Coming back - what's the current status of public servers?

[Atan]

Coming back to take a look at how crossfire is doing now (I used to play it about 10 years ago or so), I have a question regarding the current status of public servers.

As far as I could see, good old metalforge is still there, though I wasn't yet able to find any non-afk player. However, it runs server version 1.12-beta whereas all other servers on the list run 1.70+. Of those, some seem to be just test servers with weird configurations (e.g. auto-pickup won't work or every object on the floor is echoed as if for debugging), others seem fine but empty of players.

So I have two questions really:
- why is metalforge not running a more recent server version?
- is any of the other servers permanent enought to be a good place to play once in a while, trusting that the character will still be there?

[Leaf]

So I have two questions really:
- why is metalforge not running a more recent server version?

Guild maps in the current releases (after the 1.12 release candidate) are not compatible with the 1.12 and earlier map sets. This requires all items to be moved out of all guild maps (main hall, storage map, big chest, etc.) or else those items will be lost. This takes player cooperation or a whole lot of work by the DM.

At the time of the proposed 1.12 release, it was decided to drop the branches/1.x development in favor of moving ahead with the trunk code base, with the idea of back porting back to branch. Back porting did not happen. Decision was made to focus on the trunk development instead.

Trunk code base, especially in regards to key bindings and experience table, has change drastically between the trunk code base and branch.

All players will lose skill levels and overall levels when the new server code is applied.

All players will encounter some sort of problems with key bindings - testing has showed the bindings will break their character unless they completely purge all key bindings, including movement keys.

Code changes, monster and items stats, etc. have changed the overall gameplay between trunk code base and branch code base. Up until this year, there was enough players purposely playing on Metalforge to keep it around at the current release.

Heavy work load for me has kept me from going through the massive process of upgrading the server - which involves moving all the game content to a new physical server.

- is any of the other servers permanent enought to be a good place to play once in a while, trusting that the character will still be there?

Invidious2 and Netarbeiter have been around for many years and show no signs of going offline at any point.

Steel Ministry and Shinobu are new as of this year. They also show all indications of being long term servers.

[Atan]

Thanks a lot for the detailed reply, Leaf!

Also, on a different but related note, I managed to compile and run crossfire server 1.71 on ArchLinux. Having been through that, here's a suggestion to make it easier for future visitors to the crossfire website who wish to do the same: in http://crossfire.real-time.com/server/index.html , the "arch" file should also be mentioned and pointed to. Since there's presently no ArchLinux specific or generic linux section on the wiki, I started from that page, and it took some time before I figured out I needed to download a third file (besides server and maps, which are there) and from where.

On a related related note, I'm willing to write an "ArchLinux and others" section for the page http://wiki.metalforge.net/doku.php/linux of the crossfire wiki, but I don't have write access on that wiki. Should I post a text here so that someone who does can copy/paste it there?

In fact, I'm going to go ahead and do it:

// START WIKI PROPOSAL
Archlinux and others

1) Client

The latest crossfire client source tarball can directly be grabbed from http://crossfire.real-time.com/ to be decompressed and comipled on other non-rpm, non-deb Linux distributions. It makes sense to install the client system-wide, so any user can launch it and use it to access either the local server (if installed) or remote servers.

To install it system-wide, one may:

• download the client tarball from http://crossfire.real-time.com/clients/ ... lient.html to /tmp

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cd /tmp

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tar xjf crossfire-client-1.XX.X.tar.bz2

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cd /tmp/crossfire-client-1.XX.X

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./configure && make 

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sudo make install

2) Server

For the server, three source tarballs are needed: the server itself, the corresponding "arch" files, and the corresponding maps files. All three should be available as tarballs pointed to from the latest release anouncement on the homepage of http://crossfire.real-time.com/

The server should not be launched as root, but as another user. It therefore makes sense to actually install the whole package under that user's home directory.

To install as a user, e.g. under /home/myuser/crossfire , one may:

• grab all three aforementioned tarballs and place them in /tmp

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cd /tmp

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tar xjf crossfire-1.XX.X.tar.bz2

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cd /tmp/crossfire-server-1.XX.X

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tar xjf crossfire-arch-1.XX.X.tar.bz2

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vim configure.ac [or replace vim by your favorite editor]

• replace "AC_PREFIX_DEFAULT([/usr/games/crossfire])" by "AC_PREFIX_DEFAULT([/home/myuser/crossfire])" or whatever you choose

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 sh autogen.sh

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make && make install

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cd /home/myuser/crossfire/var/crossfire

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tar xjf crossfire-maps-1.XX.X.tar.bz2

N.B.: For the autogen.sh step, libtool is needed. On ArchLinux, install it with

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sudo pacman -S libtool

Then to launch the server,

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  cd /home/myuser/crossfire/bin

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  ./crossfire-server

And to configure it, go to /home/myuser/crossfire/etc/crossfire and edit the configuration files located there.
// END WIKI PROPOSAL