WIP Welcome player #1

[Didz]

So OpenJK is getting on its way now after the release of the JKA and JK2 source code. However the very useful (haha) update server at Ravensoft that tells you "Welcome player #34789632" when you connect to any JKA server got confused and told OpenJK players that their game version was out of date. So we now have a new update server for JKHub (at update.jkhub.org) which gives you the latest news* around the JK community when you connect to servers!

Notice the new MOTD at the bottom of the screen

* Right now the update server has the news manually set on it, but I'm hoping with involvement with JKHub staff we can have it entirely dynamic.
 
So how do you use this new update server?
Well, OpenJK has the server built into its code right now but the old Raven one is still used on it.
The easiest way to do it right now is to open your Hosts file (Windows: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts, Mac/Linux: /etc/hosts) using a text editor (like Notepad) with administrator privileges and adding these lines to the end of it:

# Redirect JK3 update server queries to JKHub
199.241.29.211 updatejk3.ravensoft.com

This method works with both the original Jedi Academy and OpenJK.

[minilogoguy18]

Yeah, having a dynamic thing would be really good, like change it so that it's random and pulls the latest news like how it shuffles through at the top of the jkhub.org main page. Maybe even have it how some other useful things like latest tutorials to bring more people who are just random players into the modding community.

[eezstreet]

Working on a patcher program for this, in case anyone is interested. Adds the two lines at the end of HOSTs for ya, just with two keystrokes

[Didz]

Yeah, having a dynamic thing would be really good, like change it so that it's random and pulls the latest news like how it shuffles through at the top of the jkhub.org main page. Maybe even have it how some other useful things like latest tutorials to bring more people who are just random players into the modding community.

By dynamic I mean just automatically keeping up-to-date with the site instead of me opening up the server and copying and pasting the latest news into it (as opposed to animating the text on the connection screen). But yeah these ideas are really good and I can definitely look up showing tutorials/files too and having them shuffled around. Possibly selecting either the latest news, latest tutorial, latest file, or latest poll.

[afi]

Yep this would be awesome

[Jango40]

However could you also keep that welcome# thing below or above the main message?

[eezstreet]

https://gist.github.com/eezstreet/5374545

 

Here's the source code to that tool I was writing, @@Didz. Avast was being a douche so I couldn't test it properly.

[Didz]

However could you also keep that welcome# thing below or above the main message?

No, I already tested with inserting new lines into the message and it doesn't work. The number that's there normally isn't even real anyway, it's just a counter that goes up and up, and occasionally it loops around and goes back to 0 (which it has many times in the past).