The Mess Hall

Kicking of Players for Clan members
Please note: this post is meant for the 5% of server owners who are being dicks, not the 95% who are awesome.

Kicking of Players for Clan members:

This has been requested. While we do want to have some "reserved slots" this effectively requires either a lot of scripting or changes to the base game code.

It is something that is being worked on but it is not finished

Originally we trialed allowing servers to kick out players who had either donated money or were clan members of the owner, to allow space for someone else. Abuse of this became RAMPANT.

Server owners need to start wising up. We are only processing about 20 to 30% of server requests for hosting due to the massive volume of offers. The clan servers need to realize they cannot just do whatever they feel like because their actions affect the rest of the game and the servers.

Think about it, if we let server owners do this, what is stopping them from kicking someone who just killed them? What is to stop them kicking people for arbitrary reasons? Who polices this? The policy is in place because it makes sense.

We've been pretty lenient so far, but it is causing us a lot of work to deal with these people being difficult and it has delayed development. Please try and think how hard our job is to balance everything, and realize that if your clan/group is asking for exceptions then there are hundreds of other people probably asking too. Also realize that we have been burned several times, resulting in the need for costly and time consuming backups to be restored.

The current rules weren't picked out of nowhere, we know they aren't perfect. We're just trying to make the best of the situation and keep things going.

RE: Kicking of Players for Clan members
There is nothing pompus about it, the issues are:

- We all share the same central server. That means giving access to that central server to a game server is taking on risk.

- We only have a finite amount of administrative resources. Therefore we have to perform triage and choose the easiest, most time-effective servers who cause us the least issues.

- We have only a finite amount of resources on the central server. The impact of a server with five players is about the same as the impact of a server with 50 players as the connection is left open. So we prioritize those servers who allow the maximum amount of players.

We are not "treating server owners this way" because we can "afford" too. We are doing this because it is the only way we can cope. Please, walk a mile in my shoes for a moment. We have grown from ZERO players to SIXTY THOUSAND players in FOUR WEEKS. We are getting an average of an email every two minutes. It is only going to get worse, and that means we will probably have less resources and have to make even tougher calls.

We don't really have an option, it is either we do this or we simply close the whole project down for a few weeks. We originally wanted to release the server files publically and open the whole project up, but the incidents of hacking we were having from several existing server owners made us realize just how bad this would become if we released it.

I really, really think many people underestimate just how stressful this kind of project is, and just how much strain it places on resources. They demand responses to emails immediately and they want us to customize everything to meet their demands. They get angry when we won't agree to setup 10 or 20 slot private servers. Shortly, because we can't cope with the existing system, we will probably begin denying server setup for any boxes that cannot host a minimum of one 50 slot server. Priority will be given to big servers that can host 2 or more. This is a matter of triage. I mean, if someone else has a real suggestion - I'm all ears. But we have to prioritize somehow.

Please bear in mind, I rent several servers myself and have donated money to many of the servers donation funds. My entire spare time is committed to the project, and I have only insisted on one real rule for server owners:

Everyone gets equal, fair, access to the world

Let's kick off March with two new features added in BE Server v1.131 and BE Client v1.151:


1. New script detection/logging that is fully customizable by server admins

You can now easily set up your BE Server to scan clients for certain strings that are used in script attacks on your server, for example "createVehicle", "serverCommand", "setVehicleInit" or anything else that could potentially be exploited on your server. All you need to do to enable this is create a file called "scripts.txt" in your BE working directory (in the game's application data / profiles / BEpath folder, not the install folder - where bans.txt is placed as well) with per-line entries formatted as follows:
Code:

[type] [string to search for]

The following types exist:
1 - Log detections to "scripts.log"
2 - Log detections to server console
4 - Kick for detections ("Script Restriction #X")

When logging detections, the BE Server logs an extract of 100 characters of the script being executed showing the detected string. You can combine types by adding them, so e.g. 3 causes positive detections to be logged both to scripts.log and server console, 5 causes detections to be logged to scripts.log and kicked for at the same time, 7 combines all methods, etc..

See the following random scripts.txt example (please do not use the list below unless You know what's command for/why):
Code:

1 createVehicle
1 setVehicleInit
3 serverCommand
4 godmode
3 Bo_Mk82
3 #shutdown
7 disableUserInput true


2. Messaging players via RCon

RCon admins can now directly send in-game messages to players using the new "say" command:
Code:

say [player #] [message]

If player # is -1, the message is sent to all players. Otherwise the message is sent privately to the specific player. Note that player # is the one shown when entering "players", not the one used by the game itself. Also, keep in mind that only in-game players can be messaged, not those that are still in the lobby.

Example:
Code:

say 11 hey mate, how are you doing today?


I hope you like these new features. Feedback of any sort, as always, is welcome.