Category: Development

The Development for FEAR goes on, Always exciting stuff!

SEC2 Server & Client v2.0.1 Coming Soon

Community, Development, News, SEC2, Servers
3 Comments

NewSec2LogoIt has been quite some time since the last release, so just thought I would post some details about the next upcoming release:

Server v2.0.1

  • Added: player statistics reporting to master server
  • Added: new commands to dynamically assign a password to a server (cmd_lockserver <password>,  cmd_unlockserver)
  • Added: new command to randomize teams (cmd_scramble)
  • Added: broadcast message when server is paused or unpaused
  • Added: silent admin login option (usage: “scmd login silent” instead of “scmd login mode”)
  • Added: option to exclude members of the same clan from auto balance
  • Changed: “ADMIN:” is now prefixed to all admin broadcast messages
  • Changed: renamed cmd_chgpass to cmd_chgscmdpass
  • Changed: UA mode (cmd_unarmed) will now be disabled at the end of the map
  • Changed: disable cd-key check when LanOnly=1
  • Changed: PICKUP_HACK to warning instead of automatic ban, and exceeding warning threshold will result in temp ban
  • Fixed: server crash bug caused by restarting map when server is paused
  • Fixed: do not display FLY_HACK warning while server is paused
  • Fixed: servers not appearing in serverlist when containing a large number of custom maps
  • Removed: blacklisted keys check, since all old keys are treated as invalid

Client v2.0.1

  • Added: “Querying” text box when retrieving server list to show game is not hung
  • Added: if master server is down, query backup server when retrieving server list
  • Changed: master server query timeout from 10 sec to 5 sec
  • Fixed: always set dedicated server to true when launching host from in-game
  • Removed: punkbuster column from server list

 

Server admins, if you are interested in testing out the new release, please drop myself or Fred a message!

Windows Dedicated Server Logging

Community, Development, News, Servers, Tutorials
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Okay, this is a feature that some of you server admins have been asking about for quite awhile.  I did some digging and it turns out that the FEAR Windows Dedicated Server does support logging to a text file by just adding a few additional command line parameters.

Here is how it works:

FEARServer.exe +errorlog 1 +alwaysflushlog 1 +errorlogfile fearserver.log

The log file will be saved into the same directory as FEARServer.exe (i.e. your install directory).

Please note that the log file will be overwritten if you restart the server and use the same log file name, so I recommend including a timestamp in the filename.

e.g.

LaunchServer.bat:

@ECHO OFF

set LOGF=%DATE:/=%.%TIME::=%
set LOGF=fearserver.%LOGF%.log
start fearserver.exe +errorlog 1 +alwaysflushlog 1 +errorlogfile “%LOGF%”

For some extra features check the help secion:

Host a Server / Advanced Server Options

Enjoy!

Linux Dedicated Server Issues

Community, Development, News, SEC2, Servers
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Update: We identified the issue and it should now be resolved!!

As some server operators may already know, a bug has cropped up in the FEAR Linux dedicated server that causes the server to randomly segfault (crash) during server startup. The crashing seems to occur more often if you have custom maps configured, but also occurs with just stock maps. This has affected all servers hosted with gameservers.com because they use the Linux version exclusively.

At this time the root cause of this bug is still unknown, and seems to have began sometime in the last month or so. We are investigating, but it is possible that we may never be able to resolve this bug because the FEAR engine code (Jupiter EX) has never been publicly released, and the segfault is occurring within one of the engine libraries (libGameDatabase.so).

The good news is that the Windows dedicated server is not affected by this bug, and therefore we will recommend that all server operators switch to a Windows server if possible.

Note: One issue with the Windows Dedicated server is the lack of an option to save server logs to disk, so we will be working on an enhancement to add file-based logging in the near future.