Automatic zone.exe loader?

[circuitdragon]

After 4-5 years of just lurking, and who knows how many server setups I've done...I have this question and thought. Instead of running a batch file to always load X number of zone windows, is there a way to have anything set to auto load more zones, if none are available? I'll pause here to apologize if this has been asked, but nothing to this regard appeared on my searches. The example I will use is say you want 5 static "city" zones, and 5 dynamic. No realistic value here, but 10 people on, each in a different zone, 5 being the cities. The 11th person tries to login, and wants a different zone request. Obviously they will get the "zone unavailable" message, but is there something that will auto load another dynamic zone? If not, I will just set maybe 30 zones, and just forget all this...lol But this idea seems to "call to me" and I'd love to have it work. Hopefully, my first post ever, makes some sense?

[Theeper]

Enable more dynamic zones. That's the exact purpose of having them. They are placeholders for zone content to be loaded into memory.

AFAIK, the reason it's setup this way is too keep the emu server from needing memory that isn't available. Imagine if 250 people tried to login to seperate zones at one time and the emu was allowed to load that many instances of zone.exe, it would chew your memory up.

[circuitdragon]

I guess I can see that. Next thing on my mind will be something to organize all the zone windows. Wonder if its possible to write a little something with VB to place them all nice and neat in one window....different topic though. I'll just go with the flow on the zones. Chances are, I won't see any heavy loads of players on my server. Thanks though, I was just curious if anyone had a setup for something like this idea.

[Theeper]

If you use the launcher, you should only have 2 windows open, no matter how many zones you boot. 3 if you're using Minilogin.

[circuitdragon]

2 windows? That may work for 1 or 2 people. 1 zone to be current, 1 to be "waiting" to transfer to. Bad ratio maybe, but for a figure of 5 people I would say 7-10 zones needed. Only reason I do this is to never see the "Zone unavailable" messages. Why worry, when all thats needed is more zones loaded? I'll not say this is the correct thing to do, just how I do things. My server is public, so its not just me that can get on it.

[Sakrateri]

No no no, what he is saying is if you use the launcher that you can have as many zones as you want to be ready but would only see one window for all of them , just go into launcher in your database and type in how many you want running and hit launcher and thats how many will be available.....Se?

[Theeper]

My point is you don't have to have one window open for each zone you boot, no matter how many people are playing. If you use the launcher, it will not open a command window for each zone. It only opens one. There is no need to have a seperate window for each zone.

[circuitdragon]

Ahhh, I'll try that out. I'm still "old school" I guess, using a batch file. Thanks guys.

[ven-elexver]

can someone tell me how you do this ? i got to my DB and to launcher or launcher_zone ? also both have a lot of stuff almost looks the same at what line do you add the number of zones ? at this point i use start.bat with start zone.exe the eq launcher gives me zone not found type of massage im sure it becouse i dont know how to tell it how many to load heres my launcher file in DB

-- MySQL dump 10.11
--
-- Host: localhost Database: PEQ_CVS
-- ------------------------------------------------------
-- Server version 5.0.38-Ubuntu_0ubuntu1.1-log

/*!40101 SET @OLD_CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT=@@CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT */;
/*!40101 SET @OLD_CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS=@@CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS */;
/*!40101 SET @OLD_COLLATION_CONNECTION=@@COLLATION_CONNECTION */;
/*!40101 SET NAMES utf8 */;
/*!40103 SET @OLD_TIME_ZONE=@@TIME_ZONE */;
/*!40103 SET TIME_ZONE='+00:00' */;
/*!40014 SET @OLD_UNIQUE_CHECKS=@@UNIQUE_CHECKS, UNIQUE_CHECKS=0 */;
/*!40014 SET @OLD_FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=@@FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS, FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0 */;
/*!40101 SET @OLD_SQL_MODE=@@SQL_MODE, SQL_MODE='NO_AUTO_VALUE_ON_ZERO' */;
/*!40111 SET @OLD_SQL_NOTES=@@SQL_NOTES, SQL_NOTES=0 */;

--
-- Table structure for table `launcher`
--

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `launcher`;
CREATE TABLE `launcher` (
`name` varchar(64) NOT NULL default '',
`dynamics` tinyint(3) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
PRIMARY KEY (`name`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

--
-- Dumping data for table `launcher`
--

LOCK TABLES `launcher` WRITE;
/*!40000 ALTER TABLE `launcher` DISABLE KEYS */;
/*!40000 ALTER TABLE `launcher` ENABLE KEYS */;
UNLOCK TABLES;
/*!40103 SET TIME_ZONE=@OLD_TIME_ZONE */;

/*!40101 SET SQL_MODE=@OLD_SQL_MODE */;
/*!40014 SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=@OLD_FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS */;
/*!40014 SET UNIQUE_CHECKS=@OLD_UNIQUE_CHECKS */;
/*!40101 SET CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT=@OLD_CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT */;
/*!40101 SET CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS=@OLD_CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS */;
/*!40101 SET COLLATION_CONNECTION=@OLD_COLLATION_CONNECTION */;
/*!40111 SET SQL_NOTES=@OLD_SQL_NOTES */;

-- Dump completed on 2007-11-14 15:32:00


and the launcher _zone also in DB

MySQL dump 10.11
--
-- Host: localhost Database: PEQ_CVS
-- ------------------------------------------------------
-- Server version 5.0.38-Ubuntu_0ubuntu1.1-log

/*!40101 SET @OLD_CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT=@@CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT */;
/*!40101 SET @OLD_CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS=@@CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS */;
/*!40101 SET @OLD_COLLATION_CONNECTION=@@COLLATION_CONNECTION */;
/*!40101 SET NAMES utf8 */;
/*!40103 SET @OLD_TIME_ZONE=@@TIME_ZONE */;
/*!40103 SET TIME_ZONE='+00:00' */;
/*!40014 SET @OLD_UNIQUE_CHECKS=@@UNIQUE_CHECKS, UNIQUE_CHECKS=0 */;
/*!40014 SET @OLD_FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=@@FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS, FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0 */;
/*!40101 SET @OLD_SQL_MODE=@@SQL_MODE, SQL_MODE='NO_AUTO_VALUE_ON_ZERO' */;
/*!40111 SET @OLD_SQL_NOTES=@@SQL_NOTES, SQL_NOTES=0 */;

--
-- Table structure for table `launcher_zones`
--

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `launcher_zones`;
CREATE TABLE `launcher_zones` (
`launcher` varchar(64) NOT NULL default '',
`zone` varchar(16) NOT NULL default '',
`port` mediumint(9) NOT NULL default '0',
PRIMARY KEY (`launcher`,`zone`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

--
-- Dumping data for table `launcher_zones`
--

LOCK TABLES `launcher_zones` WRITE;
/*!40000 ALTER TABLE `launcher_zones` DISABLE KEYS */;
/*!40000 ALTER TABLE `launcher_zones` ENABLE KEYS */;
UNLOCK TABLES;
/*!40103 SET TIME_ZONE=@OLD_TIME_ZONE */;

/*!40101 SET SQL_MODE=@OLD_SQL_MODE */;
/*!40014 SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=@OLD_FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS */;
/*!40014 SET UNIQUE_CHECKS=@OLD_UNIQUE_CHECKS */;
/*!40101 SET CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT=@OLD_CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT */;
/*!40101 SET CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS=@OLD_CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS */;
/*!40101 SET COLLATION_CONNECTION=@OLD_COLLATION_CONNECTION */;
/*!40111 SET SQL_NOTES=@OLD_SQL_NOTES */;

-- Dump completed on 2007-11-14 15:32:00

im thinking this is just logs and not what your talking about

[jimbabwe]

all you have to do is edit the launcher table. Add an entry. we'll name it peq and set it's dynamics to 6.

Then boot world. Then run from batch, from shortcut or from command prompt launcher.exe peq.

Tada!

launcher_zones is for if you want to add static zones I believe.

[ven-elexver]

Sweet ! that got me going Thanks now i would like to add some city's as static
zones im just i do the same in launcher_zone and then put in same batch file but not sure if in batch i use the start.exe zoneneame. or make a list of zones and at end of them add lancher.exe zone ? but ill try both

[jimbabwe]

CREATE TABLE `launcher_zones` (
`launcher` varchar(64) NOT NULL default '',
`zone` varchar(16) NOT NULL default '',
`port` mediumint(9) NOT NULL default '0',

so all you need to is insert some info into your database.

The launcher column holds the name of your launcher from name.launcher
the zone column holds the number of your zone from zoneidnumber.zone
port column holds the port number you want that specific zone to use. I am not sure what you should put in this one. there is probably an acceptable range someone has listed somehwere.

so you'll still only end up needing to execute launcher.exe 'launchernamehere' and it'll boot all the static zones too :)

[jimbabwe]

oops, I was wrong. I didn't even read that sql statement! It uses the zone shortname, not the zone id number.

[cavedude]

INSERT INTO launcher_zones VALUES ('peq','poknowledge',0);

Is an example of how to add static zones, just replace poknowledge with the short name of which ever zone(s) you want static. The 0 tells the server to automatically determine the best port to use based on your range specified in eqemu_config.xml.

[ven-elexver]

TY once more guys got all my zones going now. maybe this will be a help to other launcher noobs also.:D