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

[Zulan]

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'm a bit hesitant to start off with giving out ssh access. For starting I'd prefer to see how it goes and how often that is actually necessary.

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?

It should be possible to convert the saves after the mod merging. I'm wondering what's different about the three mod versions, is it different bug fixes or balancing changes?

[spacetyrantxenu]

I'm a bit hesitant to start off with giving out ssh access. For starting I'd prefer to see how it goes and how often that is actually necessary.

I would be concerned if this was not your answer and think you have it exactly right -- do not give out additional access to server resources until it is proven necessary, and then only do it when you trust the people you're giving access to.

It should be possible to convert the saves after the mod merging. I'm wondering what's different about the three mod versions, is it different bug fixes or balancing changes?

The mod version differences are small XML changes to game features IIRC (enable/disable map trading, tinker with balance, etc).  I don't think we've changed the .dll for quite a while but Krill could probably speak more authoritatively to that point.  With the differences in our currently used mods being XML only I assume that would make merging the mods easier, once the RtR .dll modifications are merged in with your mod.  I don't know anything about converting the saves though, so I leave that to your expertise.

As for which method I prefer it's hard to say.  The easy path is to keep doing what we're doing now, which works fine.  Ignoring the work Caledorn will have to do to set up a replacement server (which isn't nothing, so thanks!), we'd be operating business as usual, which is easy as we all know the processes used to keep the games running and the people who access the server for intervention (reload, setup, etc) know their roles.  On the other hand, the web interface and a more user oriented service model does sound nice.  Many (most?) incidents of admin intervention are eliminated using Zulan's web interface if I'm understanding it correctly, I haven't seen it in action.  The downside would be in the setup phase where we'd be relying on Zulan and Ram to be available to handle setups -- I wouldn't ask or expect them to expand the number of people with admin access to their server, plus we don't know the game setup process anyway so that would be some extra work for them even if game setups is an infrequent task.  Both approaches have merit but my inclination is to stay with what we have because that's easier for me :P  I wouldn't say to let my laziness be a determining factor, though.

[Ramkhamhaeng]

Could someone give me a link to the current DLL source code? I could only find a Zip to the RtR Mod release.

[Krill]

I think everything is on github. I've never messed with the DLL stuff, so I'm not sure what changes were made.

https://github.com/novice-rb/Civ4RealmsBeyondBalanceMod

[Ramkhamhaeng]

I think everything is on github. I've never messed with the DLL stuff, so I'm not sure what changes were made.

https://github.com/novice-rb/Civ4RealmsBeyondBalanceMod

Ok, with this code, I had no problems to merge both mods. : If somebody want try it out:
I've created a test game on pb.zulan.net:2057 , running this mod.
The matching PBSpy (civstats replacement) link is http://civ.zulan.net/pbspy/game/1/

Please note that the zip needs to be extracted into the 'Mods' folder of your game installation, but not under 'My Games'.
(If your RtR-PB's are password protected, you probably know this condition…)

You could also use this on your server, following the install/setup instructions on the Github page.
Unfortunately, the setup is not as handy as wished and requires some computer knowledge.

Edit: The code can be found on https://github.com/YggdrasiI/PBStats/tree/RtR_4.0.0
The patch level is equivalent to RtR_2.8.0.5

[Caledorn]

Based on what has been written here, I assume that the decision is to go with Zulan/Ramk's offer? Just checking since the current server is ending it's service in 13 days :-)

[spacetyrantxenu]

Seems like if anyone has an opinion now would be a good time to hear it. I'm ok going with our own server and continuing with the existing service model. I'm also ok with the offer to go with Zulan/Ramk, with the understanding that I'd be out of the game setup business so we'll be relying on their availability for infrequent service needs.  Both solutions should work fine so I'm not inordinately predisposed toward one over the other. If anyone feels strongly, let's hear it. Otherwise it looks like Caledorn will make the call by virtue of where the game saves end up.

[Caledorn]

I would like to chime in a few things on the Patreon service. If we go with Zulan/Ramk's offer we don't really need the current level of patronage that we have - as a courtesy, I think we should pay $15-20 per month to them - but I'll leave the ultimate decision on that to the community.

If we don't go with Zulan/Ramk's offer, I really need to know this week (preferably before Saturday, as I have a christmas "celebration" stream on YouTube with free key giveaways and stuff on Sunday on my YouTube channel together with my friend), as I would like to have the new server ready for usage before the Christmas week. Service of current game server ends midnight 31.12 CET, so I need everything to be ready by then, and I will have very limited time to configure a Windows Server in the Christmas week itself (dinners, family, friends, all that regular stuff). Otherwise, there may be several days with no service in January, as I would need to wait with the setup until after Jan 3rd.

I don't really feel like just making a decision either, as I'm not the one who pays for this - I would really like the active community players to weigh in their options. To break things down very quickly:

- With Zulan/Ramk's server, we'll have a stable, powerful server running within an already going Civ4 PB community. There's a handy web interface available for restarting/reloading games etc, and also a neat Civstats replacement that I personally think looks amazing. However, for new games to be set up we are dependent upon them to be available for setup (That shouldn't be a major thing, as we don't start *that* many games per year, and if it takes a few days to get a new game running, people in this community is in my experience a very patient group). The only downsides I see to this solution is the set up phase, and that we're losing one PB server community as Zulan/Ramk said themselves. Both of which isn't really anything major.

- With our own server, we'll also have a stable, powerful server running, but it will RB's PB Server. We won't have the web interface (I think we would be allowed to use it, if I recall correctly, but it's Linux based as opposed to us doing things on Windows), but we'll have the same team we're used to dealing with any restarts, reloads and set up of new games. Also there will be little to no delays in setting up the new games as we have a very reliable and dedicated team helping out with the server.

That's it :-)
Costwise, if the community feels my $20 mark is okay, we're looking at basically the same price on both services, so I would discount the costs as a factor. It's purely a matter of what we prefer.

[Old Harry]

I logged into the test on pb.zulan.net:2057 okay, it looks like it's incorporated all the RTR changes. There are some funny-looking icons in the bottom right of the screen and you can't see anyone else's name though.


In my capacity as active community player I think moving to Zulan's server is a good option, although we'll need versions of the mod for the various games we have going on. Currently we've got three live versions running:

PB39 - RtR 2.0.8.3
PB40 - RtR 2.0.8.3
PB41 - RtR 2.0.8.5
PB42 - RtR 2.0.9.2

[Brian Shanahan]

Based on what has been written here, I assume that the decision is to go with Zulan/Ramk's offer? Just checking since the current server is ending it's service in 13 days :-)

Based on what's been written here, I've been saying "muh?" a lot.