More here later.

Cheers,

tom

Was reloading the wife's grandmother's computer after a particularly nasty crash. When I attempted a Windows repair install, the mythical 0XDEADBEEF reared its ugly head not once, but three separate times.

So, yeah. I ended up formatting and wiping out the whole thing.

they lost some stuff, but the whole experience was somewhat surreal.

tom

So, since I happen to have my own dedicated system I decided to give a try at running my own dedicated server instead. Since I couldn't locate one place that had all of this information, I decided to write up my own document to show you how to install and setup your very own Left 4 Dead Dedicated Server.

Setup

My server setup is pretty anemic at this time. However, this is all for testing at the moment until I get better hardware in place:

* 512 MB ram
* Dual P3 500 Mhz CPU's
* Lots of disk space for the game files

From what I see, I'd recommend a fast dual processor CPU with a minimum of 2GB memory to run the server. You can also run multiple instances of the server, so you can serve lots of groups all at once.

Installing Steam on Linux

The first thing you need to do to have a L4D Dedicated server is to download Steam for Linux. the installer is located over at http://storefront.steampowered.com/download/hldsupdatetool.bin. Use wget on the Linux system to download this file.

I will assume that we will be creating a /opt/steam directory for everything. If you don't have one, go ahead and make it now and download the hldsupdatetool.bin application to there.

Once downloaded, chmod +x the file to make it executable, and then run it. You will have to agree to the license. Once you agree, it will create a readme file as well as an executable named steam. We will be using that in the next step.

Running Steam in Linux

Now, the next step will be to create a new directory where all of our Left 4 Dead files to live in. Create a /opt/steam/l4d directory on your system and then run the following:

root@london:/opt/steam# ./steam
Checking bootstrapper version ...
Getting version 34 of Steam HLDS Update Tool
Downloading. . . . . . . . . . .
Steam Linux Client updated, please retry the command

Once the update is complete, we will be installing the L4D game by using the following command:

./steam -command update -game left4dead -dir /opt/steam/l4d
root@london:/opt/steam# ./steam -command update -game left4dead -dir /opt/steam/l4d
Checking bootstrapper version ...
Updating Installation
Checking/Installing 'Left 4 Dead binaries' version 6
Checking/Installing 'Left 4 Dead base' version 7
Checking/Installing 'left4dead linux dedicated server' version 3
...

It will take about 5-10 minutes (depending on a lot of variables here) for all the files to download and get installed into the /opt/steam/l4d/l4d directory. Once you get that installed, it's time for the next step, configuring it.

Configuring L4D Dedicated Server

there's a bunch of configuration files in the /opt/steam/l4d/l4d/left4dead/cfg directory, so I will give you highlights on how I configured my own server.

infected.cfg

Since I wanted just a pure co-op game without any users playing infected, I set this file like so:

director_no_human_zombies 1

singleplayer.cfg

Unsure if this means anything, but I ended up configuring the singleplayer.cfg to limit to 4 players (that's the 'maxplayers' bit).

wait
wait
exec infected_off.cfg
sv_lan 1
setmaster enable
maxplayers 4
progress_enable
num_ai_survivors 3
director_solo_mode 0
director_min_start_players 1

sv_pausable 0

twoplayers.cfg

Same here, but I configured the minimum number of starting players at 1 (that's the 'director_min_start_players' bit)

wait
wait
exec infected_off.cfg
sv_lan 1
setmaster enable
maxplayers 4
progress_enable
num_ai_survivors 2
director_solo_mode 0
director_min_start_players 1

sv_pausable 0

server.cfg

A lot of these items I got from here. You may check out the variables and tweak them to your liking.

hostname "*My server banner here*"
rcon_password "*I put in a server password here*"
sv_lan 0
mp_disable_autokick 1
sv_cheats 0
sv_clearhinthistory 0
sv_consistency 1
sv_pausable 0
sv_search_key ""

sv_allow_lobby_connect_only 0

Running From Command Line

Finally, after all the configuration has been completed, I run the following from the command line to kick off the server:

cd /opt/steam/l4d/l4d
./srcds_run -console -game left4dead -maxplayers 4 -autoupdate +map l4d_hospital01_apartment +ip *my server's public IP address* -port 27015 -nohltv +sv_lan 0

give it a few minutes to start up and keep an eye on the console for any error messages. Since this configuration worked “out of the box” for me, I'm unsure at what sort of errors that you might get. Use Google if you run across something.

Connecting to Your Dedicated Server

After start up is complete, bring up your Left 4 Dead client, open a console. Now, enter the following:

connect *your dedicated server IP address here*

Hit enter and you should connect to your new Linux Left 4 Dead Dedicated Server.

Other Links

Here's some other places you may be interested in checking out for information on running your own L4D server:

• Server Configs
• Server MOTD
• Another server setup page

I hope you enjoy and have a lot of fun with it. On Steam, my user name is idlethreat. Stop by and say hi sometime.

Cheers,

tom

While I had all the best intentions of posting more neat and interesting stuff (well, to me, that is), I managed to run smack into Left 4 Dead and things haven't been quite the same since.

Sure, I'm still the standard-issue Midwest programming geek, but I just happen to flinch a hell of a lot more in dark rooms.

If you guys haven't had an opportunity to try L4D out, I would highly recommend it. If you already happen to have it and are looking for someone to join you in the festivities, just hop over to my Steam page and contact me.

Finally, this reminds me that I have extra Steam copies of HL 2 and HL2, Episode One that I picked up whenever I got Orange Box.

If you would like a free legal copy of them for your very own, just log in (or create yourself a new account) and reply back with your Steam contact information.

Cheers,

tom

Concept

The concept behind the whole thing is pretty easy. Take a general purpose PC with a video card in it, and tune it into the general-issue US government channel, Cspan. Next, start a stream rip of the CC stream.
Parse and tag the CC stream and load the data into a MySQL (or other, if there's a better choice out there) database. Finally, allow for full text searching and even email alerting on particular chunks of text as they pop up. So, if the House or Senate happen to go blithering off on something you happen to be concerned about (I.E. health care, taxes, etc), then you will get a transcript for that chunk of time to review as needed.

History

I recall something quite a bit like that a number of years ago on Slashdot, however, several searches have turned up nothing actionable. Since that particular project went under (from what I recall), I decided to bring it back in my own way by seeing how far I would be able to get on my own.
While there are companies which provide this service for a fee, there's no way that I would bring myself to pay for something that is as close as a video capture card and some clever coding.

Tools

The only real tool that I'm aware of would fit the bill would be CCExtractor. While I like the idea of coding up my own stream extractor in Python or some other language, all the hard work has already been done by this clever fellow. Gluing the extractor together with parsing and other information extracting capabilities would be entertaining enough as it is.

Design Requirements

• Capture CC information in 5 minute segments, strip and parse the data so that it is flat text.
• Inject the relevant text into a database along with link to video footage.
• Implement full text search engine on the captured information.
• Write up search and alerting capabilities to the information, including links to the relevant text as well as video footage.

Seems like an interesting project to me. My one and only PC is still downstairs at the moment, acting as a DVR to record my shows. Once I get a new TiVO on order and shipped in, then I will be able to swap it out and begin the project in earnest.

So, any input? Heard of any project quite like this before?

[update]
I did run across http://metavid.org while writing this bit. It's possible that this will do exactly what I want. Still kicking things down and researching.

Cheers,

tom

The more interesting bit about the game is that all the boards that you play are online, created by other users whom have a copy of Atmosphir on their systems.

Some are of pretty good quality, others are simple “run across a few (virtual) miles of power ups and jump really high to his the finish mark”. At the moment, there seems to be a lot more of the latter than the former. However, with new members in the Beta test being added, the level of quality will start coming up eventually.

Along with merely playing the game, you have a full-blown editor in-game (which reminds me a lot of the editor in Sauerbraten) so that you can create your own masterpiece- Or, edit any of the currently existing levels online and save them locally or even upload them as your own.

Installation of the software on the Mac is quick and painless. I like that the developer opted to go with the all-in-one bundle instead of a proper installer application. This will allow for trivial moving, and even deletion of the application without leaving a bunch of libraries scattered all over the place. Unsure of the Windows version, but I assume that it has an installer somewhere.

Preferences are pretty basic at the moment- Movement controls and screen size are about it.

Overall, the performance of the application is pretty good for beta software. There are some hang-ups in the UI whenever the maps are downloaded, and when updates are installed. Overall, for what it offers, and the possibilities afforded, I think this is an acceptable compromise.

So, if interested, check out the Atmosphir web site. There's another review online [Posted Here] that should give you an even better overview than this one has.

Enjoy!

tom

Have a great week, all. More code coming soon!

tom

tom