At 6PM CST, I tried to get on the server. My cache was cleared I think, and so it took about 15-20 minutes to download the map (Barricade) and the necessary files. Is the redirect working?

The redirect does appear to be down right now. I can't access it via FTP.

EDIT: It might be a while before I can get this properly fixed. For the time being, I've set the server to just use default UT2004 maps. As long as you have all the regular server files downloaded in your cache, you will be able to join without issue.

Jefe and I are working on the redirect as we speak, exploring some options for right now and for the future.

At this point, we are working on the redirect for the server. We lost the old redirect that we had and at the same time, we lost all of the data. Now Jefe has to reload and compress our current data and get it up-loaded to our temporary redirect on Game Servers. At that point, we will then explore options for a permanent redirect location.

One good thing is Druid may load the old DC forums on our future redirect location as well--leaving the old forums up for legacy references.

The current action we have taken is removal of most of the maps to speed up load times. We will keep you posted on the progress.

It's the end of the world!!!

hollon wrote:
It's the end of the world!!!

For you, yes.

Hopefully, I'll hear something from Gameservers tomorrow regarding their redirect service - which will be temporary if we are able to use it. Otherwise it will likely be the end of the month before I will be able to set up something more permanent.

Until then I recommend that you change your cache purge interval so that you don't have to redownload the server files - the default setting is for UT2004 to delete any files that are older than 30 days. Here's how:


Tweaks wrote:
Change Cache Purge Interval

Open Ut2004.ini. Search for PurgeCacheDays. The default value is 30 days. This means that UT2004 normally deletes any cached files that are older than 30 days old, making you redownload files when joining servers. Change it to a higher value so that automatic deletion doesn't happen as frequently.

By the way, this would be a great time to help us out with a donation. Demon and I are looking at setting up hosting with Awardspace, using a plan that will cost us around $180, but should last us several years, not counting domain renewal charges. Here's where to donate:

DC PAYPAL - THANKS!

Is it possible to go below a 14 player slot to minimize costs?

Do we really want to reduce the number of player slots? Each slot costs roughly .95 each or 13.95 per month.

It looks, at this point, that we will be using the Game Servers redirect for the near future until Jefe has the time and bandwidth to compress the server files for transfer to Awardspace.

Just FYI, here's how the GS automated redirect works:

GameServers wrote:
When a file is first requested from the redirect it will check the corresponding file on the server and obtain the file for hosting. So, the initial download attempt for files will fail, but any subsequent attempts will have the file available for download. The redirect will also periodically run a consistency check with the files on the game server to ensure they are properly synced.


Not ideal, since it fails the first time a file is requested, but after a while it will have the majority of files. I've restored about half of the map list, including most DC, D-E-K and other popular ones.

EDIT: Did some testing, and it seems the service adds the new files very quickly, so you don't notice anything, except that the download takes a few seconds longer to start, which is great. Speeds seem a bit slower than the old redirect, but, that's ok. Only real problem I found was that some files, like "d-e-k hologram fx" still take a long time - that's because I had to adjust file names on the redirect to get them working properly, which I can't do on the new one. There's just a handful of files with that problem though.