IMPORTANT! Server hosting and costs - possible shutdown of Pitboss hosting!

[T-hawk]

We've come a long way since Sunrise hosted our first pitbosses on a pile of spare parts under his desk that went down with every lightning storm.

[BRickAstley]

Sorry, just catching up to this now.

I'll up my Patreon contribution to help with whatever increased costs are needed to run the games well.

And Discord is great, there's the RB Discord we could even create a private channel in (since it isn't being used for much else right now anyway...) Just give me your username on Discord and I'll add you into the channel.

[Caledorn]

Sorry, just catching up to this now.

I'll up my Patreon contribution to help with whatever increased costs are needed to run the games well.

And Discord is great, there's the RB Discord we could even create a private channel in (since it isn't being used for much else right now anyway...) Just give me your username on Discord and I'll add you into the channel.

We should be good with the current incoming Patreon funds, even with having a buffer in a few months again. :-)

My username on Discord is Caledorn#4441 :-)

[Zulan]

If you are still in need, I can offer hosting PBs on my server that is running PBs for the German civforum.de and also the natneg server. Ramkhamhaeng has offered to do the main technical administration.

One issue might be, that we typically run games with a specific PB mod which helps with civstats alternative and administration - I'm not sure if/what mod you use. But there probably is a technical solution.

[Ramkhamhaeng]

Yes, if you're still in search, I could offer to take over the games.
I assume, we had to merge our code changes into the RB-Mod.


Advantages:
• Server with 6 cores and 12 GB could easily handle a few more PB games.
• Web interface give players access to some administrative tasks like reloading, pause games, etc.
• Server configuration allows faster loading of games.
• Many years experience in PB-Hosting
• Overall hosting costs of both communities sinks.

Neutral/Disadvantages:
• Hosting in Europe
• Global Civ4 PB hoster community shrinks by one. Always a loss

[Caledorn]

If you are still in need, I can offer hosting PBs on my server that is running PBs for the German civforum.de and also the natneg server. Ramkhamhaeng has offered to do the main technical administration.

One issue might be, that we typically run games with a specific PB mod which helps with civstats alternative and administration - I'm not sure if/what mod you use. But there probably is a technical solution.

Yes, if you're still in search, I could offer to take over the games.
I assume, we had to merge our code changes into the RB-Mod.


Advantages:
• Server with 6 cores and 12 GB could easily handle a few more PB games.
• Web interface give players access to some administrative tasks like reloading, pause games, etc.
• Server configuration allows faster loading of games.
• Many years experience in PB-Hosting
• Overall hosting costs of both communities sinks.

Neutral/Disadvantages:
• Hosting in Europe
• Global Civ4 PB hoster community shrinks by one. Always a loss

This is a very generous offer. Europe as hosting site makes no difference as we've hosted the games in a server farm a few hours away from where I live in Norway anyways.

A few questions though - I get the feeling that you have a pretty integrated mod in your games, and that there might be a need for adjusting RBMod, which is the de facto mod that is used in PB games here. Also there is the matter of what would happen if someone were to want to play an unmodded game (however unlikely *that* might be though...).

Since Krill updates RBMod every now and then, how much work would it entail to then adjust each release of RBMod to integrate with your system?
What would you expect the community to pay for our share of this?
You mention the Civstats alternative - which to me looks like a very decent alternative - am I right in assuming that this is part of the modpack you are using?
Would it be a problem to have multiple admins with access to the web interface?
Does the web interface ever fail, meaning that physical access to the server through RDP or similar means is needed?

I'm sure I may have other questions as well, but these are the ones I can come up with right now. Also, as I just provide the server configuration stuff and hosting for the community, while others do the actual administration of the games, I always yield to what the community who actively administer the games and those who play actively wants - so I do not have any personal preference for whether we rent a VPS and host our games the way we've done up until now, or if we should consolidate the hosting together with you guys. The RB community will have to be the ones making the decision - not me. :-)

[Zulan]

This is a very generous offer. Europe as hosting site makes no difference as we've hosted the games in a server farm a few hours away from where I live in Norway anyways.

A few questions though - I get the feeling that you have a pretty integrated mod in your games, and that there might be a need for adjusting RBMod, which is the de facto mod that is used in PB games here. Also there is the matter of what would happen if someone were to want to play an unmodded game (however unlikely *that* might be though...).
Since Krill updates RBMod every now and then, how much work would it entail to then adjust each release of RBMod to integrate with your system?

Ramk can give a more detailed reply but I don' think it is an issue to integrate the mod. We do run PBs with two rather big mods which have the PB-mod integrated.
Unmodded, however, is probably not going to happen. I run headless and without the mod the administration is just painful.

What would you expect the community to pay for our share of this?

I don't expect payment. The entire server costs 50 EUR / month. I use the server myself and used to pay most of it out of pocket. Within the last 15 month I got 42 EUR /month contributions from civforum.de users. Most of it was from one-time contributions though, so I would certainly appreciate contributions. But I'd have to figure out a reasonable way to organize that. Anyway, I intend to keep this running regardless of additional contributions.

You mention the Civstats alternative - which to me looks like a very decent alternative - am I right in assuming that this is part of the modpack you are using?

Yes

Would it be a problem to have multiple admins with access to the web interface?

No

Does the web interface ever fail, meaning that physical access to the server through RDP or similar means is needed?

It's fairly rare, Ramk and I have access if a game crashed hard (or for setting up a new one).

[Ramkhamhaeng]

This is a very generous offer. Europe as hosting site makes no difference as we've hosted the games in a server farm a few hours away from where I live in Norway anyways.

I'm sure I may have other questions as well, but these are the ones I can come up with right now. Also, as I just provide the server configuration stuff and hosting for the community, while others do the actual administration of the games, I always yield to what the community who actively administer the games and those who play actively wants - so I do not have any personal preference for whether we rent a VPS and host our games the way we've done up until now, or if we should consolidate the hosting together with you guys. The RB community will have to be the ones making the decision - not me. :-)

Well, I do not think we can take you out of the equation
If you still want rent a new VPN, as suggested in post #50, I'm pretty sure, the community will select it as preferred solution.
At the moment of our offer, I hadn't read this post... I'm glad to read that RB's Civ4 community has still enough players to get tree server offers within a few days.


To answer your questions about our preffered PB hosting method:

A few questions though - I get the feeling that you have a pretty integrated mod in your games, and that there might be a need for adjusting RBMod, which is the de facto mod that is used in PB games here. Also there is the matter of what would happen if someone were to want to play an unmodded game (however unlikely *that* might be though...).

To overcome some issues of PB hosting was the origin of our mod. For an user, it feels like an unmodded game as it does not change any game mechanics.
It allows an 'easy' integration into other mods, for example it was (partly) integrated into K-Mod and Final Frontier Plus by an other modder.

The most problematic part is joining the DLL code base. I've looked into the Git commits of (an outdated) version of the RtR mod. Some buges was fixed in both mods, which needs to be respected.
I does not expect any unsolvable merging conflicts.

Since Krill updates RBMod every now and then, how much work would it entail to then adjust each release of RBMod to integrate with your system?

If I does not misunderstand the question: You won't adjust each release, but merging the PB Mod features one time into the RBMod code base.

You mention the Civstats alternative - which to me looks like a very decent alternative - am I right in assuming that this is part of the modpack you are using?

Yes, it is part of the modpack. The modified PB server sends periodical it's game state. Unlike other solutions (civstats approach?!) it does not depends on an external analysis of the log files.

Would it be a problem to have multiple admins with access to the web interface?
Does the web interface ever fail, meaning that physical access to the server through RDP or similar means is needed?

As Zulan wrote. You could create accounts on the web interface and then associate multiple of them with a game for administration purposes. Giving the players the opportunity to pause/restart their games resolves most of the restarting requests.
If the PB server process hangs up or fails to restart, we manage the games by hand over SSH. A remote graphical interface is not available on our server.

[Caledorn]

Thank you Zulan and Ramkhamhaeng! :-)

Those answers are very helpful. My final question is in regards to server process hangups, and setting up new games - obviously, we would be at a disadvantage compared to today's solution where we have people both in the US timezone and the EU timezone who can log in and restart the entire server, and also individual games, if needed - although game restarts can usually be done through the web interface as far as I understand from what you've written. However, it would be very inconvenient if we had to rely on you guys every time we set up a new game, so would you grant permission to adequately technically qualified people from the RB community to get SSH access to they can set up games themselves without having to go through you?

I should add that unless someone else than just me from the RB community chimes in here, I suspect we'll go with the VPS solution, even though your offer is *very* generous. I feel that we need several people to chime in that they're comfortable with this solution before I commit to it - and I don't feel that I am qualified to be making the decision, seeing as I haven't participated in an actual PB game for at least a year now, and have just handled the administrative side of the server hosting by transferring money out of the Patreon account to our Paypal account to pay the bills for the server. And that will most likely be my continued role as well, with the exception of setting up and preparing the 2016 server if we go with the VPS solution.

[Old Harry]

Thank you Zulan and Ramkhamhaeng!

Would our existing games (working from three different versions of RTR mod  IIRC) be easy to port to your server? ie "just" merge the mod three times and distribute to players.  Or would the save games fail to load after converting to the new mod?

There is a separate argument for server redundancy, but we have enough people who can set up something new in case of emergency that I don't see that as a problem and actually joining and contributing to a more powerful server sounds sensible.