Confused by ... "We do not issue licenses for home hosted or LAN-only servers"

[Michael Z Freeman]

Hi,

I don't think I've ever got to the the bottom of this problem since I started playing PR back in ~2007 ...

Does the statement in the title quoted from Project Reality Server License .... "We do not issue licenses for home hosted or LAN-only servers" mean I cannot setup a local server unless I apply for a license and have it running as an internet facing server as well ? I'm under the impression that the license comes with binary downloads for the server. Are these only for internet servers ? Can I setup a totally non internet connected local server (all running on the same machine, client connecting to dedicated server) using the standard separate dedicated BF2 server download ? Or is this not possible ?

The latest PR Coop shows me a message in game actually recommending I start a coop game using a dedicated server because its more stable.

I'd really like to run my own COMPLETELY PRIVATE coop server (with only me in it !). If this is restricted I'd like to know what the PR's reasoning is behind this. If the above is not possible I'll have to look into setting up an internet server for PR and applying for a full license anyway. Cheers.

[Mats391]

The windows dedicated files have been included since a couple of patches now. You do not need a license to use these for hosting a server to play in LAN. Only when you want your server to be listed in the internet server list, you will need a server license.
The statement in license agreement just means that we wont issue a license to such servers as those are not real public internet server.

[Michael Z Freeman]

The windows dedicated files have been included since a couple of patches now. You do not need a license to use these for hosting a server to play in LAN. Only when you want your server to be listed in the internet server list, you will need a server license.
The statement in license agreement just means that we wont issue a license to such servers as those are not real public internet server.

Thanks for the explanation ! So at last I can set up a local only dedicated server

Is there anything "special" I have to do in the setup to run the server or is it all pretty much standard ?

[Mats391]

We include a start_prbf2_w32ded.bat that launches the server. If you want to play coop maps, you need to edit mods/pr/settings/maplist.con to only include coop maps.

[Michael Z Freeman]

Thanks. With the default serversettings.con and only coop maps in maplist.con the PR client (not the server) crashes on join. At first I thought this was the map Adak but Beirut also CTD's. Does it matter if I'm in offline or online mode ?

Also the cooperative menu item "Join internet" is greyed out. Only "Create local" is available. Also through "create local", "join internet" is also greyed out. "Join local" shows the local server but "Join IP" is greyed out. I was using "Join IP" to join a server forced to 127.0.0.1 as the server on the loopback IP would refuse to join (but does not crash PR client in this instance !) and I found that only using "Join IP" and entering the loopback address would actually join it.

Any ideas?

[AlonTavor]

Use online mode. Do you actually require it for an offline LAN? We need to make a couple of changes for dedicated to work on offline mode.

Never heard of client crashing on join, please send me a dump.

I was using "Join IP" to join a server forced to 127.0.0.1 as the server on the loopback IP would refuse to join (but does not crash PR client in this instance !) and I found that only using "Join IP" and entering the loopback address would actually join it.

I don't understand what are you trying to say. "Loopback works but loopback doesn't work"?

[Michael Z Freeman]

OK, thanks. I found out what the problem was. Even though I knew I'd switched PR into online mode via the launcher I'd forgotten I was still using an offline profile. Created a new ONLINE profile and now I can connect !

Almost there ... now vsync stopped working even though it's turned on in the launcher

Use online mode. Do you actually require it for an offline LAN? We need to make a couple of changes for dedicated to work on offline mode.

Never heard of client crashing on join, please send me a dump.

I assume you mean in Documents\ProjectReality\dmp ? There's nothing in there.

I don't understand what are you trying to say. "Loopback works but loopback doesn't work"?

What I was trying to say was that when I was last using a Coop server with Forgotten Hope I found that even though the client server browser could see a "loopback" server it would not actually be able to join it unless "127.0.0.1" was directly type into "Join IP". What I assumed was a quirk of BF2.

Now to reduce my bots down from 95. I found that above a certain level of bots you can no longer become a squad leader.