BalanceServerSeeders (4.0.0.4 - 21-April-2014): Distribute server seeding players

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Originally Posted by Tomgun*:

 

this plugin is really handy, got a propblem though, its doesnt like CTF and swops people over for the fun of it can this be fixed at all?

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Originally Posted by Flyswamper*:

 

Make sure you've got the latest version and give me some logs (plugin logs) with the debug setting up fairly high (max of 10 is great, but something like 7 is probably good enough) and I'll have a look.

 

Lastly, what are the settings you have configured for the plugin?

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Originally Posted by Flyswamper*:

 

Its been a while since I tried to debug this. I think the last time I did was right after CTF mode was released and it resulted in the player-count that controls kicking idle seeders being broken.

 

Is my memory correct that in CTF mode you don't get a meaningful score, so that setting this plugin to score-based is really a bad idea for CTF? If that is true, perhaps I should figure out how to detect CTF mode and force it to balance seeders based on player count? Or is there other logic that should be applied specifically for CTF mode?

 

I ask this stuff because I've become such a Metro noob that I haven't even played a round of CTF since it came out. So the logic that would work best isn't something I'm intimately familiar with.

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Originally Posted by Master_Pain*:

 

Hey Fly, great plugin! Been using it for quite awhile. Ever since CTF came out though, it tends to put the odd numbered idler on RU, which puts them in a 2 player hole at times.

 

I was wondering as a temp fix until procon can see flag counts, was if you could add an option to put the odd numbered idler on the US side when the server is on CTF. That would be super.

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Originally Posted by Flyswamper*:

 

What setting are you using for the balancing logic? ticket-based or player-based?

 

I guess I am probably going to have to play a few rounds of CTF myself to understand how it should work. These will sound like dumb questions, but since I haven't played BF3 in CTF mode, help me understand how it works. STuff like..

 

Is it always one team defending and another trying to capture a flag? Or does each team simultaneously defend their flag and try to capture the opponents? Your comment seems to imply that the RU team is either always defending or attacking. Which is it and how does it work.

 

Like I said, to have an idea of the logic I guess I'm gonna have to play some CTF. But presumably some of you admins that run it and play it can explain to me how it should be. Will my logic that I did for Rush mode work for CTF mode (where you can choose to always put the extra seeder on team 1 or team 2 (attacker of defenders)).

[ImportBot]

Originally Posted by Flyswamper*:

 

Ok folks...

 

In the last 24 hours I've played a round or two of CTF and now know how it works. I've also updated the code to the plugin. I was able to connect to the Procon plugin test server and put my soldier account on there for a wee bit of testing. I couldn't testing it in anger cause I am still in a hotel and don't have access to my 2nd machine and 2nd soldier account. but.... it seems to be working.

 

Also, I discovered an unexpected problem that only occurs when the game mode is CTF. Fixed that.

 

I made quite a few changes so the chance that I've screwed up something, while I think is really small, does exist this time around. So I've left both version 3.4.0.0 and the newly updated version 3.5.0.0 on the first post of this thread.

 

The basic changes from the admin/plugin-user side of things is that the plugin now does the following

 

- detects CTF mode

- Forces player-count based balancing logic for the idle seeders whenever CTF mode is detected.

 

Give it a try and report back please!

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Originally Posted by Master_Pain*:

 

Thanks for the update, Fly.

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Originally Posted by dyn*:

 

FEATURE REQUEST/SUGGESTION:

 

Having some seeders get stuck in team "Neutral". If it were possible to identify a seeder is in team "Neutral" and then move them out that would really help. Usually this happens when we join our clients and then leave for the day. If you load the game the client is moved to the proper team.

 

Or, heck, perhaps even if ANY player is in neutral over XX mins they would be moved to a team?

[ImportBot]

Originally Posted by dyn*:

 

FEATURE REQUEST/SUGGESTION:

 

Now that multibalancer respects admin moves, that is if an admin move takes place MB will not switch the player back, it might work to just have every player be a potential seeder without having to worry about a list. We could just have it monitor every player for their activity, if they haven't had any action in XXX mins they should be considered a seeder.

 

Actually, there could still be a list but this list would be used to define actual seeder accounts.... accounts that never get played. This special list could have a shorter "Seeder Idle/Active detection for seeder balancing", like 2 minutes. If a player on that list is on the server, and they haven't done anything in 2 minutes, mark them as idle. However, if they're not on the list apply the other limit -- like any player is idle for the specified time consider them a seeder until they perform any action.

[ImportBot]

Originally Posted by Hutchew*:

 

Agree w/dyn.

 

Would help with the afk squad leader problem we see frequently.

 

Make all them afk's into balanced seeds!

[ImportBot]

Originally Posted by dyn*:

 

FEATURE REQUEST / SUGGESTION:

 

Some type of logic to know how many tickets are left (for conquest) or how long the round is (for rush). If under, for example, 150 tickets left do NOT kick any idle players/seeders. The theory behind this is to try and keep the sever populated until the next round changes.

 

Quite often we'll seed the server, get it to our set thresholds so seeders are kicked, and then the round will be nearly over. Once the round ends we see the normal 8-12 players quit on round end in addition to the seeders who were just kicked. Then we're back to a level were seeders may be required again so we have to rally the troops, so to speak.

 

Then once the next round starts we can have it behave like normal. One we reach the desired population levels, assuming the round isn't about to end, the seeders can then be removed.

 

 

I realize this is the 3rd request / suggestion.... hope you don't mind I'm spamming so many ideas here. When an idea comes to my mind I just post it. :X Your plugin does REALLY help keep the server balanced when we have several seeders in... No one wants 7 idlers v 2 active players. If you would put up a donation link I'd ensure we send some beer (or wine_) cash your way.

 

Cheers!

[ImportBot]

Originally Posted by Flyswamper*:

 

Hey Dyn et.al

 

Hey there! Sorry for my delay/slowness and lack of response to these. Please do keep throwing out the ideas and suggestions. I very much appreciate them and I will eventually implement any of them that I am capable of doing provided I agree that it makes sense to do so.

 

Unfortunately I'm in the middle of moving my household goods from Canada to the southern US. I'm sitting on a laptop surrounded by nearly everything in my house having been wrapped and packed ready for the movers/shippers to load it next week. I'm going to be in transition for several weeks to come. Now.... that *might* mean I get some time to goof off and work on these ideas eventually.

 

Before I get back to my real-life stuff, let me throw out a thought or two for you guys on these suggestions/requests...

 

On the idea of having the plugin "detect" players that are AFK and treat them temporarily as seeders:

I suppose I could try to add this logic. My thought would be that this functionality should be off by default. And I'm guessing I would really need to try and have it keep track of the last time that a seeder was moved by my plugin. If it needed to move a seeder more than X times in Y minutes, then perhaps I could make it so that this functionality self-disables itself. No promises on that, but perhaps it could work and make sense.

 

On the subject of adding more criteria/limits on when seeders should be kicked (or not), such as not kicking them near round-end.... This seems like it would be relatively easy to do. But I am just thinking of it as a simple switch that says don't kick seeders when either/any team has a ticket count below a user-defined value of X. Thoughts?

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Originally Posted by Jaythegreat1*:

 

Some features I would like to see is:

 

1. Do like Adaptive Server Size does and turns idle kick on and off when the server is at certain size., Where I think this plugin just kicks seeders at the moment.

2. Have the ability to turn off idle kick during certain hours of the day, regardless of server size.

[ImportBot]

Originally Posted by EBassie*:

 

Hey Flyswamper,

 

I know you are pretty swamped (pun intended), but I just thought of another feature that would be great.

 

Don't kick idlers near the end of a round.

It has happened many times when trying to get the server going in the morning, the idlers are kicked just a minute before rounds end.

And then, after the round change the population dropped significantly because players leave after the round.

 

It would be pretty cool if the plugin could be set to not kick seeders when certain values are set for the gamemodes.

Ticket related for RUSH, CQ, TDM etc... and time related for CTF.

[ImportBot]

Originally Posted by Flyswamper*:

 

Thanks for the ideas/comments. That sounds like a good idea. I've arrived at my new home and by tomorrow should have vehicles registered and drivers licenses obtained.... so.... I'm nearing the end of the stupid-crazy-busy time and should have some time to kick-back and mess with stuff like this soon. Having a home and now having broadband should make it easier too... as I've been living with rural cell-phone data for over a month. Anyway... enough moaning from me. Thanks again for the ideas.

[ImportBot]

Originally Posted by Flyswamper*:

 

Hey guys... if any of you still check this thread and still want an update, I think I am ready to do it.

 

Have just spent the last hour or two getting map laptop configured again and linking the Procon core dll file so intellisense would help me again. Also figured out how you can tell the team scores and how far in score/ticket count it is from being the end of the round. Not going to go any further tonight before a little playtime followed by bedtime I think. But I could probably knock this out tomorrow.

 

I'm writing to solicit input on the criteria for turning off kicking. I might try to get fancy, but keeping it simple helps this novice programmer reduce his bug count. I guess my question is.... what is the simplest yet still functional way I could let the users of the plugin specify when to turn off idle-seeder kicking?

 

Probably the easiest way would be to have separate entries for each game mode and you specify the ticket/score count that below that number no kicking would occur. I'd have to have separate entries for every game mode (ones supported by the plugin logic anyway).

 

I suppose I could try and capture what the starting ticket count is at the beginning of the round and then compute a % of the round completed, then I could just have you specify a single value such that you might say turn off kicking if only 5% of the round score/tickets are left.

 

If I got crazy (I probably won't) I suppose I could keep track of the rate of change of the scores/tickets with respect to what it takes to end the round and project an approximate remaining time to end of the round (assuming the same ticket/scoring rate). And you could specify no kicking whenever the estimated remaining round time was less than X minutes. This actually seems like the coolest way, but I suspect a simple approach to estimating the remaining time might give very erratic/bad results.

 

Anyway..... any thoughts on this stuff?

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Originally Posted by EBassie*:

 

Hey Flyswamper, good to see you're still around

 

I was thinking of this for NOT kicking seeders when round is almost over.

 

CQ & RUSH:

Percentage of starting tickets left. Configurable in the plugin settings.

As you know the starting tickets of for instance 1000 tickets, I want to set that option to 10%.

So that with the last 100 tickets no seeder will get kicked.

 

For RUSH it's a bit different, as you have new tickets per stage.

Guess we need to look at the tickets of the attackers for that.

 

CTF:

CTF server setting to change the round time is still bugged. Rounds are ALWAYS 20 minutes.

If we use that same % as above, the seeders will not get kicked 2 minutes before the end of the round.

For CTF the duration of the round would be the trigger.

[ImportBot]

Originally Posted by _gp_*:

 

this plug-in works well in concert with multi-balancer...(think this is because mb does not kill to move players, so overlooks idlers)

 

was wondering if you could have option to have players added to your seeder list onJoin and taken off your seeder list onLeave...

 

at the moment I run a small 24 player server of mostly GM maps and find I manually add and take away players daily, would be nice to have it automated ...

 

_gp?

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Originally Posted by Flyswamper*:

 

Ok guys... I've made a little more progress today, but I'm a little concerned that I might introduce some bugs in the code related to figuring out how much of the round is complete. I can check some stuff by connecting to an empty test server that the ProCon gods have made available to Plugin developers for testing. But that server sits empty without any active players.

 

It would be most helpful if I could (once again) temporarily get access to someone's server via ProCon. If anybody is willing to let me connect either directly to their server or to their ProCon parent layer, I should be able to run my plugin locally (here on my machine) and watch the debug output I get in order to squash most of the potential bugs. I just need to watch what it's doing in an active server with the scores changing. Would be a bonus to have a server that had a couple of different game modes but beggars can't be choosy.

 

PM me if you are willing/able to let me in for a bit. You have my word (whatever that's worth) that I'll be as cautious as I can be not to do ANYTHING that would affect your server. My intent would be to connect, enable my plugin locally with my own solider account as a designated seeder (and nobody else) and watch how the plugin behaves. That shouldn't do anything to anybody except my soldier account.

[ImportBot]

Originally Posted by Flyswamper*:

 

gp..... After I get the code working to automatically disable kicking near round-endings, I may very well give your suggestion a try. First things first though....

[ImportBot]

Originally Posted by _gp_*:

 

PM sent

[ImportBot]

Originally Posted by Flyswamper*:

 

Update.... I've spent some time over the past few evenings (in between helping kids study for various exams) adding the logic to not kick near the end of a round. I've got access to a populated server that is running a conquest map and I've been able to join with my soldier, watch the plugin do it's thing, and am pretty happy with it now.

 

For Capture the Flag mode, the logic I've intended/planned is purely time based. I suppose I could publish the next release without having tested the plugin on a CTF server, but considering how many bugs I had to squash (silly little mistakes mostly) to get the logic added so far.... it sure would be good if I could get access to a server running CTF maps. Other modes would be good to test as well, but since the logic is essentially the same for all other modes the CTF is really the only one that has a much higher probability of having serious bugs in the code/logic.

 

It isn't uploaded yet, but here is how logic that I added generally works.

 

- For each team, whenever a serverinfo event occurs (about every 30 sec I think) the plugin computes what percentage of the round is already complete. e.g. If team 1 started with 1000 tickets, they currently have 300 tickets left, and game would end when they get to 0 tickets, then the round is 70% complete (or 30% remaining).

 

- Whichever team's score is closer to reaching the end is used to set the overall estimated percent of round complete.

- Percent of round remaining is just 100 - percent_complete

 

You/the-admin have an input that asks you when to stop kicking as a % of the round left. The plugin will not kick seeders if the calculated percent of the round remaining is less than the value you specify.

 

 

I added one more feature that I thought would be necessary. Because people generally leave the server en-masse right *AFTER* a round has ended and just as a new one is beginning..... I thought it best not to kick the seeders within the first minute or two of starting a new round. So, I have a simple timer that keeps track of how long this round has been going on (since levelloaded event) and you get to specify a time in minutes at the start of the round where kicking is disabled. Otherwise, the efforts to keep the seeders in at the end of the round might be wasted if they are kicked right at the start of the next round when lots of people are leaving.

 

 

I do have a question for you guys that know this stuff.... based on the comments above... and having never played a CTF round myself in BF3...... am I right in understanding that CTF rounds are ALWAYS-exactly 20 minutes long? This question goes to me wondering how I should setup the "stop kicking seeders" calculation for CTF.

 

- Should it be based on "don't kick seeders after the CTF-mode round has been going on longer than X minutes_"

- Should it be based on "don't kick seeder in the last X minutes of a CTF-mode round_" in which case I have to know how long the round is going to be.

 

Thanks in advance for all comments/feedback and certainly any temporary ProCon access to a CTF server.

[ImportBot]

Originally Posted by EBassie*:

 

Hey Fly, saw you in the server last night.

Good to see you are making progress.

 

I think the CQ routine sounds about right for me.

 

About CTF:

Yes, at the moment the rounds are always 20 minutes because of a gameserver bug.

The setting to have a longer roundtime does not function, but it may be fixed in a next server patch.

 

The setting is called vars.ctfRoundTimeModifier and works with percentages.

100% is 20 minutes.

[ImportBot]

Originally Posted by dyn*:

 

Sounds great!

 

One item to clarify that all CTF rounds have a maximum round time of 20 minutes. Rounds will end once one of the following occurs: 20 minutes elapse or one team captures the enemy flag a set amount of time. To my knowledge, there isn't any way to know how many flags have currently been captured strictly via rcon.

[ImportBot]

Originally Posted by EBassie*:

 

Sounds great!

 

One item to clarify that all CTF rounds have a maximum round time of 20 minutes. Rounds will end once one of the following occurs: 20 minutes elapse or one team captures the enemy flag a set amount of time. To my knowledge, there isn't any way to know how many flags have currently been captured strictly via rcon.

Ow yeah... good point...thanks for clearing that up. Forgot about the shorter rounds

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Originally Posted by Flyswamper*:

 

Thanks for helping me understand how it works. Let me pose the question...

 

Given that we can't tell the score of a CTF round via RCON and we know that the MAXIMUM round time is 20 minutes, does it make sense to you that the disable kicking for CTF would be specified with a plugin variable described something like the following:

For CTF mode, don't kick seeders if round has lasted longer than X minutes (default = 15)?

 

And the logic of the plugin would just be to compare the admin/user specified value against the round-timer that I've already setup. No kicking would occur if the round-time > specified_limit_time.

 

Make sense? Or is there a better way to do it?

[ImportBot]

Originally Posted by EBassie*:

 

For CTF mode, don't kick seeders if round has lasted longer than X minutes (default = 15)?

 

And the logic of the plugin would just be to compare the admin/user specified value against the round-timer that I've already setup. No kicking would occur if the round-time > specified_limit_time.

 

Make sense? Or is there a better way to do it?

Makes sense and I think that's the way to go.

Once the server is patched to allow longer rounds this is foolproof as well

[ImportBot]

Originally Posted by Flyswamper*:

 

Okie dokie... I've uploaded version 3.6.0.0.

 

I *think* it should work without any serious troubles, but if it doesn't.... just please capture plugin log files with the debug level set as high as possible (at *least* to debug level 5, but preferably all the way up to level 10).

[ImportBot]

Originally Posted by Flyswamper*:

 

FEATURE REQUEST/SUGGESTION:

Now that multibalancer respects admin moves, that is if an admin move takes place MB will not switch the player back, it might work to just have every player be a potential seeder without having to worry about a list. We could just have it monitor every player for their activity, if they haven't had any action in XXX mins they should be considered a seeder.

Thinking about how things might work if I implemented this.....

 

If a player runs to the bathroom or to get a snack and is flagged as idle/afk by this, my plugin could add him to the idle/afk balancing it does. From what you are describing multi-balancer won't "fight" with my plugin and try to move them back immediately. The question I have is what are the conditions that would need to exist before multi-balancer would go ahead and start including these player back into it's balancing logic? I mean, if the player goes AFK a few minutes to get a snack then returns my plugin would stop balancing them and you would really want multi-balancer to "take over again" for including the player in the balancing logic. Do any of you guys know how this would work? Does multi-balancer basically employ a timer for each admin player move such that it won't move a player until X minutes have elapsed since the admin last moved the player? Or does it start moving that player again at the beginning of the next round? Or something else?

 

Just trying to get a feel for how these two plugins might play together (or not).

[ImportBot]

Originally Posted by dyn*:

 

Missed your last update. Will be looking forward to keeping clients in longer and not kicking them right before round end. Great work!

 

Regarding your last question:

 

 

Thinking about how things might work if I implemented this.....

Do any of you guys know how this would work? Does multi-balancer basically employ a timer for each admin player move such that it won't move a player until X minutes have elapsed since the admin last moved the player? Or does it start moving that player again at the beginning of the next round?

Multibalancer will respect an admin move for the duration of a round. On next round it will put the user back into the pool for available balancing (assuming exceptions are not met - but that doesn't matter with your plugin ).

 

To answer your question it might be best to describe how our system is currently setup. Others may do it differently.

 

We have specific seeders that only seed. These are mainly extra computers. These guys will never play so the detection time on them could be zero. Then we have some members who seed also with the accounts that they play with. The detection time on these players needs to be a bit higher so they don't get moved while just sitting in game. Right now the 'minutes to decide someone is a seeder' works well for these 2 groups of accounts. It's set at 7 minutes. If our server is full the idle time out is 5 minutes so the only time an account will reach 7 minutes of idle time is if we are STILL SEEDING (Yes I do know that the detection methods are different between the game and your plugin - but 7 minutes seems to be a good balance from 'too short' and 'too long'). My goal here is to split the seeders up as quickly as possible so we don't have 4 seeders on one side and then 1 on the other for a long period of time.

 

Then there is a third group of players: players which we do not have on a list but are also seeding. These players are the ones that can cause some problems with balance because they will maintain in a squad and also take up a slot. If it were possible to identify these 3rd group of players by a longer idle time check (10 minutes no activity, for example) that would allow us to eventually ensure that while the sever is filling up the inactive accounts stay separated. I would also venture to say that we wouldn't need to "kick [3rd group] when server is populated" because quite often these 3rd group of players we will not have direct contact with them whereas the 'known seeders' can be contacted via email / sms when a server population runs low.

Edit: Because once the server gets full anyway these 3rd group of players (should) be auto kicked by the game server once idle time kick is turned back on.

 

 

Hopefully this wall of text makes sense. The TL;DR is that yes multibalancer will put users back into the pool of people to balance on the next round. If an admin move (balance seeders) occurs during the new round they will be white listed for that current round again. If the server is not full no one will get idle kicked anyway.

 

cheers!