Suggestions for new version of Autokick?

[CrowKing]

Folks,

I'm getting ready to pump out the next version of Autokick. Now that spearhead is out and it has TK detection built in, I can focus on other things. Any suggestions for Autokick, the next generation?

Here's what I've been coding up so far.....

1. Manage multiple servers.
2.a. Integrate ban lists of other servers / admins
2.b. Integrate global ban list from trusted servers
2.c. Integrate players banned from in-game with Autokick's ban list
3. FTP services
4. Improved rcon functions (command help, etc.)
5. Change maps with a mouse click
6. Allow players to call admins to server via e-mail, ICQ
7. Subnet banning
8. Finer levels of TK detection
9. Support for other games (JKII, etc.)

Anything you'd like to see?

[GrungeMan]

seems like you've got it all covered, looks very good! :)

[FredG]

I though of a few features a while back but wasn't sure how to submit suggestions to you. Basically, I would like to see the system for banning and controlling names on the server expanded.

#1. I run a small clan server and we constantly have problems with people coming in and putting our clan tag on their name and posing as members.

What I was thinking was, if their was a way to ban names with a wild card you could ban any name that starts with your clan tag. Then if an "allowed names" feature (much like the allowed ip feature currently there) were added, you could specifically enter your real clan members names. So, if the playername contains the reserved clan tag, but the full name doesn't match an "allowed name" they get the boot! Seems something like this shouldn't be too much of a stretch, most of the functionality is currently theirfor ip.

#2. A way to limit the number of a clan member's on the server. Sometimes we like to run our server as a "newbie practice night", but the server seems to be quickly over run by multiple members of the same clan and it turns into a clan practice. Now I have no problem with clans playing on my server, but sometimes I would prefer that all my slots are not occupied by members from one clan (after all it's not their private clan server). If there were a way to set the number of allowed "similar" names on the server at once it would help out. Autokick could then check, say the first 6 characters of playernames (first 6 should cover most clan tags) and count how many playernames were alike. If the count exceeds the set allowed "similar" names value it would broadcast a message telling them to reduce their numbers, comeback some night when we welcome clans etc. In 2 scans (make that value setable too) if they are still over the max, they all get the boot!

k... so now that everybody thinks I'm a server nazi! Anyway, autokick is a great program and I'm sure anything you add to it will be very useful. Good work... and good luck!! If any of that isn't clear, just send me a pm!

[Druid]

I would like to see to an option for a 24hr ban.
Some people will get to worked up in the game and do something stupid. Not something so bad it would deserve a permanent ban but more of a cooling off period.

[General_Death]

You got all the bases covered man...love the current version....cant wait to apply it to Spearhead:).

[FredG]

I just remembered something else I been meaning to ask about.

Would it be possible to make autokick accept commands from some sort of web interface? I'm not asking you to make the web side of it. But if I could code some thing in php that would talk to autokick it would be very cool. This way any of my clan mates could easily and quickly do an autokick kick/ban without having to remote login to the machine running autokick. Just a thought...

[General_Death]

Is there also a way to monitor the pings after the challange ping to kick high ping players???

[CrowKing]

Fred G. - #1 is done, #2 looks doubtful. As for a web interface, I think we'll accomplish the same thing through Autokick's ability to import the server's ban file (ie your clan mate bans someone in the game through the console - Autokick will later import that ban into its own ban list).

Druid - 24 hour ban is done

General Death - Autokick will monitor ping levels and allow you to set a tolerance.

Thanks.

ck

[FredG]

Fred G. - #1 is done, #2 looks doubtful. As for a web interface, I think we'll accomplish the same thing through Autokick's ability to import the server's ban file (ie your clan mate bans someone in the game through the console - Autokick will later import that ban into its own ban list).

Druid - 24 hour ban is done

General Death - Autokick will monitor ping levels and allow you to set a tolerance.

Thanks.

ck

Awesome CK!! My #2 was really just more of a nuisance thing anyway. But thanks for the other functionality, it's gonna be very handy! Good work and thanks agn!

This may be way out there but.

What about a version for dedicated server providers. You could access it via a web based, control type panel or threw the game's, rcon?

This way you only have one Autokick running in a centralized place for all your server admins.

I do like the 24 hours ban. - what about, if someone get's 24hour banned 3 times, then it's permanent.

[ThePlagueofDeath]

in addition to tracking multiple servers, is it possible to track Allied Assault, and Spearhead? As i might have 2 servers open, one with AA, and the other with SH. Thanks Crowking, i love autokick the way it is now, and i know that you will do nothing but improve it even more, and ill like it even more.

[CobraEF]

Can you put in a skinncheat device so the server side can allow skinns that are not skinns that are easy to spot.

Is it possibel to make a Autokick that works like a Autokick server and client.
I am running som public servers. and i have a lots of people that are admins there.
It would have been nice to run a autokick server on one computer that alle the other admins hooked up to with ther Autokick clients.
then alle the bannings and main conig would be in the one server.

And that the one server could run in multipel servers.
i have like 7 servers running today.
________
full melt hash (http://trichomes.org/hashish/full-melt-hash)

[SgtD]

Can I get my Autokick to make my coffee in the morning to?? :D

Sorry, couldn't resist!

Can anyone confirm the kick command does not work in Spearhead?

[CrowKing]

The kick command does not work in spearhead???? Is it the spaces/special chars in names or is it really not working? And does clientkick work?

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get the game yet......they don't have roads where I live, apparently. Stores have to have their stuff dropped in from the air.

ck

[General_Death]

Can anyone confirm the kick command does not work in Spearhead?

Works fine for me...

I have not checked this out myself, just going by what someone sent me.

Thanks death for clearing that up, I was scared for a moment.

[thejerk]

I was thinking of a few things myself. But first, CK, thanks for having done this in the first place. With you and YoChasdkfh (sorry, that name's just to hard to remember for me), I've really been keeping an eye on my server constantly without really keeping an eye on it. ;)

Anyway, first I was hoping that you might fix a bug I've been running into where AK crashes if you're typing something into the say field or the IP field (if I just start AK or maximize it while talking on TS then I'll get my transmit key going like crazy there). Also, if there's no connection (DSL on PPoE means an occasion when I'll have to reconnect... that shouldn't be an issue anymore, but...) it will crash.

Next, I like the idea that Rude had about having a central location of it for server providers to offer to customers. Would be awesome if I could share this with my other admins in this respect. Or, have a client/server set like Cobra stated? That would kick ass, too.

And finally, have you and Yo considered working together to combine the Delator with AK? Having them both in one app would kick my mother's ass. stik0r

Anyway, you've got your work cut out for you as it is. Thanks for all your hard work. At the rate that MOH is going now, it appears that all the die-hard community has is the die-hard community (for support, I mean).

[Ruiner]

Autokick was the best thing to happen to our clan since MOHAA ;)

What about a log of activity? Currently theres the short/long version. How about only log kicks and why (without every client's information every time status is received).

And if Delator is integrated (or something such as) log the warning/kick for illegal skin -don't know if this is an issue w/spearhead though...

It looks like the newest release will really benefit server admins, thanks

[ThePlagueofDeath]

just one more thing i just thought about. I like to try to keep an accurate figure of how many people i get in my server per day. But like late at night when nobody is on the server, "error sending timed announcement" will show up in slot number one causing AK to think that a client is connected, and add to the count. Then the error goes away and cones back a few minutes later. I actually watched this one night, and it happeped over 50 times, thats 50 people that AK said were in my server that were not there. Is there any way to fix this? Or am i the only one with this problem? Thanks for making such a kick ass program crow, I love AK.

M [84thUSMC] Plague of Death

[Eagle]

Hi CrowKing (i bow before you..lol)

My request would be.. A differnet colour TEXT for auto kick so the messages stand out from the rest of the normal text.

cheers


Eagle [DSB ADMIN]

[CobraEF]

The kick commands works in Spearhead.
The same as in the Mohaa.
If you click your button to see your scoore. you even have a number first.
And that is the client number of the players in the server. So it is damn easy to kick with cmd in Consol to.

But i havent been abel to find out if tha bann is working yet.
i havent found the cmd fore it to use.

Autokick 1.2 is working in my Spearhead server.
It kicks and gets high ping people out.
________
BMW R90S (http://www.cyclechaos.com/wiki/BMW_R90S)

Per Chris Shelton, ban does not work yet, but will be added to the patch list. This however does not mean it will make the next patch or at all.

So Autokick is hear to stay, at least for now.

[thejerk]

Any chance we can get a Q&A session with Chris... something that's scheduled and properly announced so we can all attend? I think a lot of us hardcore MOH admin/fans have a ton of questions for EA and having one or two questions answered here and there just isn't cutting it for me...

Back to AutoKick (I'm terrible with staying on topic... my wife hates that, too)... Crow, do you have an estimate on when you'll be releasing the next ver.? Also, I changed my rcon and now it seems that I can't run Autokick at all (probably coincidence)... Here's the error in the logfile:
[code:1]"[11/17/2002 9:26:30 AM] - Error 10048: Address in use
Calling Function: Winsock
Last DLL: 0
Source: Winsock
AppMsg: Error initializing application"[/code:1]

What's going on?

[CrowKing]

Looks like the winsock port Autokick is trying to use is already in use. Do you already have an instance of Autokick running? Next version will be a little friendlier in this regard... :?

[Cookie]

i have a server where we have about 5 admins. And only 5 people have the rcon password....but one of the admins keeps screwing with the server and doing things to it. Now i own the server, is there a mod you can make or add to autokick, where i can monitor the commands and the things that my other admins do...so i can know the one who kicks for the hell of it, or the one who likes to screw off.....please say you can do this

[CrowKing]

In the short term, you can check your server's logs for the times when things got goofy and see who was on (or check Autokick's logs for the status results).

In the long term, I had thought about creating an admin mod that would allow quasi-admins to boot, ban and speak from the console without leaving the game. But to do that, and allow them to be remote, still requires the rcon password. If Spearhead will allow the changing of server side cvars from clients w/o rcon (ie in script), then something could be done.

ck

[OverlordK1]

Hi Crowking,

You m ay not remember me but when you first release AutoKick we banged heads on some problems I was having with it. We now use it on all 4 of our servers but I do have some stuff that would be good if you could fix or add.

They are few but really annoying.

1.) Make the program run and start as a service.
2.) Make the swear/Bad word filter/kick work.
3.) Detect -scores tking

The list you have on your initall post is great but the things I have listed are in my opinion needed as well as the new stuff you have listed. You program is great if you have it for nothing else than the auto messaging.

It is tru that you can use firedeamon to create services in NT and 2k with just about any .exe out there but some program behave oddly when run as a service. You program will not autop start as it were. I can get the serives to run the executeable to run but it's dosen't start to scan until you press the start button in Autokick.

This is a real pain as my server have a scheduled reboot set up fpr 4 am in the morning to clear down the page file and keep things generally lag and slow down free. It works great but I have to keep going onto the servers every day and starting AutoKick going as it will not startup and scan by default. If you could create a swith for command line or otherwise it would scan upon opening autokick and I would not have to keep going over our servers every day.

Nice one with the first version mate and a great idea. Lets hope you can build on that. If you want or need any heklp from me or my Antio Cheat officer just let me know and we can test for you. It would be nice if someone could write an Admin mod that does it all.

Like this.

Auto Kick + Deletor + dogmeats not force models = The Anticheat admin tool of the year.

Thanks mate.

Keep up the great work.

[thejerk]

Looks like the winsock port Autokick is trying to use is already in use. Do you already have an instance of Autokick running? Next version will be a little friendlier in this regard... :?

Actually, it was the oddest thing. I tried installing on my wife's computer and running there, but whenever we tried to run it we got a "Wrong path" type error. Then I started having the problem described above on my computer, so it appeared I was doomed to be without AK. However, I went in and started looking at the registry keys that AK made and it occured to me to just completely uninstall AK from both computers and manually search out and delete all keys reltated to AK in the registry. After doing this, reinstallation and running of AK on both computers worked like a champ.... currently AK is my babysitter for the SH server that my host is testing... woohooo!!!

[CrowKing]

Overlord -

1. You can run Autokick with "-a" in the command line and it will begin scanning automatically (check the readme.txt for more detail if you need it). If for some reason you need to use a key macro or something like that to get it going, check the menu for the key combos (can't remember them off the top of my head). I'd thought about re-writing it to run as a service, but I haven't heard of any problems from folks who use the -a switch.

2. The swear / bad word filter does work, but it only applies to names. If you're looking for something that would apply to the chat, you can download one of the chat filters from this site.

3. The TK detection will be turned on for the new version since Spearhead will now return good scores.

Thanks for the feedback. As for the 'do it all' admin mod.....well, unless I can start making a living at this, it doesn't seem to be in my future. I think Spearhead will make some of the items you named unecessary, tho. We'll have to see.

ChickenBoo -

Yeah, that's a problem with the uninstall - it doesn't clean up the registry. The version I'm working on pretty much ignores the registry and keeps everything where you can get at it easier (...which I'm hoping will be a good thing.....).

ck

[thejerk]

1. You can run Autokick with "-a" in the command line and it will begin scanning automatically (check the readme.txt for more detail if you need it). If for some reason you need to use a key macro or something like that to get it going, check the menu for the key combos (can't remember them off the top of my head). I'd thought about re-writing it to run as a service, but I haven't heard of any problems from folks who use the -a switch.

Awesome!! I never knew about this (too eager to run it the first time, maybe?), but now that I have I don't have to worry about restarting anymore!! wooohoooo!!!

Thanks for the feedback. As for the 'do it all' admin mod.....well, unless I can start making a living at this, it doesn't seem to be in my future. I think Spearhead will make some of the items you named unecessary, tho. We'll have to see.

Well, your effort on all of this, no matter how far you can take it, is more than appreciated. By myself, if not the entire community (except the idiots that get banned :twisted: ). Thanks a lot, CK... btw, you wouldn't by any chance by updated CKR, would you?

ChickenBoo -

Yeah, that's a problem with the uninstall - it doesn't clean up the registry. The version I'm working on pretty much ignores the registry and keeps everything where you can get at it easier (...which I'm hoping will be a good thing.....).

ck

Well, it's no big deal about the registry. I've never seen any complaints about it from anyone else and it wasn't too hard to figure out how to fix the problem. As far as your next version not using the registry, that's kind of a relief, to be honest. And performance should be about the same, I would think.

Thanks again, CK!!

[Slain]

Maybe this is a question that has already been addressed, but if AK had a customizable set of kick messages for differing occasions... like...

BlahBlah was kicked for using bright skins.
BlahBlah was kicked for high ping.
BlahBlah was kicked for swearing.
BlahBlah was kicked for impersonating.

This way people would know why they were kicked, or if it broadcast it thru console others would see why they were kicked... Options for kick messages or a tab on the kick button with different customizable explanations would be excellent. (Not that theres anything wrong with the present incarnation of AK.)

That and a skin detection option would be sweet...

ALL HAIL CROWKING!!

[DrkDragon]

All I need for our Server is to get a TK detection and kick, and we're fine.
Other than that, CK is great!!

On a different note,

Anyone know any subtler Map fixes? I think the tank and plane and motorcycle look out of place on Omaha, DV, and The Bridge... I wanted something less visible....

And um...

For the DMZ scanner, anyway to add certain skins to an immune list?
the DMZ scanner warns us for using our clan skins....
That's all

DD

[BlackBart]

They have once again messed this up. It there is no spaces in the name, it works fine for Kick and Dumpuser. Any spaces a it fails, with quotes or without.

Clientkick works fine.

I noticed they changed the font in this game so I am looking to see if that is the issue with the quotes. I know if you use Timesroman quotes in the localization file it errors.

[thejerk]

Anyone know any subtler Map fixes? I think the tank and plane and motorcycle look out of place on Omaha, DV, and The Bridge... I wanted something less visible....
If you edit the map fixes, you can make the objects invisible... They'll still be there, only you won't see them.

[InvictuZ]

Heres a few for you CK.
1.) More Server Viarables - Friendly Fire Status & Map Rotation

2.) We used to use this admin tool from TeamGX - called CZbandit - We had to get rid of it, because it kicked players for TK'ing when FF was off. The one nice feature it did have, was that it had a message which announce the approximity until the next map rotated. (IE: Maptime: Approx Time Remaing On Current Map) Maybe if it can be done with AK, you can make it a server variable.

3.) I dont know how it's being done, but I've notice admins using the messaging system that shows underneath the compass for their server info lines, MOTD, and so forth. A way to do this would be neat (toggable via options on where the messages show up), and possibly colorize it differentlly? - Not that important

4.) Would there be a way that you can make AK recognize its own seperate commands that were typed in the console in game?

such as rcon akban playername would add that persons IP to the ban list inside autokick remotelly?

All in all man, AK rocks, and so do you for making this awesome program! It totally rocks!

[Oracleman]

Since AK can read console text, would it be possible for us to talk to AK using "rcon say" ? For example by typing:

rcon say to:autokick ban ip 100.100.100.100

This way we could alter all properties for Ak from any machine logged in using the rconpassword.

[Crash620]

Error:
Auotokick has encountered an error and will shut down
Error sending via UDP (UDPClient_SendMessage)[10014]: Invalid arguement.

This error is generated when I am typing a message into the AK console and the time indicator indicates that the program is checking ping/bans.

Peridically all PINGS on server will max (not at map change) and all players get kicked. The time limit is approximately 50 sec. Is this an AK based problem that will be addressed or is it my server?

I am running A Spearhead server on an XP based system with 8 players.
Think your prog is great. Looking forward to next rev.
Cheers,
Crash

My humble apologies if this was addressed elsewhere, but I didnt find it.