Everything is going to break!

ID:138145
 
Mar 2 2001, 6:01 am

If you are thinking about when to promote the great game that you just finished, don't do it yet!

We are about to make some changes that may throw things out of whack for a couple days. After that, we will achieve our long-last goal of being ready for an official public release.

One of the changes will be to move the "BYOND Central" server to network port which is more firewall-friendly. Many firewalls allow unrestricted communication on port 80 (the web server port), so we will be putting the server on its own reserved IP addresses listening on port 80. This alone won't solve all firewall problems, but it will help. A lot more people will be able to create keys, download games, and play. Whether they can play games hosted elsewhere is another issue.

We are also making the hub the source for the BYOND URL namespace. By that, I mean that if you make a hub entry called "MyWorld" and your BYOND key is "Happy", that will create an address byond://Happy.MyWorld. That could point to a centrally hosted game, a distributed game (to be installed on the player's computer), or even a DM code library.

That nicely expands the power of the hub as a publishing tool and makes it live up to its name as the device that links up all BYOND resources.

--Dan
Mar 2 2001, 6:25 am
On 3/2/01 9:01 am Dan wrote:
One of the changes will be to move the "BYOND Central" server to network port which is more firewall-friendly. Many firewalls allow unrestricted communication on port 80 (the web server port), so we will be putting the server on its own reserved IP addresses listening on port 80. This alone won't solve all firewall problems, but it will help. A lot more people will be able to create keys, download games, and play. Whether they can play games hosted elsewhere is another issue.

Many ISPs redirect port 80 connection requests to a web caching server. Any attempt to use a protocol other than http on port 80 by a user of such an ISP will fail. If port 80 is to be the only port, users of these ISPs will be excluded. Would it be possible to configure the server to listen on another port in addition to port 80?
Mar 2 2001, 2:27 pm
In response to Paul Mikell

Many ISPs redirect port 80 connection requests to a web caching server.

Oops. Good point. I didn't intend to break things that badly! If I can't settle on a better firewall-friendly port, I'll probably leave things as they are and only add an optional firewall mode that accesses things through that port.