dpmaster

Dpmaster is a lightweight master server written from scratch for LordHavoc's game engine DarkPlaces. It is an open master server because of its free source code and documentation, and because its Quake III Arena-like protocol allows it to fully support new games without having to restart or reconfigure it: start and forget. In addition to its own protocol, dpmaster also supports the original Quake III Arena master protocol.

Several game engines currently support the DP master server protocol: DarkPlaces and all its derived games (such as Nexuiz and Transfusion), QFusion and most of its derived games (such as Warsow), and FTE QuakeWorld. Also, IOQuake3 uses it for its IPv6-enabled servers and clients since its version 1.36. Finally, dpmaster's source code has been used by a few projects as a base for creating their own master servers (this is the case of Tremulous, for instance).

If you want to use the DP master protocol in one of your software, take a look at the section "USING DPMASTER WITH YOUR GAME" in "doc/techinfo.txt" for further explanations. It is pretty easy to implement, and if you ask politely, chances are you will be able to find someone that will let you use his running dpmaster if you can't get your own.

Although dpmaster is being primarily developed on a Linux PC, it is regularly
compiled and tested on Windows XP, OpenBSD, and Mac OS X. It has also been run successfully on FreeBSD, NetBSD and Windows 2000 in the past, but having no regular access to any of those systems, I cannot guarantee that it is still the case. In particular, building dpmaster on Windows 2000 may require some minor source code changes due to the recent addition of IPv6 support in dpmaster, Windows 2000 having a limited support for this very protocol.

Take a look at the "COMPILING DPMASTER" section in "doc/techinfo.txt" for more practical information on how to build it.

What is new in this release:

• This version adds a flood protection mechanism against abusive clients.
• Game properties have been added, mainly to allow the support for two new games: "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" and "Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory".
• Finally, shutdown heartbeats and unknown heartbeats are now ignored, and a few minor bugs have been fixed.

What is new in version 2.1:

• A game type value can now be any word, not just a number.

What is new in version 2.0:

• Gametype filter support in the server list queries (see techinfo.txt)
• New option "--game-policy" to filter games (see GAME POLICY above)
• IPv6 support, including 2 new messages types (see techinfo.txt)
• Logging support (see LOGGING above)
• Only the last packet of a getservers response gets an EOT mark now
• The default number of servers is now 4096
• Improved listening interface option (see LISTENING INTERFACES above)
• Long format for all command line options (see SYNTAX & OPTIONS above)
• The server lists are now sent in a semi-random order, for fairness
• The new hash function supports up to 16-bit hashes
• The default hash size has been increased to 10 bits
• 0 is no longer an invalid hash size
• New option "--allow-loopback", for debugging purposes only!
• New option "--hash-ports", for debugging purposes only!
• Various updates and improvements in the documentation
• No warning is printed anymore if a server changes its game name
• No longer tolerates several mapping declarations for the same address
• A lot of minor changes and fixes in the code
• The test suite now requires the Socket6 Perl module to run