=VG= SemlerPDX

Server has reached a record up-time! It has been stable for days, and is still working - the Campaign is going into Day 11, BLUFOR have pushed the FLOT on the North East Coast and Pyongyang is the next big target. I need input from regular pilots and newer pilots to determine if this is still as playable as it looks - it would be great to see a Campaign actually finish successfully for once, but we don't want the server to become impossible to play if there are no worthy missions for pilots. I'd also like to know how the difficulty setting is working out for everyone (vets and nuggets alike). Please advise as able, and enjoy the advanced campaign now in it's 11th day!! !hi

Obviously I had higher hopes for the title a few years ago when I made this thread - you can imagine my disappointment as they continued to drop the ball over and over, changing mechanics so unrealistically that the game might as well be dead. Security guards appearing out of thin air when before you could count them, and work hard to neutralize them one at a time. Way to go, Overkill - your name says it all.

I got a chance to fly yesterday and I gotta say, I was impressed. Server seemed to run okay, but I didn't see any other aircraft close enough to see if they were spinning or doing crazy things. I'm so out of practice, I just spent the day on DEAD strikes on the SA-2 sites to the North, and one thing I found out quickly - they sure don't seem to want to launch at me... ?!?! Recon showed them as active and near 100% operational. Not sure what's up with that, but I'll admit I've not trained on the HTS and my one HARM mission hit the airbase's Radar and not the Fan Song or whatever the SA-2's were guided by. I made several subsequent passes trying to find the Fan Song, found 2 vehicles that looked similar to and in the same spot as the pre-flight Recon, but every single Maverick I launched would only lock on the 'left' truck and not the one on the right, and they never hit either... I am trained with the Mavericks, had several successful missions throughout the day, just not when I tried to attack the 2 "trucks" in the middle of the airbase. Still not sure if it was user error, but I had such successes otherwise, I'm left scratching my head (like so many failed CCRP runs that seemed perfect, I know some of you know the feeling!) I also had the opportunity to intervene in a private campaign run on our server. Language barrier was a problem, he didn't know much English but I was able to get him to close his private server and join the VETERANS-GAMING server. Problem was he started texting up simple questions, meaning he didn't know how to Frag a flight, nor did he know which airbase to fly out of (and we all know the server puts up Kadena and the 909th air refuel wing to new joiners). Told him to google and to YouTube, hopefully he'll educate himself. After getting some time in the server, and seeing how 'well' things are running now, I've finally set up AutoSave on a 2 hour interval, and all crashes will now be restarted to the latest AutoSave file. It will take about 3 minutes each time, and I need that time to launch the server - if you are present during the restart procedure, please do not launch your flight before the server does, or I will be stuck waiting at a real-time countdown clock of over 5 minutes (if I launch alone, it will fast-time). Once in the cockpit, I will text up (even if no one is online) that the 'Server Restarted to latest AutoSave' and those with the comms window open will see this, and then can launch their flight(s). Good luck and fly safe! !cp

Okay - I vacuumed and dusted my PC room so I could take off the covers and fire up my PC and try to join the server - I got the "Kevin" message, too!! Logged in to the remote and looked at the server, looks fine, in 3D pit, BUT - upon closer inspection, it doesn't respond to any keypresses, and it's CPU usage is flat 00. I've restarted the computer that runs the server, and I've restarted the BMS Campagin - let's try this again. BAM! !wiz I'm in the server as a client, no "Kevin Pending" message - so, the server had crashed in a way that it looked like it was running (I will be watching for this type of crash in my many daily health checks from now on). So, if you wanna fly, give it a try. We might have been chasing our tails for nothing here. Fun fun. ...and Merry Christmas! !cheers

What exactly is going on here?! Nothing has changed in the last few days AT ALL..... no way difficulty settings can do this. No config changes have occurred in over a week! I seriously have no idea what to do here, and tomorrow/saturday is Christmas and I will be busy.

CobaltUK LAN_WROTE ... Has the `dubious connection` check been turned on yet ? Would be interesting to see if there were any change in the issues. Been that way for weeks - only P2P connections allowed. It's a few pages back in this thread. Why the hell you would start getting the Kevin message is beyond me and breaks all of my understanding of what we've been doing so far. Two steps forward, three steps back?! Ugh....... !hang

Minrah LAN_WROTE ... so Brain and I found out why im not able to connect, im on a connection running at 20mb down and 1mb up. so with the bandwidth set 1024 im guessing im no longer able to join =/ If the bandwidth minimum was set lower, thus allowing you to join, you'd experience tons of issues like that pausing above - and as the server needs to sync all clients to the server, it would begin to effect other players eventually. I've seen the connection demand going up for years the the 2000's, always favoring a higher and more stable up-speed for more and more complex (or poorly coded) games - and here we are marching towards 2020 where games just think everyone has at least 5-10Mbps up and down when it's not yet the case for all of us. I feel for you, bro. Wish we could help more.

I need to find a way to log the IP addresses of everyone who connects to the BMS server, and then I can begin banning IP addresses - one of two things would happen: they'd never be seen again, or they'd come here to the website (or bms forums, or bms facebook) to report connection problems, giving me a chance to tell them not to run concurrent campaigns. Until I have teeth, all I can do is bark. Restarted the campaign, but they were no where to be found, couldn't get a shout out.

Preacher LAN_WROTE ... Still getting that message: Kevin pending message. Any idea what that causes? Server is not hung - you'll need to keep trying different things: SemlerPDX =VG= LAN_WROTE ... Server has been updated with the following changes: -Client Bandwidth Requirement raised to 1024 BW -Server will now only accept P2P connections, if you can no longer connect, read about port forwarding for Falcon BMS here: http://www.krauselabs.net/dump/Hosting-Falcon-4-BMS.html (and here is a link about routers and forwarding: http://portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/routerindex.htm ) -Server will now enforce Same Tile Set and Same Aircraft Data

A second thread will just make it more work for me, having to check more than one place for info. Regardless of how many separate threads about separate topics, I am the ONE guy here working on it. I'd prefer this one thread. Names would help, if you see the name of individuals running campaigns, get them to me. Monitoring outages comes down to one thing: communication. Posting up here that it is down is the first step, next step is me checking quite often each day in this thread and remote looking into the server itself. I do it every few hours, but I also get busy with life now and then. Hoping crashes become less frequent, and they should. When people run concurrent campaigns and the server crashes, logs for it are redundant - we know the server overloaded the CPU and caused a CTD. Also, FO is not the only other community running BMS campaigns, and is not my first route for information. I usually find people I know at the BMS forums. Wouldn't have made it this far without that reading. EDIT: *Lastly, if you are experiencing "erratic AI planes", perhaps you should try to connect with a higher bandwidth than others, maybe 2000? Would be nice to troubleshoot that issue in that way, not sure how far you are from Kansas where the server is...

Server restarted...... **For the record, the server was down until now as I was unable to check it, out with family for xmas things, bells, xmas ships in port, etc. and woke up very late this morning. Was unable to respond sooner, all apologies. I will be checking in on the server every few hours today and tomorrow, and I will keep an eye out for concurrent campaigns - it is sad that my only response (as I cannot talk to someone on the server running a passworded campaign) is to restart the server and try to get a message to them before they "restart" their own server. It's happened before, and language barriers abound!! Please post up here today if you see another campaign running so I can try to deal with them and tell them they can't do that. !hi

**Server restarted with what should be a much more manageable difficulty level. Osan also has one squadron of Block 40's available. Let me know how it works out.

(also got a private message from a pilot, here is my reply:) I definitely had no intention of making the game unplayable and too hard - I had thought ACE was what the server had been at for years, but based on what you said, this is likely not the case. Really, my entire goal has been to make this 4.33 campaign indistinguishable from the 4.32 game we ran for years, except for the improvements and updates. I understand little about this, and for me, it is a learning process. I promise, I will be online in a few hours and I will ramp down the difficulty significantly, and we will work UP from there as you suggest. I honestly didn't expect the enemy to get so much better, now we know. I must leave for an appointment right now, but I will be home in a few hours and I will ease up the difficulty then. The last thing I want is our patrons jumping ship to play offline/private servers. Thank you for your information - I will act on it. Thank you for your patience!

We'll try that again... This time, Seosan is the only human airbase with no HQ fragging - one can still fly out of Osan or Kunsan with a different F-16 or whatever, but we need those airbases fragged by the AI for now to see how the campaign will level out. Difficulty is ACE, but with Aircraft and Air Defense slightly more balanced. Ground forces are still heavily weighted to DPRK. Will check back Saturday morning (it's friday night here). Good luck - kick some Kim Jong Ass!! !cp

Okay... Server Save File rebuilt now, have to leave town today, this weekend will be a difficulty test - auto-save will begin first thing next week. For now, I need input on the difficulty level - it was indeed set very low this entire time - don't get caught off guard now, it's at ACE. Let's see if the enemy Mig's will fire off a shot or try to evade a BVR attack. Will be back in around 12 hours, will check in then. !hi

restarted. Will be creating a new save file soon with a higher difficulty setting and other tweaks now that we know it's more stable.

Sinu LAN_WROTE ... It's very interesting when you look at the force levels page for the DPRK - at around day 4 they had 0 tactical aircraft and then it spiked to ~100 aircraft the same day...Same deal with the ground units. Watching the JSTAR replay is pretty laughable. Our ground forces have failed to punch through the DPRK lines. As far as difficulty - I've always found Veteran to be just right for operations, but again that's just my opinion. I have been very impressed with the stability of the server over the week or so it has been up. Great job Semler! So, then, the big question is: It's day 5 or 6, are there any good missions still available, or do we need to restart the campaign? If it's stable, and if the DPRK still have some butt that needs kicking (and it's still fun) then let's keep going to see how long it takes in 4.33 - otherwise, let me know today and I will restart it to the beginning. Since this final test succeeded, the next round will involve auto-save and restarts will load from the day it crashed. We will evaluate how well the server recovers from a loaded campaign save file. But I don't want to start that until we know how long a campaign will want to run (with fun/good available missions) in this 4.33 version. !hi

I have time soon to find out if other servers have that AI issue or if it's just us. Also, I was under the impression the difficulty was already set at ACE - if it is not, I will make sure it is. I need one of you to let me know when there are no more good flights here - this stability test succeeded and the server looks like it wants to keep running, so you all may run out of missions worth flying. Let me know, normally I'd restart it on Day 5 or 6 regardless, but this time (with 4.33) I'd like to hear how far it should go, or if it is different that 4.32 campaigns. Thanks again for all the helpful input! !cheers

I'm impressed with this latest round of fixes, touch wood: I think we might have fixed it!! Server should be on day 4 by now, day 3 at the least, and all is smooth - page faults are approaching 2 billion, but the rise has been very steady over the last several days, and not 2 billion faults in less than 24 hours - a vast improvement. I'm hoping to see this Campaign run to it's finish or until players say there are no more good missions. Please let me know. Lost one of my workers on the remodel due to sickness (tis the season for cold and flu) but I'm hoping to have it finished before this weekend. At least I have this laptop to keep up with things, but my PC and monitors are all covered by towels to keep out dust.

Well, then it's cuz someone is jumping in the server plane and trying to fire it up? then leaving? Moort wrote ..."the server a/c has to remain dark and cold cockpit otherwise it'll get kicked back to the gui after idling for some time on the ground." !dntknw *EDIT: to make sure these points are covered, all three atc.ini files in the Falcon BMS 4.33 files have PlayerBumpTime @ 1000000 now. This morning the server had a CTD crash, but the last time was a crash to 2D menu, so let's see how it works now.

The server performed better over the last two days, I'd like to hear if there is more stability in-game.... It was sitting at the Mission Debrief Screen this morning and was restarted to Day 1, anyone notice any funky issues since Tuesday?

Server has been updated with the following changes: -Client Bandwidth Requirement raised to 1024 BW -Server will now only accept P2P connections, if you can no longer connect, read about port forwarding for Falcon BMS here: http://www.krauselabs.net/dump/Hosting-Falcon-4-BMS.html (and here is a link about routers and forwarding: http://portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/routerindex.htm ) -Server will now enforce Same Tile Set and Same Aircraft Data -Server set to display a 16 bit forced display, not sure if it will work in helping the server load from graphical demand Server restarted to day 1

Restarted - file transfer from the server takes a long time, I will grab the logs during some server downtime in the near future. The problems are Memory related for sure, and the the Page Faults are often near 100 billion just prior to CTD events. The server runs an Intel Core 2 Duo and 4GB of RAM (I assume around 800MHz)

restarted.

Yes