

Story:

You exit Hyperspace in a strange sector and discover a huge station that reads “Academy” on your sensors. It is heavily protected by 3 “Comsat Gunstars” positioned around it. You also see debris of another station that looks like it was once a twin of the Academy. It too is orbited by a, fortunately inoperative, “Comsat Gunstar”. As you near the station you notice a strange object called “Alien Cave” and enter a weird red cloud that seems familiar. Suddenly you are attacked by a pair of Storm Petrels that read “Trainer” and “Rookie”.

You realize: This is a military training base that has been infected by remnants of an alien cloud. Obviously the base and it’s contaminated, hostile occupants must be destroyed! If you don’t, the Alien Infection originally caused by Caleb Maas’ experiments could be propagated throughout the whole galaxy.

You only have a limited amount of time to destroy the academy, otherwise you too will be infected by the Alien Cloud and doomed to spend the rest of your life in that eerie academy!

Game Type:
Players against Bots
1 – 6 Players

Scoring, Rules, Tactics :

Server Settings:
Game length is per default 30 min and the point limit to win the game is 150 points. You can set either value higher ( but not lower) in the server settings.
If your team has less than 150 points at the set time limit you loose the game.
If the Enemies obtain more than 150 Points (frags) at any time you loose the game too.
Note: if you pilot a destroyer, for example the enemies get 8-10 points per frag !
Your frag points are noted in the document you see as you select a ship.

Enemy Frag Points:
“Academy” Base 150 Pts.
“Comsat Gunstars” 20 Pts.
“Trainer” 1 Pts.
“Rookie” 1 Pts.
“Def Comsat Gunstar” 0 Pts.

Important: Destroy the Gunstars first!
If a Gunstar only has a few hit points left the Academy may destroy it while firing at an attacking ship. In that case you get relief but no points!
Likewise, If the Academy only has a few hit points left the Gunstars may destroy it while firing at you (or a team member). Then you get 0 points for the academy! Since the Gunstars only total 60 points and no more bots will be spawned after the academy is destroyed it will be impossible to win the game. (unless you fragged 90 bots before the academy was destroyed)

Details:

All Players will spawn in Alpha team upon entering the map.
For each player that is spawned a pair of Bots ( 1 Rookie and 1 Trainer) are also spawned.
For each player death (re-spawn event) 2 more bots are also spawned
Every time a player comes within 12 km of the Academy an additional pair of bots will launch from the academy to protect it
If you’ve completely cleared the area of Trainers and Rookies, one or two pairs (dependent on the number of players) will be spawned at 2 to 3 minute intervals (randomly) even if you don’t get near the station!

Max. no. of Bots = 12

Tactics and Notes:

Generally each player that spawns should try to take out as many bots as possible. Then, use your base “Alpha Indy Shipyard” to reload weapons by docking to it, before attacking the Academy.
You can reload weapons at any time by docking to your base.

Tips:

The “Pioneer” can deploy up to 2 miniature Gunstars type 8ty8. They are helpful against the enemy fighters. However, it’s not a good idea to deploy them in the Academy’s range of fire or close to a Comsat Gunstar. They are Antimatter powered and when they explode they probably will destroy things, but you (your team) won’t get the points for that kill!

If there are too many Trainers and Rookies for you to handle head to your station immediately after you have spawned and dogfight there. The station will fire on the bots, distract them and even eliminate a few for you. Also, if your ship does not have a PDT, the stations PDT will protect you from enemy missile fire.

You can hide in the Alien Cave or in the Tunnel Asteroid and call for help if you are surrounded by bots. If you are in the sniper ship ( the Moth), you may be able to pick off a few of them too. If you are in the engineer ship Pioneer, don’t forget: you’ve got Gunstars.

Internet Games with more than 5 or 6 players can exhibit a bit of lag when the maximum number (12) of bots are on the map, unless you have a very powerful server and high connection bandwidth[/spoiler]

One disadvantage: I can only run one DirectPlay service, so they both depend on that one dpnsvr.exe which seems to crash from time to time. If one of the servers goes down, both go down :pinch: I’ve tried to isolate them, but they keep running into each others ports. Damn you, Microsoft!

So I won’t open any third one until someone buys me a second server 😛

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Space. The final frontier.

[APE]

Hope this is not too stupid a question :

In the on ‘home’ site highlightened arcticle about the server been set-up. it’s said that it runs on a Linux server.

Does this mean I have to run a Linux OS too ? … or would I bee able to connect to the server with the game installed on a windows machine ? (win7 prof 64 bit).

[admin]

You can run the game on any OS you like and still connect to the server. 😉 I was just a little bit proud of getting this thing to run on a Linux machine (which wasn’t easy).

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Space. The final frontier.

[APE]

I was just a little bit proud

Something you definitly can be

[Author]

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