GTADS has broken 1000 downloads

As of this morning GTADS has had a total of 1018 downloads. This includes downloads from the original 1.0 to the current 1.13 of the client, server, and source files. I am going to break down the downloads into each catergory.

Total Downloads (Since march '06):

Client: 692
Server: 261
Source: 65


Client and Server Downloads this month: 266

Client: 179
Server: 69

This is our highest downloads per month overall and I hope with 1.14's release around the corner we can get even more people to try GTADS out.

Nightly Source tarballs

Well I decided that if I want help with GTADS I should make the source a little more available. I've been so busy as of late working on features to make BR 1.14 a BIG release I haven't released any bleeding edge builds yet. Just for now I will have the source code updated whenever I add new code to the CVS server. I encourage anyone who is able to grab the source code or the nightly builds when I get them up and test it out. The development server on rez.fastping.net 7001 always contains the latest development code and will be completely compatible with any new client code.

GTADS Exe files have arrived

Well its not Beta Release 2.0 but its the next best thing. Now you can enjoy GTADS without having to worry about loading up any jar files whatsoever. Thanks to the jSmooth project I am able to incorporate a client executable that everyone on windows knows and loves. Under the file releases on sourceforge you can the GTADSClientWindows.zip file for this.

Rez back up, still looking for a replacement

The GTADS server is back up...for now but with unstable hardware, who knows what another accidental reboot may bring. I merged the accounts created from the temporary server into the rez stable server and the development server along with it's database is also up and running. If anyone is interested in helping me out to build a better GTADS server I am looking for the following items:

- Motherboard (Anything equal or better than a Socket A board)
- A Processor depending on what motherboard I am able to acquire.
- 256 MB may or may not need to be acquired depending on the board.

Your donations help keep development active and keep the server up.

On the development side of things, things are progressing with the upcoming Beta Release 1.14. Multiple users on proxy has hit a few obstacles that are being addresses one by one, mainly with the behavior of the directplaysrv.exe but clientside items such as window position memory and the login-encryption are working beautifully.

I am looking to put up a website for GTADS to encompass general information while keeping this site reserved for development news in the coming weeks.

Indefinite Server outage

Last last night rez went down, probably due to overheating, and I haven't been able to get it up. It was running on some pretty dated hardware and it was probably only a matter of time. For the time being the server has been moved to my desktop and may not have persistent uptime. I am looking for some cheap hardware to utilize for a rez such as a used board, minimal ram and a decent CPU. This is where your donations can really come in. It will really speed up GTADS development if I can test items on a separate server and keep the rez server running for most people just wanting to hit the default server. Also a lot of web based features cannot be realized without having a second physical machine. Every dollar can help to make this next release happen.

Encryption coming to GTADS

Well i decided that as part of the release there could and should encryption for the logins. I have been holding off on this for a while because I didn't see it as necessary but for admins hosting the server at the very least this will be handy. The new implementation is on the test server and the client will be available via CVS to check out if curious. I am working on plaintext backwards compatibility so that newer clients can still interact with older version servers.

Encryption works something like this:

- Logging into Server, Server provides you with a timekey:
SERVER,0,LOGIN,AUTHENTICATE,1161205402469
the time key is just the date in milliseconds.

- Client uses md5(timeKey + md5(password))
admin,0,LOGIN,5880cfa25c894bd051183179b0ffad74

- Server authenticates sent hash with timeKey and the md5 password it has
in its password cache.
SERVER,0,LOGIN,LOGINSUCCESS

This ensures that upon login that it would be extremely hard to decode the MD5 password out of the redundant md5 hash and getting the right timeKey and plus administrators will never know your password.

Multiple Players and a name change in GTADS

Well as you may have seen in the previous posts GTADS development has been pretty busy. I haven't checked in any of the new code in the CVS server yet but I will as soon as I finish up the core features. Right now development is being done on the game proxy to support multiple players. With this, users will be able to transparently host games that are more than 1v1. This means the possiblility of 4 player GTA1 and 6-8 player Age of Empire games.

Also since GTADS is no longer exclusively a GTA driven application I am looking to gradually (It really won't be overnight) change the name to something that best describes the application. I haven't really made this a priority because I don't see it as being as important as getting the application functional. If anyone would like to suggest a name, please email me and briefly explain why.

Just as a side note a live serverlist can be retrieved here.

Run a forum? Integrate with GTADS

I am adding a new feature that site owners can utilize. Integrating their user accounts on their content management sites and forums such as phpBB and phpNuke will allow the server to use this account data for users to log in rather than have users recreate accounts and having two separate account stores. This will be ready in the 1.14 Beta Release, which I am working hard to bring a lot of things that should have been in 1.13. The only requirement to implement this once it is out is to have your mySQL database accessible from the GTADS server, know the tablename and fields and make sure the passwords are encrypted with MD5. If there any forums or CMS systems that use any other method (SHA? etc) please let me know so I can add these options for this release.

The Greeks have Invaded!

Well not really but now we have a Greek AOE presence in Age of Empires. Age4Greeks has decided to bring up its own GTADS server dedicated to all things Age of Empires (Especially the Conquerors expansion). I have been working with the site administrator to get things going especially in terms of Greek translations, and themes. As soon as their server has a permanent host name I will throw it up here for anyone to check out. There is still no word from Sun about their JVM problem while loading up any directX game and it looks like I am going to have to load up a workaround. I would like to thank Age4Greeks for their interest in my project. This is what GTADS is all about, choice.

Update:

The server is aoc-battleground.no-ip.org:7001 meaning it is aoc-battleground.no-ip.org on port 7001.