TPU (Tanks n Planes Unlimited)

I just added a new poll that asks what we should run on Tuesdays. Current Tuesdays are DCFinal all day.

I'm going to set up next wildcard Wednesday as another DR day on TPU. That's October 5th. I figure we should give it another shot right away since there were a few glitches last Wednesday, and to see if even more people jump in.

I think I have resolved the problem with the wrong maps appearing on the map vote screen, so that shouldn't happen. The scheduler problem that occurred at 6am PST, when TPU switched back to FH, should also be resolved. I will also try to tweak the server setup a bit so that there are some limits, but that's a bit tricky because of the mixed modes.

I'm going to try automatically switching to (and back from) the DR day announcement list. There's no way to do this with BFSM or its scheduler, so I'll have to cobble something together myself.

Coral Sea still won't be in the rotation as it was causing crash loops. I know there are a few different versions of this map out there, so if anyone has any suggestions for fixing this, let me know.

If you have any other ideas for tweaking DR day next Wednesday, drop me a line or post a comment here.

UPDATE: To keep things moving along, all maps on DR day will now have a 60 minute time limit. I also added Gazala CTF. DarkRyda tweaked CTF mode for Gazala, Berlin, Stalingrad, Kharkov, and Bocage so they now have more tank and plane spawns, just like in regular co-op mode on TPU.

UPDATE 2011Oct05: I just watched the server crash repeatedly trying to run Caribbean Inferno. I switched it to the next map and it seems to be okay now, but I will probably need to remove it from the rotation. Since this is one of the maps in the DR map pack, I'm going to take a closer look to see if I can figure out what's going on. Stay tuned.

UPDATE 2011Oct06: Apparently Stalingrad CTF was causing client crashes so I removed it from the DR day map rotation.

Gamespy flooding of TPU on UDP port 23000 seems to be under control, at least for now. I can see flood traffic arriving at the router sporadically, but it's all being dropped. Research shows that TPU is not the target of these attacks, but rather was being used as a reflector in a DRDoS (Distributed, Reflected Denial of Service) attack against one or more other servers.

Below are the IPs I am continuing to block. If you are aware of some reason why any of these should be unblocked, let me know.

78.145.117.49
82.21.203.53
85.234.149.219
94.76.216.44
109.70.148.51
220.25.130.98
89.176.28.198
24.110.31.66
76.111.53.176
184.106.242.223
66.8.194.174
81.19.212.130
96.31.86.166
69.14.213.132
72.10.172.39
67.215.65.132
184.4.130.120
74.72.216.160
108.65.237.65
208.167.232.92
64.120.251.131
209.246.142.73
24.184.255.80
69.175.48.194
64.79.109.136

As a tribute to TPU's most prolific modder, next Wildcard Wednesday on TPU will be dedicated to DarkRyda. He has selected what he considers to be some of the most fun maps available from all the mods played on TPU, including some that are rarely played, like his own Race Track. We'll be running the maps in various modes (including Co-op, Conquest and Capture The Flag) so the team ratio will be 1:1 all day.

Here's the map list:
Raid_on_Agheila Conquest secret weapons
SW_Groenland coop secret weapons
CaribbeanInferno coop bf1942
El_Rajhi_Pass coop bf1942
Faid_Pass coop bf1942
Aberdeen Conquest bf1942
Urban_Classic Conquest bf1942
The_Race_Track Conquest bf1942
x Coral_sea Conquest bf1942
Invasion_of_the_Philippines Conquest bf1942
Liberation_of_Caen Conquest bf1942
4005-train_raid_at_mill Conquest BG42
4503-cologne_trainstation Conquest BG42
4504-berlin_streets Conquest BG42
4504-crossing_the_spree Conquest BG42
stalingrad ctf bf1942
kharkov ctf bf1942
bocage ctf bf1942
berlin ctf bf1942
x market_garden ctf bf1942

UPDATE: Market garden does not have a CTF mode, so I've removed it from the list.
UPDATE: Coral Sea was removed from the list as it was causing a crash loop.

Next Wildcard Wednesday (September 14) TPU will be running a new (well, new for TPU, anyway) mod: Forgotten Hope. This is another realism mod with a load of new maps. Of course none of them have been tweaked for TPU, but it should be fun to explore this mod.

You should be aware that Forgotten Hope has some significant differences from classic BF42, particularly in the area of user interface. Tanks, for instance, have multiple views for the commander/driver, and only one of them has an aiming reticle. Press F9 to switch views.

There's a good overview of the mod here: http://forgottenhope.warumdarum.de.

You'll find download links for the Forgotten Hope client files (there are three of them) on the Files and links page.

See you on the battlefield!

UPDATE: Battle of Foy removed from the rotation due to repeated server crashes.

At 3:38am this morning, TPU started being flooded with Gamespy traffic from a single IP: 75.102.34.20. The IP is a server in California. It may be just a misconfigured server tracker, or it could be part of an organized DDoS. In any case, I've blocked the IP at the router and notified the person who manages that IP/server.

UPDATE 2011Sep05: The flood from 75.102.34.20 finally stopped, but in the past two days there have been several more, from these addresses:
64.237.43.195
64.79.109.136
71.211.32.58
70.139.49.87

UPDATE 2011Sep06: And more flooding from:
78.46.36.6
72.21.81.63

2011Sep08:
64.79.109.136 (repeat offender)

Several TPU regulars have pointed out that TPU is reverting to the DCFinal Berlin map when there are no human players. The server manager software (BFSM) may be initiating this, because when it happens I see these two messages:
"Server is idle, changing to idle map combo berlin GPM_COOP dc_final."
"User operator at console changed the map to berlin GPM_COOP dc_final."
I'm looking into this and will hopefully have it sorted out soon.

UPDATE: Mystery solved. According to the BFSM log, on 8/24/2011 at 19:22:42 one of the admins "changed the idle map to berlin GPM_COOP dc_final." I'm sure it was just a slip of the mouse; no harm done.

I cleared the idle map so things should be back to normal.

The BF1942 dedicated server software running TPU has been patched to prevent the hack that was being used to disrupt the server a few weeks ago. Let me know if this causes any problems.

UPDATE 2011Aug25: Sisko reports that trying to switch maps from DCFinal to BF1942 after the end of the DCFinal schedule last night was having unexpected results. This may have something to do with the patch, so we're keeping an eye on it.

The new TPU Monitor (top of the right-hand column) is showing team numbers that are not quite right. I've identified a bug in the PHP code and am working on a fix. I hope to have it working properly in the next day or so.

UPDATE: It's still not quite right. Sometimes it fails to count all players. Working on it...

A few announcements:

[1] Wildcard days are now Wednesdays. We'll stick with DCFinal on wildcard days for now, but there's been some discussion of changing to BF1918 soon, to see if that generates any more interest.

[2] Meanwhile, Tuesdays are now dedicated to DCFinal.

[3] There was a problem with stats processing on Tuesday, but it is now fixed and the missing stats should be on the stats page.

[4] There are some problems with the AI on a few of the BG42 maps. In particular, on Omaha Beach, the Allied bots don't seem to want to move off the beach. I'm going to start a new forum thread about AI problems in general. One thing we have yet to determine is whether we can make changes to the AI on a map without forcing clients to download the changed map.

[5] There are a few misbehaving maps in DCFinal: Bocage (day one?) doesn't run and when voted for, sends you to a random map; also the server seems to get stuck on Mimoyecques. I'll be taking a look at those issues today.

UPDATE: I tried DCFinal Mimoyecques on TPU and it seemed to work fine. Not sure what it was doing earlier since I didn't see it for myself, but perhaps the problem fixed itself. As for Bocage, the first one definitely doesn't run. I'll fix or remove it.

UPDATE: Unable to determine why DCFinal Bocage doesn't run on the server, I removed it from the DCFinal map rotation. There are still two other Bocage maps in the rotation.

UPDATE: DCFinal Market Garden was also acting weird so I removed it.