Okay, so I've been playing SWBF1 for years and years, and SWBF2 since it came out, and since playing online has been so dicey for my friends and I we finally decided to try renting a server and doing it that way. However, we've gone through three different companies from whom we've tried to rent servers, and none of them have worked. I'd imagine it's at least mutual fault, their lack of support plus my lack of knowledge and experience, but really we just want to get this server up and running so we can use it. Any input would be appreciated.

Obviously, I'm ridiculously new to this sort of thing, I've never run a game server before, and in fact I've never done online gaming before SWBF.


So, here are the details and the issues:

First of all, we've rented the current server from KillerPings.com, playing Star Wars Battlefront II (v1.1) for PC. There are four players total, with others waiting in the wings to see if the server thing works out; all of us have Cable or DSL connections.

When we started with KillerPings.com, the server showed up on the Multiplayer lists as "killerpings.com". But it only played one map over and over, and the changes I made to the .cfg files didn't seem to show up after I FTPed them -- I changed the gamename to "Gray_Clan", added a password, adjusted the reinforcements, made some other minor adjustments, but none of it showed up. It was still "killerpings.com", one map, default settings.

So then I found the BlackBagOps site and downloaded the swbf2rm Remote Manager program, which seems like a great tool. I got that set up, and made the changes there; I got more than one map to show up, but none of the other changes seemed to come through -- the game name was still "killerpings.com", there was no password, etc. I think this must be due to my not being really on top of what was going on, mixing the FTP changes and the RM changes and not knowing which was responsible for the positive changes.

Now, I don't recall exactly what I did at this point, in my efforts to get the gamename to change and the password to set. I found the User's Guide to the BlackOps Server Manager, read through it, which helped a lot. I stopped and restarted the server. I recall opening up some ports on my router. I found out how to add mod maps (to a newly-created AddOn folder in the directory root), which I began doing, figuring that even if I couldn't change the name and set a password then at least we could play the maps we wanted.

The next thing I knew, the server wasn't showing up at all on the multiplayer lists. I'm not sure when this began occurring, as I had been making changes all day long, and unfortunately wasn't monitoring the server after every change. I looked at the log, and saw that it was constantly crashing and then restarting. Suspecting the mod maps, I deleted them from the server, and now we're back to the second stage of things -- nothing showing on the multiplayer lists (not even "killerpings.com"), but the Remote Manager status-window shows the game as up and running fine, with multiple maps and all the settings I configured.

What the hell am I doing wrong?!?!? There are dozens of dedicated servers up on the multiplayer lists at any given moment, so I know that there are people out there SOMEWHERE who know how to get a game running on a rented server. I'm just hoping one of them will be here, and can respond somewhat quickly.

I'll check back here often, but you can also email me at jackthorn at adelphia dot net, if you want to.


J~TH

Oh, it just occurred to me that this might be helpful -- the contents of the ServerSettings.cfg file I'm currently using:

/gamename "Gray_Clan"
/password "removed"
/adminpw "removed"
/tps 20
/playercount 1
/heroes 1
/hrunlock 3
/hrplayer 1
/hrunlockvalue 25
/hrteam 2
/hrrespawn 120
/contimelimit 0
/ctftimelimit 25
/assscorelimit 180
/huntimelimit 25
/ctfscorelimit 5
/conreinforcements 175
/assreinforcements 200
/awards 1
/huntscorelimit 75
/teamdamage 1
/autoassignteams 0
/shownames 0
/aimassist 1
/difficulty 2
/spawn 3
/pregametime 5
/kickvotethreshold 75
/teamvotethreshold 75
/conaiperteam 32
/ctfaiperteam 7
/assaiperteam 20
/randomize 1
/autokickscore 0
/autokickscorevalue 6
/autokickping 0
/autokickpingvalue 250
/autokickpingwarnings 0
/autokickword 0
/autokickwordwarnings 3
/autoannounce 1
/autoannounceperiod 420
/autocsvlogging 1
/autocsvlogfilename "statistics.csv"

Okay, update -- with a reinstall on the server, now my friend can see the game on the multiplayer lists, but I can't. Nothing has changed on my machine since last week when I could see the game too, except maybe some ports opened on the router -- could that be it?

I've just tried uninstalling and reinstalling the game on my PC, with no effect. I still can't see the game.

Can anyone else here see the game? It's called "Gray_Clan"...

Is anyone else here? Am I just talking to myself?


J~TH

Okay -- come on, anyone know what might be going on here?

I'm down to just the one issue now: Others can see the server game on the multiplayer lists, but I can't. Why in the world would that be? Anyone?

Bueller? Bueller?

...

All right, got it on my own, eventually. Apparently something was off in the router settings, I just reset them and it's all fine.

And now I know that this isn't a very active forum at all. Good to know.

Thanks so much!

J~TH

Yea... the line from the router that the server is running on needs to be DMZ'd. If you can't DMZ the line.. then open these ports on both your computer/firewall and the router: 3658, 3558, 4658, 27900, 29910, 29920, 6500