Personnal Gamecube server

[mrtator]

Hey, I'm not sure if this has already been asked, but I wanted to start a private server for me and my family, but all the files I've found that I downloaded were full of viruses. I was hoping to set up a dedicated server that supports gamecube so me and my family could play online under our own terms. I, 1: couldn't get non-corrupted files, and 2: am somewhat lost on how to set it up. If you know where I can find some clean files and a guide for "server host noobs", that would be awesome! Thanks!

[Aleron Ives]

Kohle's server (fuzziqersoftware.com) is the most popular program for that purpose.

[BlueCrab]

Caution. The entirety of this post is a personal rant on the subject of small private servers for PSO. The question posed in the thread has already been answered at this point, so feel free to ignore this entire post entirely.

<rant>

Not that I'd have any power to stop you from doing so, but I personally recommend that you do not do such a thing. PSO is a whole lot more fun when you're playing with people from all over, including those who you do not know. That's the point of an online RPG, after all. Plus, why keep people potentially away from populated servers where others can join in and play too?

Personally, I've never understood the idea of setting up a private server for a couple of people to play on, especially on the Gamecube version of the game (since it has split-screen multiplayer). Sure, you might be able to cheat on your own personal server, but does that make the game any more fun? All the GMs on Sylverant have the ability to make any item they want, but we almost never use that ability (and usually when we do, it's only for helping those who have lost items for one reason or another). Cheating might make the game more fun for a few days, but after that, what's the point?

As with any game that's more than 10 years old, the number of people playing it is decreasing all the time. Why potentially decrease it further by fracturing off small parts of the community?

Anyone who has asked me for help setting up a small personal server for Sylverant has pretty much gotten this same answer. It's not that I don't want people using my software -- I just don't want them making the remaining community smaller by fracturing off people to ever smaller servers. That seems counterproductive to what I'm doing, after all.

</rant>

[Sir Rappington]

Caution. The entirety of this post is a personal rant on the subject of small private servers for PSO. The question posed in the thread has already been answered at this point, so feel free to ignore this entire post entirely.

<rant>

Not that I'd have any power to stop you from doing so, but I personally recommend that you do not do such a thing. PSO is a whole lot more fun when you're playing with people from all over, including those who you do not know. That's the point of an online RPG, after all. Plus, why keep people potentially away from populated servers where others can join in and play too?

Personally, I've never understood the idea of setting up a private server for a couple of people to play on, especially on the Gamecube version of the game (since it has split-screen multiplayer). Sure, you might be able to cheat on your own personal server, but does that make the game any more fun? All the GMs on Sylverant have the ability to make any item they want, but we almost never use that ability (and usually when we do, it's only for helping those who have lost items for one reason or another). Cheating might make the game more fun for a few days, but after that, what's the point?

As with any game that's more than 10 years old, the number of people playing it is decreasing all the time. Why potentially decrease it further by fracturing off small parts of the community?

Anyone who has asked me for help setting up a small personal server for Sylverant has pretty much gotten this same answer. It's not that I don't want people using my software -- I just don't want them making the remaining community smaller by fracturing off people to ever smaller servers. That seems counterproductive to what I'm doing, after all.

</rant>

I can sort of see both sides to this, actually.

On one hand, the PSO community will always be tiny going forward, and the more players here on Sylv, the better. On the other hand, how are we so sure that mrtator would join Sylv if he doesn't manage to get his own server running?

There are definitely reasons to want access to online functions without desiring the community aspect of it or wishing to cheat. Sometimes you just need to hit Gallon's Shop, y'know? And sometimes you need to run something for a hunt but no one's on to make it feasible. I did a Spread Needle hunt recently, but my character was far too low to do, say, EN4 on his own. But no one was on to run it with me half the time. So I popped over to L33tserv for 30 seconds and grabbed the DLQ version. When I found a squad, I ran it online; when I couldn't, I ran it offline. It's just the sort of adjustment you make when the community is too small to fit the original game design. That's how I see it, anyway.

I think one thing that mrtator would benefit from is an endorsement of what kind of community this actually is. And to that end, let me just say that most of the people I've met on GC are fantastic. Very easygoing folks, almost no one tries to speedrun or criticize your gear (which is always what I hated on Schtserv)... I was legitimately surprised. I would recommend it to anyone who remembers playing on GC and decides to download Dolphin one night on a whim like I did.

But compare this server to another gaming community... take Minecraft for example. Anyone who's ever played on a public server for it (or hell, even seen youtube videos of it) knows how juvenile and exasperating that community can be. So when I made a server myself, I whitelisted only my friends, because I honestly had nothing to gain by widening my social circle in that particular game.

Again, Sylverant doesn't have that problem by any stretch of the imagination. I'm just saying that I can see where mrtator is coming from.

[tueidj]

Not everyone lives within the US, you know. Maybe we want to use a server that has a shorter round-trip-time than 500ms.

[BlueCrab]

Not everyone lives within the US, you know. Maybe we want to use a server that has a shorter round-trip-time than 500ms.

To that end, I'm always willing to hear from people who want to host ships in geographically diverse locations.

[mrtator]

Thanks all for the responses. You've all made great points.

The reason I was going to make the server was not to cheat at all, but rather so that my family, who is stretched across multiple states, can all play together, whenever we want to schedule a game time. I also would like to access some of the online features, like only Halloween drops, or only Christmas drops, etc. Plus my family has made some high level characters on the GC version and don't want to lose those characters. Which I understand.

I tried looking up how to bring those characters to the PC with various programs for copying the memory card and such, and found it very complicated with the whole serial code for the game being written to the specific card itself.

I personally like the community servers myself. Like you said it does provide that ability to play and group up with other players to help you beat missions or levels you were having trouble with. But in this situation, we just wanted something to play together, by ourselves, and hang out, where we otherwise couldn't. With the addition of being able to control the "season" drops and whatever.

All in all, I just needed a program which ran well enough and could handle a GC format. I'll give the Kohle's server a try and see if that works. thanks all!

Edit : I tried the Kohle's server, and my anti-virus program found some trojan files on there.

[BlueCrab]

I highly doubt that the server software on Fuzziqer's site has any trojans in it, it's most likely some sort of false positive (unless someone's hacked the site, which I suppose is possible, but probably unlikely). Heck, the last version of Fuzziqer's newer server is open-source, so you could even inspect the code yourself, if you so desired.

Another thing to note is that drops aren't handled by the server at all -- they're completely done on the client-side on the Gamecube version of the game. That is to say, there are no special holiday drops. There are special holiday enemies (rappies), but there certainly aren't holiday-specific special drops in general.

[Sir Rappington]

All I'm going to say is do reconsider coming on Sylverant if you can. We need more GCers, and it removes all the work from your end. And when your family isn't around to do a full scheduled run, there might be others here to do a run with.

[Minsc]

While this is not the case for mrtator there is one real good reason why a person would want to set up a private server. A parent wants a safe place to play online with their children, similar to how a parent would set up a private MC server. Obviously Sylverant wouldn't be run rampant with all the sex symbol chat like sega's servers were back in the day. Still, I'm not sure I'd want to allow a six year old onto a public "private" server.

[Aleron Ives]

A six year old shouldn't be playing PSO in the first place. It's rated "T" for Teen.

[Minsc]

A six year old shouldn't be playing PSO in the first place. It's rated "T" for Teen.

Ha ha, indeed. I do remember that the admin of a public-ish Minecraft server let his eight year old sister play there. That's a prime example of when your younger sibling pesters you to get on a server to hold firm and say no. Once you slip it sets a precedent.