Detecting the server

In the process of diagnosing a plugin issue, I may have accidentally discovered how to detect which server you're logged into.

It seems that each server has its own "game timer" (the value returned by Turbine.Engine.GetGameTime()) which is significantly different from every other server. If you subtract the "game time" from the "local time" (which is the same for all servers) using the expression (Turbine.Engine.GetLocalTime() - Turbine.Engine.GetGameTime()), you get a pretty stable value for each server, that only varies by ±1 second or so:

Server	local time - game time
Gladden	1178127221
Landroval	1178132198
Brandywine	1178171801
Arkenstone	1178716300
Sirannon	1180187358
Laurelin	1180230289
Evernight	1180278158
Belegaer	1180348254
Crickhollow	1283960584
Gwaihir	1286462731

The only question is whether these numbers remain valid after server resets and game updates. I'll recheck them then and report the results here. If the numbers stay the same, it will be trivial to implement a Turbine.Engine.GetServerName() function.

Note that "local time" seems to be a misnomer; the value seems to be independent of timezone. Which makes it handy for this purpose.

Arkenstone was rebooted today. Afterwards, the difference between "game time" and "local time" has changed to 1178716405, which is 105 seconds higher than the previous value (1178716300).

I decided to go ahead and recheck the values for the other servers, even though AFAIK none of them has been rebooted:

Server	local time - game time (previous)	local time - game time (current)	difference
Gladden	1178127221	1178127421	+200
Landroval	1178132198	1178132060	-138
Brandywine	1178171801	1178171624	-177
Arkenstone	1178716300	1178716405	+105
Sirannon	1180187358	1180187294	-64
Laurelin	1180230289	1180230163	-126
Evernight	1180278158	1180277867	-291
Belegaer	1180348254	1180348127	-127
Crickhollow	1283960584	1283960477	-107
Gwaihir	1286462731	1286462482	-249

Looks like the numbers can change at other times, other than server reboots.

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Originally Posted by Thurallor

I may have accidentally discovered how to detect which server you're logged into.

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Well, if you really need the server names for your plugin, you could manually create 10 different "servername.plugindata"-files for each server directory within your PluginData directory (or 12 if you want to include Bullroarer and Palantir), each returning the corresponding server name string. Once all files are created, all plugins can always access the correct file (= the file associeted with your current server) and can get the string of the current servername.

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Originally Posted by Thurallor

Note that "local time" seems to be a misnomer; the value seems to be independent of timezone. Which makes it handy for this purpose.

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I always assumed "local time" would be the Turbine API equivalent to Lua's os.time (= Operating System time on your local machine), no?

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Originally Posted by Eruadarion

Well, if you really need the server names for your plugin, you could manually create 10 different "servername.plugindata"-files for each server directory within your PluginData directory (or 12 if you want to include Bullroarer and Palantir), each returning the corresponding server name string. Once all files are created, all plugins can always access the correct file (= the file associeted with your current server) and can get the string of the current servername.

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Sure, that's fine if I'm the only person using the plugin. But I prefer that to not be the case for the plugins I write. ;)

I could instruct users to create those 10 files in those 10 locations, but then I'm making it even harder for people to use the plugin, and the number of people willing to mess with it goes down. And Plugin Compendium can't create files in the PluginData folder, AFAIK.

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I always assumed "local time" would be the Turbine API equivalent to Lua's os.time (= Operating System time on your local machine), no?

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Not sure. According to the SSG Lua API docs, Turbine.Engine.GetLocalTime() "Gets the number of seconds since 1/1/1970." I tried changing the OS time and timezone on my machine, and it didn't affect the return value.

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Originally Posted by Thurallor

Not sure. According to the SSG Lua API docs, Turbine.Engine.GetLocalTime() "Gets the number of seconds since 1/1/1970."

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That "date" is a standard for Unix based system.

To quote the WIKIpedia entry: "Unix time (also known as POSIX time or UNIX Epoch time) is a system for describing a point in time, defined as the number of seconds that have elapsed since 00:00:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), Thursday, 1 January 1970, minus the number of leap seconds that have taken place since then.

I don't know if Windows uses the same definition -- but the implication is that the Game Servers are running on Unix (or possibley Linux) based systems.

The only way I can think of to obtain the name of your world is to grab the XML from the Launcher, the way PyLotro used to do. That XML is passed to the GLS to get the IP addresses associated with the particular servers as part of the pre-login authentication process. However, that info is gone once you are in-game. Of course, there are no hooks in the Launcher to do that. . . sigh.

Starting tomorrow, there will be a reliable way to identify the server:

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

The /loc command has been modified to include the player's server ID and timestamp. Including this information with GM correspondence could help us expedite your request.

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It requires a click from the user, but it's a huge improvement over the options we had before!

It will also probably break a lot of existing plugins that rely on the "/loc" command's output format.

Our hopes dashed...

Good news. Apparently in some recent update (not mentioned in the release notes) they've added support in French and German:

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Originally Posted by /pos

Ihr seid auf dem Server "[DE-RP] Belegaer" (45) in r1 lx979 ly993 i8 ox77.86 oy33.89 oz405.06 h135.0. Spiel-Zeitstempel 419643325.702.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by /emp

Vous vous trouvez sur [FR] Sirannon, serveur 22, à r4 lx907 ly1468 ox75.66 oy91.39 oz419.97 h29.5. Horodatage du jeu 419777374.617.

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