SERVER RPi| FA [RTV] EU

[Cat Lady]

Hello kittens,
As a result of having working MBII builds for (arm) Raspberry Pi 2 credit-card sized computer (builds soon to be released for everyone), on evening of 25 October 2015, I've started hosting two 24/7 MBII servers - with names as in title. One is for Full Authentic (described here), and one for Competitive Open. Here are details for the first, Full Authentic one. Have fun!

Location
Poland, Europe

RTV/RTM:
RTV

Address:
FA:

/connect estel.linkpc.net:30000

Numer of slots:
20

Maps:
For RTV, all main + CMP ones are available, minus the non-star wars themed cmps (zombiehorror, looking at you). No umad or moviepack.

TK limits:
300+ for kill
500+ for kick (tempban), 10 rounds. So watch yourself

Roundlimit before map change is 11 wins for either team, or 20 rounds passed (draws possible).

Servers use - and always will use - mainstream MBII settings, aka no modified classes for FA, changed gravity, or other nonsense. Just the MBII Full Authentic experience you're familiar with and craw for.
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Server curiosities:
In real-life tests with players fighting on servers, the machine hosting it uses around 1W of power (0.20 A @ 5V). It makes total power use around 700Wh (0.7 KWh) per month, amounting to less than 0.5 USD per month of energy cost, depending on your area charges for electricity.

Raspberry PI 2 have 4 cores - in this setup, I've isolated 2 cores, and dedicated one of them for each server, completely. From my experience, one unit (costing 25$ + microUSB power supply able to 5V 1A or 2A if want to be on safe side - for example, any modern phone charger) can comfortably host up three servers with 20 slots each. With some tweaking, it can host four servers (the 4th one - sharing CPU core with operating system - need lower sv_fps and possibly less slots, to not choke said core to 100%). The cores separation work great - during one test, I was compiling MBII on remaining 2 cores (100% usage), without players on server-dedicated cores even noticing. The real limit is connection (both download and upload) that you're willing to dedicate for servers.

Servers have safeguards restoring RTV (and servers themselves) upon crash/power loss, so uptime should be close to 100%. They're hardened against DDoS, and server by 100 Mb synchronous fiber connection - nothing less of real botnet should be able to scratch them. If you're able to DDoS successfully (and explain method used, preferably giving tips on how to defend against that kind of attack), you have my blessing and thanks.

Both servers are served (pun intended) by FOSS (Free and Open source) software only, save for MBII itself (shame) and some binary kernel blobs from broadcom (low level hardware handling). Operating system is Raspbian (Raspberry Pi specific version of Debian), with systemd removed. I fully and whoreheartly support Devuan, and will be surely switching to it, (not only for servers, but on all my home and production machines) when project release first official version.

After/during releasing MBII for RPi builds, I'll include full tutorial on how to set it up (from raw RPi straight from the shop), hopefully allowing everyone to host any number of MBII servers, for very low cost. Power to the people! By playing on current RPi servers, you're contributing to determining best settings, to be adopted by many others in future.

There are offers from respectable collocation centers (google for it) for as low as 3$ per month fpr hosting Raspberry Pi server on 100Mbit upload connection, without data transfer limit. It is great way to fully utilize this marvelous device, for hosting up to four 32-slots servers, without upload connection being saturated (which would probably happen on any home network ion such scenario).
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Now - as last paragraph, cause it is place for most honorable and important things - I would like to thank, from the deepest of my heart, all players who contributed to testing those servers, on first day (Sunday) and during following days, before this announcement. You guys patiently waited out all my restarts, helped fighting lags and regressions when I was tweaking settings, and played the hell out of it since first hour, allowing me to reach best-working equilibrium in no time - You guys rox! I'm not listing you by names - cause it would be too long, and I wouldn't like to miss someone - but you know who you are, if you're reading this.

It is really motivating to do hard work on hosting, hardening, and bullet-proofing MBII servers, when one have dedicated players like that. Thanks, again!

/Cat Lady

 

[Cat Lady]

Admin applications:
You may *not* apply for admins - helping to manage those servers is invite-only. I want administrating standars for those servers to be extremely high, so I will "snipe" (pun intended) appropriate people out of actual experiences from in-game play.

Admin code of conduct:

1. Being admin for RPi servers is a duty, not privilege. If you have been proposed this duty, you're expected to treat it as responsibility, *every time* you play on Rpi. You must be ready to put administrative duties over "just having fun gameplay" at the time of need (for example, spectate for some rounds instead of playing, to filter out troublemakers that think they're "smart"), or when you're asked to via other channels, by concerned non-admin players (if physically possible and you're available).

Obviously, you're expected to act just and in complete accordance to this code of conduct. your actions should be maximally non-obstrusive to the gameplay on server, yet 100% determined, when point from this code of conduct apply. In practice, it means no actions when unnecessary, and full action when justified, without any middle ground.

2. The "laws" governing admin actions are simple and effective - troublemakers get one and only warning by admins. After that, there is kick. Troublemaker is allowed to return to server and play peacefully, but in case of further troublemaking (or announcing will to do so), they get 50 rounds tempban without any further warnings. Confirmed attempt to circumvent tempbans by admin result in eternal ban without warnings - and yes, we have effective methods to ban people with dynamic IP's and we *will* use them.

3. Actions that are determined (in admin discretion) as non-purpose TK are not governed by code of conduct and won't result in any admin action - we have (quite strict) TK-points settings for that

4. In case of uneven teams (not resulting from from all players actually wanting to play that way), admin can - upon own discretion - call for evening teams in two rounds time. After deadline, admin will forceteam last players on the list. If forceteamed players attempt to (on purpose) uneven teams again, they're considered troublemakers and point #2 is in effect.

5. Unlike most servers, RPi's allow discussion about any topic, including religious or political ones. Hoever, you're expected to keep it civil.

We're not kindergarten, so harsh language is allowed, albeit excessive profanity "just for the sake of it" or aimed at other players won't be tolerated. In such cases, point #2 takes action.

What is *not* allowed thought, is Hate speech. Refer to linked definition, if in doubt. Failure to comply result in point #2.

6. With respect to all the above, admin decisions on server are *law*. Even if you think that you're wronged in complete disrespect for this admin code of conduct, you're *not* allowed to discuss it on server (no matter if receiving side, or bystander). Failure to comply result in point #2.

If you think that certain admin broke this code of conduct, you may contact me via PM, explaining situation. Logs for all server actions are stored (with max verbosity enabled) and pre-parsed for ease of checking, with timestamps - we can and *will* verify what happened to the smallest of details.

Neither admins disobeying code of conduct, or false accusations will be tolerated - in such case, the "one warning" rule apply.
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Summing it up, we aim for enjoyable gameplay, with maturely acting people. Have fun, and respect others - it is all that you need, basically. Ultimate (perfect world) goal is no need from admins to act at all - but still having their swords (hammers?) not rusty and ready, just in case

/Cat Lady

 

[Cat Lady]

For future use

 

[Acrond]

Nice! I asked on the old forums if Raspberry pi servers were possible. At the time it wasn't possible! I will wait for that tutorial and maybe buy a Raspberry Pi to host my own server.

 

[Zed]

Very good server! One thing is though, from my point of view the tk kick ban time of 20 rounds is a bit harsh. It's very easy to accidentally tk 2 people with , e.g, a red swing or a grenade that one accidentally pushes into one's teammates. A ban time of say, 10 rounds, would deter tkers anyway.

 

[Cat Lady]

Nice! I asked on the old forums if Raspberry pi servers were possible. At the time it wasn't possible! I will wait for that tutorial and maybe buy a Raspberry Pi to host my own server.

Yes, I remember that. It turned out that MBII source code compiled for arm is necessary, and given how MBII team was occupied at the time - and the fact that none of them had access to RPi - I decided to apply for team, as maintainer of armel version. The rest, as they say, is history...

Very good server! One thing is though, from my point of view the tk kick ban time of 20 rounds is a bit harsh. It's very easy to accidentally tk 2 people with , e.g, a red swing or a grenade that one accidentally pushes into one's teammates. A ban time of say, 10 rounds, would deter tkers anyway.

Thanks! You got a good point, I will lower the limit to 10 rounds. Theoretically, people should !f you for that anyway, but we know how it works in practice...

Depending of the number of active administrators, I may lose the TK limits with time - for now, it is meant to allow kind of "self-governing" of server.

/Cat Lady

 

[Chaos the Chaotic]

There is something very wrong here. It's almost like a cult.

 

[Szunti]

I still don't like the 300 tk point limit. I mostly enjoy playing in teams. After getting 300 tk points I can't shoot when teammates are nearby.
And getting 300 points is not that hard. There was once a guy who deliberately stood in the flames of my fire grenade. Killing himself just once like this is enough to cripple my play.

Also admins can't remove tk points I think, so if you get those points undeserved you still have to wait a couple of rounds.

I think a good option to stop trolls without admins would be votekicking. The problem with this was people not voting. Especially the other team is not interested. In another Q3 game I played (tremulous) there was a teamvote option, where only the team voted to kick/force spec someone. I think that would be useful.
You could say that this can be abused by the team, but if you would play in a team where more than the half want you out, you won't enjoy the game probably anyway.

 

[Chaos the Chaotic]

Another way would be to make the Punish Command Server-side optional.

The owner can choose to enable it or disable it.
The problem with servers with low tk settings is that all it takes is one 'Dick of a Player' to ruin another's game.

This is especially bad on servers where it takes multiple rounds to decrease tk points.
One Tk shouldn't cripple your gameplay for so many rounds. On some servers it takes, instead of rounds, I'll say minutes, 20 to 30 minutes of making damn sure you don't even hit a teammate with a single shot.

Pain.
In.
The.
Ass.

It's even more grating when its some noob with 5/27 and you're 27/5.
Oh, I forget. The ability to kill the other team is not a good measure of a player's efficacy in neo-Mb players minds.

That's what I'm calling all you hippies.

 

[Cat Lady]

In another Q3 game I played (tremulous) there was a teamvote option, where only the team voted to kick/force spec someone. I think that would be useful.

Sadly, thats not currently possible in MBII - but it is great feature request! Could you made it in "Bug tracker" section?

As for TK points, as I said, they're going to stay until server gest enough administrators (preferably from different time zones). When it reach the point that - most of the time - there is at least 1 admin of server, I will loose it by 200 or so for every stage.

There is something very wrong here. It's almost like a cult.

/Cat Lady

 

[Chaos the Chaotic]

Why does that cat.....






....have a hood on?

 

[Cat Lady]

Cause he is cultist, obviously. Every cultist need a hat.

Anyway, lets get back on-topic, please? (note to self, too)

 

[Szunti]

Sadly, thats not currently possible in MBII - but it is great feature request! Could you made it in "Bug tracker" section?

Isn't it possible to make a prototype like rtv works? (I think it reads the logs and sends commands to the standard input of the server)
If the players' team can be get from the logs or printed to the stdout it could work imo.

 

[Phelps]

Your server, your decision, but I read through it lightly and tk points leading to a tempban are imho too strict.
Anyway, seems like fun time, will drop by sometime.

PS: Ah, seen following posts and I got my answer to tk points, move along.

 

[Szunti]

When I try to spawn as deka I get back to the main menu with

Error: invalid playerState field count

Doesn't happen on the other servers (at least not on EU official).

Also happened when I tried to get into the smaller walker on the map, where a turret has to be blown up, one team has 2 walkers, the other has 2 bikes in a garage. The large walker works but the smaller gives the same error.

Tried a newer openjk version, it works now.

 

[Cat Lady]

So it is solved? I tried to reproduce, but everything works fine here (using latest OpenJK master branch).

BTW, since yesterday, I incorporated some more tweaks, that should make those pesky lags thing of the past (or, at least, decrease amount of their occurrences severely). Still won't help with the saber clash lag spike bug, that one must be addressed on (deep) MB2 side...

 

[Szunti]

Yes seems to be solved with the OpenJK master.

 

[Cat Lady]

I've restructured server description (due to launch of RPi| Competitive [RTV] EU sister server), and added info about collocation of RPi servers to "server curiosities" section of the first post:

There are offers from respectable collocation centers (google for it) for as low as 3$ per month fpr hosting Raspberry Pi server on 100Mbit upload connection, without data transfer limit. It is great way to fully utilize this marvelous device, for hosting up to four 32-slots servers, without upload connection being saturated (which would probably happen on any home network ion such scenario).

Cheers,
/Cat Lady

 

[foggy]

There's a strange thing about your servers. If you hit opponent's kata/lunge/butterfly massive lags are to happen. I've never seen this before on other servers

 

[Puppytine]

@foggy
Your posts reminded me this thing:
Kata lag | Movie Battles II Community