Call for more Monsterball servers

Top Gun · Post by **Top Gun** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 12:18 pm

Technically, {Hawk}Liquid, CTF does require a lot of killing, to clear paths for your flag-bearer, defend your base, make a run on the flag, etc. Theoretically, Monsterball shouldn't require much killing at all.

Speaking of which, it would be interesting to have a Monsterball level where all the players were invulnerable. You might even be able to get away with limiting the weapons, such as just MD, Vauss, and the more useful missiles. This would force people to ignore any Anarchy aspect and just focus on scoring.

Liquid Fire · Post by **Liquid Fire** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 2:17 pm

I don't think that would be very good, because one of the best aspects of monsterball is that satisfaction of totally destroying people that only go for the kills because they never try to score

Top Gun · Post by **Top Gun** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 3:35 pm

I see your point

SkyNet · Post by **SkyNet** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 6:29 pm

Xamindar wrote:What is the exact problem?

SIGNAL 11 caught, aborting

I've found out that it's the 2.6.8.1 kernel. I've switched back to a 2.4.x kernel mainly the 2.4.27 kernel, and Descent 3 runs again. I even tried re-installing Descent 3 with the 2.6.8.1 kernel to no avail.

I've got everything working for the 2.6.8.1 kernel aside from that, so if Descent 3 ever works for one of the newer kernels my switch over will be less painful.

However I'm still getting the crash due to network corruption, and I'm not sure what causes that. I think perhaps it has to do with some of the downloaded files for descent. The reason I come to this conclusion is because I found out when I tried to use some Teddy, and Twisted Teddy logo that was downloaded it crashed the game, so now that I think about it, I'm going to remove all custom sounds, and graphics for my server and see if it can stay stable. I'm thinking that when someone uses one of these bad files it's causing the server to crash.

esa · Post by **esa** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 7:11 pm

I'm sorry to be the (way belated) bearer of bad news, but the root cause of your Linux D3 woes is the hopelessly buggy state of the Linux D3 server port, and there's nothing you can do about it until [sic] the mythical 1.5 patch comes out. I speak from some battle-hardened experience here.

There are crashes and anomalies you will never get rid of: random crashes, ghost ships, and the showstopping level checksum bug. Players notice these things and will leave your servers in droves. On the positive side, at least the PXO server registration bug no longer matters.

Unfortunately, a lot of recorded history about this issue is forever(?) lost after the most recent DescentBB migration.

Shiva has been the authority on Linux D3 stuff over the last few years.

I think this is unfortunate in the extreme. I would prefer to run descent.cx servers on Linux myself (the tracker is Unix-based, but my D3 servers are win2k.)

Xamindar · Post by **Xamindar** » Sat Sep 11, 2004 1:23 pm

SkyNet wrote: However I'm still getting the crash due to network corruption, and I'm not sure what causes that. I think perhaps it has to do with some of the downloaded files for descent. The reason I come to this conclusion is because I found out when I tried to use some Teddy, and Twisted Teddy logo that was downloaded it crashed the game, so now that I think about it, I'm going to remove all custom sounds, and graphics for my server and see if it can stay stable. I'm thinking that when someone uses one of these bad files it's causing the server to crash.

Interesting. I have noticed that sometimes D3 will crash on me in the middle of a game, usually when a certain person joins the game. I wonder if that is caused by the images and/or audio taunts they have? And, some servers I can't even stay on because D3 crashes almost imediatly after joining. Too bad, D3 for Linux is slowly becoming impossible. I'm still on a 2.4 kernel by the way.

By the way, did you try that linking thing I mentioned?
http://www.happypenguin.org/show?Descent%203
Stopped the "Signal 11" for me.

Xamindar · Post by **Xamindar** » Sat Sep 11, 2004 1:37 pm

Oh yeah, has anyone tried that "Frenzy(Monsterball)" server? If I'm correct, it was veins with monsterball. Has anyone ever played that? I plunked around for a bit on that level by myself and it seems like it would take forever to get the ball to the goal. Just my input, a level like veins is NOT a good monsterball level. I can just see people getting sick of trying to make a goal and just turn the game into a team anarchy.

SkyNet · Post by **SkyNet** » Sat Sep 11, 2004 7:32 pm

Xamindar wrote:Interesting. I have noticed that sometimes D3 will crash on me in the middle of a game, usually when a certain person joins the game. I wonder if that is caused by the images and/or audio taunts they have? And, some servers I can't even stay on because D3 crashes almost imediatly after joining. Too bad, D3 for Linux is slowly becoming impossible. I'm still on a 2.4 kernel by the way.

By the way, did you try that linking thing I mentioned?
http://www.happypenguin.org/show?Descent%203
Stopped the "Signal 11" for me.

Yes, I created a symlink from PPics.Hog -> ppics.hog and that stopped the SIGNAL 11 for simply playing the game, but still trying to start a --dedicated server caused a SIGNAL 11. I haven't yet solved this problem. It is related to the 2.6.x kernel series as I've tried various patch levels now.

I think those logo files, and audio taunt files are also the reason for the server crashes that I've been having. Since I've removed the files, and clean them on a regular basis now; I haven't had one crash. Although I think more testing needs to be done, but I believe that when I user joins the game with one of these faulty files it will crash the server, and or other Linux clients.

I think we better start documenting some of this stuff to be put on Planet Descent, and Descent3.com for other Linux users to get information on what might be going wrong with their server/clients. Also there is a specific install routine to get D3 installed, patched, and Merc in. It follows this order: descent3-1.4.0a-x86.run -> descent3-1.4.0b-x86.run -> mercenary-1.0.run. It must be installed in this order or it will not work.

Stryker · Post by **Stryker** » Wed Sep 15, 2004 5:28 pm

Ok, I've set up a level spotlight on the level at phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=60802#60802 ! check it out!