FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

I have noticed that the server list was improved since the last time I played around 0.4.7 which is very nice but I have noticed that some servers are still getting priority over all the others. There are servers that are in the top 5 almost 24/7 and it seems a little unfair to the other servers.

I suggest that the server list be shuffled ( with 100% randomness) about every hour and if a server happens to be in the top five more than 3 times ( 3 hours ) in a row, it is dropped to the bottom of the list and be allowed to re-enter the next shuffle. The main reason I find this a issue at all is because we now have ~98 servers but yet around 5-10 contain about 90% of the players so that leaves about 90 servers almost empty all the time. This will give other servers a chance to build a player base and not doomed to fail from the start.

If anyone has any other ideas how to manage the priority better I would love to hear it.

The serverlist works this way.

Rewarded for:

• number of online players (up to 16)
• average online players
• age in months (up to 8)

Penalised for:

• unrealistic Max players
• guest accounts
• uptime of less than one hour
• ping times > 1 second.

For traditional voxel Minetest servers, where building is key, it is good to reward servers for age and number of players as it's less likely that they'll just vanish.

I think that servers should be rewarded for diverse game play. Don't know how that would happen though; it's hard to measure it objectively.

It seems legit system but its seriously flawed because newer servers have everything against them :| its impossible unless they stay up for months on end and hope they get one or 2 legit players to get even close to being seen by newer players who join the first server they see. The unrealistic Max players is only good for hurting servers that can handle more players. The guest account is great thing and the ping is good so players are not joining laggy servers with a bunch of guests. Other than those to I believe it is flawed and could use some more rethinking. Or maybe add category to split the age. I believe that is the biggest hindrance of this system so maybe add a new server category and a adult server category for server whose age is beyond the 8 months.

You are wrong Clouds, new servers can succes easily. See Amhi server. It crashes almost every day, 3 Guest accounts at least at the same time. Ping it's sometimes high. It has been around not much.

Clouds wrote:The unrealistic Max players is only good for hurting servers that can handle more players.

No servers can handle more than 128 clients, even VanessaE's - Minetest's code is just not good enough.

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My CaptureTheFlag server was in the top four for a while. It's only been online for 25 days.

You can use this tool to get analytics on your server list position: https://gist.github.com/rubenwardy/6d6882db0cbe1b5b24be

Here are the scores of the top ten servers:

1) backbone.ws = 28
2) VanessaE's Basic-plus Server = 27
3) [FR] Minetest France Survie / PvP [Phase de tests] = 22
4) Neue Minenwelt Server = 21
5) Craig's Server = 20
6) skyblock server = 20
7) Amhi = 19
8) LinuxGaming.us = 19
9) Dan`s Carbone Server = 16
10) GunshipPenguin's Hunger Games Server = 15

So for a new server to get into the top ten, you need at least 10 players online with no penalties and a good average population. It is possible if your server is unique enough.

Here is the code for the serverlist ranking: https://github.com/minetest/master-serv ... #L282-L324

What it's a player with no penalties? Most important question is what are the penalties?

EDIT: Does kick/ban "rate" helps score or just isn't there at all?

I not trying to find a way to get my server to the top, I am just wanting a way to give every server a equal opportunity to have players.

Dragonop wrote:What it's a player with no penalties? Most important question is what are the penalties?

EDIT: Does kick/ban "rate" helps score or just isn't there at all?

Your question is rather hard to understand - are you asking about the specific values of the penalties? Just look at the source code, it's quite a lot to write here. Although to summarise: a full player gets you +1 points and a guest gets you +1/8 points.

The serverlist isn't told about kick/ban rates at all, and probably shouldn't be. (It's too dependant on one type of subgame, the voxel building game with protection mod's etc

Clouds wrote:I not trying to find a way to get my server to the top, I am just wanting a way to give every server a equal opportunity to have players.

The server list should put players first, rather than servers first. As I've said before, the server list should somehow reward diverse and innotive servers, but it is rather hard for a computer to actually make the decision as to whether a server is innotive or not.

I must apologize, I miss understood. I assumed you meant that I was trying to find a way to selfishly rank up my server.

Yes, indeed the players should come first but one thing you should put inconsideration is should we allow players to join servers that have a lot of regular players, less admin interaction ( to help solve there issues ), and with some lag or could we level out the amount of players throughout all the servers. If we can solve this we will fix the issue of laggy/full servers scaring new people from minetest because if they are disappointed with the first server they join some people just say its not worth it along with having 90+ almost empty servers.

My opinion, the server list priority should be totally random. with all full servers dropped to the bottom. that would give each server an equal chance to gain attention

@rubenwardy
If I understand well what you say, if my servers reboot everyday at 4:30am for 5minutes for backup purpose, my score will be low ? (-8)

My servers need to have an uptime of 8 months without reboot ?! What about updates & reboot ?

crazyR wrote:My opinion, the server list priority should be totally random. with all full servers dropped to the bottom. that would give each server an equal chance to gain attention

+1, currently, good servers get to the bottom, so every once in a while, I just check the entire list for good-looking ones.

Minetestforfun wrote:@rubenwardy
If I understand well what you say, if my servers reboot everyday at 4:30am for 5minutes for backup purpose, my score will be low ? (-8)

My servers need to have an uptime of 8 months without reboot ?! What about updates & reboot ?

You can reboot in that time.
You only get penalties for < 1 hour of uptime, and it follows P=1/t roughly (where =penalty, t=time)

Ok, so that's strange.

Except the reboot i told you everyday at 4:30am, our MFF servers are always up, and I expected a score highter than ...

(Only one server have a score penality, it's the first in the list)
70) MinetestForFun (Survival PVP Hardcore) [FR/EN] = 2.13414634146 (penaltity : ping times > 1 second)
81) MinetestForFun SKYBLOCK = 0.337209302326 (no penality)
83) MinetestForFun HUNGER GAMES = 1.12790697674 (no penality)
85) MinetestForFun CREATIVE = 1.0 (no penality)

So, the 81/83/85 servers are up 24h/24 7d/7 since at least 6 months and the score is less than 8(we can even say less than 2 :X), can you explain me how is it possible ?

Here is an idea for the devs...

How about adding another setting in the conf file where there are four types of server, one to choose from and we could sort. i.e. survival, creative, game, combat.

Then each type could be sorted when we browse the serverlist and have better grouping to choose from?

Just a thought.

Also, if you ever wanted to "inflate" your rank, you can change the env_meta file in your world folder to set game time to a older time. But this would be cheating.

I think a way to sort server by game type would be pretty cool.

Minetestforfun wrote:Ok, so that's strange.

Except the reboot i told you everyday at 4:30am, our MFF servers are always up, and I expected a score highter than ...

(Only one server have a score penality, it's the first in the list)
70) MinetestForFun (Survival PVP Hardcore) [FR/EN] = 2.13414634146 (penaltity : ping times > 1 second)
81) MinetestForFun SKYBLOCK = 0.337209302326 (no penality)
83) MinetestForFun HUNGER GAMES = 1.12790697674 (no penality)
85) MinetestForFun CREATIVE = 1.0 (no penality)

So, the 81/83/85 servers are up 24h/24 7d/7 since at least 6 months and the score is less than 8(we can even say less than 2 :X), can you explain me how is it possible ?

Try "python mt_serverlist_points.py MinetestForFun" and compare it to others

MinetestForFun HUNGER GAMES:
1 clients: +1
0 guests / 8: +0
months of game_time (max 8): +1
average clients / 2: +0.15625
= 2.15625

Top server right now:

[FR] Minetest France Survie / PvP:
17 clients: +17
0 guests / 8: +0
highly loaded server: -1
months of game_time (max 8): +5
average clients / 2: +5.31746031746
= 25

My server:

Capture the Flag (quick matches):
5 clients: +5
0 guests / 8: +0
months of game_time (max 8): +1
average clients / 2: +0.765625
= 6.765625

It's mostly just number of players.

Oh, ok i understand better, so the penalities are not very important, the only thing important are the uptime, the actually number of player & the average number of players.

The main problem is certainly the migration to an another hoster we have made 1 or 2 months earlier... Our IP address was also changed.

I have 2 last questions :
1) If my server is DDOS, is the counter take it like an "offline" status ?
2) Why the VanessaE servers have a uptime of 2 years+ ? if i remember well, VanessaE shutting down her servers at least an entire night for the migration in an another hoster because she was under DDOS everydays (our servers too in this moment), how is it possible ?

Thank you in advance for your answers :)

Minetestforfun wrote:2) Why the VanessaE servers have a uptime of 2 years+ ? if i remember well, VanessaE shutting down her servers at least an entire night for the migration in an another hoster because she was under DDOS everydays (our servers too in this moment), how is it possible ?

Well...one day downtime in 2 years is still an extremly good uptime, isn't it? Players seeking a server that will last will be well served with it. I'm just afraid that they won't be able to locate it. The server list is certainly better than nothing, but not really designed for the huge amount of servers we got by now.

maikerumine wrote:How about adding another setting in the conf file where there are four types of server, one to choose from and we could sort. i.e. survival, creative, game, combat.
Then each type could be sorted when we browse the serverlist and have better grouping to choose from?

That would be fine and might help players a lot. Each server could decide for itshelf where the main focus lies. It's still not easy and might require diffrently named categories. I tried to create some some time ago (don't remember where the posting ended up; probably even this thread or a similar one). There are a number of decisions a server admin may take and which determine which orientation the server will have. Automatic categorization like creative vs. pvp enabled just doesn't do servers any justice.