Kane's Multiplayer Suggestions and Ideas Thread.

Hello, My name is Kane Hart. I been running gaming servers for well over 10 years. Some emulated MMORPG's to sandbox RPG Servers to the latest being mainly Minecraft and Terraria. I'm going to talk about Minecraft since I been running my server for over 500 days now and have had a lot of success with it and wanted to use what I have learned to try to better Starbounds success for running servers.

So Godcraft is one of my biggest accomplishments when it comes to running game servers. I have done 100's of videos on Youtube and we recently hit over 1,000+ Videos in total related to Godcraft on Youtube. So I'm not using this as bragging but wanting to actually show how much work it actually takes to become one of the better servers out there. It's not a simple throw up a server and alt f4.

So moving ahead Godcraft had some bad times when Minecraft was still Alpha and young. Mainly cheaters, griefers, dupers. This had happen to almost every server out there because of the way Minecraft was designed at the time and Mostly Client side. So one of the biggest hints is try to put most things on the server side Starbound .

After that due to the lack of tools from securing and maintaining a proper server we went to paid access. This was a $10 fee a month to prevent most griefers and clearly if you are caught cheating/duping you just wasted $10 and you were removed. This actually worked out so well over 500 days later my users still demand this service though overtime so many servers went under and scammed so many players this had started to weaken our user base but that is another story.

I have been with well over dozen companies that were all dedicated servers and I have paid as low as $150 a month all the way past $300 a month trying to provide the best hardware for my players.

So That was more of a background history lesson not bragging rights I'm not here to advertise since most people here are done or bored of Minecraft and are here to move on but I thought sharing some of my background would give a better idea where I am coming from when I post some my ideas / suggestions.



1) Make as much as possible server side. This includes text, dialog, etc etc. You might wonder why would you put quests server side check 2). So you want to have as much as possible server side from client hacks and etc this includes CHARACTERS!

2) So why have Quests, NPC Dialog, ETC Server side? Because instead of forcing everyone to relive the same storyline over and over or see the same NPC name over and over or even see the same dialog over and over you want to make the community into your own. One of the ways to get players to enjoy and get attached more to Multiplayer is to allow as much customization as possible and this does not mean character looks but as much as possible.

3) If you are selling the game Via Steam and I assume with the success of certain other games out there the chances are very high then the most recommended thing to do is allow users to create accounts via private servers. Simple whitelist / password system will not work period. You want to be able to give your friends a user/password or ask them to signup and then activate their account. This has been very common in a lot of Multiplayer games again for 10+ Years nothing new and something that is needed to bring more security to your community.

4) Logging. This is a big key logging and offering types of logging. Like detailed logging where it tells you a player logs on from what ip with what user to what planet at what time and etc etc. Maybe if you optimized it right offer in depth logging and clean logging. What will happen is one the mod creators will make a nice log reader and compile the server.log to be used to catch griefers and problems and etc... Sort of like your own Minecraft logblock system but not as in depth but still offer a lot of useful data for server admins.

5) Config options. This is a must and I mean a must in details. Don't let us turn pvp on and off and consider that a config file. We want to be able to do a lot more then that maybe even make the mobs harder or stronger and etc. We want many many options to customize our server and our community to our likes. We love your game and other games but a lot of companies misunderstand that the community sometimes likes options so they can have their own community to play the way they want to with in reason.

6) So from what I heard there will be many many planets and etc to go to. Maybe even infinite amount. If users are able to build claim and etc then offer some advance options like allowing users to claim a certain amount of planets where other users can't go to or only have certain rights to do things on the planet. Maybe if the owner teams or adds the user to a special planet whitelist then their friends and etc can access it or maybe just explore and more. This where security is a must and as much as we want to trust everyone its best to offer the tools to allow us to protect our land just in case.

7) Offer special game planet game modes and such where you could offer fun things like capture the flag, pvp death matches, etc etc for fun to create and do fun events within your server community. Pretty much mini games inside a working game

8) Tools to ban users, Give permissions to users, Ranking system really that via a config or a gui admin can easily add new ranks and give certain permissions to these ranks and features and more. You want to offer as much tools as possible with as much details possible. You gotta think of everything and including IP Bans, Mutes, Kicks, Global Mute Everyone (temp if things get out of hand), Shutdown the server and more. Yes shutdown the server if something bad happens sometimes its best just to shutdown the server and work from there and solve the issues.

9) API, Yes a modding API but don't get upset with this idea and take it slow. Even take your time but creating a simple API that outputs statistics and information. From there you can add more API overtime allow mod creators tap into features you want them and overtime grow the feature list slowly where one day you might have a full blown API letting mod makers create and do as much as they want without the need to decompile and release source code like they should never ever do period anyways.

10) Offer some kind of chat API period. Yes I said API in 9 but this is a must and can be done in so many ways. Pretty much you want a simple API where we can hook it into with anything we want say php even etc. This is where we can make simple chat bots and start creating our own commands and help files and even more overtime. So you could do things like !calc 10 + 10 and someone made a simple chat bot that actually does calculation and outputs 20... Really crazy you might think but this has actually been very successful in Anarchy Online and Age of Conan and its really simple to do. This could be used for some hardcore roleplaying etc etc.



I'm tired now and I can think of many ideas but I will leave this for now and see what kind of ideas you guys can come up with also. Remember don't just think first 2 weeks or 2 months but think of playing the game years later and what you would want to make that possible and safe and secure!


Sorry if my English is derp it's 5am lol.

 

That is a long suggestion but is exactly what starbound will need multi-player wise. Good work Kane!

 

Definately a lot of good ideas in there!

 

This is a must. I hate how Minecraft and Terraria both require 3rd party mods for you to have a decent server.

 

E-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-xactly.
I couldn't agree more, this game can make a bunch of wrongs into a bunch of wrongs and a right!

 

You sure do know what your talking about. I think that you should be a mod when it comes to the multiplayer aspect of the game. great work.

 

very good suggestion, this NEEDS to be available as fast as possible, if not day one.

in my group of friends, i am the only that have a basic knowledge of hosting and how to manage ports and such, so i am always the hoster of EVERY game we play, and i hate the minecraft/terraria server, they do not give anything useful for you to customize your game, it's just the basic of the basic, and it pisses me off.

i hope the starbound developers see this suggestion and add EVERYTHING from this topic in the server.
this is basicaly the reason everyone stopped playing terraria...

make it so too that the server can hold up at least 10~20 players at the same time, if we had a good terraria server with 30 or 40 players on with events and a good economy, i think ppl would never stop playing the game...

 

This is brilliant.

 

This is pretty good stuff.

 

As somebody without much knowledge of hosting outside of prt forwarding (but still the most knowledgable out of my friends which leads me to hosting everthing ), I feel it would be great to be able to customize my server without having to look up countless youtube videos/faqs on untangling third party mods. A user-friendly interface that allows for easy game customization would be amazing!

 

Impressive. Also you covered the mod topic, which I feel is very important in a sandbox game, and which i'd LOVE to see fully supported. Seriously, mods only contribute to the game, in no way they hinder their progress. Minecraft and Terraria have already a long history with this issue, and not one of success.

 

As a Terraria/Minecraft server owner, I definitely approve of these requests! On a related note, competitor Mojang hired the Bukkit team to handle their official multiplayer API. This is one of those rare cases where the developers handed the keys over to the community to decide how their server modding will ultimately turn out. While I wouldn't turn down the prospect of hiring the team that made TShock, I would really hope ChuckleFish makes a flexible API of their own by release.

For started, anti-griefing tools are probably going to be the most important thing you can give to server owners. Giving players region/planet protection, chest protection, permissions, etc. right from the get-go will be a boon to server owners everywhere. But this game aims to raise the bar on the economy in multiplayer sandbox games; and with a full-featured economy, griefing isn't the only thing server owners will have to worry about.

If money and items really are going to be much more important than they were in Terraria, you can bet that players will want to cheat and dupe/hex edit their way to riches. As Kane suggested, server-side storage is one reasonable way to deal with this. But what about players that cheat offline and then bring their ill-gotten gains online? You can't possibly store offline characters online without upsetting the people that can't always be connected to the internet. This would ultimately lead to open/ranked servers and it starts to get messy from there.

If the developers are going to use Steam, why not go the extra step and integrate Valve Anti-Cheat system (VAC)? While VAC or punkbuster, or any related system won't stop cheating/griefing entirely, it will certainly deter players that care about their accounts and help regulate the flow of hacked items or money in the game. One sure-fire way to deal with it is to just lock a character to a server and then only allow server-side storage, but then that limits the player's ability to jump from one server to another with the same character. While I think it should be an server-side option, how would you deal with it if players could bring their characters to other servers? Especially once you start introducing modded servers into the mix.

 

I'm thinking that the game devs can not do ALL of this. There'd probably be some other server programs, like there's always been for ever game, for example Bukkit for Minecraft and Tshock for Terraria.
However, if the devs DO put in the entire thing, they'd be extremely dedicated towards the servers. They have enough stuff to do already, programming the game and all.

 

Powerful, secure, configurable player-run servers are the root of every great multiplayer community. I understand the burden of development for something like this, but I must agree that it's entirely worth it.

If the developers do this, they can dig the deepest pit and drop Starbound in it. I will fill it with money just to get myself back out again.

 

Very good!

 

That's pretty nice of you, come share your knowledge and experience with the community and the team.
I haven't read everything yet, but so far you seem like you know a LOT on this subject on multiplayer/server hosting and the likes.

 

I love this! Very well done. +Like. Now, on the topic of cheaters. THe solution be simple. Server side character saves. With the option for server admins to make their server an 'open' server where singleplayer characters are welcome. This would mean closed servers would each individualy have their own character save but i couldnt care less xD. It gives everyone the options that they do what they want!

I do like the idea of per-planet rights management. It would be nice to claim coordinates 2382.1194 to 6000.7490 for you and your friends, yet still have the rest open for random players that are friends of your friends to use.

 

I'm all for this idea, as long as singleplayer is not the same. One of my biggest annoyances with minecraft is that you have to start a new character for every world that you create. I can see how this enabled certain things, such as creative mode, but since I doubt that sort of thing is going to be in Starbound, MineCraft's system has no benefits. In addition, I would like to be able to make singleplayer "worlds" into servers like in Terraria; I didn't know you couldn't in MineCraft, and I was kind of frustrated, as I had built a bunch of stuff. (Correct me on that last point if I'm wrong; not really sure if you can't.)

 

Theres a mod for just about everything in minecraft now. Including multiple worlds per server. My friends run with a creative world and a regular world side by side. I quit the server however because people were cheatin out the ass and drained a lot of the fun for me =/ (Ex. I make a comment im out of food and need to head for the surface. Someone suddenly appears next to me and gives me 5 stacks of cooked pork... Or i die and lose some diamonds. They tele to me to gather everything up and tele back to base. Effectively taking the punishment out of dieing.)

 

I can't believe I went trough that whole text...
Well, I support this idea!
There are some great, very good suggestions, that will not only help the admins,
but also the players and the whole community.

Devs, add this!