To register for this forum, I genuinely had trouble with the security/bot question. Well done!
First, some introduction.
Some time before GameSpy shut down in 2014, I developed my own masterserver for Unreal Tournament and Unreal. In the time that followed, I expanded the masterserver with support for a variety of games such as deusex, rune, postal2 and more. With 333networks, a group that runs a number of synchronized masterservers, we try to create support for as many affected games as we can.
One of the affacted games, as pointed out by this thread, is Battlefield 1942. It makes me happy to see that you managed to run a masterserver on your own with success as well.
Our masterserver has been running with success for the past 5 years and provides support for a number of abandoned games. A list of supported games can be found here:
http://master.333networks.com/g/allUntil now, I have only limited success with querying bf1942 servers and providing support. I'm hoping to find one or two people who want to put some effort in helping with the development to get this working too.
Basically, I would like somebody to
1) point his/her bf1942 to "master.333networks.com" (or ip: 84.83.176.234) to test if you can acquire the game list;
2) tell me whether it works or not;
3) and if not, help me capture network data in order to make it work.
And a server administrator to
1) point his/her bf1942 server to "master.333networks.com" (or ip: 84.83.176.234) to test if 333networks recognizes it as valid server;
2) work with me to verify that I received the server directly, instead of via the synchronization protocol of other masterservers;
3) if it does not work, help me capture network data in order to make it work.
On my website, I documented the whole process of supporting Unreal Tournament and Unreal on
http://dev.333networks.com/masterserver, so you have an idea about the steps.
I realize that I can not walk into this forum and immediately expect that you will all jump in and help. The 333networks masterserver is put together by people who have this as a hobby and volunteer for this. We think that support for Battlefield 1942 would greatly contribute to reliability for the community. If any of you could help us, it would be of great help to this community and ours.
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There are also some questions above that I could answer/confirm:
Count ComBat wrote:hello - do u already know if its just for a while and it will be back soon as ususal or is it a permanent change?
Since it's an old post, everyone may know this already, but just to be sure everyone is on the same level: GameSpy was bought by GLU and they confirmed that they have no interested in supporting legacy games that used the GameSpy protocol. 333networks recreationally picked up support for a lot of these games.
andwan0 wrote:Was the real reason why EA had to withdraw Battlefield 1942 was because of the GameSpy copyright? Why can't they just hack it to remove all references to GameSpy?
If we do this, then they can still put Battlefield 1942 as FREE.
Since they withdrew Battefield 1942 from EA / Origin.... does this mean it's not legally free anymore? Or is it still FREE and we can just get a copy from a friend, etc?
The references to GameSpy are not enough. Battlefield 1942 communicates using the "GameSpy v0/1" protocol, the way in which you communicate with servers and vice versa. Basically, this is just patented technology, whether it connects to the GameSpy masterserver or not. This is between the game developer and GameSpy. When GLU bought GameSpy, I assume that they also inherited the patents on this technology. With 333networks, we are trying to figure out how this works with legal cases, but so far we have not gotten far/useful responses yet. This might get an update at some point, but I don't expect anything from it.
For the EA/Origin withdraw, according to
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/ne ... 641411871/ it is still free (license). They may have stopped offering the actual download file, or put it behind a login, but according to their license, it's still free.
Hopefully this helps, I'm looking forward to any response.