OpenArena Message Boards

(TL;DR: Read the bold parts.)

Some people hosting servers also have a domain and use that or a subdomain to allow people to connect to their server. I was thinking of generalizing this to .openarena.ws or .otherdomain.tld subdomains, because;
- it is easier to remember only the subdomain (the domain would always be the same);
- you might be able to guess a subdomain (when dpmaster is down, or maybe that also comes in handy other times); and
- people don't need their own domain.

I don't know if Fromhell wants to create or find an automated system to register subdomains and such (or of it's even possible at all with this domain), but an alternative to this would be another domain. I have oaserver.net in mind, a slightly shorter alternative is oacon.net. (Of course when there would be an openarena convention, I would gladly put a big link to their own space on the front page of that domain.) I think oasrv.net might be less memorable for the less tech-savvy people, and many others are already in use.

Who's going to pay for this extra domain and setup the required technology? I wouldn't mind taking that on, I would only like to ask being featured on the OpenArena news board (once it's ready) so that people actually know about it. I have experience running BIND DNS which uses files for configuration (easily modifyable by for example PHP), and I can write a PHP system to register domains and accounts and whatever else is needed.

But before I buy the domain and get started I would like to ask your opinion. We do have dpmaster with a serverlist, you can set favorites in Openarena itself, and people could buy their own domain if they're big enough (superbots, rofl, god, etc.). Would this be used at all you think? Please vote in the poll if you have an opinion. The poll goes for both when openarena.ws subdomains would be used or oaserver.net subdomains. If you feel there would be a big difference in the usage if this was hosted externally, please reply.

Also I would like to ask Fromhell if it would be possible (let's assume we all think this will be used quite a lot) to set this up on openarena.ws. I've noticed you're hesitant with outsourcing things central to Openarena like control of the forums, so I assume you'll want to do this yourself. If not, I would also gladly set this up for you (or anyone else you choose, I don't care, it's about the end result :)).

Thanks for any replies and votes!

What do you mean by "Do you those subdomains would be used?"

Also are you saying people should only use a certain name style for OA servers?

While I do think life would be easier if all OA servers had a standard domain, I know there are a lot of free host names available that unfortunately don't provide that level of customizability. Is this sort of what you were getting at or did I misunderstand?

I suppose he meant "Do you think those subdomains would be used?".

Ups! Yes that's what I meant :)

No, simply that one domain would be used. For example ROFL Instantgib could have something like 'roflinstantgib.openarena.ws' and 'GoD|Rockets' 'godrockets.openarena.ws'. (Or shorter aliases, but the exact naming of the subdomains is not the matter now). Or if this isn't possible with openarena.ws, we might use another domain like oaserver.net.

I probably misexplained, I suck at that. What I meant was simply whether it would be a good idea to set this subdomain service up and if people would ever use it. Free hosts do indeed often not offer this, but that's not what I was getting at. The the main advantage of this service would be that people wouldn't have to remember the domainname.

There is also to say that the internal server browser shows the server name only, while it does not show the server address or URL (about that, I would suggest Sago to add such information to a sort of "status line" at the bottom of the screen, or something similar).
Thus, while using the internal server browser, a single domain name would not be so useful. While the dpmaster web site does show both server name and address, but not the URL.... so when do players see a domain name? Maybe while HTTP autodownloading?

Maybe some third-party DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Servers#Server_browsers]server browsers (http://([b) actually do reverse DNS queries?

Well you often see people advertising to connect to "playerxx.dyndns.org" or "server.clan.com" or something, it's not really to solve server browsing when you are joining a random server.
It also aids connecting for clanmembers to the clanserver. Once 'hide private' is off you have to search between >100 servers for the one you want to join, remembering or looking up the IP is annoying. Instead, with this, they could connect to clanx.openarena.ws (not that the domain of the clan you're in is so hard to remember, but many don't do this because of a lack of skills. This way it would be easy and automated).

XQF does rDNS lookups if enabled in options (Preferences->Appearance->Show hostnames).

On a side note; rDNS is not so useful here. You may have multiple dns address->IP mappings (round robin etc.), but only one rDNS name per IP, obviously. Many gameserver providers do not allow you to set the rDNS name for your gameserver's IP (and in fact, even some virtual or root server hosters don't allow this either).

External downloads do not neccessarily need to be on the same machine/IP/(sub-)domain as the gameserver (which is a good thing ™).

Now on-topic;
I don't really see the advantage of this. I mean, how often do I actually need to type a frigging IP:port or domain to connect? I'm either using some server browser or doing copy&paste.

Okay, I see it won't be used enough to make it worth the effort. Thanks for all answers everyone ;)

Actually your idea is not bad but it would be more useful to have subdomains to redirect to clans websites, so that it would be possible to create a huge hub for the whole community, which would help for the cohesion.

But I guess that simply revamping the website to integrate more seamlessly some key pages of the wiki would do the same result.