New Game in Beta

If you have a new game running on your server, you can announce it in here.

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RancerDS
Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Mar 20, 2016 22:17 UTC

New Game in Beta

Post by RancerDS » Sun Mar 20, 2016 22:22 UTC

Hello all,

IN BETA
Wanted to let everyone know that I've got a home-based server up and running Blacknova. To access it, us one of the following links:

http://rancerlabs.tk/bnt/
http://98.22.162.231/bnt/


NOTE: Since I'm with an ISP that only allows DHCP, the first link will not work if my WAN IP changed *AND* if I hadn't updated my DNS records. The latter is the first IP my connection is using and will work without having to resolve the domain name (DNS).

For anyone having questions, contact me via RancerDS AT gmail.com or through the game. I plan to leave it in a "testing" mode for 4 to 10 days, then reset if all goes well. Then we can look at if a reset should be on a regular basis.

First Edit: P.S. Settings are close to defaults, updates every 2 mins. These settings are SUBJECT to CHANGE without warning while in this BETA testing phase.

RancerDS
Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Mar 20, 2016 22:17 UTC

Re: New Game in Beta

Post by RancerDS » Wed Mar 23, 2016 15:01 UTC

The automatic mailer that sends out passwords is not functioning as of yet. I will try to contact each new registrant promptly, but please allow up to 12 to 36 hours for an e-mail sent from my personal account with the login information. Apologies for this inconvenience.

RancerDS
Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Mar 20, 2016 22:17 UTC

Re: New Game in Beta

Post by RancerDS » Sat Mar 26, 2016 21:22 UTC

There have been a handful of players who have registered for this game. After I'd sent out passwords, only two of them have successfully logged into the game.

To possibly resolve this:
Make sure your browser is set to allow cookies for the domain (website) where I am running the game. Also, make sure you do not run any ad-block plugins within your browser.

For those who are having problems still, you can message me here or via e-mail after I send your password out to you.

RancerDS
Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Mar 20, 2016 22:17 UTC

Re: New Game in Beta

Post by RancerDS » Mon Mar 28, 2016 06:54 UTC

RancerDS wrote:Hello all,

IN BETA
Wanted to let everyone know that I've got a home-based server up and running Blacknova. To access it, us one of the following links:

http://rancerlabs.tk/bnt/
http://98.22.162.231/bnt/


NOTE: Since I'm with an ISP that only allows DHCP, the first link will not work if my WAN IP changed *AND* if I hadn't updated my DNS records. The latter is the first IP my connection is using and will work without having to resolve the domain name (DNS).
The DNS has been updated as the ISP had changed my IP. :(

Now use the first link or this alternate link (if DNS hasn't resolved):
http://50.96.152.208/bnt/

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TheMightyDude
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Posts: 311
Joined: Thu Apr 17, 2014 09:15 UTC

Re: New Game in Beta

Post by TheMightyDude » Mon Mar 28, 2016 12:12 UTC

I thought I would give you a heads with the emailing side of things.
Due to you using a Dynamic IP over time your emails will start to get blacklisted, this happened to us when Ron Harwood was running the server.
Also 3rd party mail servers hate mail that is sent from a dynamic ip and they get blocked, you can see this in the mail logs on your server when they fail to take your email.

Also your mail server is mass emailing even though it might be only a few emails sent out, I know it doesn't seem like a mass emailing going on but it is.
So you will have to setup a SPF Record (Sender Policy Framework) for your mail server, sadly this might be an issue if your using a Dynamic IP that keeps getting changed by your ISP, can't you buy a Static IP ?

Then we get to encrypting your emails.
Its in best practice to have you email server encrypt the emails that is sends to other mail servers using encryptions like TLS etc.

All the above was everything that we/I had to overcome when all of the BNT Services was passed over to me to run.
It took like forever to resolve all the blacklisting etc when I first started and have just got to a stage where everything is running great, leaving just my health issues to resolve now.
TheMightyDude::Blacknova Development.
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RancerDS
Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Mar 20, 2016 22:17 UTC

Re: New Game in Beta

Post by RancerDS » Mon Mar 28, 2016 16:12 UTC

Thank you for the head's up.

I couldn't get the mailer within BNT to work at all. The reference to a mail-server was one of Google's. Since you'd sent me this e-mail, that reference was removed from config.php.

One of the things I'd attempted in the last week was to set up a home-based e-mail server. Unfortunately, the sites that indicated how to set up postfix & dovecot were either incomplete or simply out-dated. What I had been doing was manually typing out and sending the new player's passwords.

From what you're saying, it looks as if I'll have to make doubly sure that I'm not accidentally mass-mailing anything out.

Yes, I can get a Static IP... but the costs and other limitations would prevent me from going that route for the foreseeable future.

Again, am very glad you told me I may end up being black-listed. The fact the ISP changed IP's on me may have been directly as a result to what you've pointed out.

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TheMightyDude
Site Admin
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Joined: Thu Apr 17, 2014 09:15 UTC

Re: New Game in Beta

Post by TheMightyDude » Mon Mar 28, 2016 17:13 UTC

RancerDS wrote:Thank you for the head's up.
No worries.
RancerDS wrote:I couldn't get the mailer within BNT to work at all.
Yeah, a load of people has issues with sending emails within BNT.
TBH I never had any issues in sending the actual emails, it was whether they got blocked or not.
RancerDS wrote:The reference to a mail-server was one of Google's.
Ah, not really tried using Googles mail server to send BNT's emails.
I know I wrote my own mailer PHP Script that signed the emails that I sent using DKIM (DomainKey Signing), which worked fine for a while then started to get blacklisted and listed as a mass email sending.
Which I then realised that all the main ISP that provide an email service all seem to use SPF, I won't get into what SPF is and how to set it up, but it requires a few records added to the domain that the mail server is a part of, this took a little while to get right.
RancerDS wrote:Since you'd sent me this e-mail, that reference was removed from config.php.
What refference was removed?, a bit confused now :P
RancerDS wrote:One of the things I'd attempted in the last week was to set up a home-based e-mail server.
You will have issues sending emails to most top mail services, they might be ok at first, but will end up just blocking your emails and just returning a 5xx error code with a message moaning about dynamic ip usage etc.
There is nothing you can do to get around this if you are to run the mail server at home.
RancerDS wrote:Unfortunately, the sites that indicated how to set up postfix & dovecot were either incomplete or simply out-dated.
Yeah, I just let my younger brother set all that up, this Dedicated Rack Server which is located in a data centre some place in Germany, and its not just for BNT stuff, loads of stuff is using it, the last time I checked a few companies was using it.

But yeah, you really need to be sending emails from the same server that is running the mail server, the IP and reverse DNS lookup need to match.
RancerDS wrote:What I had been doing was manually typing out and sending the new player's passwords.
That's doable for a few players, but what if you have say a few hundred or more.

It was bad enough when I was checking every account on all 3 of our games, that was very time consuming especially when I was checking the players actions to see if they was using multi accounts.
It got to a point where I wrote my own PHP code you already probably know of call "The Governor" which ended up being a plugin before I took the games offline.
That script worked rather well considering it was only to detect multi accounts, which ended up doing all the logging and checking all the interactions between other players etc.
RancerDS wrote:From what you're saying, it looks as if I'll have to make doubly sure that I'm not accidentally mass-mailing anything out.
You have no way not to, they class you as mass emailing when you are sending the same formatted emails to multiple email addresses on the same mail service provider.

Think of it like this...
A player signs up to your game where your server sends them the email with their password in.

Now most mail services that care about spam runs a grey list which delays emails by say 5 to 15 mins and any repeats of the same emails being sent gets blocked and risks the chance of being classed as a spammer, so basically the decent mail services will see this error code and think, hmm, a grey list, ok I will resend the email again in 5 to 15 mins and all is fine that time round.

So this player checks his Inbox and no email, now it could be in their spam folder due to its format and content, or it could be delayed due to a grey listing.
So what does that player do, well that player will go to the game and ask for it to be resent and leave that page open for when they cannot find it.

I know this to be true due to I have seen thie happening in the BNT Extreme Logs that my plugin done.

So its not something that you need to be careful about, its all down to all your users/players.
RancerDS wrote:Yes, I can get a Static IP... but the costs and other limitations would prevent me from going that route for the foreseeable future.
Ah ok.
Yeah our ISP in the UK refuses to give out a Static IP for the Home User, now if your a Business User then yeah you can have one, but it will cost you more.
I think the last time I checked our server had a few Static IP's and so does the new server that the BNT stuff was to be moved over to.
RancerDS wrote:Again, am very glad you told me I may end up being black-listed.
Oh, no doubt about that, like I said Ron Harwood was being black listed all the time for using a dynamic IP, it would take me hours and days to get them lifted and a few weeks later back again, I think that was one of the main reasons why he let me run them all on our server, less hassle on him LOL.
RancerDS wrote:The fact the ISP changed IP's on me may have been directly as a result to what you've pointed out.
No, ISP's rotate their dynamic IP's for a few reasons.
1: Security.
If a Modem/Router had its firewall disabled due to an exploit in its firmware then people on that network would/might be at risk, and rotating the dynamic ip address given to the modem/router (i.e. broadband network ip address) it makes it difficult for get back to that same device after ip change.

2: Lack of IPv4 addresses available.
We as in everyone has used up all the IPv4 range of IP addresses which is why we are all gradually moving over to IPv6, and due to not everyone leaving their Modem/Router connected all the time it frees up an IP address for somebody else to use.

There was a few other reasons why ISP's use dynamic IP that change every x time, but I just cannot remember.
TheMightyDude::Blacknova Development.
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