Unofficial Kaillera Server based on original binary

[TRAC_]

Greetings, everyone. It's been a long while since I first started this, but to those who thought it couldn't be done, the truth is here.

The front page of the SNEeSe home page exhibits release 0.913 of my Unofficial Kaillera Server; updates will also appear there, until further notice. http://www.emuunlim.com/sneese/

This server was produced from source code created by decompiling an original Kaillera server binary. It can function as a drop-in replacement for servers running version 0.86 of the official Kaillera server.

Changes over the official server:

Greatly improved internal security (a few buffer overflow vulnerabilities patched over, far more error-checking on the protocols to prevent unauthorized commands);
Flood protection against chat flooding in game lobbies, as well as game creations and joins;
MotD support that should work with older Kaillera clients;
Two automatic banning systems - one for banning users who have been flooding or attempting buffer overflow exploits from entering the server, and one for preventing users who have been kicked repeatedly from a game from rejoining it;
Support for limiting the number of users that can join a game;
Improved checking in loading the configuration file;
Generally improved performance;
Reduced difficulty in establishing an initial connection.

I'd really like to see some servers switch over, or at least give some reasons why they don't see a benefit. Problem reports and feature requests are welcome.

[Magus]

"Reduced difficulty in establishing an initial connection. "

How so?

[TRAC_]

"Reduced difficulty in establishing an initial connection. "

How so?

As in, the problem where you try to connect to a server, it says 'Connected, logging in...' and nothing else, is gone.

[Athelstone]

Excellent work TRAC_ .

This is something Kaillera fans will be very pleased to see; finally, someone has done it. I've sent the news to Zophar.net.

EDIT: If any other Kaillera fans are reading this, please try and get the news out to other emulation sites.

[3emeOeil]

I had test it, it seem to work great, but i need to see what it can do with a real hacker on.........

[TRAC_]

Sadly, a few problems have been found in the last release, the worst of which (a bug resulting from an error in the decompilation, I suspect ) shows up in any game with more than 2 players (it can show up in a game with only 2, but in the test where that was witnessed, it took over 80 minutes).

I am currently hunting it down, and a fix will be released as soon as it is available.

[Athelstone]

Don't give up, good luck.

[isamu]

So which is better...this or EmuLinker?

[TRAC_]

Ultimately, that's not a question I can answer.

When that bug is fixed, then I could likely say without hesitation that this server 'works as well or better than the standard Kaillera servers in every way, while maintaining the highest level of compatibility with existing Kaillera clients, due to being based on original server code', take it how you will.

[TRAC_]

Version 0.914 of the Unofficial Kaillera Server is now available at http://www.emuunlim.com/sneese/.

This release should not have the game slowdown bug that plagued earlier releases. In addition, a few more crash exploit vulnerabilities were fixed, a bug that could cause ping flooding of a user who was not responding to pings sent to them, and a few other minor changes.

[TRAC_]

Version 0.915 of the Unofficial Kaillera Server is now available at http://www.emuunlim.com/sneese/.

This release has a rewritten keyframe arbitrator (which is far more efficient), alerts when a user in a game has lost connection, some improvements to chat handling to prevent abuse of tabs/newlines for scrolling the chat, and a input swapping function (think of F5 key in MAME, but server side, so should work with everything and without the nice (?) press-a-single key interface.

' Added a '/swap ####' command usable by game creator in game lobby,
to allow switching of user inputs during a game. Up to 8 players may
be remapped, and duplicates are allowed.
Numbers are to be specified in order; 0 means 'do not change mapping'.
ex: "/swap 2104" will set input 1 to player 2, input 2 to player 1,
and input 4 to player 4, without affecting input 3 or any others;
"/swap 3" will change input 1 to player 3 without affecting any others;
and "/swap 002" will change input 3 to player 2.'

I'll probably add a few other things in the near future (/swapreset, /ban #, and /banreset). I didn't wait to put them in, though, since I wanted to get this release out for the improved performance and chat 'security' to be available.

For now, if you want to reset the swapping, just set them to numbers in order (for 3 players, for example, use "/swap 123" ).

Suggestions for changes / improvements are welcome.

[isamu]

keep up the good work mang

[Sumo2]

Added a '/swap ####' command usable by game creator in game lobby,
to allow switching of user inputs during a game. Up to 8 players may
be remapped, and duplicates are allowed.
Numbers are to be specified in order; 0 means 'do not change mapping'.
ex: "/swap 2104" will set input 1 to player 2, input 2 to player 1,
and input 4 to player 4, without affecting input 3 or any others;
"/swap 3" will change input 1 to player 3 without affecting any others;
and "/swap 002" will change input 3 to player 2.'

What a cool idea!!!

Thanxalot!

[TRAC_]

The 0.917 update should be up sometime tonight/today. Here are the changes to expect in this upcoming release:

Reduced wasted time in many buffer clears, improving performance.
Fixed another buffer overflow vulnerability rooted in the original server.
Added 'host inheritance', where the earliest-joining player in a game lobby when the host (the game creator, initially) leaves will become the new host.
Added two new game lobby commands (primarily to aid with host inheritance); '/start' starts the game, just as the start button in the standard client; and '/kick #' kicks a user in a game by number, similar in usage to the /ban command.
Added protection for MAME32k clients which disallows a game from being restarted until all users have dropped from it.
Added an alert for when a user joins a game with a different client version than that of the creator.

And for those who missed the list of changes in 0.916, here they are:

Fixed a bug which caused user input switching to be reset when a user joined a game (they are reset on any game start, however).
Added three new game lobby commands; '/swapreset' resets input switching; '/ban #' bans a user in a game by number, ex: '/ban 5' to ban the 5th user in the game (standard Kaillera client lists user 1 on the bottom of the list by default); and '/banreset' clears all existing bans in a game (whether automatic bans, or bans requested with the '/ban' command.

As always, suggestions for changes / improvements are welcome.

[TRAC_]

As promised, version 0.917 of the Unofficial Kaillera Server is now available, get it at http://www.emuunlim.com/sneese/.