Gamespy services shutdown June 30th

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Arokhs Twin
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Gamespy services shutdown June 30th

Post by Arokhs Twin »

I came across this news post on ModDB http://www.moddb.com/news/50-ea-games-l ... yer-online which says that Gamespy is shutting down their hosted game server services altogether.

As Drakan uses the Gamespy master server it will loose multiplayer support & you will be unable to use the services to find games plus the built in game finder will cease to work. There is still a workaround though - you will need to know the IP addresses of game servers. There's a few I know of but the IP addresses are subject to change so it would help if people who host servers inform me of a change.

I know many of you regulars already do this to get around the game crashing when trying to contact the master server - especially if you don't delete the mplayer stuff from the config file. The services will be shut down on June the 30th but if anyone does host a server please let me know so I can keep the site updated for less frequent players. I have checked the servers I have in my list from time to time and I never see any players on them. It is very rare I see anyone on my server and it is visible on gamespy (at least it is when I check it) so does anyone play this game online anymore?

UPDATE: Date is now May 31st 2014 - after this date Drakan multiplayer will no longer work as it did - you will have to know the IP address of a server to be able to play it online.
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peterpp_bg
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Re: Gamespy services shutdown June 30th

Post by peterpp_bg »

The GameSpy servers are down and as a result there is no way to get a current list of active Drakan servers.
Has anyone got compatible Master Server application (program) for Windows or Linux, so we can look at running it 24/7 and redirecting Drakan to register with this server.

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Arokhs Twin
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Re: Gamespy services shutdown June 30th

Post by Arokhs Twin »

Not as of yet. There is a list of servers on the main site that can be added manually however it was last updated a while ago. I run a server but recently it keeps crashing and I have yet to solve that issue. There was never anyone playing on it (well maybe the odd player once in a blue moon)

Andrey and some of the others who wrote the unofficial patches may come up with something as they are programmers.
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UCyborg
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Re: Gamespy services shutdown June 30th

Post by UCyborg »

There is no need to reinvent the wheel. The guys behind Qtracker (server browser application) already have their own emulated GameSpy servers up. Just open your Drakan.cfg file, find MasterServerList line and make it look like this:

set MasterServerList "gsm.qtracker.com:27900"

And that's all there is to it. Fire up the server and others should be able to find it using Qtracker, assuming you have everything configured correctly on your side.

The only issue that remains is that the in-game browser still works only for LAN servers because the way it queries internet servers is by downloading servers.txt file with the list of servers from some obsolette non-existent address at ign.com and parsing it (which obviously doesn't work anymore), instead of sending request packet for server list directly to master and parsing the response, which is how games usually do that.
Last edited by UCyborg on Fri Sep 25, 2015 5:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Gamespy services shutdown June 30th

Post by UCyborg »

I think I figured out how Drakan retreives master server list. It was connecting to ign.com with default settings because the default address master.mplayer.com redirects to http://www.ign.com/. Anyway it takes the list from:

master ip/hostname:80/drakan/servers.txt

So if we set MasterServerList to gsm.qtracker.com:27900, it will try to get them from http://gsm.qtracker.com/drakan/servers.txt, but the actual list is at http://www.qtracker.com/server_list_det ... ame=drakan.

That means if we somehow redirect the game to the correct address, we might be able to get fully functional in-game server browser.
Last edited by UCyborg on Fri Sep 25, 2015 5:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"When a human being takes his life in depression, this is a natural death of spiritual causes. The modern barbarity of 'saving' the suicidal is based on a hair-raising misapprehension of the nature of existence." - Peter Wessel Zapffe

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Arokhs Twin
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Re: Gamespy services shutdown June 30th

Post by Arokhs Twin »

I don't know much about programming but the redirect would require some changes to the game code I think. I updated my drakan.cfg file to the settings you suggested as well.
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Re: Gamespy services shutdown June 30th

Post by peterpp_bg »

Confirmed Qtracker works.
Not sure why UCyborg put "gsm.qtracker.com:27900", I think it should be "master.qtracker.com:27900". I tried both and they both work. I simply thought it was logical to stick with the original format which was "master.gamespy.com:27900".
The Drakan server runs fine for me and doesn't crash. I'm with Drakan patch 445. I have NOT installed any of the later patches (like AIO, 10-th anniverssary, etc.).
I only run the server occasionally on Saturday nights, about 20:00 GMT till about 22:00.
My IP address changes from time to time so there is no point to post it here. Use Qtracker.
I haven't run the server lately, but I may start again, if there are people who want to play. This August it was 15-th year anniversary from the game release in 1999. I was hoping someone may want to play and then I found Gamespy was down.

Great thanks to UCyborg for putting so much effort into fixing the game.

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Re: Gamespy services shutdown June 30th

Post by UCyborg »

gsm.qtracker.com is actually an alias for master2.qtracker.com. Anyway, the actual server behind those names was suggested here: http://www.qtracker.com/master-gamespy.php If you look at any game which requires modifying hosts file, you can see the IP address 65.112.87.186. Both gsm.qtracker.com and master2.qtracker.com resolve to that IP (server), so that's why I suggested it. But yeah, the server at master.qtracker.com also works, so if you put both addresses in Drakan.cfg and game server will send heartbeats to both. Might be useful if one of them is down, I don't know.

BTW, I've been messing with in-game server browser today and it was possible to implement quick and dirty hack for redirecting game to the correct address with the server list, but the game didn't parse it correctly. I thought it probably expects space instead of colon for IP:port separator, judging by server.txt it creates when you manually add server address, but changing that in data it received from Qtracker didn't fix it.

I also upgraded to Windows 8.1 previous month and there are some compatibility quirks, some of which I've managed to work around with Microsoft's compatibility hacks. Visible window borders in fullscreen, low frame-frate (20s), changing gamma in-game not doing anything, VSYNC always being on in fullscreen mode regardless of the setting, dedicated server console freezing after few seconds of operation and staying frozen. Fortunately, all problems can be easily solved, except VSYNC and no window borders in windowed mode caused by compatibility fixes. I don't think VSYNC is bad for a game like Drakan, but inability to turn it off can prevent having fun with glitches caused by too high frame rate. And in windowed mode, while the game can run at higher FPS, Windows' Desktop Window Manager is still hindering mouse responsiveness by its own VSYNC.

Fixing at least some of these problems by patching game binaries, to make it cooperate with Windows nicer would be preferable. As always, I'll release the next patch if/when I figure something out. No ETAs 8)
"When a human being takes his life in depression, this is a natural death of spiritual causes. The modern barbarity of 'saving' the suicidal is based on a hair-raising misapprehension of the nature of existence." - Peter Wessel Zapffe

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