84 réponses à ce sujet

[OldTimeRadio]

Thanks to all trying to help lessen the impact of this!

This morning, UK game developer Rebellion posted an open letter to their Sniper Elite gaming community, one of the dozens of games who have also been affected by this wide-scale shutoff:

A few weeks ago, the online multiplayer servers for Sniper Elite were suddenly switched off by Glu, the third-party service we had been paying to maintain them.

For the past seven years we have run these servers at a cost to ourselves so that fans of Sniper Elite could continue to play online for free.

This decision by Glu was not taken in consultation with us and was beyond our control.

We have been talking to them since to try and get the servers turned back on. We have been informed that in order to do so would cost us tens of thousands of pounds a year - far in excess of how much we were paying previously. We also do not have the option to take the multiplayer to a different provider. Because the game relies on Glu and Gamespy’s middleware, the entire multiplayer aspect of the game would have to be redeveloped by us, again, at the cost of many tens of thousands of pounds.

While we are not happy about the situation, as an independent developer we simply do not have the resources to pay the massive costs of new servers along with redeveloping a seven-year-old game.

We share the disappointment of fans who have played the game since it was published in 2005. This is not something we intended or wanted to happen, but unfortunately it has been beyond our control. We have always looked to support our fan community and we hope the past seven years of free multiplayer service have been evidence of that - we're sorry that the servers have been shut down in this way.

We would like to thank all the fans who have continued to support Rebellion and Sniper Elite.

It's a shakedown.

Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 07 décembre 2012 - 09:12 .

[henesua]

That makes sense. GLU used to be located in San Francisco, but take a look at where they are hiring. Typical corporation. They are merely chasing profits, and the cheapest labor they can find despite having one of the largest concentrations of developers near their "home office". Not impressed by anything they have created in the past few years either.

[CrispyWalrus]

I don't think the point is GLU hiring policy or corporate history but that on inquiring about restoring multiplayer they were "informed that in order to do so would cost us tens of thousands of pounds a year - far in excess of how much we were paying previously."  This does not bode well for the hope that some NWN PW admins had of seeing if the community could somehow fund the cost to keep the master server online.

Modifié par CrispyWalrus, 07 décembre 2012 - 09:31 .

[henesua]

CrispyWalrus wrote...

I don't think the point is GLU hiring policy or corporate history but that on inquiring about restoring multiplayer they were "informed that in order to do so would cost us tens of thousands of pounds a year - far in excess of how much we were paying previously."  This does not bode well for the hope that some NWN PW admins had of seeing if the community could somehow fund the cost to keep the master server online.

This is not GLU's cost. GLU is the new owner of Game Spy. I was tlaking about GLU not the developer that was being forced by GLU to pay some absurd price for multiplayer services. It has everything to do with GLU's corporate culture. They aren't about making games. Games is simply the flavor on a very thin candy shell covering their greed. Kinda like a fig leaf.

And by "used to be located in SF", I meant they used to actually produce games in SF. I don't know if they have any real staff here any more. I think its just a corporate head quarters.

Modifié par henesua, 07 décembre 2012 - 09:41 .

[NWN_baba yaga]

hmm... i dont like to see my only beloved game die a slow motion death on so many levelst. Now i think they should have just said (back then), f*** it we are over with it and move on you nwn people... All these little punshes into our community p*** me of realy. Dont know what to say... me mad now precious f*** it!!!

p.s.
i hate doom threads but i´m just sick of this and that doesnt work anymore etc...

Modifié par NWN_baba yaga, 07 décembre 2012 - 09:52 .

[SHOVA]

Just to be clear, GameSpy is not the master server, merely a place to see all the servers up and running. Since GameSpy has shut that feature down, PW surfing is now hindered, but still possible, provided you have the direct connect address. PWs are still up, running and can be accessed. Also, the Chat feature of GameSpy seems unaffected.

I am not surprised that GameSpy has done this, Seeing as there is no corporate "champion" for us. Bio is not going to do anything about this, neither is EA, Atari, or WotC, no matter how many signatures on whatever petitions. Face it, There is no money in it for them, its a decade old game. Its on us to fix this, or more likely switch to a community made system that does what GameSpy did. Wonderfully its in the works.

Personally I am rather glad that GameSpy has done this, as it has always been a love/hate affair with them. Think about it, there has only been the set "Types" of Servers for 10 years. Finally with a community made version, we can have a "Adult" channel, a "Kid Friendly" channel, and all the types left out of GameSpy.

[NWN_baba yaga]

they could have just sent out a message that they are shutting their service down with an eta and everything could have been much easier... thats what i dont understand. Just a note, this does not cost any money to tell a community when something is changing. Thats customer support!

[SHOVA]

Customer support denotes that we as customers were buying a service from them.. We didn't pay them a dime..

[NWN_baba yaga]

ok good, maybe i´m realy to old to get the changes that have happened during the past. I remember an installation message for gamespy for many games when i install a game on my HD.. thats advertising... thats equal to money.

[Visavant]

Overwhelming responses from the hosts, thanks for the interest. A common question is if you have to enroll or sign up a server on what I'm working on, the answer is simply nope. As soon as your server announces it's online (turns on) to me will automatically populate the lists. I have a pool of 20 from the PM request to test tonight / tomorrow morning. I'll announce on this thread tomorrow where to obtain more information and how to see the list again.

[SHOVA]

Thanks Visavant!

[Borrie BoBaka]

I'm glad we were able to find a solution that will put more control into the Neverwinter Nights community so that we can have a reliable stability despite BioWare and GameSpy's abandonment of the series. Once this solution is complete we will have to work to spread it to all 2,000 or so NWN1 and NWN2 users so we can continue business as normal.

[luna_hawke]

SkywingvL wrote...

Should GameSpy support be permanently discontinued, there are some options available. I am willing to investigate creating and hosting a barebones emulation BioWare master server that would track connectivity information for game servers that connect to it. Given that the master account database doesn't seem like it is coming back up, it makes more sense to just pass through all auths as succeeded and have the only function of the emulation master server to track which game servers are online.

Seems like a good idea.

[Visavant]

 Major milestone, testing with the first set of servers on NWN1. NWN2 hosts, I'll contact you in the morning.

[eeriegeek]

For a quick way to check NWN servers for basic status (at least from the linux command line), the quakestat program can parse gamespy3 protocol. For example:

quakestat -gs3 www.isleclostridia.net:5121

will produce:

ADDRESS           PLAYERS      MAP   RESPONSE TIME    NAME
www.isleclostridia.net:5121  0/32  0/0  Isle Clostridia v211     40 / 0  PW Story Isle Clostridia (CEP)

It also has an option for reading a list of servers from a file. This could be used to produce a list of live server "up" info given a list of known server addresses using it's -xml option or a bit of scripted parsing. Under fedora core it can be installed with "yum install qstat".

Modifié par eeriegeek, 08 décembre 2012 - 06:08 .

[Melkior_King]

It's possible to redirect the call to the master server by editing your local hosts file but that does require some knowledge of how that file works.

The same is true for GameSpy, but this runs the risk of redirecting all calls to GS which would disable any other games from using GS.

If the URL for GS is different for each game, then editing the local hosts file to point to community made alternatives for the master server and for GS would be an elegant permanent solution.

I'm willing to contribute toward the costs of running such an arrangement.

[Borrie BoBaka]

I'm assisting as much as possible in the development of this solution, though I'm still not sure on the specific costs that may be required to run the emulation. There may not be (optimistically), but if there are, I'm sure donations would be appreciated. I'm certain Visavant will give details as he learns of them.

Thank you everyone for your assistance!

Modifié par Borrie BoBaka, 08 décembre 2012 - 07:46 .

[SkywingvL]

eeriegeek wrote...

For a quick way to check NWN servers for basic status (at least from the linux command line), the quakestat program can parse gamespy3 protocol. For example:

quakestat -gs3 www.isleclostridia.net:5121

will produce:

ADDRESS           PLAYERS      MAP   RESPONSE TIME    NAME
www.isleclostridia.net:5121  0/32  0/0  Isle Clostridia v211     40 / 0  PW Story Isle Clostridia (CEP)

It also has an option for reading a list of servers from a file. This could be used to produce a list of live server "up" info given a list of known server addresses using it's -xml option or a bit of scripted parsing. Under fedora core it can be installed with "yum install qstat".

The advantage of subsuming the master server communication that game servers perform is that the server list becomes self-maintaining once more.

It is a separate problem to distribute this list to clients in game, but at least an automatically updated webpage for servers that participate in a shared master server could be distributed.  Particularly were support for this included with NWNX2/NWNX4, one would hope that reasonable adoption among the major PW's could be expected.

[Rain16]

Here is a list of servers and their direct connect addresses:

http://webcache.goog...d&gl=us&strip=1


It is a cache of the web page that has since been taken down so I'm not sure how long this will be around but if you are looking for direct connect information. There are a lot of servers with their numbers here.

[Borrie BoBaka]

Rain16 wrote...

Here is a list of servers and their direct connect addresses:

http://webcache.goog...d&gl=us&strip=1


It is a cache of the web page that has since been taken down so I'm not sure how long this will be around but if you are looking for direct connect information. There are a lot of servers with their numbers here.

Hard to copy paste that, so here it is in link form:

GameSpy Server List Cache from Rain16
Text-Only Version of Above Link

Alternatively, you may be able to find cached information using Wayback Machine. They don't really delete their archives but the question is when they managed to archive some things, and is it recent enough to be useful.

Modifié par Borrie BoBaka, 08 décembre 2012 - 09:59 .

[Rain16]

Good call Borrie. People will want to click on Text Only Version in the upper right for a more readable version. I used the Wayback Machine for this page as well to no avail. I got three results that didn't show any of the information. These things have a way of disappearing from the web even with the help of the Wayback Machine if publishers wish to do so. See jumptheshark.com for an example of a corp. purchasing a site and killing it's content even blocking the Wayback Machine as well. I can almost hear the big corp of TV Guide's evil laugh when you try to find anything from jumptheshark.com the way it used to be using the Wayback Machine. Try it. If you want another reason to hate big corps.

[Borrie BoBaka]

Updated my post with a link pointing to the Text-Only Version for convenience.

[kamal_]

Borrie BoBaka wrote...

Rain16 wrote...

Here is a list of servers and their direct connect addresses:

http://webcache.goog...d&gl=us&strip=1


It is a cache of the web page that has since been taken down so I'm not sure how long this will be around but if you are looking for direct connect information. There are a lot of servers with their numbers here.

Hard to copy paste that, so here it is in link form:

GameSpy Server List Cache from Rain16
Text-Only Version of Above Link

Alternatively, you may be able to find cached information using Wayback Machine. They don't really delete their archives but the question is when they managed to archive some things, and is it recent enough to be useful.

Since google cache will empty once they re-index, I saved the list.
dl.dropbox.com/u/3879894/nwn1_servers_gamespy_cache.htm

[Visavant]

GS Replacement Project

Modifié par Visavant, 09 décembre 2012 - 07:22 .

[The Amethyst Dragon]

I went ahead and posted information on reddit for those gamers that think this may have killed off multiplayer for NWN.

r/gaming topic