East Coast, 75+ Man, Dedicated | Crowd Source

[zild1221 1]

My group and I have a tough time getting into servers on the east coast due to the abundance of east coast players, and lack of east coast servers.

The servers that there are currently, are not the most reliable to say the least. We wanted to host a server for DayZ, but the costs are too high to host out of our own pockets.

We have TONS of prior ArmA I and II hosting experience, so this won't be anything new for us. We know what it takes to set up and moderate/maintain a large server.

Included in the link below are all of the details. Please check there, everything you need to know should be answered.

https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/arma-ii-dayz-mod-75-man-dedicated-server-east-coast

Feel free to ask anything here. I'll be glad to answer.

Edit: It would help if I added the link...

[anthony_henson2003@yahoo.com 33]

My group and I have a tough time getting into servers on the east coast due to the abundance of east coast players' date=' and lack of east coast servers.

The servers that there are currently, are not the most reliable to say the least. We wanted to host a server for DayZ, but the costs are too high to host out of our own pockets.

We have TONS of prior ArmA I and II hosting experience, so this won't be anything new for us. We know what it takes to set up and moderate/maintain a large server.

Included in the link below are all of the details. Please check there, everything you need to know should be answered.

https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/arma-ii-dayz-mod-75-man-dedicated-server-east-coast

Feel free to ask anything here. I'll be glad to answer.

Edit: It would help if I added the link...

[/quote']

willing to donate if you can let me know how to get the server above 50 players. Simply setting the max players does not seem to do it.

[Freeborne (DayZ) 7]

What kind of server hardware do you have, to run over 50 slots?

With the latest DayZ patch, running 50 slots means having about 1000 zombies spawned. As Mojo said it's more a limitation of ArmA as to how many players "any" server can comfortably support. You won't get 100 players for example without it crashing frequently, and having such low fps that half the scripts don't work properly, loot won't spawn, zombies will spawn with long delays, etc.

If you don't know how to dePBO a mission file, I doubt you know how to optimize your ArmA configs to squeeze more performance out of it then the ArmA admins who have been running servers for years?

I'm not ArmA server guru, but we use an E3 1240, which is only 300MHz slower than the 1270 from memory. You cannot use more than 2 cores in the server engine. We managed 75 slots with 1.5.6 quite comfortably on 2 cores. After 1.5.7 we had to drop it to 45-50 slots, with all the extra zombies. We still get about 4 fps though.

1 month in DayZ universe is a LONG time. I'd suggest raising enough money for a month's server hosting, and see what you can do in that time, instead of trying to raise so much start-up cash, without proving to your customers you can achieve your goals. Run a DayZ server for a month, and see if you can make it more reliable than everyone else, and squeeze more performance out of a server that's less powerful than what other's are using. See how stable you can get DayZ, without touching any of Rocket's coding or custom apps, and only working with the few small areas of your server you are allowed to modify ;-)

[anthony_henson2003@yahoo.com 33]

What kind of server hardware do you have' date=' to run over 50 slots?

With the latest DayZ patch, running 50 slots means having about 1000 zombies spawned. As Mojo said it's more a limitation of ArmA as to how many players "any" server can comfortably support. You won't get 100 players for example without it crashing frequently, and having such low fps that half the scripts don't work properly, loot won't spawn, zombies will spawn with long delays, etc.

If you don't know how to dePBO a mission file, I doubt you know how to optimize your ArmA configs to squeeze more performance out of it then the ArmA admins who have been running servers for years?

I'm not ArmA server guru, but we use an E3 1240, which is only 300MHz slower than the 1270 from memory. You cannot use more than 2 cores in the server engine. We managed 75 slots with 1.5.6 quite comfortably on 2 cores. After 1.5.7 we had to drop it to 45-50 slots, with all the extra zombies. We still get about 4 fps though.

1 month in DayZ universe is a LONG time. I'd suggest raising enough money for a month's server hosting, and see what you can do in that time, instead of trying to raise so much start-up cash, without proving to your customers you can achieve your goals. Run a DayZ server for a month, and see if you can make it more reliable than everyone else, and squeeze more performance out of a server that's less powerful than what other's are using. See how stable you can get DayZ, without touching any of Rocket's coding or custom apps, and only working with the few small areas of your server you are allowed to modify ;-)

[/quote']

We are running an E3-1290 So that pretty much has the highest thread speed you can get currently. The money for the server is not an issue atm as we run one of the biggest minecraft servers in the world.

So far many people have said our server is the most lag free of them all besides the Seattle server. Its set to auto reboot when it crashes so it seems to do just fine there. We have also been able to get a little over 2100 zombies with 50 people on with zero lag.

Im pretty sure that the server could run good/great with maybe even 65 people on.

I am not very familiar with the arma 2 engine but have been learning a lot so any help on setting the max players higher would be great.

[RHS-Jeff 0]

A lot of the stability of the servers isn't coming from the people who run/own them, with the patch early this week there has been a lot of issues with it. However, they ran some updates last night which will hopefully fix these issues.

[zild1221 1]

Ok, I'll try to keep this response organized and directed as not miss anything.

@Jeff - I know that the past couple of days the patch screwed with things and that the main "Hive" was having problems. This is not the instability we are annoyed with. However, I do hope that the issues with the "Hive" have been ironed out so I can stop listening to people in ventrilo complain... =]

@FreeBorne - It seems you are looking at the 4 month vs 1 month thing from the opposite direction as me. =] In my head 4 months sounds great. For one, I would hate to contribute, only to see the server I now regularly play on go down in a month. Also, DayZ is only in Alpha... With as big as it is now, can you imagine a few months and a few patches down the road! If we don't end up getting enough contributions by the time period, I will try the 1 month route.

@Hungoverfurball - If this mission is anything like other ArmA missions, you will have to use software to "de-pbo" the mission. From there, you will have to edit a file within the mission files. I have not looked into it for DayZ yet, but I am fairly certain that is how it will have to be done.

Worst case scenario. We attempt for 75 slots. After exhausting all efforts to optimize settings, we still have a low FPS. Instead of one 75 slot server, we run two 50 slot servers. With the server specs listed, and seeing that ArmA II servers only use 2 cores, we have more than enough resources to do so.

So please, if you would, give us a chance. The more DayZ servers up and running (stably), the better off DayZ is.

[masterjts 1]

I will donate if you make it (or one of the two 50 servers) a hardcore server that allows 100kb face.jpg files.

[zild1221 1]

If we have only one server, it WILL be hardcore. There aren't enough of them. If we have two servers, one will be hardcore, the other will be regular.

I will look into the 100kb face. I can't see why not though, other than bandwidth, which we will have more than enough of.

[cm. (DayZ) 28]

Can people please stop calling it "hardcore". It's called "veteran" or "Expert". Trust me when I say "hardcore" was over-used in a game-thy-shall-not-name.

[zild1221 1]

The problem with calling it "Veteran" is that even when it shows "Veteran" in the server browser, it still has crosshairs and names...

[Freeborne (DayZ) 7]

So call it "Expert". Everything's off in Expert, including 3rd person, by default.

My advice is still to ask for less upfront cost. I'm just giving my opinion as an outside observer. I read the link you posted, and all I got was basically this:

- We have run A2 servers before, but we won't tell you which ones, just trust us that we know what we're doing.

- Everyone else can only manage about 50 slot servers, but we're going to do better, coz we can, trust us!

- We want 4 months upfront now. We want your cash before you get a chance to see we can meet our claims of high slots and a stable server.

- We also have no forums, and no TeamSpeak server, but trust us, we'll get one, and it will be super awesome.

Sorry, I'm often a pessimist, but all I get out of that is some 16yo expecting a bunch of players to donate to a cause with no credibility. As an example, we paid for the first month for our server at our our own pockets (cm and myself). We THEN started taking donations after the server went up. Donations flooded in after that, as everyone was to happy to play on our servers. In less than 2 weeks we raised another for another 2 months, with the promise of refunding all PayPal donations if we don't raise enough for the next month.

[zild1221 1]

So call it "Expert". Everything's off in Expert' date=' including 3rd person, by default.

My advice is still to ask for less upfront cost. I'm just giving my opinion as an outside observer. I read the link you posted, and all I got was basically this:

- We have run A2 servers before, but we won't tell you which ones, just trust us that we know what we're doing.

- Everyone else can only manage about 50 slot servers, but we're going to do better, coz we can, trust us!

- We want 4 months upfront now. We want your cash before you get a chance to see we can meet our claims of high slots and a stable server.

- We also have no forums, and no TeamSpeak server, but trust us, we'll get one, and it will be super awesome.

Sorry, I'm often a pessimist, but all I get out of that is some 16yo expecting a bunch of players to donate to a cause with no credibility. As an example, we paid for the first month for our server at our our own pockets (cm and myself). We THEN started taking donations after the server went up. Donations flooded in after that, as everyone was to happy to play on our servers. In less than 2 weeks we raised another for another 2 months, with the promise of refunding all PayPal donations if we don't raise enough for the next month.

[/quote']

No no, I appreciate your pessimism (I call it an opinion). I guess I was just looking at it from a completely separate standpoint.

I have been rethinking out the way to handle this. I really didn't want to start a community, rather just everyone pitch in for a good place to play. However, it seems people like the "community" feel more.

More and more I am liking the 2x 50 man server idea. The same spec quad core server will handle it, and it seems you get more bang for your buck that way.

The forums and VOIP server can be taken care of, right away with no problem. Been there, done that, I'm going to get those going ASAP.

As for the other points, the ArmA II servers we hosted were nothing HUGE. We just had 20-30 people on our Ventrilo who played Warfare BE almost every night. Warfare BE slams an ArmA server resource wise, so it kind of relates to DayZ.

Anyway, I am going to restructure things like I said. See if I can get any of the cheap bastards in our ventrilo to donate ( I doubt it, I got stuck paying $60 a month for our last server, alone).

Again, I appreciate the time everyone has taken to respond. I will probably make a new post rather than update this one once everything is a little more situated. I want to get it together by the 1.61 update.

[anthony_henson2003@yahoo.com 33]

So call it "Expert". Everything's off in Expert' date=' including 3rd person, by default.

My advice is still to ask for less upfront cost. I'm just giving my opinion as an outside observer. I read the link you posted, and all I got was basically this:

- We have run A2 servers before, but we won't tell you which ones, just trust us that we know what we're doing.

- Everyone else can only manage about 50 slot servers, but we're going to do better, coz we can, trust us!

- We want 4 months upfront now. We want your cash before you get a chance to see we can meet our claims of high slots and a stable server.

- We also have no forums, and no TeamSpeak server, but trust us, we'll get one, and it will be super awesome.

Sorry, I'm often a pessimist, but all I get out of that is some 16yo expecting a bunch of players to donate to a cause with no credibility. As an example, we paid for the first month for our server at our our own pockets (cm and myself). We THEN started taking donations after the server went up. Donations flooded in after that, as everyone was to happy to play on our servers. In less than 2 weeks we raised another for another 2 months, with the promise of refunding all PayPal donations if we don't raise enough for the next month.

[/quote']

No no, I appreciate your pessimism (I call it an opinion). I guess I was just looking at it from a completely separate standpoint.

I have been rethinking out the way to handle this. I really didn't want to start a community, rather just everyone pitch in for a good place to play. However, it seems people like the "community" feel more.

More and more I am liking the 2x 50 man server idea. The same spec quad core server will handle it, and it seems you get more bang for your buck that way.

The forums and VOIP server can be taken care of, right away with no problem. Been there, done that, I'm going to get those going ASAP.

As for the other points, the ArmA II servers we hosted were nothing HUGE. We just had 20-30 people on our Ventrilo who played Warfare BE almost every night. Warfare BE slams an ArmA server resource wise, so it kind of relates to DayZ.

Anyway, I am going to restructure things like I said. See if I can get any of the cheap bastards in our ventrilo to donate ( I doubt it, I got stuck paying $60 a month for our last server, alone).

Again, I appreciate the time everyone has taken to respond. I will probably make a new post rather than update this one once everything is a little more situated. I want to get it together by the 1.61 update.

any guide you can give me or something to increase the player cap. As i really want to do this.

[zild1221 1]

any guide you can give me or something to increase the player cap. As i really want to do this.

I haven't done it in a few months, so I really don't know exact names and such. All I can do is point you in a direction.

Look up PBO tools. More specifically, tools to unpack PBO files. There are a few well known ones out there. From that point, you have to go through mission files and find the files that handles the max number of players. Once you change that value, you will have to repack the PBO.

Before you do all of this, make sure it is allowed by the mod creator. I would assume it is, as I have seen a few servers with either more than 50 slots, or less than 50. Also, make sure that this is the correct way of doing this, as I haven't done it for DayZ. The only time I have done this was for Warfare BE, in which I had to adjust the max slots for opfor and blufor.

I hope this helps you out.

[Freeborne (DayZ) 7]

Jump on a few DayZ servers. Quit. Check your ARMA2 folder for the MPMissions. In there will be a separate mission file for each server you joined. Some of the new ones I think are hard coded to 50 slots, but some are still setup for 100 slots.

Go on Dev-Heaven and search for dePBO. Unpack the mission file, and there's 3 files you can easily edit with a text editor. It's pretty easy to see what you need to change there.

Then don't forget to change the max player setting in your dedicated server config settings.