Straight Jacket Type Fun
Game Server Admins: The Duct Tape of the Gaming Community
Carmack gets the Ferrari's. Newell gets the hype. Romero. Well, he just gets laughed at all the time. But you know who really keeps the online gaming community alive? Server Administrators. Whether it's just a bunch of guys hooking up a LAN for a weekend of gaming and beer drinking or a 24/7 dedicated server farm run by a group, the great unsung heroes who allow you to keep fragging your friends are server administrators who have taken the time to study config files, network bandwidth, and for some, PHP bulletin board systems.
What's interesting to see is that as the more of the current crop of games go to a team based dynamic, you are starting to see a group dynamic extend from the playing field out into the Internet virutal world. People that are hosting servers then host websites and on those websites they host bulletin boards. While this has of course been around since the beginning of gaming, the current trend also suggests an almost brand loyalty or even name recognition to the more established servers and even the well-established clans as online gaming has given rise to such events as Quakecon.
In the Wolfenstein server community, one of the more established server hosts is the [ND80] community. ND80 started playing in the id's server RtCW community but soon formed his own community which was so well regarded he and his troop of admins were brought in for server and client-side testing of Enemy Territory by Splash Damage. I recently messaged with him back and forth and after smacking him and his teammates around a little in the game, he agreed to answer some questions regarding administrating servers. After getting his insight you might also check out GameAdmins for some various server setups on a host of games.
1. How did the ND80 community start? What is it today?
Started around the first of this year. I am an admin for Xian's ID servers [site for Xian's Wolf community here] and as he has become occupied with the development of Doom 3, the servers has become somewhat laggy and there seemed to be a need for some other servers to host the players that have occupied those servers since RTCW first came out. I initially started with two RTCW servers but knew that once Enemy Territory came out I would expand. Right now, there are close to 500 members to the ND80 forums and many others playing on the servers.
2. How many servers do you currently host?
Currently I am running 21 total servers, 14 Enemy Territory and 7 RTCW servers of various setups.
[ed. note: whoops, included my own server there]
2a. What sort of masochistic mentality makes you want to host 21 servers? How'd you get started doing this?
Ha, I guess you can call this my expensive hobby du jour. It certainly has grown much bigger than I anticipated. No idea how long this will last, but for now, keeps me out of trouble.
3. What type of servers (software/hardware) are you running? Would my TI-99/4a be able to host a server?
I rent 5 computers for running these servers, 3 P4 2.0s with 1.5 mb RAM and 2 Dell Dual Xeons with the same specs. They are on OC48 lines and allow me varying bandwidth between 700-1200 gb/month depending on the box.
4. Who hosts your systems?
The computers are rented from www.rackshack.net in Texas. I find this much easier and less expensive than renting individual game servers. It affords me complete control of the servers plus I can run web pages, stats, and numerous ventrillo and teamspeak servers.
5. What's the bandwidth usage, on average, of each server? Please do not include the statistics for all the goat porn I'm told you host on your server as well.
It certainly varies depending on the server, but the biggest bandwidth users are the ET servers which can use up to 400 gb a month if they are occupied all the time (which they seem to be). Fortunately Rackshack recently upped their bandwidth cap so this has relieved some of my worries about bandwidth usage.
6. How do you handle problematic issues inherent to multiplayer games like spamming, bad attitudes, derogatory remarks, or people trying to vote to kick an admin off the server?
There certainly are an abundance of idiots that find their way to game servers, especially Enemy Territory since it is a new game. Some issues like racist or offensive names are handled with punkbuster settings, but for the rest of problem players, I have to rely on myself or the 13 admins that I have to help police the servers. Quite often, regulars players are the biggest help as they are quite willing to track down an admin if someone is creating problems on a server.
7. How do you pay for the bandwidth usage? Muggings, hostages, or other?
Initially I paid for all of this myself, but as the number of servers have grown, I have to rely partially on donations from others. These donations are covering about 30% of my total costs. If they continue at the same level, I should be able to run these servers for as long as the need exists. If not, then I'll either have to drop some servers or file for bankruptcy.
7a. How does one go about fulfilling their philanthrophic side and give you some bling bling?
Dontations are usually made via the PayPal link that I have on my home page. Several people have also sent me checks via the mail.
8. How can a player get hold of you or another admin if they are having problems on an ND80 server? Like for example, if I'm owning them too much and they are whining little snots.
Many of the admins have instant message services running and I have an IRC channel, #ND80 on gamesnet.east. Im fairly accessibly via these and can usually respond fairly quickly to a problem if one arises.
9. What tools do you use to remotely administrate the servers?
We use an SSH program called Putty. This allows you to completely manage the computers for the game servers and other functions as if they were sitting in front of us. Great program, although I have had to get a crash course in Linux from SiliconSlick (the linux guru for ND80.net). Without his help, I would be lost.
10. From a technical standpoint what are the big changes you've seen between RtCW and ET?
Not much difference in setting up servers for RTCW or ET, but ET gives you a lot more flexibility in setting up different types of campaigns so that you can offer quite a few combinations.
11. Server Admin: god like power being able to ban, or just too much time on your hands?
Ha, yes I ban from Mt. Leprechaun. Being a server admin definitely requires some level of maturity to prevent abuses and I have been fortunate so far in the people that I have selected for my admins.
12. As an admin of multiple servers are there any technical or administrative hurdles you'd warn up and coming admins about before they begin to host a server?
Definitely familiarize yourself with as many commands as possible. Depending on the type of server you run, you need to know Quake 3 commands, Punkbuster commands and in case of RTCW, shrub commands. I also would recommend that you utilize Punkbuster's web admin tool that allows you to remotely admin the server without using rcon.
13. Would you be willing to share one of your server's configs with the community to help new admins get started?
Absolutely. We have posted all of our cfgs on the ND80 home page so that they are easily accessible for others to read. Because I run so many servers we have had to set up the cfgs a little different than one might need for one or two servers, but everything is there to be read. We get lots of questions about our cfgs and I can't answer them, I refer them to SiliconSlick who has been very helpful to others in the ET community.