!! Important Notice !!

Probably you've noticed the recent DDoS attacks on our HIVE server. As a result, the downtime forced the game to run in offline mode. When the game runs in offline mode, you are still able to play singleplayer or via P2P/LAN, but you can no longer join any public multiplayer servers with hive-verification enabled.

Basically the hive is there to make sure that usernames are unique. This allows Steam users to play with standalone users.

Unfortunately there isn't much we can do against the DDoS attacks, and since it's inacceptable to ignore them, we made a momentous decision: We will get rid of the hive server, at least for Steam users. From that point on, authentication will be solely handled by Steam. In return, user names are no longer unique, so you will be able to change your name at any time (identifying users will happen via SteamID). This also means you no longer need an account to play multiplayer.

In a nutshell, these changes are only beneficial for Steam users. Due to these changes the game will have a better Steam integration, e.g. support for the Steam server browser.

Of course we will still support the standalone users, and they will still be able to play with Steam users, so there will be no drawbacks for standalone users.

These changes also affect server admins: Since user names will be no longer unique, you will have to use the SteamID64 for the whitelist/blacklist or to set up admins. In addition, we have to get rid of the standalone server, so the server will only be available through Steam (but it supports anonymous login, and there is no need to install Steam in order to run the server). Of course standalone users will be able to play on these servers.
It's highly important to create a backup prior the update, since the update requires some extensive conversions to the world database. To be on the safe side, it's also recommendable to create a backup of singleplayer worlds.

Apart from that, there will be some changes to the Plugin API as well. It's important that plugin creators update their plugins if they rely on playernames to identify a player. We created a separate topic about that: https://forum.rising-world.net/thread/7781

Unfortunately we have to take down the stats page for the time being, since it will be no longer compatible with the new servers. Also the rcon tool will only have limited support, but we will release a new, better rcon tool in a few weeks.

If you have any questions, please let us know

Overview of all changes:

• Authentication is solely handled by Steam, so it doesn't matter if our servers are online or not (Steam version only)
• No need to create an account to play multiplayer (Steam version only)
• User names are no longer unique. In return, you can always change your user name
• User identification will be done via SteamID (standalone users will receive a similar ID)
• The dedicated server files will only be available through Steam (SteamCMD is sufficient and anonymous login supported). Standalone users can also play on the Steam server
• No changes for singleplayer, P2P multiplayer or LAN
• Server admins have to use SteamID for whitelist/blacklist/adminlist/banlist (or standalone ID)
• Server admins can reserve names on their server (and, in addition, block certain user names)
• Some changes to Plugin API, maybe some plugins need to be updated in order to stay compatible
• We will add support for the Steam server browser
• We no longer need a separate EULA for Steam users
• We have to take down the stats page for the time being
• The rcon tool only has limited support, but we will release a new rcon tool in a few next weeks
• Standalone users will be able to access beta branches of the Steam version

Quote from botchikii

Will we have an easy way to catch the steamid ingame ? not only for ban but for area protection or setting group ? if username is not unique anymore, we need to use steamid for those too ?

Yes, the SteamID (or the standalone ID accordingly) will be visible in the main menu (below the user name in the top right corner). Rightclicking on it allows you to copy it to clipboard Probably we will also add a command for admins to get the steamID of a player who's currently on the server.
Alternatively it's possible to get the SteamID of a certain user if you have a link to his profile.

Quote from botchikii

It would be useful to insert dev's names in config, or we will see many red51 running in our servers

Hehe, yeah, probably we will blacklist these names from the game anyway Otherwise people could abuse it

Quote from botchikii

I'm only worry about the update script at the moment but I guess we can adapt it for downloading the steam server (or have a new script for ?)

What update script do you mean exactly? Basically there will be two ways to check the version automatically: on the one hand, you can get a json string containing all branches which are available on Steam (including the build number and version). On the other hand, you can also just get the current version number. The new links for these requests aren't ready yet, I'll post them before the update goes live

Quote from botchikii

I think of gameservermanagers.com/ which is very useful for managing steams servers

It's our intention to send a contribution containing support for rw servers to gameservermanagers.com after the update. However, I don't think this will be ready in time for the update

Quote from yahwho

Just a thought, how can we prevent someone impersonating another user?

Server admins can set up a list containing reserved names. This allows you to either block certain names (e.g. if you don't want users to have names like "Admin" or "Moderator" or something like that), or alternatively you can assign a certain name to a specific UID (e.g. you could link the name "yahwho" to your SteamID, in this case you will be the only person who's able to use that name)

Quote from ArcaneDesmond

Well I'm feeling a bit better these days but coming by here to read this change still makes me wonder if Hive was even a good idea?

Well, basically the hive was originally necessary since there wasn't a Steam version at the beginning. It was required to authenticate standalone users. When moving to Steam, we didn't want to force existing people to move to Steam as well, so we kept the hive. We didn't knew that the hive will cause so many problems at one point

Quote from ArcaneDesmond

I've read up on a few servers and VPN networks with security and wanted to suggest a few for you

We already have a ha-cluster and a comprehensive DDoS protection which can handle up to 11 tbit/s (and there aren't any security issues at all), but filtering legit traffic from malicious traffic is always tricky. If we want to stick to the hive, we need a lot more servers (with proper load balancing in place, the more servers you have, the bigger the attacking botnet has to be to really cause a downtime). Unfortunately we don't have the funds for a massive server infrastructure, so fully migrating to Steam is probably the best solution (of course Steam also suffers from networking issues sometimes and DDoS attacks may also happen for Steam, but usually there shouldn't be many problems at all)

Quote from ArcaneDesmond

As I read we should back up our single player worlds I can't help but wonder why?

Since the game used the player name to authenticate a user previously, we need to change that to a unique user ID now. But since there is always a small chance that world conversions fail, it's recommendable to create a backup of existing world (just to make assurance doubly sure). But well, if something really goes wrong, in the worst case you will "only" lose your inventory.

Quote from ArcaneDesmond

My reason for asking this is because I've never figured out how to invite anyone to my singleplayer world yet. I could click that button on the bottom right till I'm blue in the face and yet still not even Joni or anyone else could I successfully invite to my world

If you want to play via Steam P2P (i.e. invite people from your friend list), you have to select a world first and then hit the green "Play with friends" button Once the world is loaded, you can invite a friend from your friend list (or alternatively they can join the game through the friend list accordingly)

Quote from ArcaneDesmond

Does this mean the dedicated servers are gone?

Dedicated servers will still be there, and they will still be available for free of course But we can't offer them on our homepage anymore, so it will be necessary to download them from Steam. But we add support for SteamCMD (a slim command-line based Steam tool) and anonymous login (so there is no Steam account required to download/run the server).
If you want to run the server on your local machine, you can also find it in your Steam lib under "Tools"

Quote from ArcaneDesmond

Do you have official servers or will all that disappear?

Unfortunately we don't have any official servers (we don't have enough time to administrate them), but basically there is no reason why a server would disappear due to this update Most server hosters were already using SteamCMD to offer (and update) their Rising World servers