Dmantro

Hi guys! Usually I'm busy running my own server (I've been running Private HIVES since may), but I figured I'd stop by and post a tutorial on how to keep your servers well-maintained and optimized, and show you how to apply some fixes, and how to create your own! I'll keep adding to this (with credits from the people whom make these scripts) as people send me more modifications. Some of the features I'll be going over are: Tuning & optimizing your server to run 110% Custom BattEye Extended Control Scripts to reboot a server at any interval (with warnings) Full moon, locking a server at any specific time, & where to modify each of these settings How to install server fixes, & how to create new fixes. Add image to server loading screen How to add ARMA 2 assets & buildings Adding additional vehicles or vehicle types to your map. First off, you need to determine if you have access to the following files from your provider. Admins who host on a dedicated server or elsewhere, you have access so don't worry about it. Just read to know what each file can do for you! -=What you need access to (and details)=- You need access to the following files from your host. I have put a description on what features are editable (from my knowledge) from each respective file. I have seen a few people overwrite data that was in dayz_server.pbo in their mission file, and it worked but I'm not positive without testing it. Access to..... DayZ_Server.pbo (Located in the addons folder of @hive, @bliss, @dayz_1.chernarus, @saintly, etc.) This file controls a large amount of the variables that can be edited. The ones we'll be editing (in this post) are the time values. Your mission file (located in Arma2|arma 2 operation arrowhead/MPMissions/ folder. It should be titled "DayZ_1.Chernarus.pbo, but differs.) This file controls spawn points, and can be used to implement zombie fixes, loot fixes, and player fixes. We'll be using it to add an image to the start of the server loading. Edits here are public (people can "share" them when they download your map file to their pc), so if you plan on doing a long investment of coding I'd suggest finding a way to do it server-side. You can add fixes by simply "calling" additional .sqf files within the init.sqf file. Server Startup File (Usually a .bat with the server link+some settings) database access (you really need this to add vehicles or buildings. It's 100% must. Get access from your host, and if they aren't willing to give you access quit and move to a real host.) Now that we've explained what each file can do, lets move on to optimization. NEXT: You need to know what system HIVE your host/provider is using. Dedicated server owners should know as they installed the software. Some are different than others, so let me know if you have one that is entirely different than mine or others. The current common providers are Conanhun, Pwn's, Bliss (do not want), and guruabdul/antirocket (much older). I'd suggest if starting fresh to use Pwnoz0r (-10 spelling) as he doesn't patch ti unless its worth aptching. Bliss crew is great but they seem to update WAY too often with so many bugs each time. I'd avoid it. -=Optimization=- I believe I learned most of these fixes from an older post on here by Vaquxine (http://dayzmod.com/f...um-performance/ Original Thread), and I saved the thread a while back. I'm not going to suggest ALL the fixes he suggested, simply because people really aren't sure on what is "the best" settings for basic.cfg. What I will suggest is you do the following: Download TCPOptimizer http://www.speedguid.../downloads.php/ Open open up TCPOptimizer on your server machine, and (assuming you have at least 100mbit connection) move the slider at the top all the way over to the right under "100+MBPS". Check the box "Modify All Network Adapters", then choose "Optimal" at the bottom and hit apply changes. Be sure to restart your dedicated machine right after doing this, as some programs revert many of the TCP settings back to their default values which will still be loaded into memory. http://i.imgur.com/ZGEZ8.png There are a few other settings that are not enabled by default with the 'optimal' profile that I feel should be for ARMA2 hosting. You can edit these advanced values after restarting on optimal settings by choosing the "custom" box on the lower right, which will allow you to edit all fields. You should change: General Settings -> TCP Window Auto-Tuning should be on 'experimental'. ** If you run a MySQL server on your dedicated machine, this can cause confliction and should be left as its default value. Advanced Settings -> NetworkThrottlingIndex should be on 'high: 70' TCPMaxDataRetransmissions should be 9 or 10. Network Memory Allocation Size should be on 'optimized: 3' TcpAskFrequency should be 'enabled'. TCPNoDelay should be 'enabled'. * Make sure you apply changes once finished and reboot your dedicated machine once again. After you do this, open up the .bat that you use to start the game with, and check if the following is in it: @echo off echo.....Killing task.......... taskkill /FI "WINDOWTITLE eq ArmA 2 OA Console version 1.62 : port numbergoeshere" /F start /high Expansion\beta\arma2oaserver.exe [all your other settings, etc] -noPause -noSound -cpuCount=2 -exThreads=1 -maxMem=2048 exit What is really important about the startup file is that running arma 2 on high or realtime can actually make a big difference. I personally think high is fine, but you can set it to realtime if you'd like. At high though if it crashes or has issues it most likely was going to have them on realtime regardless. You can also try -nocb, which turns off multicore drawing , possibly enabling a speed boost. I haven't tried it myself with the latest HIVE builds, though. -=Custom BEC Scripts=- I'll explain these files and how to edit them, but for simplicity I've uploaded my full configuration onto Github, and with a few edits to the config files they should work perfectly. you can see ALL the code on github, so no virus scares :) This will allow you to use one .bat click to start BEC and your server, and has multiple restart points. To get this to function, you need to edit the following lines in the described files in the config folder. To use BEC, download the files here: http://www.ibattle.o...wnloads/Bec.zip Take ONLY bec.exe from the above download, and place it within my setting files below: https://github.com/Rinaun/BEC1 Once you place the exe with the BEC1 folder, just leave them inside their folder and place the folder in any place you'd like. You need to edit inside the config folder the actual config.cfg, and if you'd like to change when the server is restarted or see how scheduling is done, open Scheduler.xml in notepad. You can add administrators by using the admins.xml and copypaste a new entry in. You get the GUID from ingame (logging in) or from server logs. The scheduler is currently set to restart every 6 hours, with warnings starting 10 minutes out from the reboot. The things you need to be careful about are adding more jobs (keep track of the job ID and make sure you don't overlap), and making sure you get BEC started with the server. How I did this was adding the following to the server startup .bat we made earlier: echo ........Starting BEC....... echo........................... echo........................... start "" "bec.lnk" exit (be sure to delete the previous "exit" before you add this!) after you add that to your .bat file, make sure you include a shortcut to wherever you keep your .bat file of the BEC link. To make the shortcut just put the bec folder where you want it, right click make shortcut, and drag that to the same folder as your server launcher bat. The reason I do it this way (through .bats and shortcuts) is because I use a custom launcher for multiple server instances. It also gets the job done quicker :P After you complete the above, now we're ready for the real meat and potatoes; modding! -=modifying files=- How do you do it? You can edit the files several ways, but the most common is calling new .sqf files within the mission file (such as the All-In-One fixes you've seen around) or editing the dayz_server.pbo and doing pretty much the same thing. Those two spots control most of the modification of DayZ. You want to avoid editing anything else or users will have issues connecting to your server. to unpack the files, you'll need to download PBOview so you can unpack and repack the files. You CANNOT edit .pbos packed with a text editor! You MUST undo them with Viewpbo or another application. Here is PBOview: http://www.google.co...vUm2L3x0jHSEKrQ What can I edit from these? almost everything to do with zombies, loot control, anti hax (yes, you can build anti hacks within a map file.), vehicle spawning, pretty much anything. you can make buy menus, team menus, etc. What will cause server issues if I edit it? How do I fix them? What will cause server issues is making changes that require new signature files or editing any of the base dayz files. If it's in DayZ folder, don't touch it. Period. Another thing that MIGHT cause issues is if you edit things that were or are banned. DayZ doesn't like that because it thinks you are a hacker. Most of the time it can be solved by editing your battleye scripts.txt and such, but sometimes modding in tanks and etc won't be possible without a mod (such as RMod). To test this, just simply unload all scripts.txt when doing heavy modifications. I just keep the beserver.dll and .cfg in there and nothing else when testing. How do I tell if I broke my server? You can tell if you broke the server from the map file if it hangs on loading or wait to respond. I typically get everything running, then slowly modify things as modding always breaks more than it fixes initially. Quick Explanation/tutorial on simple edits So what the typical edit/fix looks like is someone add a new .sqf files (lets call this one vehicflip) and places it within the mission file. So how does he use this file? Simple. you add a one-line call to the file within the init.sqf, right as the loading bar is happening to the user. the line looks like this: call compile preprocessFileLineNumbers "vehicflip.sqf"; and now his script is ran. time locking/adjusting & full-moon nights Time has as of 1.7.3 been added in to certain HIVE systems. I know bliss now has the ability to adjust time without editing the actual files anymore. I'll be adding a link here soon with a tool that allows you to run custom day-night scripts. image on loading This edit is located within the Description.ext in the mission file. To add an image, simply place the image inside the mission folder within another folder to keep things organized :) In this demo, I'll be using the folder img and the image name of img.jpg. Be VERY careful on size of the image! I'd use this loading picture to show rules at a low res, so as to not affect load times too much. You could also intentionally make it large so new people have to read the rules. To make the picture show up, you still need to edit description.ext. Add this line somewhere inside description.ext: loadScreen = "img\img.jpg"; replace the folder and image name with whatever you'd like to use. LAST BUT NOT LEAST -=Adding new vehicles and buildings=- This section is super tricky because now bliss and other private HIVE systems are completely different now. I'll suggest that the poor souls still using bliss either move onto a more stable system or follow their building instructions. They have a great building system, but they patch so much that anything they add doesn't help with what bugs it brings >.> If you are using anything else, you are in luck! To add a vehicle, you need database access. It's pretty simple. You go here: http://www.armatechs...5165f/index.php pick any assets within those two catalogues, and understand that a lot of the military items/buildings/stuff is banned. If it doesn't spawn, then it's banned. With an asset in mind (I'm going to use Land_A_BuildingWIP for this example), go find a spot with your character, then log out to lobby. Open your database, copy your position. Log in, move ten-100 feet, depending on item size. Log into database, go to your ACTIVE vehicle table (usually 2-3 tables, one has the list of vehicles, the other has the list of spawns, and the third has all the vehicles active on the map spawned). You can tell which one is the active table by looking at the inventory column. Active vehicles will have randomized gas, items, etc because people are using them. Once in this table, create a new row and input in the data much like you would adding a vehicle. Give it 0 gas, 0 damage, put your copy pasted position in, and when asked for the type/model, put in your model (for me, Land_A_BuildingWIP). After you are all done, save the database, log onto your server and restart it. Log in and tada! You should have WHATEVER asset you wanted from that webpage on the map. If I was a bit vague on the tabling its because there are SEVERAL different builds, all with different structures. you can post below if you are having issues and if I have time I'll be more than glad to help :) I'm going to clean this up and format it once I eat dinner and my hands get uncramped! I'll add more fixes as people send me them. If you are looking for a place to play or a community to help build, check out my site. I'm trying to find some like-minded individuals who want to keep making dayZ better! Our servers have over 300+ objects/scenery and vehicles added (no, we didn't spawn a ton hueys cars and barracks, only some bikes :P)

I am. Check this thread for more information: http://www.tunngle.net/community/topic/114291-mission-file-mod-player-built-buildings-bliss/

Hey all! I'd like to advertise a server for a community I've been working with. Our server includes a white-listing system based on our forum (requires GUID input), Zombies/loot that spawns while you are inside a vehicle, a custom 20/4 day/night schedule, and coming within this week build-able fortifications including buildings like huts, shacks, and small sand bunkers. Our server has been around since june, and was one of the first private HIVE systems that was not for nocdkey players. Our server is from a top rated dedicated provider on the east coast, and provides an incredibly smooth performance for our player base. Pings for west coast users average in the 70-100ms range. Our servers are under our full control, and thus have been optimized thoroughly, and saves the database every 10 minutes to ensure users precious time is not wasted during a hacking attack. Broken/OOB vehicles are respawned every week, and we do not clean tents unless there is banned content inside them. To join, simply register on our forums (http://rinaun.com/forums/) and supply your guid via the profile field during registration. this field will NOT be shared/viewed by anyone, and it is accessible via only your profile. Rinaun's Hideout decided to stick to a serious whitelisting system to make sure our users aren't wasting their time on our servers. User who hack will be reported straight to battleye with logs. As one of the first private servers out in june/july, don't expect to see us vanish! Silly donation rewards like BMRF, or abusive admins like on CA/BMRF who ban players for winning don't exist here. No money goes to staff, all money goes strictly to server costs. It's a community, not someones cash project. Please note that some of these posts are from july. We have a long track record of providing a amazing server with admin coverage and other gaming servers. We do host events every month. This months event is a 40 man bike race. Here are some reviews for our HIVE system: http://dayzmod.com/f...ve-cheat-proof/ http://dayzmod.com/f...e-play-reviews/ http://dayzmod.com/f...n-hive-servers/ Some future ideas we're working with: Bases despawn with user logout Additional buildable loot (testing 15 or so at first) Humanity and temperature adjustments (making temp actually matter) dogs? If I can do it without dls sure. Trading system? Website: Http://rinaun.com Teamspeak: Http://rinaun.com Server IP: Rinaun.com port 2302 BUILDABLE STRUCTURES COMES LATER THIS WEEK. TESTING SAVING WITH OBJECTS FIRST!

I saw you in TS this morning Ripsaw, I was busy working on some server stuff. Great to see you enjoying the server :)

im so lost.

This is one of the reasons why I started mine. I got really annoyed that servers were giving people blatant advantages like bandages, guns, skins in namalsk (which is really temp dependent) and was really annoyed. I wouldn't mind something like a map (completely useless as we already have maps out of the game), but when you give a donator a golden gun it's just a bit silly. And secondly, wait for standalone. It takes immense amounts of time running a HIVE right.

Try our HIVE system. We're adding some more features soon, including player-spawnable buildings and fortifications. Other perks include buildings/vehicles spawned in tasteful manners, and zombies/loot spawning while you are driving and flying to increase immersion. Our server is based in Philly I believe, and http://rinaun.com is our website :) there's a bunch of other stuff I'm missing including a custom day-night schedule (20 hours day/4 hours night). there is also only a small handful of administrators, all of which have no actual database access. Best Regards, dmantro

Your argument would be valid if the site was up. Clearly whoever running that server has no clue what they are doing. But hey, if you want to wait a few days/weeks for them to get their equipment back online so 16 year olds can ban you, fine by me. It's a bit discouraging that you would say that they have "little" bumps when their site is down for longer than two full days. That is hardly a bump, that's forgetting you own a server. Even if they offered you free pillow-mints on log-in and out, if the server is down for almost a whole week I'd say it is pretty pointless having a server in the first place.

Can you possibly list the changes applied? If not, I'll just join and check the file out myself. I'd love to help you guys out :) Is there any chance you are going to re-implement zombies/loot spawning when vehicles are nearby? I know it was active at one point but now we have to mission-mod to enable it. Just wondering on why exactly it was turned off (server load?).

You guys could come over to our hive system (rinaun.com), and not deal with (a few) terrible admins. Heck, you could join ANY other HIVE and not get this level of drama or annoyance. This is what happens when the owner doesn't administrate and run the gaming server on a day-to-day basis. If he is, then he isn't keeping his promise if he received donations. I feel terrible every minute my server is down because users paid for it. ARMA isn't easy to administrate either, so I don't blame him for tasking it to others. I found out long ago that having others administrate (some actively playing "to win") just didn't meet my standards of administrator.

Bump. We've added so many features it's hard to list. Some include Zombie/Loot spawns while driving/flying, increased zombie spawns, custom day-night settings (4 hours of dusk>dark at 8PM-midnight), 250+ vehicles including the newest additions (an, AH, MI's). We use every asset available for vehicles, and we tend to keep the bulk of that number as bikes, motorcycles, and ATVs as they are more balanced and not used as mobile tents. All of this, and our servers still run incredibly fast and stable. Our buildings have been copied on many servers because we take the time to place doodads and proper placing, rather than just laying out 10 apartments We're adding this week the ability for users to make bases by trading in tin cans, meat, wood, tank trans, sandbags, etc. We now have a whitelisting system, which requires you to put your GUID in your forum profile. No admins aside from me can see this! For more info, check our website (http://rinaun.com) and Stay tuned!

Easiest way to add vehicles to bliss as far as I know is to access your database, go to the "world_vehicle" table, and add a full entry in with a world position you've recovered from yourself by logging in to the desired position, then logging out, copying the POS from your character and placing it in the world_vehicle table entries. The vehicles table is a list of all vehicles that bliss can use, with corresponding number to enter into the world_vehicle table. You can add vehicles (I have) to vehicles table, and not all the vehicles listed on there work on chernarus. Some actually cause major problems calling in (such as the lada4's and 5's). In the following days, I'm just going to release my current database build along with the custom time setup and other functions. What I've done is added 200-300 vehicles in well-placed spots, and added around 100-150 well placed buildings, bodies, and fire barrels/broken crates/doodads. You don't need to spawn all the vehicles, obviously. I've added the new unbanned planes and helicopters too. The custom time function allows you to set "day" and "night" times according to whatever you prefer. It DOES require a server restart but I usually use it while refreshing the server anyways. For example, you can set it (like mine is currently) to run 20 hours of daytime (12:01AM-7:59PM), then I restart the server like I do every 4 hours, and upon restart my server is becoming dark, then full-night by midnight. At 11:59, the server warns users day is coming and restarts (as per 4 hour reboot) . When the server restarts, the time will now be daytime. Other fixes/features that can be DIRECTLY added to vanilla dayz include making loot and zombies spawn while users are inside vehicles. With this build, you'll also need to set up BEC and firedaemon to make this all work. My build will also include a PHPBB forum whitelisting system (GUID based). If the guy that made BEC wasn't such a crybaby he'd allow me to bundle it with the future release, instead he whined about me not giving him credit and now you guys will have to take extra steps and download it from a completely separate link :/ How hard is it to code a credits window/line?

I'm currently working on a custom time script for BLISS hive system. Stay tuned. This feature will allow server admins to set custom night-time lengths.

We've updated the server since this post. Server now contains 200-300 vehicles and 200-300 buildings. Videos to come. A big thank-you to Sequisha for spending his time between college/career to help our community out. We will be activating our whitelisting system within the next two weeks to avoid hacking attempts. To join, simply register on our forums (http://rinaun.com/forums/) and supply your guid via the profile field. this field will NOT be shared/viewed by anyone but me, and it is accessible via your profile. We decided to stick to a serious whitelisting system to make sure our users aren't wasting their time on our servers. User who hack will be reported straight to battleye with logs. As one of the first private servers out in june/july, don't expect to see us vanish! Silly donation rewards like BMRF, or abusive admins like on CA/BMRF who ban players for winning don't exist here. No money goes to staff, all money goes strictly to server costs. It's a community, not someones cash project. Please note that some of these posts are from july. We have a long track record of providing a amazing server with admin coverage and other gaming servers. Here are some reviews for our HIVE system: http://dayzmod.com/f...ve-cheat-proof/ http://dayzmod.com/f...e-play-reviews/ http://dayzmod.com/f...n-hive-servers/ Main website is down while we add a stats tracking system.

To set the time in the new hive system using BLISS's system, simply go to your Arma2 OA folder, and look for a folder named: cfgdayz, Bliss, dayz_1.chernarus, or something similar. Open that folder up and you should see a file called HiveExt.ini. Within the file, there will be instructions on how to do certain time changes. To lock the time to 8AM (bright day), find the line ";Type = local". Remove the ; before the start of type if it has one, and change local to "static". Below will be a line like this: ;Hour = 8. Just remove the ;, so the files read that line. Overall, it should look like this: Type = Static ;If using Custom type, offset from UTC in hours (can be negative as well) ;Offset = 0 ;If using Static type (Hour value always the same on every server start), the value (0-24) to set the Hour to Hour = 12 Remember, this is for the BLISS hive system (and now the Pwnoz0r system too)

Why would you need to restart the server fully? I've never had any issues prior with just restarting the mission, and that's running two mission files with 30+ people for 2-4 days. I used to restart until I actually looked at performance and aside from ram usage (2gb is nothing), the server FPS doesn't seem to take a drastic hit at all. I will agree however firedaemon is a good choice if you are planning on 110% automation. It just simplifies everything and when I get time I'll write a quick guide on how to set it up for dummies. for now, if you'd like to use Firedaemon go ahead and download it, set up BEC (pretty sure you still need it to warn people) and you can install firedaemon similar to how these two users did: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/35540-firedaemon-restarter-need-help/

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