Alien Front Online Server Update: Now Online

[DR TEAMCAST]

[DR TEAMCAST]

So about the open testing, when does that begin?

[Xiden]

Just out of curiosity, would this server software also be used to get the Sega Sports titles to come back online? Don't they also use "SNAP" or "KAGE"?

Partly. While I havent really had the time to look into each and every one of them (like successors and such) they used some of the same setup, while some of it where developed in-house at Visual Concepts. During development they skipped the whole lobby-server and connected straight to the other consoles. This feature is ofcourse not in the final release of the games.
The server for these titles are mainly just a lobby and really not dependent on dedicated game servers. So while, say, Outtrigger or Alient Front Online is played on actual game servers, most (if not all) sports titles are Peer2Peer, like WWP and probably others. How do I know this? Well, packet logs and actual dialogs with the developers, which all confirm this. There might be exceptions, but I doubt it. VC and BSI which created most of the NBA/NFL/WSB actually use a similar setup to this day, and the setup they used was handed to them, and they all say it looks like it was developed in-house at VC - not using SEGAs system as it was probably not needed. There are pros and cons in doing stuff like this through either dedicated game servers, or just pairing players up against each other, but I wont get into that right now.

What is odd is that while the sports titles created at VC used this approach, the servers or system used for Ooga Booga! is entirely different with strong encryption (a game were the developers was willing to help - but got a "no-go" from the president of VC since this code officially belongs to SEGA) where the developers actually have their hands on everything needed to get this up and running again with official setup, but were unsure if they really knew where the encryption keys were stored, if they still had them at all - so this is an example of a game (of entirely different genre ofcourse), but with a different setup, developed by the same company.

The same goes for Propeller Arena - which most people thought were running on the same (game) servers as Outtrigger, something it did not do even though they shared the same KAGE server for the initial request to the bootstrap server, but the main difference between the two is that this game uses encryption aswell, while Outtrigger does not - and was probably redirected to what may have been identical servers for all I know, but because of a different GameID, was redirected to its own game servers. I should add that I have not dug very deep in this game nor Ooga Booga because of the encryption - thats not to say that revival is COMPLETELY out of the picture, but requires alot of resources and information aswell as decrypting the packets without the keys for it - which is quite a bit of work.

However, WinCE games licensed through Microsoft was pushed in the DPlay direction which is a different stack, and while WWP use P2P through a lobby, which wasn't really their original plan of doing things as they first used a RAS setup on Windows Servers with SQL-handling but which turned out to be a huge pain in the ass to both maintain, deploy and debug, an alternative setup was used with P2P and a IRC-server with an Eggdrop-bot for broadcasting game info to players connecting/connected. You can read more about this in the WWP page at the DC Wiki. Hope that answers your question.

However, once everything is documented, and tested, a page at the DC Wiki will be created with info about both the sports titles and KAGE(and its evolution into SNAP), aswell as the newly written replacement system created by DCSERV.org.

Lots of good readings Yeah I read Ooga booga uses blowfish encryption. If Sega owns this still I wonder if they would be willing to share info like they did with Alien front. They seem to be pro for things like this and even with people making sonic games.

On another topic, how similar do you think (if at all) would the Unreal PC server be to a dreamcast server? I think Shu was able to get a game listed and even connect before it crashed on him. I wonder with a little tweaking, this could be revived in the future

[HuntrRose]

just snagged one off fleabay.. if someone from here was one of the people watching it.. sorry 'bout that...

[Bob Dobbs]

First, really nice work shout to petter3k and Shuouma.

Second, About UT Online, I was able to connect to the server TeamXLink was working on (link below to project). What happens is that once the DC would connect to the master list, it would put you in this "blue lobby". Although the Dreamcast could see the server, the server couldn't finish the connection (denied). I used a BBA back when I had my other router (when everything worked), so this was not an issue.

https://forums.beyondunreal.com/threads ... ne.194792/

[petter3k]

All I can say is that they worked hard to get UT to actually run on the Dreamcast because of the memory compared to a PC. The Lead developer was more than helpful and at one point I was just waiting for him to send the full sources including servers. However, even looking through tape backups at Epic, nothing was found. On the other hand, I guess the two versions were very similar given that multiple people have gotten connected before the Server kicks you out - probably because of other models, engine - everything really. The game itself also expects a version of the Server noone has found (dont remember which one atm) so I guess its not really that weird that the two is incompatible (PC and DC). If one has the time and knowledge about UT I guess one could create a new one based on packets in the PC version. The Lead developer oddly enough did not remember making the server which makes me think the differences werent that big and someone else just modified the existing ones to match the Dreamcast version, which probably is not a big deal if you actually have the sources for the PC servers aswell as the DC client/game.

[petter3k]

I would also like to add that the (very very talented) main developer at one point had a backup on a now broken harddisk while a rumour has it that another member actually has a backup, but all of the developers deny this and point the finger at the lead developer which seems to have done most if not all of the actual coding. One of the members sadly enough actually died a few years back too, so it might aswell be him Who had the backup for all I know. No need to message anyone involved in the UTDC team though, as everyone of them Will point the finger at the man responsible for the coding which I already have had a atleast 20 emails from but ofcourse does not remember much details from the development, which is not really hard to understand seeing it is about 15-16 years ago and probably has done alot of other stuff between then and now. He has given his full effort in trying to help so more nagging from us will probably yield nothing but no answer or refeer to my dialog with him. So I guess unless someone makes a new server based on the old one or a modified PC version compatible there is not much else we could do to revive it. I think creating New ones is the way to go, maybe with help from people Who have investigated this thorougly. That person aside from the "social" part is not me. I have not even played the PC version and barely touched UTDC as of yet while others have actually connected and tried various attempts with the PC servers.

[Xiden]

First, really nice work shout to petter3k and Shuouma.

Second, About UT Online, I was able to connect to the server TeamXLink was working on (link below to project). What happens is that once the DC would connect to the master list, it would put you in this "blue lobby". Although the Dreamcast could see the server, the server couldn't finish the connection (denied). I used a BBA back when I had my other router (when everything worked), so this was not an issue.

https://forums.beyondunreal.com/threads ... ne.194792/

I wonder if we could use a decompiler on the UT Server to reverse engineer it. On that link they posted the output of where it bombs out. I guess its looking for a missing texture, seems like this texture could easily be pointed to whatever the dreamcast texture is, but of course we'd need the source code to know lol

[DR TEAMCAST]

I'm more interested in AFO's release rather than UT, but what a final effort could be is in terms of cooperating with the developers is, maybe a fundraiser can be held between all of us to let the developer get that hard drive repaired if he still has it. I know that there are ways, though very expensive, to get data from broken hard drives

Else it's a non-problem considering AFO and all of the other projects. I'm also not too sure if the developers current or former employers would be too happy with going to those lengths

[Wombat]

If getting the broken hard drive to a repair center is an option, I would definitely be willing to donate for that cause.