[mohaa] Server control programs for Linux

[richardnharrison at btinternet.com]

Excellent idea. If your at a stage of a stable release i would love to see it.

Hazzie.

>  from:    "[-SF-]Shockwave" <shockwave at clanshortfuse.com>
>  date:    Thu, 05 Sep 2002 15:32:08
>  to:      mohaa at icculus.org
>  subject: Re: [mohaa] Server control programs for Linux
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> I have been working for the last week or so on creating a server control program for Linux.  This program is written in Perl and has been tested on a stock RedHat 7.2 Linux server.  So far I have been able to do the following:
> 
> (1)  The server program launches the game and can be used in conjunction with "screen" to allow flexibility for people using SSH to connect to the game server remotely.
> 
> (2)  A multiple line server message printed to the game console can be automated to broadcast at regular intervals for every player to see.  This is good for advertising the server name & IP, policies, and email of the server admin.
> 
> (3)  Using the client program I wrote, multiple users can connect to the server program via sockets and issue commands to the server.
>     (a) each user connected gets to see the server output
>     (b) each user can see what the other users have sent to the server
> 
> 
> I originally got the idea when Ryan mentioned using named pipes and was prompted to start work on the project after I realized that the backspace key won't work when trying to edit console messages.  I hate fat-fingering messages and not being able to correct them.  The project is still under development and all of the settings are built into the program itself at this stage.  I intend to allow settings to be specified via configuration files so the program code won't need to be adjusted, however I have been more focused on getting the whole thing to actually work first.  Currently I am working on the following functionality:
> 
> - individual dynamic filtering of server output to clients to keep feedback uncluttered and customizable
> - ability to easily kick players by their player number rather than typing their names in quotes
>     (I hate trying to type in those long names with weird characters while the server output spams my console)
> - monitoring of team killers for warnings and autokick
> - ability to ban players by IP address
> 
> I haven't noticed any server messages that indicate what team a player is on, but the score column seems to offer a possible clue.  I haven't thoroughly experimented with it, but it appears that members of the same team share the same score value.  If I can separate the player list by those values while monitoring kill messages, it might be possible to use that information together to determine if a player has killed someone on his own team.  If anyone knows of a better way to determine this information, please contact me.
> 
> If anyone has any other ideas regarding functionality or any other suggestions I'm interested.  With any luck and barring any snags, I'll have most of it done soon.
> 
> 
> Shockwave