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LeftSkidLow

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Posts posted by LeftSkidLow

  3. Posted

    You bring up a very good discussion Santhonax, one that most admin type personalities will almost certainly disagree with.

    There is very much a "I rule my server with an iron fist, if you don't like it buy your own" attitude. It's true, I am not paying for your server, but as a long time player of BIS products, I can tell you that you are dealing with a very small pool of players. This small pool of players is why your public server exists, whether you care to admit it or not. Every time you ban one of them its a big hit to community.

    Think about this, say for discussions sake, that there are 300 regular players in US time zones(likely a high figure). How many do you think are actually cheaters that run 3rd party addon/scripts? It's a very small number, out of 300 I would bet there are no more than 10. Yes I know that's an extreme claim for me to make, but you have to understand how these guys work. They go to one server, often in pairs, take usually NO MORE THAN 20-30 minutes to ruin it, and then go on to the next. Over the course of the night, they are changing their names, and probably ruining 3-4 servers an hour. That's just 2 players doing that, on a peak night, maybe we see all 10 of them. 5X the server attacks/griefing, by 10 players. You could literally ruin all populated ArmA2 public servers with about 5 of these guys in a matter of hours. That is their goal, and they love to get innocent players banned as part of their game. It's no secret that they run scripts to help admins falsely accuse the wrong players. In ArmA1 they had scripts that would say a certain player was responsible for each the griefers TK's, as well as scripts that allow them to type messages under another players name. They know they can ruin ArmA2 online this way, remember how bad ArmA1 was before addon signatures?

    You could argue that if you banned the wrong guy, they can take it up with you on the server website later. Have you ever been banned? You are more likely to say, "F*** those a**holes I'm never going there again" than going and registering on yet another forum, and checking the thread for days for a reply, then waiting another few days for an admin that actually knows how to unban to do it, assuming they even believe you. A small percentage of wrongly banned players may even turn to griefing other servers. As server admins, how many of you even know how to unban and what is your rate of actually doing so? Go look at your ban list, how long is it? Do you really think all 15 of them are script kiddies, I highly doubt it.

    If you are paying for a public server you owe it yourself to keep the community going, be very careful when you ban and be damn sure. Being a hard-ass makes you feel better, but you guys are really turning people away from the game. Especially with a widespread release like steam, you need to be more patient, noobs are going to happen, sometimes they just need a swift kick (not ban) and they will start behaving. Give more players admin access, most of you "iron fist" guys are such control freaks you only give admin rights to a few other players who happen to only play during the same time as yourself. Whats the point of that? Would it really be against the interest of your server to give admin rights to some trusted regular players?

  4. Posted

    I think everyone should be skeptical of the huge performance increase that is said to happen when you leave vista.

    I have vista x64, and became convinced enough by these forums to try XP x64, and decided to benchmark it myself.

    I made my own mission, and used exactly the same settings for ArmA in Vista and XP. What I found.......... almost no difference in frame rate, 24-25 FPS in Vista and XP.

    I have seen the benchmarks that report as much as a 10 FPS difference, but I'm skeptical of how much they controlled the conditions they tested with. ArmA is very strange with FPS, you should only get the FPS right after opening the game, a fresh mission load, and looking in exactly the same spot.

    I think this is often why people see performance increases when they increase settings, the fact that the game reloaded new textures or the game was alt-tabbed, or the player was staring in a different direction for a while, these all have an effect on the FPS, and we saw the same thing in ArmA1. In fact, it was discovered by players in ArmA1 that changing certain settings essentially caused a memory flush that would show in increase in FPS for some time.

    I guess my point is, be skeptical of what you read on these forums about performance increases. A lot of statements are made without controlled testing, and some are made just because it feels good to jump on the bandwagon. So it would be in your best interest to do your own research, it performs different on every machine.

    I can say for mine that the FPS helper addon, view distance, anti aliasing, and post processing effect my FPS more than anything.

  5. Posted

    That kinda of shit ruined Arma1 online for a while, I didn't see near the # of players like there was around the release until ACE came out. I think maybe we should start asking for help from the mission makers because BIS either doesn't care or can't figure out how to fix it. Maybe like if Zeno made a new Domination with a vote option to kick if possible, or at least disable the player.

  10. Posted

    I just set a 1.5gb ramdisk, and loaded all the chernarus, trees, and building pbos into a mod folder on the ramdisk.

    I didn't notice any increase in performance on the ground but flying was a little smoother. The FPS isn't really affected, I just got less stuttering.

    I only have 4gb of ram, but someone with more could try to load the whole addons folder.

  11. Posted

    Not to say it isn't skilled, but the Chinook pilots could not do those landings without a crew chief on the ramp talking to them.

    I would consider this a lot more skill, maneuvering a single pilot MD-500D (no stability augmentation or hydraulics) with wires above, below and on both sides to transfer lineman.

  14. Posted

    ------

    Ah, that file is only for the hosting servers... doh!

    Guess they're all boycotting this addon???

    Pretty much, I think there are only 2 public servers that with addon signature enabled that allow VOP. One is the Old Farts server and the other starts with a U. If you play on Old Farts make sure you have the small update of VOP the author posted on this thread.

  15. Posted · Edited by LeftSkidLow

    Not bad at all, but there is too much turbine sound on the MH-6, I can nitpick that one because I've flown Hughes 500's and worked hundreds of hours around them. Most of what you hear is like a literally like a "fart" sound from the main rotor system and the buzz from the tailrotor (which is usually only prominent when a 500 is approaching you with Doppler effect). You really only notice the engine sound when they are at ground idle. Other than that I think it's fine, as long as you can tone down the engine sound.

    Just to show what I mean: you can barely hear the engine if at all

  16. Posted

    "Co" means its a coop mission, the most popular coop missions are usermade "domination" or "domi" and "evolution" or "evo."

    If you like the domination missions I'd try the Old Farts server, its in the US. Also just because its in europe doesn't mean you won't understand them, a lot of them speak english anyway, and most Germans can speak it. The only downside is the ping.

    The game is much more popular in Europe than the US, but I've found that the US servers will start showing up around 5:00 PM or 1700 PST.

  23. Posted · Edited by LeftSkidLow
    Wanted to make it a tutorial

    Addon signatures will allow you your server to let players connect using mods that have chosen to allow. More importantly it uses encryption and signature/key file pairs to check that the file has not been tampered. This greatly reduces the hacker/cheaters ruining your server because they are simply using their own created addons. Without signature files that you have approved for your server, their cheat mods won't allow them to join the server. There is more info on the signature checking system at the bottom of this post.

    Enabling signed addons on your server:

    Here's how you do it, for tutorial's sake we will say you want to enable your clients to join with a fictional mod called @xxx mod.

    1) In the server.cfg, look for and edit or add this line:

    verifySignatures = 1;

    Recommended----------With a mod activated, attempt to join your server and it should not allow you to enter and give you a error saying which specific files are not allowed.

    2) Download xxx mod from a legitimate site, and look for a file or files that end with .bikey ie "xxx.bikey" These are generally set aside in a separate folder within the downloaded mod.

    ( There are many legitimate sites but a couple I recommend are: http://www.armaholic.com http://www.armedassault.info , or the links posted by the addon author on the BIS forums)

    3) Move the bikeys to the "keys" folder in your arma2 server directory. In my case the directory is "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\arma 2\keys\" Yours maybe be different depending on OS and how you bought the game.

    4) When you or a player downloaded the mod, there should also have been files with the extension *.bisign in the addons folder. These files are the players responsibility and need to be with the actual mod files (*.pbo), usually in the addons folder of the mod folder(there are often multiple of these files per addon). So make sure these bisign files are in the right directory of the machine you will be playing ArmA2 on.

    For exampe- C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\arma 2\@xxx\addons\whatever.bisign

    (Generally speaking, just follow the mod authors installation directions)

    Also note: With VOP mod the 2.1 version was released to the major sites with keys, then the author made a small update which he only released on the BIS forum thread with more keys, make sure you decide which one you want to use and the bikey and bisign files coorespond to the correct version.

    5) Now that the server.cfg is set and you have the keys in the server folder, try to join the server with @xxx mod activated, it should let you in.

    6) I highly recommend adding to the server name, that you allow mods, maybe make it look something like "ABC CLAN Signed addons"

    The reason being, many players running mods, which is a lot, have servers they won't bother trying to join because they won't allow mods, if they see that in the title then they can join. Unfortunately there is only so much space that is readable on the ingame browser, so I'd also reccomend posting in the "list of servers using mods" thread some general server info and which mods you allow http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=82613

    Some other important info:

    -If the player or client tampers with original PBO file from the addon, they will be denied.

    -The server does not have to run the mod to allow it, you just need the bikey in the correct folder

    -The server can allow as many mods as you like

    -This isn't a substitute for admins, but it will help, give admin rights to trusted players.

    -You will need to update your server keys as new versions of mods are released.

    -Mod authors, please release the server key files in seperate zip or rar files so its not as much of a hassle for admins.

    -Not all addon makers sign their addons, so if you come across and addon you want to use that isn't signed you need to ask the author to release the next version with a signature.

    For more server.cfg variables look here: http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/server.cfg

    and : http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/ArmA:_Addon_Signatures

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