Game Server On Irc Machine

[Hooman]

A copy of the Game Server has been setup on the IRC machine.

I'll probably set it as the default server during the next update. For now though, I'm mostly just telling everyone so they can use it as a backup in case the other one goes down. I don't recommend changing any settings at the moment, as a game hosted on one server will not be visible to people using the other server. I figure this should change during a version upgrade when the new version becomes incompatible with the old version and everyone is forced to upgrade at the same time.

There are two main reasons for doing this. One is that the IRC machine has a static IP address and so it won't move around on you. The current server is on a machine with a dynamic IP address, although, the IP address probably hasn't changed in about a year. The other reason is that the machine currently hosting the game server is going to be replaced sometime in the near future. When that happens, the game server will probably be down for at least a few minutes and I wanted to have a backup running. The interruption should be short, and the default game server will stay running at the current IP until at least the next Outpost 2 release.

If you need to manually change settings, just edit Outpost2.ini, look for the [NetFix] section and change the server address to:
GameServerAddr = "irc.outpost2.net"


In other news, when the game server machine gets replaced, the older copy of the game server for the 1.3.4 R2 version will go down. It will not be restarted. If you're still using 1.3.4 R2 for multiplayer, you'll have to upgrade to 1.3.5 Beta 2 (or later?) to use the game server. If this is a problem for anyone, then let me know and I may considering looking into starting up another copy of the old version.

The SVN server will also be unavailable during the transition period.
 

[Brazilian Fan]

Why not use DynDNS (because it's free) to avoid changing server DNS? Or even an OPU subdomain (game.outpostuniverse.net) so that you can update the game server address whenever its needed, without too much hassle for players?

[Hooman]

It basically does have a subdomain at the irc.outpost2.net location. I suppose we could give it a unique name, just in case we wanted to run the IRC server on a separate server sometime.

Using DynDNS doesn't really avoid the problem of an IP address changing. From what I gather, DNS changes can take a while to propagate. This could mean service interruptions while the change is taking place. In some cases, it can take a couple days for DNS changes to be felt in some parts of the internet. Moving the server to the IRC machine gives it a fixed IP address, which avoids the whole problem.

Plus, the game server was going through some experimental phases, and having it where it is now made it easy to change and test. That and the IP address was known to typically not change for 6 months to a year at a time meant most dynamic IP address problems were avoided in practice. There was also no alternative static IP address machine that could host it at the time it was developed.

At any rate, there is little point now. Why bother people with changing the server address to a domain name if it's just going to be moved in the hopefully not too distant future. It'll be easier to change this if we just update the download package for the next version rather than bother people with changing the current version.
 

[Brazilian Fan]

True, but it I still think it may be useful to have a dedicated subdomain. It's easier to manage when you have the main game server temporarly/permanently down.

[Leviathan]

Good work