128.simutrans.entropy.me.uk

[Guillaume]

I think that public interchange will be construct when players want, where they want, and how they want 
I can't upload it because I don't know how to do it, and we need to fix some things more before starting.

[Fifty]

Okay, I have made some more modifications based off of G's revision with the 95 km/h roads. Here's what I've done:

-Added a textile chain to the shopping mall chain
-Added 3 sawmills and 2 paper mills near timber growing areas per moblet
-Changed the location of two interchanges on the autobahn at 395, 92 and at 467, 389.
-Removed and downgraded some roads around that I felt were redundant

Please share your thoughts, particularly on the roads; I hope I did not remove too many. Likewise, make sure that I did the interchanges right.

I *think* the industry is done.

http://simutrans-germany.com/files/upload/Swiss_MP_50modv8.1.sve

[Guillaume]

Ok, I let some 65 km/h roads for very low trucks and buses, but yes the players will built it themself  
Autobahns are ready now.
Industries are ready for a good start.
Maybe we should make some east cities larger to allow early good passenger network... Or maybe not  

EDIT : maybe set the open page on a particular point and make a readme with rules.

[moblet]

We've done some good work here, let's just run it and see how it goes. As we will have public player powers we can grow cities artificially if we need to. Once we have a better idea of what is our "perfect map" we can refine this savegame and replace it on the server.

I have set the opening scene and some passwords, will PM the passwords and request Timothy to upload once they've been tested. I've not placed any signs at the opening scene yet, we can easily do that as we go along, and it will be easier to direct players here once we know the name of the server.

[Sephiroth]

Package to play on this server.

http://download-gratuitos.blogspot.com/2011/08/simutrans-11001-online-servidores.html


Edit by Timothy:

You don't need to download anything except the stable for your OS and the pakset linked to in the first post of this thread! Please read the first post for instructions for playing on this server.

[moblet]

Just an observation from how the current game is evolving - taxiways bordering the motorway will also protect it from players connecting to it wherever they want.

[Vonjo]

Just an observation from how the current game is evolving - taxiways bordering the motorway will also protect it from players connecting to it wherever they want.

No, it will not. Anyone can delete either the taxiway and even the road wherever they want.
However I have just found that we can protect the road from players by electrifiying the road and replace the taxiway with electrified rail.

I think the 95km/h road need both protections (rail and electrification) too, and the 65km/h intercity road also need to be electrified.

Moblet, congratulations for your 100th post.

[Guillaume]

I built the 95km/h road not only to connect cities but also to connect industries, so players need access to these roads. So I think protection for 95km/h roads are awful and useless.
For motorway, making electrification on railway for protection is... awful sorry    We can explain to players that they can't connect to motorway except on the existing interchanges. If they don't respect this rule : admins should destroy it. And we can keep the old taxiway, it's not awful and unostentatious, but enough to dissuade players from doing new interchanges.

[Vonjo]

How about road electrification to avoid abusive player from deleting the road?
This will allow troleybus to pass too.

[Guillaume]

Well, we want a realistic map... and we can let some liberty to the players too 
A too restricted game is not good.
This is what I think, but if others think in a different way... I'll do it, but we need more opinions.

[moblet]

I think electrified road bordered by electrified rail is an unnecessary eyesore. We will have active public players able to delete any unauthorised connections, and because ways are identified we will know who did it. I was wrong that a public taxiway provided protection, but it still shows players where they can and can't go. This should be enough.

[Fifty]

Client stayed paused for a few minutes during a join. I eventually closed Simutrans and the server is now down.

Timothy (no pressure, thank you for allowing us to make a map and I know you are moving) but when might you have the new map up?

Whoever is Player 12, please stop blocking other people's vehicles with roadblocks.

[Sephiroth]

the server is closed?

[Ashley]

The new map is up and running now, I'm also going to restart this game with a new larger map.

@Sephiroth - the server is definitely not closed

[Sephiroth]

puts more factories!! has few!

[Dwachs]

Should be back up.

I would love to get any information about crashes of the server. If the server crashes on loading the savegame then please provide that savegame. Is it possible to run the server inside gdb (or any other debugger) to get backtrace information in case of crashes?

[Ashley]

The save games all end up here when the maps are rotated:

http://entropy.me.uk/simutrans/networksavegames/sim128/

The one which caused the crash is probably the 5th August one.

How would I run the server inside a debugger? Would that have any performance impact? I'm already pushing the capability of my server as it is...

[Dwachs]

The one which caused the crash is probably the 5th August one.

I could load this without troubles :/

How would I run the server inside a debugger? Would that have any performance impact? I'm already pushing the capability of my server as it is...

Is gdb available for your server? Running it inside gdb should not drain to much resources (hopefully)

Are crashes related to out-of-memory? Do you experience increasing memory consumption due to save & reload actions?

[Ashley]

I'll get the VPS memory upgraded since it is running at full capacity at the moment.

I think gdb is available, how would I go about running it and what would I need to do in the event of a crash if running this way?

[moblet]

Timothy, would you accept donations for the cost of upgrading/replacing/duplicating/maintaining the Simutrans server you're running? I'm happy to chip in something and maybe a few others would be too.

[Ashley]

Well if people want to make donations I would accept them, but that would be voluntary of course. I'll see if I can set up a paypal donate button or something like that - but really I like to do this for the community

EDIT: Chat logs for pak128 server:

http://entropy.me.uk/simutrans/server/sim128/2011/08/11.html

I need to get the html generation set up to be automatic, and then see if I can produce a page for each server which simply shows the last 24 hours of chat, or last 200 messages or something like that.

[moblet]

I certainly don't want to corrupt your volunteering spirit, especially as things always seem to be more fun when there's no money involved, I'm just conscious of the usual volunteering maxim that volunteers should only be asked to give their time and the use of what they have anyway, and not also become poorer. If you're purchasing and running equipment dedicated to supporting the habits of online users then you're entitled to ask us to help with any real money you have to pay. You of course can choose to bear all those costs yourself, or you could take the donation button route, or you could post on here when you have or are planning a server expense, say what it is and how much, and invite users to contribute to it. I don't know how well donation buttons work, what I heard from Microsoft Train Simulator add-on developers is that hardly anyone uses them - one problem with them is that they are not transparent, the user can't see if you're receiving more or less than your costs.

[Ashley]

The monthly cost I pay for the server is very little compared to the time it takes me to develop the associated software and maintain it. I can't easily put a price on that (and that's mainly why I consider this a volunteer effort). It is my intention to develop a comprehensive suite of management software and then offer a rental model (at cost) for individuals to own a server of their own without any of the management headaches - but that's quite a way off...

I will see if I can find a solution which allows transparency as to the amount donated compared to the running costs. Donations would certainly increase the number of servers I could host at the moment (if there is demand for more!)

[V813]

Package to play on this server.

http://download-gratuitos.blogspot.com/2011/08/simutrans-11001-online-servidores.html

It asks for a password when I extract the files.

[Ashley]

You don't need to download anything from a third-party website, simply download the latest stable (110.0.1) from here for your platform: http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=7025.0

And then use the pakset located here:

http://entropy.me.uk/simutrans/simupakopen128-1150.zip

[moblet]

It is my intention to develop a comprehensive suite of management software and then offer a rental model (at cost) for individuals to own a server of their own without any of the management headaches.

That's an interesting idea, hopefully we can generate enough participation to make that work. One package to consider offering is to include the physical server and internet connection at your end, as some of us do not have access to adequate upload speeds to operate our own server.

I will see if I can find a solution which allows transparency as to the amount donated compared to the running costs.

This would also serve as an experiment to learn to what extent the Simutrans online player community will "automatically" cover its costs.

[jamespetts]

The monthly cost I pay for the server is very little compared to the time it takes me to develop the associated software and maintain it. I can't easily put a price on that (and that's mainly why I consider this a volunteer effort). It is my intention to develop a comprehensive suite of management software and then offer a rental model (at cost) for individuals to own a server of their own without any of the management headaches - but that's quite a way off...

This is indeed interesting - is your software likely to be compatible with Experimental?

[Ashley]

There's no reason why it shouldn't be jamespetts, assuming the log file format is roughly the same and the command line options are identical (and even if they differ, writing a shim for Experimental wouldn't be hard).

Roughly the idea is to have these features:

Log files (with a patch for the game to log the name of players along with chat messages)
Status display (statistics, graphic showing the map etc. - another patch needed to get the map detail but I have that one written already)
Control functions, e.g. (re)start server, stop server, upload a new map etc.
Sysop functions (e.g. kick/ban players etc.)

Some of the functions require support directly from the game via the nettool, this was part of the reason I was so eager to improve that. Others are done via simple parsing of log files and shell scripting. At the moment I'm focusing on the chat log/statistics parsing part of it. Next I'll put in the basic control functions. At that point the entire thing will need to be rewritten using a web framework and I'll include the other functions at that point.

[jamespetts]

Those are interesting ideas indeed! Had you thought of testing as you go along with Experimental as well as Standard? Experimental has always been designed/forked with multi-player in mind. Perhaps you should start a specific thread to document your progress on this very interesting and worthwhile project?

[Ashley]

Do you have a guide or docs on getting the experimental source and compiling it? If the latest builds are fairly stable I can set up a test server (I have RAM to spare now...)

Oh and I'll start a thread when I have something a bit more concrete to show

[jamespetts]

Experimental uses Git instead of SVN for its version control: the Github repository is here. Other than that, compiling Experimental is more or less the same as Standard. Use the Master branch on the Github repository and the version that you build will be the same as the latest released version (currently, 9.12). Do let me know if you have any trouble.

[moblet]

Sysop functions (e.g. kick/ban players etc.)

Ooh! I like, I like.

[Guillaume]

I have a problem, I can't load the savegame from 05-Aug-2011 09:22     ( 2.9M)
The loading bar doesn't finish, and then : simutrans crashes.
Am I alone to have this problem ?

[Vonjo]

EDIT: Chat logs for pak128 server:

http://entropy.me.uk/simutrans/server/sim128/2011/08/11.html

I need to get the html generation set up to be automatic, and then see if I can produce a page for each server which simply shows the last 24 hours of chat, or last 200 messages or something like that.

Hi Timothy,
Thanks for the chat logs. We can check what happens in the game when we are away.
Are you still working on this?
I played with it yesterday and I made an html page which can read all of the csv files direcly using only javascript. So, no server side processing required. Tell me if it interested you, so I can continue developing it, then it can be put on your server.

[Ashley]

Oh, well it's almost done to be honest, I quite like the style of the comments though so I might use that.

Edit: I've set it up to automatically re-parse the last two days of logs every 5 minutes. I'm going to add a page which shows the last 200 messages for each server too but I'll do that tomorrow.