Tossed up a shorter-term Ironman server

[Fink]

As some of you may have noticed, I've had a temporary Ironman server going on.

I've been wanting to play some of Jug's Ironman variant lately, and figured, heck, it's more fun to play with people than by oneself, so I set it to ping out the metaserver.

Some of the guys have been on playing, and the connection for them seems to be fine. But, for full disclosure, this is just a server running in the backround on my home box, on my own line - no swanky hosted linux craziness going on at some dedicated phat line But, I figure as Ironman MAngband is by its very nature short term (you're lucky to live through the day, let alone a month), the ephemeral nature of this server works out - I'll just leave it up for however long people feel like playing it.

I'm the lone unresolved IP on the metaserver list, and I've tossed a character sitting there named "IRONMAN" to mark the server, so to speak. House rule: if I'm on playing, I'll kick down one free scroll of ID if you are in town

So gather up those Flasks of Oil, hoard those teleport scrolls, and dive in for some old-school action!


~fink

[Berendol]

Aha, I was wondering where the new Ironman server came from  Any idea what happened to Jug's server?

If you really want it to show up as Ironman in the metaserver list, edit netserver.c, find the part where it appends the version number (search for "append version number" to find the comment that precedes the line) and put something to identify your server in the string literal in that sprintf call. I'd suggest something short, like "Iron" or "Ironman". Oh yeah, you also have to recompile after you edit that. Shouldn't be too bad of a wait, since it's only one changed c file.

(edit)

Code: Select all

sprintf(temp, "Version: %d.%d.%d ", VERSION_MAJOR, VERSION_MINOR, VERSION_PATCH);

would maybe become:

Code: Select all

sprintf(temp, "Version: %d.%d.%d (Ironman) ", VERSION_MAJOR, VERSION_MINOR, VERSION_PATCH);

[Fink]

Ah interesting, I was just trying to bug Crim about that last night. I didn't realize you could do that. Thanks!

<edit>
PowerWyrm just mentioned that, as well, you can set
#define VERSION_EXTRA 3 to 0 in defines.h, to remove the "development" etc tag, to save some space on the metaserver list.

[Fink]

Update

Well, last night (evening of the 6th), 3 of us made it to the 1k dwarven halls town.

Warrior (playing as Divah) of course made it on his first try, in about four minutes, and if I'm not mistaken, he didn't even bring a weapon with him down to 50'. Showoff

Darius had a good run and patiently mopped up all available experience he could on his treck down, and arrived in style (despite being chased off of 950' after using up his last tele and running into a couple of mean uniques).

Sbluen was sooooo close, but got squished at the last moment on, I believe 950'. The real question is how he made it that deep - he mentioned having his str drained down to low-mid single digits, and a huge number of stat drains on other stats as well.  A valiant effort.

I took forever to make it down, replaying a number of levels accidentally (levels unstatic pretty quickly, making this an option), and actually hit the 1k town as level 26 with a moderate pile of money to spend.

So, the three of us are hanging out waiting for some good stuff to spawn in the shops, and then the trek to the 2k town will begin. I fully expect to be dead by 1100' (hounds), but wish the best for my compadres.


Onward to glory!

[Fink]

After making awesome progress, Darius V bit it to Tom the Stone Troll. Darius was level 27 on dlevel 1600. Being the soldier he is, he immediately rejoined and rolled up a new High Elf Warrior

[Shane_S]

Darius here....

Easy to forget that supplies are limited.  After two failed atempts to get him, I should have realised that he was out of my league.  Even if I had succeeded, I would have wasted almost half my remaining ccw's.

After a dive where everything went right too.  Orc pits at 250' and 300' gave me the exp to breeze through the rest of the dungeon down to the 1K town, which I made with about 70K loot.   I even dropped money on a Feanorian (I know, stupid.... but stylish   ;D )  

Anyway, thanks for putting an Ironman server up, Fink.  I missed playing back at the end of 2005.  Good to have a chance now.

 

[Fink]

Yikes, that was close!

I bluescreened earlier this evening, which resulted in the server save getting corrupted (well, specificly, the last 7 percent of it or so failed to write correctly).

So, I did a mad dash to salvage and fix etc, and thank the maker and the RNG - the net effect seem to be that the 0' town is regenerated, and thats about it.

The server forced the start town to be off seed, instead of my pasted in map that we originally had (I think), so new town it is! heh.

I encountered a problem or two with how the server-save references the character-saves of those players who are on a town level (mainly me, God, Warrior, PowerWyrm), but I figurd out how to get all that sorted, so everything should be groovy now. Phew! Man, that scared me - I thought maybe we lost it all heh. Time to explore some periodic backup options...

Anyhoo, give a shout if you see anything kooky, but I'm confident that, outside of a fresh town, things should be ok.  Onward to Morgoth!


-Fink

[Fink]

Hey guys,

PowerWyrm was exceedingly kind and helpful, and got a new build of the Ironman server code kicked out for use. This definitely took a bit of work on his part, so three cheers to PW!

I've plopped the new exe into the exisiting setup, and things seem to be working normally. So, hopefully this should be (fingers crossed) a seamless upgrade to the server. The build I was using did not contain a number of cool additions and fixes that Jug implemented when work was going on with Ironman. This build brings us completely up to date.

So, get in there and dive!
-fink

<edit>
PowerWyrm, bless him, again spent even more time sorting out some issues that arose with spell targetting, and got me sorted on that front as well. All hail St. PW!

                                                           


Important note: get your magic user on!
- This new build contains a number of tuning adjustments, including more starting books for magic users! This should really make things more realistic on that front (for example, mages now start with book three, which contains ID, etc). So, if you tried magic users in the past, dive back in!

Other changes that appear in this new build:
- Food is no longer consumed on the special dungeon town levels (this one's for you, PW!)
- Hounds no longer spawn around entry stairs for dungeons (ie, no more insta-hound-death when you stair. Thank god! Note that this is only for hounds)
- Sundry spell, mana, and hitpoint per-level updates.
- Some sundry store items prices have been dropped back down to vanilla levels.
- Level feelings re-enabled. Yay!
- More info in chardumps
- Potions of Healing are now normal priced (a bit over 1kAU), and spawn at the temple! This should really help below 1k.






               


This is just to remind me of what I've changed, if I happen to lose local notes.

- Disconnect update
- Born with an id
- Version reported tagged as "Ironman"
- Fixed spell related potential crash.
- all special arts can now generate
- ego hit dice will persists on reload
- drop all gold if specify > p_ptr->au

[Fink]

I'm going to have to put the ol kybosh on the Ironman server - my box is suddenly exceedingly unstable, and crashing a lot. I would crash, before, now and then. Then, daily. Today, twice and counting. I'll keep all the saves etc etc, so we'll see what happens.

-fink


<edit>

Ah, fingers crossed, I think I might have discovered the problem.

I had yet another crash today, but this last one, when my box locked and the screen froze, actually had distortion going on onscreen (ie, of the overheating video card sort).

I cracked open my box once again, but this time yanked out the video card (I kind of thought it wasnt the problem before). The well in the heat sink where the fan sits was had a thick mat of built up dust surrounding it, effectively blocking airflow through the heatsink and too the fan. My appartment is super dusty, so its annoyingly understandable this would happen. Combined with an unseasonably warm day today (70F), and sheboom - even more crashes than usual.

So, fingers crossed, I *think* the cause of my crashes/lockups has just been an overheating video card.

I've tossed the server back up, and we'll see what happens. Excelsior!

[Fink]

I just rebuilt the server using the fixes that PW came up with for the Special Artifact list bug and the "loaded" ego hit dice problem.

Now of course, the special arts are damn rare (particularly in Ironman where most wont commonly get too deep). But, the artifacts from the "special" list from the Arkenstone on down to The One Ring can now be generated. Go git em!

-fink

[Fink]

I've been in the habit of leaving a character named "IRONMAN" connected, mainly just to make it clear what the server is. I'm going to stop doing so, but fear not - the server persists, fingers crossed

[Fink]

We have a new member of the 2k crew - sbluen made it down to the 2k town, to keep Warrior company.

Grats sbluen on the milestone! Keep safe

[sbluen]

And I have great equipment too. The best piece is my balance dragon scale mail. With it's confusion resistance, I can always run away from monsters. I am also able to handle the dangerous umber hulks.

[Fink]

Woops! My box melted. Will fire off some orders for new parts and be back

[Berendol]

The circuit board (offscreen) breathes fire.  It was an excellent hit!  You feel bored.  ;D