[ATAG_Bliss]

Well,

I'd love to have more missions up and even get some coordination going on, but the problems with the game limit what we can do. You fly in formation with twin engine planes you're likely to get a launcher crash within 20 minutes - single engine planes are much better for some reason. Then you have the launcher crash problem itself. This limits the distance (realistic flight times) that I would love to have for missions. So the best spot on the map, mission-wise, using the full channel map, is where it's closest between England and France. Anything doubling the flight times will lead to many people wasting a flight just to finally crash.

As far as server rotations go, we used to do that, but soon found out that if the server doesn't cycle every so often - (in other words completely shut down and restart) - that there will be people that can never connect due to steam errors. Willie has released a server commander similar to a beta state of FBDj, but that won't shut the server down, so attached below is prime example of why the server has to be restarted every so often. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, you'll notice what I have circled. This (null) is actually a player that tried to join the spits server and failed steam auth. Almost 11 hours later his instance of failing steam is still in the server cache/stats listing. This means that whoever that player is will never be able to join that particular server until the server/steam is completely shut down and restarted.



With that said, to avoid these types of issues we've had to create tools that will automatically shut down the server, shut down steam, restart the server, restart steam, watch for steam disconnects, watch for steam server shut downs, and perform a variety of tasks based on which one of those items fail. So lets say noone gets the objectives in the mission window (time limit) and the match ends in a tie, we use scripts to start our mission end cycle which will start the actually server rotation cycle 2 minutes later. For instance:

 
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////Snippit///////////////////////

{
            GamePlay.gpLogServer(null, "The match ends in a tie!  Objectives still left for both sides!!!", new object[] { });
            GamePlay.gpHUDLogCenter("The match ends in a tie! Objectives still left for both sides!!!");
            Timeout(10, () =>
            GamePlay.gpLogServer(null, "Mission is restarting soon!!!", new object[] { }));
            GamePlay.gpHUDLogCenter("Mission is restarting soon!!!");
            Timeout(10, () =>
            Process.Start(@"C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\ATAG_Server\W_O-Hyperlobby\Server_Cycle.exe"));

So if red wins, blue wins, or the mission ends in a tie - the same process is started. In saying that, it is possible to have the process start another mission based on a red wins, blue wins, tie scenario and then go to another based on the outcome of that one, etc., etc., but it will take a whole bunch of coding and testing to get all our ducks in a row to have it work right in process with each other. Rotating missions how the game was intended (such as willie's server commander) is great, but having 20+ people not being able to join in a 24 hour window because of auth errors is a much worse situation. I've actually seen 30 (null) errors within 24 hours before. That would be 30 people not able to ever join the server it was created on.

It has taken a massive effort by us simply to keep the server up 24/7 based on the state of the game and steam issues. There's more coding in the tools just to make the server work than in the mission themselves. I do want to make a few scenarios like you suggest - IE..-reds win so the front lines move, the blues get pushed back etc.,etc or vice versa if blues win, kinda like a static MP campaign that changes based on who wins the mission, but I've been a little busy as of late. And having the FMB launcher crash on you after 2 hours of work just makes you have to walk away from it for a bit. But please realize we do things a certain way for a reason. We started when the game came out, and after literally thousands of hours amongst us in testing, building, trying, etc., for all this time, we have a really good understanding of what will work and what won't. I don't think many people realize some of the frustrations it's taken us just to try to have a server....work..

Anyhow, more will definitely come, but the games gotta get there as well