Glass Hosting Development

[Scout31]

Now that Blockland officially has no remaining hosting services with Blocknet closing down, I'm curious to see if there's a market for dedicated Blockland hosting to continue. I've worked on a Blockland web-based control panel before maybe 5 years ago (it was bad because I was a novice at the time) and again around when RTB closed down, as well as having worked on an in-game remote server control and a server wrapper. The service could be up within a month.

A big issue I've realized is the lack of Steam integration with dedicated servers (caused the demise of RTB). The solution to that is to buy a series of keys, but that could mean I end up spending more than the service brings in (part of the demise of BlockNet). At a small scale, I can match BlockNet's $7/mo for non-steam users and I'd offer $10/mo for steam users. If Blockland had promise of continuing on and expanding, I could offer less to Steam users, however each Steam account requires $20 investment for a new key- If I get, say, 5 Steam users out the gate, I'm out $100. If I match BlockNet's $1/mo, that won't return for 20 months, and Blockland has already gone 8 months without even simple updates, showing no signs of future growth and updates. Plus, if there's more users now than later, say those 5 Steam users drop to 3 after a few months, then that investment may never end up returning on itself and I'm out money. There's a very small profit margin from hosting the servers themselves, and not enough to cover a large number of keys. Charging an extra $3/month leads to a 6 month turn around, which is a good amount of time to determine whether the service is feasible or not for me to continue.

If there's a large demand, I could rent a dedicated server as opposed to getting VPS's. I could reasonably drive the price down to $5/month, but a dedicated server is a lot less flexible than a VPS, so there's more of a risk of losing money.

I'm not aiming to make much of a profit at all, but I'm not in a position where I'm able to lose much money. However, now that money is involved, the Glass service would certainly be a lot more rounded out and tested than previous web releases, which I've learned a lot from.


TL;DR

Small Scale:

• Non-Steam: $7/mo
• Steam: $10/mo

Large Scale:

• Non-Steam: $5/mo
• Steam: $8/mo

Features:

• Instant set-up
• Paypal
• Online Management Panel
  Console, chat, add-ons, Support_Updater integration (pre-launch updates), preferences
• In-Game Management Panel
  The same features as the online panel, integrated in to the Glass overlay but as an independent add-on
• Semi-Private VPS
  Each node is only shared with one other user and receives it's own IP address; this provides some degree of protection against DDoS attacks, as not all nodes will be impacted at once
• 10 GB SSD storage, 250 Mbps (or greater) connection

I'd also likely extend the web-panel, server wrapper, and in-game client to be available to all, not just Glass Hosting servers.

[Ad Bot]

[Drydess]

i don't host but i think this is a good plan

[Pecon]

You should do it.

[rggbnnnnn]

Do it. One thing though: how come the investment for a rental key is $20? Keys sell for $10 right now on Amazon and blockland.us.

[Space1255]

Quick (stupid) question, would BL Glass be required to host this or is this just called Glass Hosting Service because you also run BL Glass? Sorry for the dumb question

[rggbnnnnn]

Quick (stupid) question, would BL Glass be required to host this or is this just called Glass Hosting Service because you also run BL Glass? Sorry for the dumb question

I'm assuming you can choose to control your server via your browser or in-game. However, Scout31 said that it'd be an independent add-on integrated into the Glass overlay, like the preferences. Whatever floats your boat.

[Scout31]

I wasn't aware the key price dropped. It's just called Glass Hosting because I already run Glass and it would use some of the same frameworks, but the add-on would in no way be required.

[Space1255]

Thank forget. As long as addons aren't required, I say you go for it. It'll be a way to make a quick buck at least.

[rggbnnnnn]

Another thing I noticed is that way more people bought BlockNet while the budget node and the high-end node existed. One was $6 and the other was $11. Market is small, but if the nodes are small it could work out. I never understood why the budget node was removed besides money reasons. Pecon could probably explain why this is a good/bad idea better than I can.

[Meta_KnightX]

You will save my life if you do it!

[Squidbee]

do it, i need a hosting service for my new gamemode coming out.

[Pecon]

Another thing I noticed is that way more people bought BlockNet while the budget node and the high-end node existed. One was $6 and the other was $11. Market is small, but if the nodes are small it could work out. I never understood why the budget node was removed besides money reasons. Pecon could probably explain why this is a good/bad idea better than I can.

The provider I bought the budget node from was dirt cheap. Their service was also the equivalent of dirt, which is why I got rid of it.

[rggbnnnnn]

Make sure you can start the server with a gamemode too. It's really convenient. Also, make sure the crash-fixing Blockland executable comes stock with the server or you're going to have a flood of support questions.

[TheBlackParrot]

came back from the dead just to pitch this idea as an alternative

set up a docker image that's already set up for blockland hosting, post instructions somewhere on how to set that up
you would be much better off just buying a VPS and setting that up yourself. you have a choice of price and practically 0 setup time if a docker image is used, etc.

if i had enough experience with docker, i'd do it myself, but i don't

[TheBlackParrot]

update: figured docker out and just made a basic one myself


# Package versions at time of last edit:
# multilib/wine => 1.9.17-1
# extra/xorg-server-xvfb => 1.18.4-1
# core/openssh => 7.3p1-1
# core/dialog => 1:1.3_20160424-1
# extra/screen => 4.4.0-1

# credits:
#   Greek2me (bl-ded script)

# NOTE: Port mapping doesn't appear to work? (what a shame)
# PORT MAPPING:
#   the '27000:28000' means port 28000 in the container will map to 27000 on the physical machine
#   '28000:28000' is also possible, servers should always run on 28000 in the container
#   multiple servers can be run, just map to different physical ports
#      e.g. s1: '27000:28000', s2: '27001:28000'
# to build:
#   [sudo] docker build -t theblackparrot/blockland-server .
#      (it can be named anything)
# to start a UNIQUE instance:
#   [sudo] docker run -it [--name bl1] theblackparrot/blockland-server /bin/bash
# to remove an instance:
#   [sudo] docker rm -f [name/container ID]
#   this deletes the instance and any data on it, and kills all processes within it
# to start the server:
#   bl-ded
#   screen -r blockland-server0
#   (Ctrl-A-D to detach)

## TODO:
# - add SFTP connection with forced chroot jail, terminal access off
# - add some form of basic menu

FROM base/archlinux
MAINTAINER TheBlackParrot <twitter @TheBlackParrot>

# set basic pacman.conf with multilib already enabled
ADD pacman.conf /etc/pacman.conf

# create blockland user and dirs
RUN mkdir -p /blockland/server
RUN useradd -d /blockland -s /bin/bash blockland

# blockland itself
# (who's bright loving idea was it to auto-decompress tars)
# ADD bl-def.tar.gz /etc/bl-def.tar.gz
ADD bl-def.tar.gz /blockland/server
RUN chown -R blockland:blockland /blockland

# shortcut commands
ADD edit-prefs /usr/bin/edit-prefs
RUN chmod +x /usr/bin/edit-prefs
ADD bl-ded /usr/bin/bl-ded
RUN chmod +x /usr/bin/bl-ded

# install the keyring
RUN pacman -Syy && pacman --noconfirm -S archlinux-keyring

# install server requirements
RUN pacman --noconfirm -S wine xorg-server-xvfb screen

# workarounds
RUN ln -s /lib/libncursesw.so /lib/libncursesw.so.5; exit 0
RUN ln -s /lib/libncursesw.so /lib/libncursesw.so.6; exit 0
RUN echo "export WINEDLLOVERRIDES=\"mscoree,mshtml=\"" >> /etc/profile; exit 0
RUN echo "export WINEDLLOVERRIDES=\"mscoree,mshtml=\"" >> /etc/bash.bashrc; exit 0


https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/182376391/docker-blockland-server.tar.gz

could join the server fine

port mapping didn't work, but honestly i didn't expect it to anyways

EDIT: will probably improve it at a later point if enough people want to actually use this