Death of MTA:Race?

[mr.dogshit]

I just read this on www.mtasa.com

All-Seeing Eye and server-browser termination - Thursday 15 May 2008 (15:38)

As you may know, all our Multi Theft Auto versions up until now have relied on UDPSoft's All-Seeing Eye system to list game servers you can play on. UDPSoft were bought out by Yahoo! back in September 2004.

Today, the acquisition by Yahoo! has resulted in the unfortunate shutdown of the entire All-Seeing Eye network. As a result, the server browser functionality in all released Multi Theft Auto versions will no longer work.

We are currently working with Game-Monitor.com, a server listing website affiliated with Multi Theft Auto to integrate a new server browsing system. This will be incorporated into the next version of Multi Theft Auto: San Andreas which we will be releasing as soon as possible.

In the meantime, we would strongly recommend you to use the following link that lists the current servers queried by Game-Monitor.com:

http://www.game-monitor.com/search.php?game=mta

Which in simple terms means that the server browser will no longer work, which is bound to equal less players.

Also, does anybody know how to get the "mta://" game-monitor protocol to work with firefox?... i keep getting an error.

EDIT: please don't change the subject of the topic. It's very confusing. /raz0

[raz0]

I just talked to eAi.

[17:31:42] <@eAi> we're all pretty busy with other things and going back to really quite old code is time consuming
[17:31:57] <@eAi> the fixing it is not too bad, but getting all the old code up and running is the issue
[17:32:01] <@eAi> I may have a go
...
[17:32:57] <@eAi> if we can write a simple class to do it for dm, I'll see if I can backport it to race in a few hours

So there is still hope! We'll see how it goes. Maybe he needs another nudge when the new system is ready. Time will tell.

Anyways, we'll probably see some slow times on the server until this is fixed.

[pro2c]

Hope they apply it on the race also......else it would mean the end

yahoo.sux

[raz0]

Unfortunately the comment he made on mtasa.com after he talked with me does not sound so promising:

The sourcecode for Race has not been lost. Our feeling is that DM should be able to provide the same gameplay as race does. If it doesn't, tell us what the problem is and we'll look at fixing it.

Going back and fixing race would be quite time consuming - a few days of our time I'd guess.

Nevertheless, all hope is not lost. Cygnus and I were discussing reverse engineering the MTA server browser protocol yesterday. I've already successfully modified and tested a modified core.dll that connects to a custom server instead of ASE's servers. Would probably have to talk to the MTA devs and get permission before distributing it though. What remains is reverse engineering the ASE protocol, but that is proving a bit difficult since with no ASE servers online, I can not even sniff the protocol. ;( I am currently trying to see if the MTA devs will give it up though.

[Partyjerk]

its really a bit odd, thats there is no source code for race left.. O.o

[raz0]

its really a bit odd, thats there is no source code for race left.. O.o

I think you need to reread that. The source code is intact. Apparently it's just a lot of work to get it to compile again. :-)

[Snipe]

Eeek, i don't want to install DM instead of keeping Race. That's time consuming ... I hope you figure something out, raz0! Our hopes rest on your shoulders... and on Cygnus'

[elbrujo]

damn it!!
fucking economic liberalism  just when you change the server's message, it's a yahoo's conspiracy
so now, the last solution is: buy GTA4 FTW!!

[raz0]

I hope you figure something out, raz0!

It's looking a bit bleak though. With no way to sniff the communication and no documentation, I can only really try to send random bytes to the client, and that's obviously no feasible solution. I also spoke with someone who had looked into the ASE protocol extensively some years ago, and he told me that the data the master server sends is encrypted/compressed somehow. The algorithm for this is proprietary, so there is not much hope left here I think. :-(

[raz0]

Let me just state a few things:

1: We've made good progress with sorting out the server browser for DM. The new server browser works much better than the old one (faster).
2: We're going to make a decision over the next two days as to whether we release DP3 very soon, or whether we go back to DP2 and just fix the server browser, as a temporary quick-fix. We'd prefer to release DP3, but releasing a more buggy version than DP2 would be counter productive and I think you'd all bitch at us about it, even if the server browser worked.
3: We'd love to fix race as well, quite honestly we think than DM should be able to replicate race exactly. We'd love to see a detailed list (on the forum), as to why it can't, and we'll do our best to fix it. We'd love to go back and fix MTA 0.5 too - it's sad to see your work become obsolete due to a pretty minor thing.
4: All that said, it does come down to time. I'm personally very busy at the moment (with exams), I probably know the server browsing code best too so that's not ideal.

So, the long and the short of it is: We're aiming to fix DM first. Once we've got a release out, hopefully DP3 rather than DP2.5 (hah!), I'll personally look at the feasibility of fixing Race. I've coded the new server browsing code so that it can pretty much slot in to replace the ASE code. I'd like to also investigate possibly moving race to the current platform, but that may be contentious. I'd also like to fix the vista issues and perhaps a few minor bugs. I'd also like to go back and fix 0.5, but the source code for that is sitting in some zip file somewhere, probably. Obviously, that can't be updated really, but I should be able to replace the server browser in it, in theory.

So, we think it's great that everyone is so keen for us to fix our old versions. Of course, we're somewhat disappointed that our old versions are considered better than our new versions, but we'll take what we can get We'll do our best to fix Race, but DM will come first. I'll probably be able to tell you within a week or so if Race can get a fix or not.

I hope this has helped explain what's going on!

[elbrujo]

thx for information raz0
wait & see!

[raz0]

Good news everyone! An updated version MTA:Race has been released which uses the new server browser! Long live MTA:Race!

Link to MTA:Race 1.1.2 client news

[MCvarial]

That's indeed great new the only thing is it doesn't work with me... 
Evry time I try to start it I get an error that d3dx9_33.dll can't be found to bad...

[Fur-Q]

Thanks for the news professor ...er raz0  , I wondered why the server was almost full this afternoon. As you say Long live MTA:race 

[raz0]

Evry time I try to start it I get an error that d3dx9_33.dll can't be found to bad...

Try downloading the latest DirectX release. I know it's still called DirectX 9.0c, but they update it like once a month anyway without changing the name. If that doesn't work, try searching for d3dx9_33.dll on google, download it and put it into your Windows folder (maybe Windows\System32 - dunno).