Help Fund a Fast U.S. ARMA 2 Server

[zild1221 10]

Hi there all.

Do you live somewhere in the US and play online frequently? If so then you probably find yourself playing on a slow European server like my friends and I.

My group of friends and I are all pitching in any cash we have to fund a dedicated box.

I am paying monthly for the beastly internet line into my house to host. Any donations will go straight toward the payment of the hardware.

The server will be kept up to date as well as have the newest and most popular mods.

All of the donors will be given some special privilege, dont know what yet, but there will be something.

I keep track of who donates and if it does not happen, all of your money will be given back.

Please help us, any amount is greatly appreciated.

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=W7WWYT9X5B4PU&lc=US&item_name=Dedicated%20Server%20Box&currency_code=USD&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF%3abtn_donateCC_LG%2egif%3aNonHosted

OUR NEW BLOG UNTIL WE HAVE A WEBSITE. http://violatorgaming.chipin.com/arma-ii-dedicated-server-box

Edited November 10, 2009 by zild1221

[Alex72 1]

Create a "social group" here on the forum. Its free and you can all have better contact there as you get sort of a mini forum in it. Add some information there like servername and progress/goals, and you can all discuss it in there. Make it a little bit organized. Asking for donations straight out of nowhere just doesnt seem to be so successful. Just a friendly tips. ;)

Good luck though. You deserve great servers over there too.

Alex

[zild1221 10]

Will do. Yeh, started out by just taking donations from our community. Figured I would broaden the scope of things to bring in some more $$. Figure (and hope) there will be other people playing on it too.

[.kju 3245]

What about the BMF server?

Tom Anger has started a similar effort. Look for his thread via search.

[Tom_Anger 0]

I made a post a few days ago and it looks like folks are trying to do this on their own, but this is something you do with careful planning and communicaty discussions first.

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=89665

Zild - I would be totally interested in helping fund/run/maintain USA Community servers. Not to speak for others, but we may also be able to get with some of the UK folks who may be looking to run UK community servers (i.e. ARMACOM - maybe others out there) and pool efforts for the entire ARMA community to run 2-6 USA & UK servers combined. It would take the entire community to do this though as the costs would be great. For the USA I would actually be interested in pledging 3 - 32 player slot USA servers for 1 month each year.

I think to start this off in the right direction we would need some formal place to document pledges, see what $$$ we are looking at then move on it. I don't forsee anyone coming back and saying they will donate alot without knowing how successful this would be. it may take a few to get the ball rolling as a trial and if the results pay off then move forward projecting out to host and have server drive donations each quarter. Numbers will help the project, but I wouldn't want to ignore UK folks. 24/7 global community servers would enhance gaming efforts for ARMA 2. I would say servers to support conisitent games such as

• Advance & Secure ONLY available to vote on to host a set of good AAS maps and rotate some in and out each month. Even make edits to some as needed.
  
• Capture & Hold running ONLY to host 2 types of HOLD missions. 1 which would be very similar to Battlefield conquest where you have 3 to 5 zones to capture to win and the other style would be Team King Of The Hill where both teams fight for 1 zone during the round.
  
• The 3rd server would be more of a wild card for DM, TDM, Attack & Defend, Seek & Destroy, and coop events - Basically others outside the box from AAS and C&H.
  

Hosted missions would have to be screened for consistency, playability, balancing, etc. I would forsee many folks wanting their missions hosted, but at the very least we could come back with our feedback and have mission designers tailor missions around what the community wants to see. Another consideration is who would admin the servers. I don't like to sterotype, but the success of this would require mature folks with years of gaming server hosting experience. Just my opinion...

Feel free to email me at tomanger@comcast.net and maybe we can further discuss over the next month and possibly make this happen as we approach 1st quarter 2010. If you don't go with a box, I may be able to get a deal on 3 separate servers and have a Community Teamspeak for it as well. I know people, lol...

On another subject - I have a list of missions hitting all of these gametypes and more which will be released fairly shortly so as far as fresh good detailed missions, I don't see much of a problem keeping things new and fresh as needed. I'm not sure if you are soley interested in PVP or Coops, but I do know a US community set of servers for PVP gaming is just what players need. The BMF server does great each night for AAS and others do well in C&H, but when they are full folks need a place they know they can go to and know what missions exist to pick from.

If you setup a Community Server Group let me know and I will join it. If you like, I can start one up and we can place the links in our signatures...

Go PATS, lol. Hope to chat with you soon enough - I post at the wee hours of the night because I am a programmer who supports code on third shift, lol. Take care and good luck on any efforts/direction you choose.

Edited November 10, 2009 by Tom_Anger

[zild1221 10]

I am all for doing a more organized community donation, I just am not quite as ambitious as you yet.

You have some awesome ideas how to organize and improve the community as a whole, right now though I want to focus on one specific range of people. My community mostly plays CTI, we never really find ourselves playing missions. When you go into the server list for CTI, most of the servers in there are flourishing European server. For ex. SuicideSquad #1 and #2 as well as XR #1 and #2. There are many others that are constantly full. Anyone in the US though is pretty much forced to play on those servers and ping over 120. If you have ever tried to play on a server like that you will notice all AI are kind of laggy.

I will get a donation bar going and some more info on what we are trying to do. But for now, we are starting small. The more donations we receive, the more servers we can host and broaden our views. Again, I am all for helping everyone, we just need to start somewhere.

Our community right now is not large. We were previously a much larger community, but that kind of died with the aging of the game that we were based around. We always have at least 8 people on a night to play Arma, that is why a CTI is always an awesome option.

Toward the hardware side of things... What we put in the box on the lines of hardware will be completely dependent on how much money we can raise. The more we receive, obviously the better we can put in there. I already pay for a ridiculously unnecessary line into my house, and I will be upgrading it even more so when we have this server box. I opt for this because we will not have to host it at a datacenter somewhere far from here and we can fix any problems on the spot. In the long run it will be cheaper to host it here than pay a company to host us one on not so good hardware.

I do not know what else to right at the moment, hopefully some more responses will remind me of something I forgot.

EDIT: I remembered something... We already have a large Ventrilo server running the best codec. It sounds amazing and is hosted in the US so ping is never a problem.

EDIT AGAIN: Once we have a server, we will have a website with hopefully active forums. In there people can discuss mods that are of quality that may make a good addition to the server, as well as other suggestions. There will be other sections discussing Ban requests and so-forth.

EDIT AGAIN: We now have a temp. blog to keep everything organized at. There is also the donate counter on the side. Once we have a server a much better site will go up. http://violatorgaming.chipin.com/arma-ii-dedicated-server-box

Edited November 10, 2009 by zild1221

[ZeosPantera 0]

I am one of the "friends" that plays with zild. We don't play nightly but when we do play it has been either my brothers Phenom1 on 15/2 internets or those euro servers. It's time for a real server on this continent.

If you want to discuss anything we are all in My vent most of the day.. See Link in Sig vVv

[zild1221 10]

So far we have a few donations. Now I have to link my paypal with my bank account. That will take a few days so if you donate, please do not be alarmed. It will show in a few days.

[hypnoticdragon 10]

I'm in possession of my own US-based dedicated box (2 actually) and I do use it to run an ArmA II server for me & my friends and I'm European myself.

[ghiostonm 10]

Sure all pro gamer are most welcome... if you can reach out to them it would be great!! Thanks a lot

[Pitchfork 10]

Guys,

We have one running on the East Coast, VA.

Running a dedicated 40 player AAS setup - co-located server on good backbone. :D

We'd be more than happy to host new and custom maps.

Tom_Anger's Embassy is awesome BTW.

Played some on the RU server last night.

Adding it to the rotation today.

Server Name is:

ClockworkOrange Arma2 AAS-PVP

75.102.10.218:2303

Vent Server running for it as well:

66.148.67.12:3802

If you are looking for a solid PVP setup its running and paid for!

[.kju 3245]

You may want to add your servers here:

Advance_and_Secure WIKI

[Tom_Anger 0]

Thanks Pitchfork.

I have 2 other AAS missions that I am letting ferment with me. One is another Small scale missions and the other is Medium and then the same mission which is opened up as Large giving both teams an airbase with an arsenal of weapons. That mission at the moment has the Depot that you see in warfare for each base and has the weapon boxes inside and outside it. I also have the small camps you see in warfare on the outskirts of the bases for look and cover. May get it out to the pubs in a week or so. Need to really nail it down...

[Pitchfork 10]

Thanks Kju, had no idea they were listed there!

I'll add to the list.

Keep those new maps coming, Tom. Really great work!

[Tom_Anger 0]

I don't want to steal the main intention of the post in which zild1221 is looking for some help on a community server (I believe for 24/7 Warfare).

Good posts here so if you have questions/comments on the Embassy AAS mission please feel free to post at: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?p=1492875#post1492875

Edited November 19, 2009 by Tom_Anger

[zild1221 10]

Well thanks. I was going to post that myself, but I did not want to sound like a douche.

[BeltFedish 10]

Too late...

Why in God's name do you need someone or someones to buy you a physical server for ARMA 2?

[zild1221 10]

Umm, not buying me... Helping donate for a server for our community... Anyway, because of the Blackop guys donating their box for our use. we have had a few awesome CTI's going. It was running well all night.

CTI started 2v2 at 6pm. By the time I left it was 12v12 and 3am. 9 hours of constant battle on a fast running US based server. I just crashed out of the game and the server is still going. Island was still split half and half. We destroyed their hq and they were able to rebuild. It could have gone on for another 5 hours, I need to sleep though.

With funding, we could have these type of battles every night. Anyway, we will have a real community site up soon. We are looking for some more members as well to play with/admin the server.

Anyway, everyone is welcome to the BlackOP Public Server. Our ventrilo is in the name. We run VOP 2.1, WarFX, Custom night vision, and custom reticules. We play with crosshairs off.

Thanks again to the guys over at BlackOP

[tcp 10]

Well, until the issue with handheld targeting is addressed, crosshairs will have to be turned on.

Belt, why would you choose your first post ever to be in this topic? Obviously you must be interested in a fast ArmA2 server. Making the initial purchase of server hardware a community effort is not unreasonable. It's better than going with the standard GSP which usually does not satisfy the hardware requirements of a high-performance ArmA2 server.

For anyone hosting Warfare games, if you've experienced the issue that currently affects this gamemode and causes longer games to reset and break, then please vote for this issue in the CIT: http://dev-heaven.net/issues/show/4655

[zild1221 10]

Well some updates. The server TCP has lent us for the next month has finally been running awesome. With the new version of Benny, we are seeing no errors or crashes 6+ hours into the game.

We now have AddonSync set up for the community to stay up to date with the mods the server allows. Currently we are running:

-The newest Beta

-Zeus Ai

-Vop (track vehicles & helicopters as well)

-Full NV Goggles

-WarFX

-31'st Reticules

-No texture map

-Reduced Voices

They are all awesome mods, I would recommend them to everyone.