Direct download of ARMA2/OA game files?

[doonbugie]

Defunkt... Sorry your world keeps shakin man!
You are running on Windows presumably? I'm guessing it runs better on linux, but i'm playing with both atm...
I'm 2 steps behind you, but set up a micro instance last night - intending to do exactly the same thing.
Also, do you go by another name? I know a few ChCh Arma lads...


Am I correct in saying that the you are allowed to set up a dedicated server on a separate machine - as long as you own the game? If this is the case, then I could legitimately take a copy of Defunkts image and save myself the hassle of uploading the gamefiles over my DSL connection. ( Orcon, NZ )

The alternative I've been contemplating is to install steam... but I suspect I'd then need to run steam in order to run the server - meaning I couldn't play from my home machine.


I'm assuming BI intends to let you install a dedicated server without having to buy a 2nd instance of the game.

Arma 2 on steam is independent of Steam. You can do it, just run the a2 exe.

[Defunkt]

Defunkt...

Your nick is familiar to me but I don't know why. I don't go by any other names, I'm generally to be found HERE.

AFAIK the dedicated server executables are not bound to Steam or any sort of protection and I don't believe you're expected to buy the game again to run a dedicated server. So you could use Steam to download the data files and then run the dedicated binary (arma2oaserver.exe) without starting Steam though my ArmA is not the Steam version so that's not something I've proven, just my assumption, suggest you test this yourself.

I used Amazon's Linux.

The CO install is larger than the EC2 free storage quota and I'm afraid I discarded the volume rather than get micro-charged every month for something I wasn't very likely to use.

[edwood]

Arma 2 on steam is independent of Steam. You can do it, just run the a2 exe.

Hmmm... Whenever I run A2, Steam also runs. However, I am using a batch file that runs the program via Steam... i'll have to test it out.

Defunkt, I'll come and track you down at http://arma.anzins.net/

edwood - aka. EdwoodScissorsHands... and we've probably just bumped into each other in some other random south pacific theater .

[eddieck]

I'm currently running a few ArmA servers under EC2. I simply started a small Windows instance, and used that to download Steam and the game. I then used WinSCP to transfer the files over to my other Ubuntu instance. (You will need to create an EBS volume of around 10 GiB for OA and 25 GiB for CO if you intend on using Linux instances. The default EBS volume for each instance is 7 or 8 GiB IIRC, and that's not enough for the OS + the game.)

I see no reason why this method would be illegal, as you're not putting the files up publicly - just transferring them between your instances. (And presumably, if you're using Steam, you paid for the game in the first place.)

[doonbugie]

Has anybody ever tried setting up X and vnc on their linux ds and then running steam from wine and downloading the files that way? Then removing X of coarse, GUI's are no good for server OS'.

[edwood]

eddieck - i'm part way through the process you've described.

I had to start again when i decided to move my stuff to California... <mutter mutter stupid EC2 mutter lack of regional transfer support grumble mutter...>.

I've got a 40G EBS volume that I'm sticking all the game files on.
(i'll also put ACE and a few gigs of mods).

I'll be using Centos (as opposed to Ubuntu), but that shouldn't make any diff. I'm a linux nub, so i'm going to have some fun working out how to do stuff...

I had another thought... Assuming linux is more than happy with NTFS, I can just mount the EBS volume from the linux instance, and i don't have to copy anything anywhere! <-- am i missing something here, or am i brilliant?

I'm really looking forward to having a play this weekend and seeing if I can get a linux server up and running!

[edwood]

Hmmm... The good news is that I managed to mount the NTFS EBS volume, and thats all going swimmingly!

The bad news is that I can't get my server to start up

I've used a few configs, but I'm currenly using the default server.cfg from the wiki here

and I've edited arma2oaserver as follows:

ARMA_DIR=.
CONFIG=server.cfg
PORT=2302
PIDFILE=${ARMA_DIR}/${PORT}.pid
RUNFILE=${ARMA_DIR}/${PORT}.run
LOGFILE=${ARMA_DIR}/log.${PORT}.txt
SERVER=${ARMA_DIR}/server
PROFILE=${ARMA_DIR}/player/player.armaprofile
#OTHERPARAMS=-cpucount=2

I've created ./player/player.armaprofile which contains my profile info from my home machine.

...but when I run ./server I'm inundated with errors.

here's the first 20 lines...

Warning Message: No entry '.profilePathDefault'.
Warning Message: '/' is not a value
Warning Message: No entry '.profilePathCommon'.
Warning Message: '/' is not a value
Warning Message: No entry '.extensionSave'.
Warning Message: '/' is not a value
Warning Message: No entry '.extensionProfile'.
Warning Message: '/' is not a value
Warning Message: No entry '.extensionWizardMission'.
Warning Message: '/' is not a value
Warning Message: No entry '.extensionAddon'.
Warning Message: '/' is not a value
Cannot register string STR_SUNDAY - global stringtable not found
Cannot register string STR_MONDAY - global stringtable not found
Cannot register string STR_TUESDAY - global stringtable not found
Cannot register string STR_WEDNESDAY - global stringtable not found
Cannot register string STR_THURSDAY - global stringtable not found
Cannot register string STR_FRIDAY - global stringtable not found
Cannot register string STR_SATURDAY - global stringtable not found
Cannot register string STR_JANUARY - global stringtable not found

Anybody have any clues!??!

---------- Post added at 01:23 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:28 AM ----------

OK, I solved my own problem, but I figure its good to leave my errors and posts in the thread so someone else can find it...

To cut a long story short, the Expansion folder, and all the subsequent folders seem to be a little resistent to tolower. I had to do some jiggery pokery with copying and moving files, but now I have my expansion directory, and all the child directories and files renamed to lower case.

My server now runs!

(I can't see it in the list, but thats for another day)

---------- Post added at 01:44 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:23 AM ----------

...and I've solved that one too! Somehow I had the wrong secirty group set on my linux box. I've updated the firewall rules in the security group to include 2302 - 2305 on UDP, and now it appears in the list!

These are happy days!

[eddieck]

I personally wouldn't use an NTFS EBS volume under Linux, but I'm glad that worked for you.

For the security group, you should only need port 2302 (UDP) open unless you're running multiple servers. Also, you will not be able to see the ping in the server browser - it'll just say 2500. I can't figure out how to fix that. I tried temporarily opening up all traffic (ICMP/TCP/UDP) but that didn't change anything unfortunately.

[edwood]

I personally wouldn't use an NTFS EBS volume under Linux, but I'm glad that worked for you.

I'm a noob remember...
I figured that NTFS may well be sub-optimal, but I couldn't find anything to back up my theory... I've had another quick look now, and found this table which clearly shows that I will get only 20% of the disk access speeds using the free NTFS drivers...
Fine, I will move it over to an EXT3 filesystem when i'm finished setting up.
...I wonder if I can 'mount' the EXT3 drive in windows...

For the security group, you should only need port 2302 (UDP)...

Kellys Heroes had a nice guide that included this information:
port 2302 UDP ArmA2 game network communication.
port+1 2303 UDP Gamespy public server reporting.
port+3 2305 UDP Voice Over Net transmission.

I vaguely recall I had the ping reporting correctly too...
I'll re-confirm (if i remember).

Thanks

[edwood]

Gaaarrrrr!

I been foiled!

I finally got everything working pretty sweet...

However, I have one final issue that I may find unreconcileable.... I cant get the server run Combined Ops / Combined Arms.

I've reverted to windows to try and get it going, but obviously I can't do a 1st time run of the actual game Arma 2 (no decent graphics card on the server)... so whatever registry entries / env variables get created at first time run, don't get created.

Long story short, I've tried everything I can think of, and I can't get the server to run any of the combined ops missions and/or what I really want, which is custom content that requires ca.

I've tried -mod=<full path to Arma 2>;ca;expansion;

I've tried numerous combinations of the above.

I've tried merging the entire OA and Arma2 directories into a new one. (This later proved to have worked)

I haven't tried going back to linux and just hoping for the best yet...


I figure if I can't get it to run ca on windows, linux aint gonna be much better.


At the end of the day, i think my problem boils down to this. Ive used Steam to get all the game files on the server, and I can't run the dedicated server in combined arms.



---------- Post added at 12:22 AM ---------- Previous post was Yesterday at 10:52 PM ----------

<sigh> - ultimately I copied the Arma2 and OA directories together, and its now working!