The current state of game servers

[Steven Hartland]

I whole heartily agree with this although tbh bf1942 has been better than most.
Take Halo for example. They released a dedicated server "Due to pressure from
the community" said server had a readme consisting of "here's and example config
and map list file", said config had just a servername and a map list. I had to
search the exe for the other available commands to post them on the forums
which the dev's then commented "That pretty much sum's it up" and made it
sticky. I mean wtf you release a game like that 1 year late and don't anticipate
the need to release the server at the same time like DOH!!

The dedicated server is key to a games success and key to a dedicated server
is performance and documentation. Without either of these any new game is
dead in the water. Fortunately for most companies there are a large number of
dedicated individuals out there which take up the challenge and do things like
bfsmd but this shouldn't be required. There have been enough good examples
no of how to provide management interfaces, that this should be part of any
multiplayer games planning.

If anyone's interested we maintain a document on what makes a dedicated
server acceptable to GSP's which could be used to avoid all these issues.

    Steve / K
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "cameron" <cameron at aberdeenlanparty.co.uk>
To: <bf1942 at icculus.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2003 6:47 PM
Subject: Re: [bf1942] An Open Letter to the BF1942 Community


> I have been reading most of these emails and indeed intend to send EA Games
> / Dice an email in support of BlackBagOps.  But what I think a lot of people
> are missing is a really important point here. Kevin wrote BFSM to fill a
> vacuum. He saw that the community would need such an application and so made
> one (for which I am very grateful). Why wasn't this need foreseen by the
> games developer? This isn't a new thing, Unreal Tournament and Unreal
> Tournament 2003 both came with a web based remote manager. It seems to me
> that any time a new game is released we have to scrimp and scrape enough
> information to run a server. I would have though that it would have been in
> EA Games / Dice's interest to have a web page listing all the relevant
> console commands and examples on how to configure your server and to also
> include a WORKING remote managing tool.
>
> As has been said in previous mails EA Games rely on us the community to run
> servers to play their game, so why cant they make it easy for us? I run
> lanpartys and I know quite a few people who after playing BF1942 single just
> put it on the shelf. Many have now reinstalled the game and are playing
> online as well as at my Lan's.
>
> At the end of the day any games developer is in business to make money, and
> they are going to as little as they have to for their money. It is up to us
> to demand more for our buck!! I personally feel that after paying £35.00 for
> a game, that all the necessary information should be available at the
> developers web site and I also think that including some sort of remote
> managing software isn't asking to much.