homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation EECH / EEAH Dedicated Server

Encouraged by werewolf's good experience of running eech in dedicated server mode instead of just launching the game with all the graphic stuff active (that seems to cause lock-ups when pilots tries to join or leave) I've briefly looked into this part.
Somehow I can't get a 2nd PC to run a Ded.server and join it from my LAN, seems like my router is playing me a trick. Othervise I'd put up a 24/7-server (I'm always on-line).

In the mean time I'd like to share the things I've done with you.
Looks like I've managed to get eech to read the eech.ini for all customized setting regarding chaff, flare & smoke, capture aircraft and "wut-profiles" and then launch a dedicated server.
No deal, should it be? Just set the proper switches in eech.ini and off you go. My experience is that it isn't that easy, a launch of a Dedicated server by switches in eech.ini is kind of hard. 1st time all goes well, but then something goes wrong when I try to launch it a 2nd time, so I've edited the original file for a dedicated server: "Dedicate.bat" you'll find it in your cohokum-folder.
I've added a new launch line and some comments, if anyone is interested, you can d/l it from here: Dedicate.bat -file
Here's a cut&paste of what I must do to launch a 2nd server. This is what I've written in the Dedicate.bat-file:
rem Moje: Here's the new syntax for launching a dedicated server
rem you *must* edit the eech.ini when you've used this once, because, on stopping the sever, eech writes data to
rem eech.ini that spoils a 2nd launch
rem you should change the dedicated=1 to dedicated=0
rem and
rem game_type to 0
rem and
rem gunship_type to 8
rem and
rem clear the path=

I'm pretty sure that my joining trouble is tied to my network and/or the setup of my work-PC. I just discovered that it was running DX8.1, not DX9.
Made a brief test with another PC in my LAN and connected w/o trouble.
werewolf claims that parts of the MP-problems is due to bad 3D-code and running a Dedicated server takes away all interactive parts of the 3D-code. His server has been up for 100+ hours a couple of times and it's been possible to join it after such a long time.
I'll upgrade my work-PC to DX9 and make a new try to create a joinable server with some eech.ini-settings active. Especially the pauseserv=1 seems like a good thing to get going. That means that the game pauses when no clients are connected

Time for some news. I got the Ded. server going on my LAN. Don't quite know why it worked the 2nd time I tried.
Could be that I tried a short-cut the 1st time, installed eeah/eech to get the registry-values, then copied the whole Razorworks-folder from my game-PC. 2nd try I made it the right way, installed from scratch and all the way, the whole procedure with install -run -patch -run -install -run -patch -run. After gettting up to eech v1.4.1c I applied the superpatch and now it's working.
Next step is to change my router, so the new PC can act as a server for I-net connections. If that works as well, I'll start up a Ded. server in a couple of days to see if it's a cure or if werewolf is the only one who can run a server stable
I plan to use "pauseserv=1" so the games waits for a client to join before anything happens. That way the AI can't win alone. More "tweaks" will be chaff, flare & smoke at 50%, fog of war 30 minutes, capture enemy aircraft (cpac=1) and wut-profile 1_6_13h.txt

Got the server up and running, currently the game is paused, but I could join from my gaming-PC. Don't know if it works from the I-net thoguh, but I'll keep it up for a while

Got an exception and the servercrashed
Restarted and could join from my LAN-side OK

I have some bad news:

It turns out I have been using a rather old eech.ini which was created by one of the first versions with masterserver support.

Last weekend, I deleted the eech.ini and let EECH W14 create a new file, which I edited to my liking - and now it appears as if the server is much less stable. After 2-3 days I see that the server has quit - without any exception.

I have the pauseserver setting disabled at the moment, but I'll try it with pauseserv=1

We might have something there... The testing procedure would be:
- get an "early" version and run it without ini so it spits out "early ini".
- keep the backup of the newer, crashing ini handy.

Run the server with the new, crashing ini. Replace the values with the "old" values until it becomes steady.

Of course, in reality it won't be that simple, but maybe it is possible to catch the offending settings?

Well, the server was blocked when I came home from work, here's the server-log:
18:56:46 : Campaign started: War Of Independence
18:56:52 : Moje_Host joined - 1 player connected
18:57:24 : Received join request...
18:57:29 : Moje joined - 2 players connected
18:57:35 : Moje quit - 1 player connected
18:57:35 : Server paused
19:08:34 : Received join request...
19:08:48 : ulfnet joined - 2 players connected
19:13:32 : Received join request...
19:13:37 : Moje joined - 3 players connected
19:13:55 : Moje: En liten stund da.....
19:15:20 : ulfnet: visste inte du skulle komma
19:16:01 : ulfnet: tar du heli_
19:16:21 : Received join request...
19:16:36 : PGrunt joined - 4 players connected
19:19:11 : PGrunt: Hi ! May I Join ?
19:19:30 : Moje: You're most welcome
19:20:12 : PGrunt: Thnx !
19:24:57 : ulfnet removed
> ulfnet got major lag and was kicked out <
19:24:57 : ulfnet quit - 3 players connected
19:29:39 : Moje: 000000000000000000000000000000000010000000010000000
19:29:51 : Moje: 000000;00000000000000000000�000
> My joystick played me a trick, looks like the button I assigned to "next target" was stuck <
19:29:59 : Moje removed
19:29:59 : Moje quit - 2 players connected
19:29:59 : Error: Failed to remove player 19187706 from group: 19187699
> Seems we had some trouble here <
19:35:05 : PGrunt: done
19:35:50 : Received join request...
19:36:02 : ulfnet joined - 3 players connected
19:45:03 : PGrunt: SShhhh....
20:00:54 : ulfnet quit - 2 players connected
20:01:02 : removed
20:01:02 : Error: Failed to remove player 19187710 from group: 19187699
> ...and here <
20:31:18 : PGrunt quit - 1 player connected
20:31:18 : Server paused
03:36:38 : Received join request...
03:36:57 : Aierbourne joined - 2 players connected
> "2 players connected" the prevoius trouble must have been cleared by the game? <
03:37:49 : Received join request...
03:38:03 : Aierbourne joined - 3 players connected
13:35:32 : Received join request...
13:35:48 : Aierbourne joined - 4 players connected
> Seems Aierbourne had trouble connecting <
14:56:33 : Received join request...
14:56:38 : Moje joined - 5 players connected
15:04:09 : Received join request...
15:04:13 : Moje joined - 6 players connected
> The last two was my tries when I got home - no connection<
> Stopping the server <
15:05:05 : Moje_Host quit - 5 players connected
15:05:05 : Moje quit - 4 players connected
15:05:05 : Moje quit - 3 players connected
15:05:05 : Aierbourne quit - 2 players connected
15:05:05 : Aierbourne quit - 1 player connected
15:05:05 : Server paused
15:05:05 : Aierbourne quit - 0 players connected

Server is restarted, let's see how long it will live....
BTW, running with cgs=0, cvc=1, the rest default regarding comms

I've had the server up and running for a while, no game crashes but that doesn't help
It looks like we still have the old problem -the game can't clear a pilot completely, he's mostly removed from the chopper, map and chat-window, but the final removal fails (according to the log) and locks up the server for a new join.
It doesn't matter if the game runs as a dedicated server or a "normal" game, I've tried both and gets the same result. Think it's DX7 to blame and lack of proper timing, in LAN-conditions all goes well EVERY time but as soon as a minimal lag (ADSL-connection) is introduced it's the same old story

That's really strange... Are you sure cvc is on?

Positive, cvc=1, cgs=0, default settings for time-out and other comm-settings.
I'll make a third check tonight when I come home.

It's the known "chat-window" bug: The chat-window remains accesable in the host's game although the last client left (no pilots in the chat-window) and if you (as a client) tries to join the game you'll see the host pilot and the name from the last client that hasn't been totally removed. It's possible to continue the joining process until you sit and wait for the "engage"-option -but it never comes.
In the log the last note is "failed to remove player xxxxxxx (long number) from group xxxxxxx"

Edit: Forgot to say that this can occur when a client leaves in a controlled manner. Reading Fixer's post in "MP game on" indicates to me that when I quitted the game, something went wrong and he lost comm's with the host, then crashed with a "Direct display error" and couldn't get to the "engage"-option when he tried to rejoin

If it actually says "failed to remove", it's most probably the DP problem (unless there's some loop left). As I said before, the DP code is like a black box, so it can't be really debugged. Naturally, there were games that used that version with good results, but maybe they used some tricks. Most of network games at that time had proprietary network code anyway.

I'm afraid there's little left to be done, short of updating the DX code to 8. You could tweak the ini values, but I doubt it will do any good.

Confirming the servers cvc=1-setting.
Looking at the serverlog it looks like a "clean leave", but Fixer got into trouble anyway, it wasn't exactly as I wrote above:

22:02:58 : Moje quit - 2 players connected
< clean leave??, but Fixer got into trouble anyway>
22:04:53 : Fixer_w14_server removed
22:04:53 : Fixer_w14_server quit - 1 player connected
22:04:53 : Server paused

22:11:15 : Received join request...
22:11:19 : Fixer_w14_server joined - 2 players connected

22:12:32 : Received join request...
22:12:37 : Fixer_w14_server joined - 3 players connected

04:00:14 : Moje_Host quit - 2 players connected
04:00:14 : Fixer_w14_server quit - 1 player connected
04:00:14 : Server paused
04:00:14 : Fixer_w14_server quit - 0 players connected

Soooo the question is do "we" change the multiplayer dp4 code as is and totally rewrite it to DP8 and do "WE" know anyone that can do it. Can anyone put any feelers out there.....

As anyone thought of asking Razorworks to see if they have a DP8 engine that "we" could use ?

Does anyone have an email address for them and I'll do it, they can only say no.

Phil

I have looked into it, but it is not a trivial task, especially for a non-programmer.

Basically what needs to be done is to rewrite all the procedures in directp.c to DX8, leaving all the calls in the main code intact. If after weeks of doing that it still does not work, it means that DX is not guilty and that the game code is to blame.

What I started to do is to copy the directp.c to directp8.c, and change the calls in there to DX8.
In order to do the switch it would be only needed to replace declarations to directp.c with directp8.c.
I didn't get too far, as I was not exactly sure what I was doing, and the documentation is poor. If there is another game with a source code that uses DX8, it might be of help. Of course we would need a permission to use any actual code.

I also think that Dial up and direct connect may go. They take up a lot of the code, so that would be of help. I don't know about IPX, it might not be needed as today most networked computers have TCP/IP anyway. As we will make the switch only if TCP/IP works much better than it does now, it won't matter anyway.