tbot

Let's be a bit patient for eAi to find out that there is permission for this program. In the mean time I don't want to knock anyones head, it is publically available, but I won't give you the link here (wait for the original topic to be put back)...

It looks quite nice, I have some suggestions though: - Have the page validated by the W3C HTML validator (http://validator.w3.org) - Use of images isn't necessairily bad, but in your case the size of the images is quite big. Keep in mind that there might also be 56k users viewing the page. Give in some quality to bring down the size (60kb for the banner is quite much, in an ideal case it takes 12 seconds for a 56k users to load it). - The text size is quite small, make it a bit bigger so it requires less effort to read it. - Underline hyperlinks, or make them easily distinguishable by giving them an other color, a combination is even better. - Get rid of the image at the left of the news, it interferes with the text by drawing the viewer attention away from it. - The Iframes might be not the best choice, especially not for the progress bars (they don't work in Firefox). For the rest it looks quite nice, keep up the good work.

Oh, now you mention it, it might be nice to see the web statistics you can generate from the MySQL data: http://holyfluid.student.utwente.nl/mta/ (Online users and player statistics). These pages don't show the full capabilities, but give a nice impression.

You can take a look at it in action at 130.89.160.100:2003 (the server isn't really busy atm as I don't list it in ASE due to recent attacks), check the docu mentation (Modules section) for the commands at player level you can use. The real power is in the admin commands though, but for that I'd have to be there to demonstrate it, and I'm not very much around as I'm quite busy. You might also look in Oli's or Harry's server (Don't known IP's, and Harry's server is not up atm. They received the latest version for testing purposes and it seems to perform quite well), and ask there. The third option is to run it yourself after the original topic is reinstated.

I wonder if you know what you are talking about. The attacks were in no way 'small' (you have drawn this from MrBump's misconception that it caused only 'small temporary problems'). 2 of 3 major dutch servers went down due to the attacks (the 3rd went down a little while after too, yet I have no conformation this is due to attacks), both are still not back up (as I fear more attacks). Secondly there are no clues whatsoever that these attacks were not to MTA in general, we haven't received any threats, nor did anyone claim the attacks. And finally I never accused the MTA team of lying, I just pointed out the inconsistencies between this and my topic.

I can quote from a mail of ijsvogel that I already have permission of the team to release it: Which translates to: "I've discussed it, and it's ok to release your addon, under the condition that you keep the source closed and don't spread it, because we don't want the admin netcode to leak in this way (too easy), and under the condition that the addon is well protected against abuse (of servers) of course. I'm possibly ready to add this addon to the download directory, and of course you can open a forum topic on the forum." You can check this with IJsvogel and I suggest you reinstate the topic afterwards.

We don't make a habit out of lying to our community. We also had the ddoser sitting in our IRC admitting to it, so it's be hard to claim otherwise. Yet you did lock my topic about an other ddos. I don't see the fundamental difference between this attack and the one that struck me and others. Both ddos, both obvious in that it has succeeded (the checks are quite easy...). But still my topic should be locked, and this topic shall remain. If you want to moderate your forums so well, i guess it's only fair to treat all topics identically. And if you don't want to lie to your community, why then don't allow acknowledgements of servers going down due to attacks as that is the only truth at the moment...

Let me guess, 100mbit+ of bogus UDP packets. Someone clearly doesn't like MTA, bad luck, as there's nothing you can do against them (unless you have hard proof of the source of the attacks, and you won't get that from bogus UDP packets). Now there's one thing I think is very weird about this newspost, a few weeks ago I posted something about ddos attacks on dutch servers and the topic was locked because eAi doesn't wanted the kiddies to get their pleasure, so, why this post?... (you can always say the server is down to 'maintenance', thus not acknowledging ddos attacks...)

What would keep crackers from creating another cracked client which would just sent a random hash ? There's no way you can check it's random, because you don't know the actual serial number. Nice idea, but it can be cracked...

May I note that this is only about MTA servers (I see suggestions about IRC, etc.)... As for the damage: My server still runs, that's not the problem. The problem is in the fact that my ISP cut the server off from the internet because of the floods. If the floods continue the solution is simple, and that is to not run a MTA server anymore. So it might not cause damage to the server itself, but if it continues it does mean the end of the MTA server, which is quite harmful if this is done in a large scale (as I said, 3 major dutch servers dissappeared these days...). I don't have many details of the attacks itself, I saw a minor attack coming from IP's tracing to china. The major attack was all corrupted UDP packets, of which I don't have any information. There could be a relation between the minor and major attack though...

That's one way to handle your public relations...

In the past few days I saw a trend of DDoS attacks. My server, as well as another one on my uni campus got cut off because of UDP floods. Today I saw another dutch server disappear, though I have no conformation this is due to attacks. From another source I heard about him too suffering attacks, though the servers still run. I wondered if there are more servers suffering attacks. IMO it looks like somebody who really doesn't like MTA, and is going very far in his 'hate', any opinions?

I didn't say it was a problem, I identified it as possible source for performance loss...

That's certainly not always true. In fullscreen the game itself can decide the video mode to run in. When windowed it has to conform to the desktop video mode. In cases where the color depth the game runs in isn't equal to the desktop color depth a conversion step has to be done, causing more CPU usage. And as I said before, there's hardware acceleration that might not work in a windowed mode. So, the reduction of drawing area might reduce usage, but there may be other factors that require more CPU power in a windowed mode. The actual outcome is totally dependent on the situation.

In what age do you live? MS-DOS mode is long gone (Win2K/XP weren't build on top of DOS...). Even when you run apps fullscreen other programs get CPU time because of the multitasking nature of Windows. Though a possible windowed mode could increase CPU usage, mainly because the desktop also should be redrawn and some hardware accelleration might not work windowed. But why bother, there is no windowed mode...

I just have one thing to say: have about a week (hopefully ) patience

Both the -p and the quotes are not needed (try it )

mIRC even provides it's own sound playing function: /splay c:\path to mp3\mp3name.mp3

Ping also rises if MTA/GTAVC doesn't get enough CPU power, and with MTAMA running that way, well, you use quite some CPU...

The types should be UDP, not TCP...

I wonder if you read my piece about 'precompiled binaries'... Because you don't approve open-sourcing it (I completely respect your wish on that, it's quite logical), I asked about what you think of precompiled binaries. Now, the reactions to your posts: As I previously said (and which you completely ignored in your reply): Emulating windows just kills the performance of my server. I said that I didn't know anything about the features of 0.4, thus my argument may not have been completely accurate, but I did gave an argument why the program might be needed. I heard from Aeron that he has already adapted MTAMA to 0.4 (if I understood him correctly), so the need still seems to exist. Why did you release a linux server in the first place then? if linux users already have trouble playing MTA... (Do you see now that your argument was quite worthless?) I might drop by on IRC sometime if I have time for a long discussion (as this topic already shows it's going to be)...

So what you literally say is: f*** all linux users? Running mIRC is not an option for me, my workstation makes too much noise to run 24/7, and emulating windows just kills the performance of my server. Running a program on the server itself is just an ideal solution. Also on there it can communicate easily with MySQL, RRD, or any tool you can think of. Saying that there will be no need for such things in the future is probably not correct (I don't know what features are planned in 0.4 and further). But I think that unless you build ingame administration into the server itself a need for such programs will continue to exist. And I also think that for statistics you impossibly can support all types of logging that's wanted, thus creating another need for the program. You also speak of non MTA related problems caused by a badly coded program. For this matter there a phenomenon called 'testing'. The program already runs over 2 weeks non-stop on my server, causing no apparent problems. So I think it's pretty safe to say the program is not a source of additional problems. (OT: Testing is a point where the MTA team can learn something. For someone who knows only a bit about socket programming and reverse-engineering it's extremely easy to actually CRASH the windows 0.3.1 server (so don't give me a lecture a badly coded programs...))

As some time has passed the program is becoming more stable and mature. Since we get almost only positive reactions to the scripts ran by the program we might consider releasing it publicly. So, as for the fact that you oppose releasing it open-sourced. My question to the team now is whether you oppose releasing it as configurable pre-compiled binaries?

You shouldn't have a '#' in front of those lines...

You imply a dll for every situation exists, which doesn't. C++ gives freedom to the programmer to do anything technically possible. Besides that it still doesn't weigh up to the fact that it's cross-platform.