Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Age of Empires II Unconfirmed

Well it looks like AOE 2: Age of Kings may infact work with Beta Release 1.1. I had attempted to do a game with the Virtual Machine however since too many things were running i didn't get to successfully explore it. The game did infact connect and this seems very promising. If you have Age of Empires II please try to test with friends if it does in fact work. You may use the Age of Empires game type.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Beta Release 1.11: Age of Empires and JVM Issue

Hey it finally happened, after a week of trying to figure out the problem Age of Empires now works with GTADS. If anyone cares to know, the issue was the buffer size for incoming proxy packets was too small for the huge data dump AOE would send to the client. This has all been fixed and Beta Release 1.11 reflects these changes. Unfortunately, unlike what I had previously though, Twisted Metal and even Age of Empires 2 does not currently work with the configuration. I suspect that different DirectX versions have upgrades to the protocol that aren't compatible with one another and that GTADS's proxy works on a DirectX 4/5 level. Never the less this is great news for all those AOE fans, especially with MS Zone being done away with. I'm looking forward to working on and adding games using a higher DirectX version soon but AOE will for now. If you are interested in playing AOE please upgrade your client to Beta Release 1.11, otherwise you may keep your 1.1 version to play GTA1/London as normal.

NOTE: This has been a minor annoyance on GTA1 and doesn't happen everytime but for players of Age of Empires, please START UP your game first before starting up the GTADS client. If you start up the client and then the game the client will crash. I am waiting on word for Sun as to why the JVM crashes when either GTA1 or most definitely Age of Empires runs. If you have the game open you can ALT-TAB out of the game then run the client. GTA1 users may want to do this also to avoid the client crashing as well.


Enjoy!

Monday, August 21, 2006

GTADS Server Discovery

Anyone who has taken a look at the configuration file in the GTADS server since version 1.0 may have noticed a unused parameter in the file named publish. This was something I had thought about from the very beginning and is probably a necessity for something with multiple servers. began writing the GTADS server discovery cgi scripts. This way if anyone wants to put up a server there will be a url that you can send them to and have them displayed for others to see. The scripts (when ready) will also be released under the BSD license and packaged with the GTADS server and source code.

As for an update of other things. I have been focusing more on the server and proxy in terms of making the server side of things more efficient as well as bring in the addition of more games to GTADS. Depending on how much stuff I get done on the Server there may be a Beta Release 1.11 for the Server.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Age of Empires, Twisted Metal, etc and so on

Just getting through with releasing a freshly updated GTADS is something I am proud of accomplishing. I have been getting positive feedback on the interface and features. So although it gives me a little time to rest from coding, there is still much work to be done for the next release. Right now, I am packet sniffing game traffic from many of the Age of Empire games. I really want to get a few RTS games working on here, especially the old favorites people love to play. Also getting the proxy to become AOE compatible will also make it compatible with most DirectPlay games bringing the list to maybe hundreds of titles. There is still the language translations to get working as well. Still stalled on populating that file but with enough help I should get it internationalized. As I have done before I won't make any promises on releases because my schedule can be pretty hectic but before this next release gets hammered out, Age of Empires will at the least be playable over GTADS.

Monday, August 14, 2006

Router Guide

I'm happy to see a lot more people taking interest in GTADS since I released Beta 1.1. We have had over 25 downloads so far and I have played a few games with people eager to see what it can do. One problem which has been brought to people's attention because of the proxy check feature is the opening of ports. Most people when logging on will see the error message stating that their proxy port is not open and that they will have to go into their routers. I've had to step a few people through getting their routers open so that they would be able to play GTA1 or London but I found a guide that will have most models listed for how to foward ports. Anyone looking for how to forward their ports may look at http://www.portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/routerindex.htm for specific information. I will post the link on the side menu and hopefully this will get people going a lot faster.

Sunday, August 13, 2006

New Release PLEASE UPDATE

Well I am happy to announce that Beta Release 1.1 is finally done and has the following features:

- New color scheme on Client
- Support for GTA: London
- New ban admin management
- Server recordable pingtimes
- Bind IP Function
- Gameroom announces whom connects to proxy
- Preferences
- Multi language support (Not Finished)
- Fixed uptime bug post 24 days
- Proxy Port check in beginning

I am going to replace the GTADS Server on 7001 with the new server code. Please upgrade your clients accordingly.

Friday, August 11, 2006

New Theme for GTADS (Soon to be Modifiable)

Well the first steps of stylizing GTADS has begun. I started coloring and theming GTADS with some initial work on the Main Chat window and the creation. Here is a preview of it:

Sunday, August 06, 2006

GTA London

I was finally able to try out GTADS with GTA: London 1969 and I am happy to say that it is 100% compatible with the GTADS Proxy. There have been a few other enhancements in the code to make this release much easier to use. I think to make the most of this 1.1 release I will postpone it while I fix minor things. Shouldn't be more than a few days.