Dedicated server software

[weerwolf]

As clan-founder & Trackmania hoster of a middle-large clan in the Netherlands i am curious about the beta's dedicated.
Since the experience of the dedicated server software on Trackmania forever that took a while to run stable, im curious when these beta's are launched. I guess it gonna be at the same time. Of course i would like to see a stable transition to Trackmania 2. Ofcourse i hope to hear in time what the specs are for running this on Linux systems.

[Makikou]

Im pretty confident that the Dedicated Server software will progress within the game's beta.

[Sammon]

It certainly did during the Forever betas, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was stable. What was surprising was that the dedicated servers during that time also had Aseco.

As a server operator myself for my time and another team, I'm eager to set up a server when it gets released.

[w1lla]

Aseco was first because AM and Xymph where in the alpha stage. As aseco now is slowing down development the quest for first server software will be between xaseco and gaseco.

Hope there will be a new gamemode called co-op in the dedicated. Which is like team rounds but only based upon quests or rounds.

[Makikou]

Aseco was first because AM and Xymph where in the alpha stage. As aseco now is slowing down development the quest for first server software will be between xaseco and gaseco.

Hope there will be a new gamemode called co-op in the dedicated. Which is like team rounds but only based upon quests or rounds.

And possibly FAST

[w1lla]

yes Fast too. Well as you can see Fast is evolving to the more modes that i think are coming up as the rest is more devolving after fast.

[weerwolf]

Or....... They join up to one team -Wonder what that would produce..
Either a brilliant system or a fight D But seriously, a new game, a new form of scripting and what about the servercallls.. dunno what nadeo would built in it standard. I even guess that the dedicated software could be universal for the 3 gametypes and maybe in future lets you switch TM & SM maps.........

[svens]

Or....... They join up to one team -Wonder what that would produce..
Either a brilliant system or a fight D

Haha, I guess it's going to end in a fight.. Especially with Gekko praying his ladder system all the time .

But seriously, a new game, a new form of scripting and what about the servercallls.. dunno what nadeo would built in it standard. I even guess that the dedicated software could be universal for the 3 gametypes and maybe in future lets you switch TM & SM maps.........

I also managed some Trackmania servers, especially relay servers for matches and did some programming, like for example the serverviewer you see below or some custom manialink score displays, etc.

What I really don't like is that there's absolutely no reliable documentation when programming something for Trackmania. Sure, you can list all xmlrpc methods and get a short description of them but this is not always enough. And when it comes to callbacks, it gets worse. It's no problem to find out what you need for a simple serverviewer, but for bigger things, especially modifications on the server side you need to know much more. You'll end up reading code from FAST or (X)Aseco and start to wonder why these guys knew how it works.
The same applies for manialinks, I still don't know how the correct syntax and those style/substyle combinations have been found.
Of course I don't expect something as perfect as the Valve Developer Wiki, but a bit more would really be appreciated (by at least me ).
This way I got the feeling that there are only like 6-10 people from the community with a complete overview over the dedicated server, the creators of the server controllers.

[Xymph]

Aseco was first because AM and Xymph where in the alpha stage. As aseco now is slowing down development the quest for first server software will be between xaseco and gaseco.

And possibly FAST

Definitely FAST too, but a lot depends on our available spare time, and for both Slig and me goes that we have significant less of that than two+ years ago during the TMF alpha/beta, due to our current full-time jobs. So we'll have to see... it's certainly going to be interesting to see how the dedicated has evolved, and how the common aspects between TM2/QM/SM affect our server controllers.

[Xymph]

What I really don't like is that there's absolutely no reliable documentation when programming something for Trackmania. Sure, you can list all xmlrpc methods and get a short description of them but this is not always enough. And when it comes to callbacks, it gets worse. It's no problem to find out what you need for a simple serverviewer, but for bigger things, especially modifications on the server side you need to know much more. You'll end up reading code from FAST or (X)Aseco and start to wonder why these guys knew how it works.

The same way, by studying the methods/callbacks lists, experimenting, and learning from other people's code.

The same applies for manialinks, I still don't know how the correct syntax and those style/substyle combinations have been found.

That would be Smurf's secret but ISTR it involved a lot of .exe searching and, again, experimenting.

Of course I don't expect something as perfect as the Valve Developer Wiki, but a bit more would really be appreciated (by at least me ).

Yeah, you can't expect a small team like Nadeo to produce a lot of documentation on their tools, especially not in advance - they've got games to build and release. Besides, the Valve Wiki is a major community effort too, and while there is a TM Wiki, that never saw much activity. So your disappointment regarding this issue should be directed as much at the TM community as at Nadeo.

This way I got the feeling that there are only like 6-10 people from the community with a complete overview over the dedicated server, the creators of the server controllers.

There are probably quite a few more. This stuff is indeed not trivial, but it's not rocket science either that you'd need to be John Carmack for to fully understand.