Colored server names

[Freddy]

Hi,

I hope I am posting this at least partially in the right category. I started hosting a server 24/7 and the first thing that caught my eye was the colored names. So I messed around with it got it just like I wanted, but two things still bug me.

1) The color codes are... well... wierd. For some reason it's not the anticipated RGB but instead is BGR (the whole format is "[$BBGGRR]"). Why is that? Kinds of takes the simplicity out of proper coloring.

2) Not many servers have pretty colorful names (I understand some people prefer more plain stuff and think of this differently) and I wonder if it is because most hosts are the happy-with-plain-names people or just don't know how to use the codes. If it's the latter reason, maybe some info on the website would help (I guess there is none as I searched, but found nothing).

Any thoughts? Do you want more colors in the server list? Or less? Does anyone need help with the color codes?

[Krom]

It's good to see people use coloring system, it adds more fun into the lobby

Color-codes are BGR because thats how they get applied within the games engine (OpenGL uses ABGR format). We didn't looked around when implementing it. So thats how it is

I guess we should remove colorcodes from serverlist at kamremake.com/servers - it clogs the view (I'll ask Lewin when he returns). Other than that I find colors good addition

[Nissarin]

I suppose most server admins just don't care, some perhaps find it unnecessary and more importantly even if it was possible before (colored names) no one really used it, this "fashion" popped up like 2 weeks ago ?

[sado1]

On a related note... if Ernie servers admin is here, please please change the color to something less obtrusive than green lol

[Ben]

Please forgive my ignorance, but how exactly does this sever thing work anyway? Like how do I set one up?

[Krom]

Almost any text in game could be colored with these colorcodes (except for player name, cos only flags color it, and texts typed in yellow and darkbrown (which will just shift lightness and hue, cos coloring works multiplicatively)). Mechanics is embedded right into text renderer, wherever it sees a [#] it applies that color. Some examples: you can colorcode mission briefings, chat messages, any libx files contents in general.

[Ben]

Were you addressing me, Krom? Because (though slightly off topic) I was just wondering what the requirements were for starting a server.

[Krom]

@Ben: You need to start server executable and make sure ports are opened and your IP is accessible (look in remakes server list to have your server listed without exclamation mark).

[Freddy]

@Ben: You need to start server executable and make sure ports are opened and your IP is accessible (look in remakes server list to have your server listed without exclamation mark).

On a related note... My server does have the exclamation mark even though I forward the ports correctly (works fine for other games i hosted on the internet). Any ideas why that could be?

[Krom]

@Freddy: I'm not sure, we better ask Lewin. I can connect to your server without any problem

On a side note, for MentalClan and Ernie: launching 5 servers at once serves no real use, one server is enough for any sane number of players.

[Lewin]

@Ben: You need to start server executable and make sure ports are opened and your IP is accessible (look in remakes server list to have your server listed without exclamation mark).

On a related note... My server does have the exclamation mark even though I forward the ports correctly (works fine for other games i hosted on the internet). Any ideas why that could be?

At the moment our master server is only able to scan port 56789 due to restrictions on outgoing connections at the hosting company (I had to ask for permission to make outgoing connections on port 56789). I've been meaning to fix it for a while, thanks for reminding me Now if the port is not 56789 it does the test on our other host which is allowed to make outgoing connections. Let me know if there are any further problems.

On a side note, for MentalClan and Ernie: launching 5 servers at once serves no real use, one server is enough for any sane number of players.

Yeah one server process is enough really, it will keep opening new rooms up until the room limit you specify.

I guess we should remove colorcodes from serverlist at kamremake.com/servers - it clogs the view (I'll ask Lewin when he returns). Other than that I find colors good addition

Yes I was thinking that myself My first thought was "hmm a regular expression replace would work well here, since we don't want to block stuff like [DE]". Here's the finished product:

  Code:

'/\\[\\$[0-9a-fA-F]{6}\\]|\\[\\]|\[\]/'

It matches [$xxxxxx] or [] (where x is one of 0-9,a-f,A-F). Regular expressions are very powerful, but also very ugly

[Krom]

  Code:

'/\\[\\$[0-9a-fA-F]{6}\\]|\\[\\]|\[\]/'

It matches [$xxxxxx] or [] (where x is one of 0-9,a-f,A-F). Regular expressions are very powerful, but also very ugly

That looks ugly indeed!
If you haven't told what it does I wouldn't have guessed, seriously.

Good you've made it

[Freddy]

@Lewin
Yes, I am using a non-default port. But that doesn't explain the problem when I sometimes can't see my server in the list... or is it related? Could changing the port to default help? And also my server log is full of LNet errors, is that normal?

[Lewin]

@Lewin
Yes, I am using a non-default port. But that doesn't explain the problem when I sometimes can't see my server in the list... or is it related? Could changing the port to default help? And also my server log is full of LNet errors, is that normal?

The port you use shouldn't matter at all. Which list do you not see your server on? The http://www.kamremake.com list or the in-game one? If it's the http://www.kamremake.com list then that means your server is failing to register itself with our master server for some reason. If it's the in-game list that could be something else, for example you often can't connect to your own external IP address (at least I can't) which means if you are testing it from the same connection that you host the server on you won't see your own server (it depends how your router is set up). Let me know if it keeps happening.

Some (most) LNet errors are normal, for example when a client forcefully disconnects it triggers an error (which can be safely ignored). If you see "stacktrace" anywhere in the log then a serious error has occured. I should probably make forceful disconnections not show up as "error" because it's a bit confusing... That's just how LNet reports them to us.

[Nissarin]

@Lewin
Which list do you not see your server on? The http://www.kamremake.com list or the in-game one? If it's the http://www.kamremake.com list then that means your server is failing to register itself with our master server for some reason. If it's the in-game list that could be something else, for example you often can't connect to your own external IP address (at least I can't) which means if you are testing it from the same connection that you host the server on you won't see your own server (it depends how your router is set up). Let me know if it keeps happening.

I'm afraid it's some issue with the game client, I don't know if you had any chance of reading what I send you on irc (it was some time ago, so probably not). Anyway it would be nice if someone can confirm it but afaik ingame server list is missing some servers (open KaM and web browser and compare both list). I did some digging (with network sniffer on both client/server side) and it appears that client is terminating connection (server query) during connection phase for no apparent reason. I looked at the source code but I was unable to find any (obvious) bugs, the only thing I can think of is resizing the array containing servers (default 16), they may get copied in the process, perhaps while doing so objects gets actually "destroyed"/"created" again and this leads to the problem, however my knowledge about Object Pascal is limited so it's just a guess..