Biocross Server Management System

Looking at what I know about parsing, decoding a file is longer the larger the file is; thus, the encoded files, being smaller, should require less looping through each character and less unnecessary overhead (working with bytes VS Strings) than unencoded files.

Whether the file is encoded or not, the game/controller still has to parse them into memory
(Of course, this assumes an empty memory where each .fl file must be read from disk)

I definitely think FL doesn’t preload all the characters… It most likely reads the file when the player tries to intiate login. And it’s there that parsing an encoded file takes less time. It should actually be the same with any server operator…

But it’s late, maybe I’m not thinking exactly straight

EDIT: Oh and hey, I always wanted to ask: Why Biocross? ;D

A most awesome operator. I applaud you.

I’ve seen IFSO to load with 22.000 chars once on our server, when the playerDB got screwed by an old backup restore that made it be 22k players in size. Either way, it’s way too slow to handle that many chars. It took nearly 10 minutes to load with our Current CPU, which is an [email protected]. But given the fact that IFSO was written on VB6, such a performance was to be expected.

When Biocross starts it will check all FL files (takes mere seconds) to see if they need decoding if they do then decode them (takes mere milliseconds) - you would be surprised how quick it runs, even for 30,000 players and over.

The reason for the speed is because it places all the files it already has decoded into a list and never does them again so once the first 30,000 are done, any new player after that is just added to the list one file at a time.

As for the name I always thought Iron was rigid and unchangeable whereas Bio as in biological represents evolution and change…

so thats how it came about.

But that’s not iron, but ion! (which has a whole lot to do with change)

On the other hand - keep up the good work! I’m more than interested in what’s going to follow.

is the program flstat compatible

Yes it will be

Will all of you be willing to wait a fairly long time (Depending on player count - just over 2 minutes for 291 player files, it came back at 135 seconds) this is on a single core 3.2GHz with 2GB Ram so it may be faster for many of the high performance servers out there.

so it supports 20,000 just not that quick - however after that you will NEVER have to do it again - as from then on it just syncs with your fl files updating old ones and creating new ones (which if you do often enough is only about 20 - 30 a time)

You may run IFSO and your FLServer in the background however you may experience some kind of lag (34% CPU Usage on my single core 3.2GHz) - theres a simple CPU monitor on screen at the point of XML Generation. Once the Gamedata creation finishes you can and MUST close IFSO before Biocross can take control. Also I’m off on holiday for the weekend so I can’t answer any questions until Monday - sorry guys

Noticed a bug in the XML caching - wasn’t clearing the array after each player - CPU Usage decreased to 25% timer now reports 100 seconds per 291

I’m back after a long weekend holiday, all questions can be answered again - if of course you have any!

Seeing as this topic is now dieing anybody who has any more queries should now email me at [email protected] - all email sent to this account will also sync to my mobile device so you can be guaranteed an answer from pretty much anywhere at almost any time

@HazardFN:

Seeing as this topic is now dieing anybody who has any more queries should now email me at [email protected] - all email sent to this account will also sync to my mobile device so you can be guaranteed an answer from pretty much anywhere at almost any time

I have a question :

When can download the “Biocross Server Management System” ?

In a few months depending on a smooth integration into the Freeworlds Server which is our testing grounds. As soon as it has been running succesfully on the Freeworlds server for 2 weeks it will be released as a BETA

FLRead is now being released to the community it is a part of the BiocrossMasterLibrary (containing over 100 functions and subroutines for Biocross) and is as far as I’m concerned finished! However please let me know of any bugs etc.

Documentation: http://www.redhazard.spacialhosting.com/FLRead/FLRead%20Documentation.doc

DLL: http://www.redhazard.spacialhosting.com/FLRead/FLRead.dll

be sure to read the documentation - it helps muchly and remember due to the nature of Biocross this DLL is designed to handle FL Files which HAVE ALREADY BEEN DECODED!

use on encoded files will cause havoc! Well a small box with a red cross in it really…

FLWrite is to follow for all those wondering

http://www.freeworlds-mod.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=987

If I could all direct you to here and ask you get an account and log on etc. As freeworlds is my base of operations as it were and I read my freeworlds blog comments and dev section quite a bit more than I come here.

Feel free to PM me on Freeworlds and email me etc.

Also a big thank you to Sajuuk who has (with his hard work and effort) made the release date to the Biocross open BETA so much shorter away.

Just a simple question.
Will Biocross have a hardcoded message like in IFSO saying: “This Server is running Iioncross Server Operator by Joe Boomz” ?

Note: Sry for posting this here but i cant sign on in another forum i have enough board, blogs, forums etc. to watch and its much easier to do this here ;D

Just thought I would update you all on how this project is going to let you know the project isn’t dead and to let you know I am doing quite well

I am now in the process of copying the source code over into a NEW project ready for the creation of an autoupdate installation procedure whilst reviewing changing and debugging as I go - this process is long and hard, it’s basically like copying BFSO into a new project except I iron over the code getting out kinks and bugs…

During this ironing out and copying over process I will be adding the project to Source control whilst implementing the Biocross Error Library I created which provides feedback for every error encountered and saves it on log files…

as you can imagine this will take a while :S sorry for the delay folks but I really want this to go down well

EDIT: apologies to Stormblast

No worrys take the time u need.
I’m still looking forward to the release and will surely be one of the first persons testing it.

Greetz
Mind

Oh yeah mindhunter I forgot to tell you, the 12th banner does have a message like the ioncross one BUT there is button which says enable reserve banner for customisation - which allows you to change it, but I ask in my program that you keep it there unless you really need it

but nonetheless it IS optional

I dont want to remove it at all but more than one banner u’ve seen thousend times on hundrets of servers would be nice. ;D

Yups…

Though i wonder who Joe Booms is …