Multiplayer after GameSpy - Lobby and NatNeg

[Smittey]

Neither NatNeg nor Pitboss are directly affected by this.

Ah, good to know it's not a complete doomsday. Thanks for all your efforts and sorry about those miscreants.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

As some have noticed, I am sunsetting the multiplayer lobby. Unfortunately there are continuous issues with misconduct and I cannot afford to moderate the community. So far, I have stopped registrations which makes that somewhat easier, but this is clearly not a sustainable mode of operation for a community.

I have hosted this service for about nine years, spent countless of hours on the open source code of the services and housands of EUR in the server. Both of which are supported by various contributors, for which I and the community are very grateful. And all of that is fine and I would happily continue to do so, despite not having played a single game in the lobby. However, I will not tolerate the continuous hate speech on the server, nor will I continue to spend time dealing with it. This is not related to an isolated incident or a particular individual, but a continuous and consistent issue.

Neither NatNeg nor Pitboss are directly affected by this.

very unfortunate, i've played dozens of games there organized by my discord server, and in the past with my brother and IRL friends. I had donated $50 to server costs previously, which is probably no more than a month of runtime, so thank you for keeping it up for so long.

Is there a way to just block the chat functionality to keep it hosted? If you are past the point of no-return on this, would I be able to set it up using the code on github and natneg?

[gregg_bandy]

Dang. I was wondering why I couldn't get multiplayer to work. Racist people suck. I hope it'll be possible to set this up and host privately in the future. If not, LAN parties ~

[Smittey]

I hope it'll be possible to set this up and host privately in the future.  If not, LAN parties ~

Yeah, the code is public. Kvalitet hosted his own server on 86.38.156.68 and people tested that it worked, but not sure if it's still/always available. And you still can use Zulan (or any other Gamespy replacement that all participants use) for NATNeg while playing through Radmin/Hamachi/ZeroTier/whichever VPN you like - might just use public IP.

Unfortunately there are continuous issues with misconduct and I cannot afford to moderate the community. 

Btw, can we have a list of banned offenders' nicknames and maybe some other information if it's being kept? Maybe some people from the teamer community could maintain order with registration reenabled once a month/week?

[Zulan]

very unfortunate, i've played dozens of games there organized by my discord server, and in the past with my brother and IRL friends. I had donated $50 to server costs previously, which is probably no more than a month of runtime, so thank you for keeping it up for so long.

Is there a way to just block the chat functionality to keep it hosted? If you are past the point of no-return on this, would I be able to set it up using the code on github and natneg?

Your support for the project is really appreciated.

i've considered blocking chat. But then again, we already had racist game names. And I know that the chat was used as intended - to organize global games and to discuss games afterwards.

But not all is lost. Right now it looks like there will be a successor server and I am supporting the volunteers who are setting it up best I can. And I will also keep running the NatNeg and PB servers, which are independent and much more difficult to setup / hardware hungry.

Btw, can we have a list of banned offenders' nicknames and maybe some other information if it's being kept? Maybe some people from the teamer community could maintain order with registration reenabled once a month/week?

I'm afraid I can't share the user list and ban list for privacy reasons. Keep in mind that I had to decide on bans without a well-defined process. I think it's best to start from scratch. The community is going to need proper moderation anyway. And the registration is really straightforward also.

[Smittey]

I'm afraid I can't share the user list and ban list for privacy reasons. Keep in mind that I had to decide on bans without a well-defined process. I think it's best to start from scratch.

Well, people are not in a hurry to migrate and some had a backup account or two, which are being shared now, so I'd rather not let in one of those banned back on your server.

Right now it looks like there will be a successor server and I am supporting the volunteers who are setting it up best I can.

Do you mean Kvalitet or someone else? Does that mean there will be an executive with the new IP?

[Zulan]

Unfortunately I have had to finally shut down the GameSpy replacement lobby server. Again neither PB nur NatNeg are affected.

I hope that someone can pick it up with proper moderation.

[Smittey]

I hope that someone can pick it up with proper moderation.

Kvalitet somewhat did on 86.38.156.68, though sometimes there are hiccups. Was he the one you meant before?

Attached below are a hosts file and an .exe with Gamespy address assigned, use either, but if you keep Zulan's hosts, it can interfere with .exe - keep that in mind and clear/replace/# out if you want to use the new lobby, but still require Zulan's NATNeg or PB. Also sometimes you can't connect without administrator right. If anything happens to Kvalitet's server, I've made a hosts file for OpenSpy.net, but only for BTS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zfuU6uLwF8&t=84s