TinkerDifferent Game Server - Now testing!

[Kai Robinson]

This has been on the cards for a while, and i've just gotten a Dell R520 handed to me for the sum of £0 - ie, 'take it away or we're throwing it away' (perks of the job!).

Oh look, here's Gary inspecting it now...

To be honest, these Dell servers are more than enough for a community game server, the specs are currently:

Dell R520 Chassis
2 x Intel Xeon E5-2407v1's (4c/4t each) (Sandy Bridge-EN)
48GB RAM (8gb x 6 - Triple Channel)
Dell PERC H710 MiniMono RAID Controller (1GB NVRAM Cache)
2 x 2TB SATA in RAID 0
6 empty bays intended for use as a storage array in RAID 5
Windows Server 2019

Currently i'm doing a little testing, the OS and Hyper-V are sitting on the 2TB main OS drive.

I've made a single VM with Server 2019 on it, 4-cores and 20GB of RAM allocated to it as a Rust Server - so if you happen to play rust and like PvE, give it a try at:

games.tinkerdifferent.com:28015

The server is surprisingly quiet and it's less noisy than my desk fan, until it kicks into high gear. Temps on the E5-2407's seem to hover around 50*c under light load, with 54 Watts of power draw.

I have some upgrades already on the way, too - some cheap Xeon E5-2470 v2's (seriously, they were £7 each!), so instead of two quad cores with no hyperthreading, it'll have two 10 cores with hyperthreading for a grand total of 20 cores and 40 threads!

I may try and get some more memory for it, as there are certainly the slots for it. Luckily, server hardware is silly cheap for what you get!

I'm going to try setting up some older VM's to run things like Unreal Tournament dedicated servers, Quake servers etc - what games would you all like to play together as a community, so I can get these servers set up?

 

[Kai Robinson]

UNREAL TOURNAMENT 2004 SERVER IS NOW LIVE!​

To play, all you have to do is click 'Join Game' at the main menu, click on the 'Internet' tab, right click in the window, select 'Open IP' and type in: games.tinkerdifferent.com - you should be loaded directly into a Deathmatch game starting on Deck17!

 

[Kai Robinson]

UNREAL TOURNAMENT 1999 GOTY SERVER IS NOW LIVE!
​

Deathmatch rotation starting on Deck 16, bots are present so you can always have some competitors!

Just open: games.tinkerdifferent.com:9777

 

[Kai Robinson]

QUAKE 3 SERVER IS NOW LIVE!​

Standard Deathmatch, although I can add other modes if people prefer.

Connect to: games.tinkerdifferent.com:27960

 

[Kai Robinson]

Two upgrades have now taken place! The CPU's were finally swapped for the E5-2470v2's giving us 20 cores and 40 threads and thanks to a donation of DDR3 ECC DIMM's from @Bolle - the TD Game server is now sitting at 192GB of usable memory!

Anyone else want to spool up a VM on the system to run a game?

 

[BigDBiden]

Hello Boss
You have any ETA for the Rust server? Its down due to an update

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

QUAKE 3 SERVER IS NOW LIVE!​

Standard Deathmatch, although I can add other modes if people prefer.

Connect to: games.tinkerdifferent.com:27960

We're getting all the good games. Might be a great way to waste some time this weekend.

 

[Kai Robinson]

Hello Boss
You have any ETA for the Rust server? Its down due to an update

Will reboot it later today!

 

[fxgogo]

What are the chances of getting a real-time strategy running? I am thinking Warcraft III, Age of Empires or anything else really.

 

[Kai Robinson]

What are the chances of getting a real-time strategy running? I am thinking Warcraft III, Age of Empires or anything else really.

If you have instructions on how to setup a dedicated server for any game you'd like to add, pass them over in this thread and I'll spool up another VM - the server has gobs of resources to throw at stuff!

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Just played a few rounds of Q3A on my winbox - averaged around 230 ping which isn't bad at all considering the server location. It reminds me of gaming on domestic servers via 56.6k dial up which brought back all those turn of the century FPS feelies. Thanks for hosting @Kai Robinson . HL or HL2 DM, CS/CS:S would all be fun multi players. H2 Bots are decent if no one is around. Quake2 DM would be a fun blast and runs really well on TOTC hardware.

Update:

Was having a high-bandwidth day so took a brain break and reinstalled Q3A on my quicksilver and the TD server performed even better. I averaged ping of around 175-85. Very playable DM.

If anyone wants to play and does not have a disk/image, Q3A 1.32 is on macintoshgarden for both OSX and os9.

 

[Bolkonskij]

I had been on the UT '99 server a few days ago. Ping was much better than expected, server location is the UK?

Man, my reflexes didn't get better after passing the 40 winters. The bots wasted me, not knowing the map didn't help either. Still, it was a fun experience. I need to try that again soon. Reminds me of the times when I'd do it on my old iMac G3 as a student. Fun days. Thanks for keeping the server up!

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

I have UT99 ready to go but have not had the time to jump on the TD server. One of my favs though - loves me some UT99. I'll have to try n jump on this Friday or weekend maybe.

The Q3A server is fun but the bots are not set too hard (not asking them to be LOL) so any of us old people with old burned out nervous systems should do pretty well still

 

[Patrick]

even back when it was new i couldn't play on servers.

as soon as i spawned into a UT server. i was killed. and my killer just bunny hopped away.
didn't even get a chance to run. it was not fun... ( i later learned that person prolly was just camping spawn points)

lol

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

@Patrick - No campers on these servers. Every time I've hopped on, its been all bots.

 

[Kai Robinson]

Yep, they're all set to be bots, so even a single person can join and not be on their own and have a challenge but nothing pro level, my reflexes are garbage these days too.

For the Rust server, it's designed to be a more chilled PvE experience - ultimately all designed to be something enjoyable and relaxing and fun and nothing too rage inducing!

 

[Patrick]

yeah. i was just sharing a memory from 20 years ago for fun.

would be cool to meet another person on there anyways nowadays.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

I never had much issue with the bunny hopping but it sure was fun to slay the campin’ one shot wonder weenies

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Ran into a little UT bug when joining the TD server - DE version mismatch. If any of you run into this, the fix is easy. Just go to your installation directory Unrealtournament>Systems and delete the existing de.u file. When you join the server, the file is replaced, so pretty harmless.

 

[Bolkonskij]

Our group of three was just trying to join the UT99 server but can't. It looks like it's initially connecting and starts parsing some index.unr file but stalls on that for us. I did not change my setup since the last game on the server ... can somebody else confirm?