trevorjd

Dear FunPimps, PLEASE add inventory logging as an option for private servers. I run PVE servers exclusively and have a "Don't touch it if it's not yours" policy. Generally speaking we have a good crew but at least once a week some clown thinks they can get away with using one exploit or another to get access to someone else's stuff and sadly, too often they can, even with LCBs in place. Using exploits, or someone has an open window within arms reach of their forge, or someone abuses trust given by another player. It should be trivial to add a log entry like so whenever an item stack moves. <timestamp> ItemName Qty xx added to inventory: PlayerName I have no doubt this will result in a performance hit so it absolutely should be an opt-in value in the settings. TrackPlayerInventoryChanges: <0-3> None, All, Pickup Only, Drop Only Thanks for your consideration. Trev --- To ward off the inevitable unkind suggestions, we play strictly PvE. We're not after realistic & we don't care to 'harden up'. Our community is tailored to older gamers with families and limited time. We want to have to keep an eye over our shoulders for Zeds, not for other players. We want to be able to go on vacation for 2 weeks and pick up where we left off. You play your way, we'd like to play ours.

Hi folks, Executive summary: I'd like to customise the XP on our server so that players get less XP for various activities, but not actually get negative XP at all. I just want to encourage risky activities, not penalise anyone. I'm hoping that someone here can offer insight on how to best achieve that. I've tried using PlayerExpGain but that may not be the best way. Open to ideas. Details: For our latest playthrough, a "hard mode", we thought it would be nice to tweak the XP bonuses for various activities to encourage to get out and get slaying rather than mine and build themselves to the end game in a few days. To that end, I did some searching and reading then went into entityclasses.xml and tweaked the PlayerExpGain settings, using perc_set to set most somewhere between 0.1 and 1.0. For the most part, things are going fine. A couple of days later, someone reported that their XP was actually going backwards when they're mining! So I did some more searching and asked in Discord. As a result of that, I changed harvesting to perc_add with a negative value. Then it seemed they were only going backwards with Coal & Nitrate so I bumped the base XP in materials.xml from 6 to 8. Testing seemed OK. Today I get a ticket to say that things were fine last night but today they're losing XP. I haven't touched the configs in 10 days! So, it seems that Harvesting in particular must have extra black magic happening under the hood and in some special circumstances can go backwards. Following are my current settings that seemed to be working OK until today when they strangely don't, but just for Harvesting. (Just to clarify, initially Harvesting was tested with perc_set with various values from 0.1 to 0.8 but that always sent them backwards.) <passive_effect name="PlayerExpGain" operation="perc_set" value="0.75" tags="Kill"/> <passive_effect name="PlayerExpGain" operation="perc_add" value="-0.4" tags="Harvesting"/> <passive_effect name="PlayerExpGain" operation="perc_set" value="0.5" tags="Upgrading"/> <passive_effect name="PlayerExpGain" operation="perc_set" value="0.1" tags="Crafting"/> <passive_effect name="PlayerExpGain" operation="perc_set" value="0.1" tags="Selling"/> <passive_effect name="PlayerExpGain" operation="perc_set" value="1.0" tags="Quest"/> <passive_effect name="PlayerExpGain" operation="perc_set" value="0.5" tags="Looting"/> <passive_effect name="PlayerExpGain" operation="perc_set" value="1.0" tags="Party"/> <passive_effect name="PlayerExpGain" operation="perc_set" value="0.5" tags="Other"/> Can anyone suggest a reason why it might suddenly start behaving differently? Can anyone suggest a better way on how I can nerf XP on Harvesting? I'm open to ideas! Thanks Trev

Thanks for the comprehensive reply. He has a residential broadband connection so pretty much guaranteed to have a dynamic IP address. Blacklisting his IP is a great idea though! hmmm, would cause troubles if he wanted to connect to other games though. I'd read that having IPv6 on the server can cause issues so I've disabled that and asked him to do the same on his PC, just in case. Waiting to hear back on if he was able to test with a LAN cable. SylenThunder suggested via Discord that it might be worth setting up OpenVPN for this one user to connect. I'll give that a go if needed. He's playing on PC, pretty sure. Just to clarify, are you saying that if he owns the game on multiple platforms and his Steam acct is linked with his Epic acct, it may cause problems? Thanks again!

Hi folks, I run a dedicated server on hardware leased from a reliable supplier. I have OS level access and the machine is connected directly to the internet (no NAT). We have been running 7D and other games with up to 30 concurrent players for a few years now. With 7D, we've had SteamNetworking disabled for all our playthoughs. One of our players has reported trouble staying connected to our 7D servers for more than 10 mins. Both his client log and the server log simply show a LiteNetLib timeout with no further explanation. This has persisted for several months apparently, which means it pertains to more than one fresh install of 7D server. He has uninstalled and reinstalled the 7D client more than once. While he is using wifi locally, his speed tests are excellent, general household internet is OK and I believe he hasn't had any trouble staying connected to our other games e.g. Ark & Conan, nor has he had any trouble connecting to 7D servers run by other people. Just ours! It's a curious one with no obvious place to point a finger. He asked tonight about disabling LiteNetLib as it was proposed as a solution. However, I'm reluctant to switch to SteamNetworking exclusively for fear of increasing latency for everyone else. So... Q1. Can a 7D client be directed to use a particular protocol? If so, how? If not, then I'm forced to choose one or the other on the server side Q2. If I have both protocols active on the server, what will it default to? It's also undesirable for players to connect via SteamNetworking unless they need to. Thanks!

Hi, w00ien00kie, We run two servers, one with Darkness Falls and one with Improved Hordes and a number of other modlets. Both of those interfere to some degree with vanilla spawning. Do you have any idea if there will be compatibility issues created by adding your mod? Thanks Trev

Cheers

Thanks for the suggestion. Will need to test it pretty thoroughly though. We run Darkness Falls (comprehensive overhaul) on one server and ImprovedHordes on another. Both of which may/do influence spawning. Will check it out.

Hi TFP, Many of our players do not enjoy facing the Blood Moon alone and so log out to avoid it. When that happens, time stops ticking and the BM stays shining overhead, waiting like the Sword of Damocles for the next player to log in. Telling my players to "git gud" is not an option! We use CSMM to help manage our servers. * I looked at implementing a "death bubble" for 1-2 minutes if someone logs in during BM but there's no reliable way to detect whether it's BM or not. * I fear that giving *all* new logins a death bubble will result in abuse in ways that I can't foresee. * I looked into implementing a /voteday command that lets players skip the night if a majority votes in favour but that turns out to be a pretty complex piece of code. The expert programmers over at CSMM all replied, "Oh! That looks like a fun one!" when I put the idea forward. "Fun" in programmer-speak means "complex" and I'm not a programmer! A simple solution would be a TimeKeepsRunningWithZeroPlayers: true/false configuration option. I hope we can see that in the not too distant future. Thanks, Trev

Awesome! Thanks!

Hi folks, We're having trouble with players planting forests. One idea that occurred to me was preventing seeds from dropping when trees are harvested. Anyone know if this is possible? Thanks

You seem to be asking for Two-factor Authentication (2FA) for your game. We've been running 7D for about a year and haven't had a single instance of unauthorised changes to configuration. Have you had problems?

This is a minor issue but a nice to have. I'd like to see blocks prevent re-spawning of resources. At the moment, our maps get littered by people leaving nerd poles all over the place to mark resources like bird nests. There are seven such poles visible in the image below and 11 more visible off screen without taking a step. The map looks like an astray

Good news! I think we've found the problem. It seems that TCAdmin enforces a connection limit, even if a game doesn't. When you set the slot count via TCAdmin webUI it updates the configfile. However if you later change the conf (as this old-school IT guy is inclined to do), TCAdmin's doesn't know about it. If TCAdmin is set to a lower slot count than 7D2D, it will kick players when it hits that number, even if the server is happy to let them in. In hindsight, that should've been a clue that it was a Kick with a reason of (Server Full). We tested this with a few values and were able to replicate it reliably. Since ensuring both TCAdmin and the conf are on the same page, we haven't had the problem.

Good news! I think we've found the problem. It seems that TCAdmin enforces a connection limit, even if a game doesn't. When you set the slot count via TCAdmin webUI it updates the configfile. However if you later change the conf (as this old-school IT guy is inclined to do), TCAdmin's doesn't know about it. If TCAdmin is set to a lower slot count than 7D2D, it will kick players when it hits that number, even if the server is happy to let them in. In hindsight, that should've been a clue that it was a Kick with a reason of (Server Full). We tested this with a few values and were able to replicate it reliably. Since ensuring both TCAdmin and the conf are on the same page, we haven't had the problem.

We've had less players since xmas so it's been hard to get a sample of the problem. We got one that looked like it might be the same this evening but I wasn't able to reproduce it personally and the user in question didn't try again. There were only 13 or 14 of 16 online at the time. Incident was at 7:07 when player snu2 was kicked due to server being full. https://www.oldfarks.com.au/funpimps/output_log.txt It was happening a lot from when A20 went from experimental to public up until christmas day. We had lots of players coming and going and after a couple of hours more and more people would report this problem. We worked around it by putting scheduled reboots every 4 hours. We don't back up the log files so I can't provide those. I would expect that a stress test setup simulating ~30 players trying to connect/disconnect should be able to trigger it after a few hours.

We've had less players since xmas so it's been hard to get a sample of the problem. We got one that looked like it might be the same this evening but I wasn't able to reproduce it personally and the user in question didn't try again. There were only 13 or 14 of 16 online at the time. Incident was at 7:07 when player snu2 was kicked due to server being full. https://www.oldfarks.com.au/funpimps/output_log.txt It was happening a lot from when A20 went from experimental to public up until christmas day. We had lots of players coming and going and after a couple of hours more and more people would report this problem. We worked around it by putting scheduled reboots every 4 hours. We don't back up the log files so I can't provide those. I would expect that a stress test setup simulating ~30 players trying to connect/disconnect should be able to trigger it after a few hours.

It's great to get that assurance but I still need to check it myself. We've bumped the slots to 30 and things have been quieter in the last couple of days so our 6 daily reboots are keeping up with it but I'll keep an eye out if/when it happens again.

It's great to get that assurance but I still need to check it myself. We've bumped the slots to 30 and things have been quieter in the last couple of days so our 6 daily reboots are keeping up with it but I'll keep an eye out if/when it happens again.

LOL no. All we have are Allocs and botman. By sanitise, I mean do basic due diligence to ensure there's no personal information, sensitive information, passwords whatever in the log segment. If it were a short excerpt of a minute or three either side of an incident then sure, no problem but here we're potentially sending a hour or two's worth of logs from our prime time.

LOL no. All we have are Allocs and botman. By sanitise, I mean do basic due diligence to ensure there's no personal information, sensitive information, passwords whatever in the log segment. If it were a short excerpt of a minute or three either side of an incident then sure, no problem but here we're potentially sending a hour or two's worth of logs from our prime time.

I've already spent dozens of unpaid man hours troubleshooting this including reinstalling several times. I'm notifying FP of a bug to help them with their commercial product. I don't care to spend another 30-60 minutes sanitising a log just for the post to disappear w/o comment like other posts I've made. This problem should be trivial for FP to verify and it's well known enough that Smegz0r's already working on his own solution.

I've already spent dozens of unpaid man hours troubleshooting this including reinstalling several times. I'm notifying FP of a bug to help them with their commercial product. I don't care to spend another 30-60 minutes sanitising a log just for the post to disappear w/o comment like other posts I've made. This problem should be trivial for FP to verify and it's well known enough that Smegz0r's already working on his own solution.

Hi FunPimps, I'm a new admin so forgive me for asking for something that's been asked for a million times but I was stunned tonight to find that I wasn't able to destroy a player's claim block nor blocks within a claim. We're PVE so have land claims set infinite to prevent pseudo PVP. It's great that we can't accidentally destroy player bases but the reality is that admin work often requires that when cleaning up mess from players that leave, helping players that screw up, etc. Please add a mode where the Hammer of God will bypass claim protection. Thanks

A user just contacted me and said that he was getting the server full error even though we're at 22/24 at the moment. He switched from his broadband to his cellphone connection and got straight in. That seems to support the idea that the server isn't releasing connections quickly enough. IE, it still has the player's WAN address cached and is refusing "a second connection" from that address.