rocket

Yes, want to do something about this. But finding a solution is difficult without it being engine developed.

Stickied

Avoiding the issue of hacking won't solve it. The authors of the bypasses would probably be the first to state that game developers need to start taking hacking seriously, I agree. Piracy is important but can be solved by changing the way you market, design, and price your product. But this means hacking is now critically important. There is only so much I can do in the mod, but what I really want to do - is highlight this problem. You are all helping me with this, and in fact, the hackers are really highlighting it. Smart hackers would keep this under the radar. The smart hackers made the bypass, the stupid hackers are using it to do stupid things. Because of this, we know exactly what is occurring and exactly what to do about it. This has been passed on to the required programmers. These things take time. Alpha is not about running from the problems, we confront them head on and fix them. Also, I've dealt with explanations of why private servers cant be used at this point in the project, search my previous posts if you'd like a detailed explanation.

Ping limiting is allowed because of practical necessity, and because it is indiscriminate on everything except your connection performance (i.e. it doesn't discriminate on race, language, etc...).

This is an Alpha of a mod, not an Alpha of a game. As such, anything that requires the change to the engine is out of the scope of the project unless, as you identified, a "feature" can be identified to get around the issue. I could simply stop development until the engine is changed, but that would be rather arrogant of me - ArmA2 is a military shooter, it was designed as such with specific requirements in mind. It was not designed for suvival / zombie shooting. Changes to accommodate DayZ are made as they are for other mods such as ACE and ACRE but like them it is also limited in its scope.

Point was made. Meme's were posted. Some think it's wrong. Some think it's right. I've closed the thread, if anyone is upset by this my apologies just open another thread and we can start the cycle again there are plenty of meme's left.

Did anyone else see someones post on his steam forum profile: Damn. That made me lol extremely hard.

HIVE is now integrated with the server. Currently, because of the way it works, the server will stop while it awaits a response from the central server for some queries it makes. So the server simply stops responding to any messages while it is processing a query. Normally, this happens instantly. Sometimes it may take some time, especially if transient internet issues cause connection problems to the central server. We're working on the issue.

Server setup is transitioning to an entirely community run affair. This is because myself and the others assisting with core development issues do not have the time, nor want the risk of dealing with the potential for such an issue as the suggested "zombie mod server zombie botnet". As I understand it, those assisting with server setup will often get the RDP details to help with the setup. However, these RDP details even if given are not recorded for the DayZ dev team to use. They're a one-time thing, its not part of any process any longer to store these details. The vast majority of new server providers are simply given instructions, download links, and instance files. I've been advocating putting the instructions for setting a server up along with all the files public, but there are some security issues present with this. The server side of the mod has been under the most significant revamp of any area of the code between me and viper, so it hasn't been practical to consider this issue. An example of this is the movement from HIVE from a standalone console app (exe) to a dll loaded directly within the ArmA2 server exe. We're currently running around 9000 peak, and 5000 offpeak for concurrent users. That's enough for capacity testing. We have around 400 servers, which is a nightmare for coordination. The main thrust of my server admin efforts have been to partner with large organizations which can host 10 or more servers and self-manage them. I am sure you can appreciate this makes the task much easier. How this whole process will work is being looked into, but rushing into process changes in this area is not a good idea and will just make matters worse.

You're forum passwords were not at risk as they were, in the parlance of our time, "salted".

Also, we don't require RDP access. In fact, it is discouraged. We currently only have RDP details stored for around 15% of servers.

The server lost a number of days of data. The forums aren't a priority service, and we are upgrading them to IPB soon, so they aren't backed up that often. I realize that might upset people, but really the forums are just the least of our concerns at the moment until the new system is in place.

Best advice I can give, resubmit your details to the contact form.

Actually, Alpha is for adding features. Beta is for ensuring those features work. There is no point getting the features to work only to break them by adding another feature. The focus at the moment is to add features, ensure enough stability for testing, then add more features. Once the core features are all added, there will be a feature freeze and then coding begins to address remaining issues.

Done. Sorry for the delay and that it's taken so absurdly long to resolve this.

Its no secret (I've been saying since day one) that I personally want to see this become a standalone game. But rushing into that is not a good idea. There are many things requiring careful consideration not least of all sustainable payment models.

Server bans are managed by Tonic in consultation with server admins. There is little value in banning someone on a single server when over 400 other servers exist. Hence why we have a central ban file. If you identify a hacker, contact Tonic.

Yes, they are. They spawn in military areas.

Ander has gone through and rolled 40 servers today cleaning up 600 old emails. Has your issue been resolved?

This stuff really needs to be dealt with at the core code level. The hackers themselves would be the first to tell you this. I could (and have tried) adding checks at the mid script level, but this causes performance issues and there is nearly always a way around this. I've raised this issue and I am confident it will be solved in time. But it's not the kind of thing that can be solved at a mod level, its an engine level required fix.

Probably because we had to roll back the forums one day. A large number of posts were lost I am afraid.

E3 soaked up all my time. I flew back into Czech Republic yesterday, but my bag got lost on the flight. I'll have more info this week but expect an update mid to late during this week.

Think of this as an "operational pause". I need to sit down with everyone involved and come up with a plan that is sustainable, and makes sense.