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Update: Added Mission 20: The Oracle's Quest Alexander finally meets the Oracle of Amun at Siwa Oasis. The Oracle is ready to give his blessings -- but Alexander must perform a task. An adventure like no other. This is basically a tactical RPG using 0ad as the engine

Hi, Ok, we all have pretty much seen what is happening the last times to some team games : unexplained crashes. It occurs principaly in the games of "known players". So it's legitim to think they don't happen randomly but are through someone or some people who is/are targetting 0ad for a reason which is not clear yet. The community was not silencious about those attacks and many tried for some to find who is doing that and others to find how to face them. Event if many are developers, it is not always evident. I - The facts: All the clients lose almost simultaneously the connexion to the server. This process seems irreversible as there are not actually connexion issues and way to fix it. II - The responses: A - Finding the author(s) Here is a screenshot of online people a day when many attacks happened. Image by reza-math. This screenshot is interesting because attacks here happened where there was not a lot of people online. B - Make a protection against the attacks The first idea to protecting against that attacks is to close the ports used by the author(s). The issue is that this solution is not very effective when the author(s) can only change attack port. Another fact is that they need to go through 0ad to do their attacks. And about that we know the port used by 0ad lobby : 5222. Confer to the discussion below dated of November 2013. Refering to this, we easily see that all the threads are going through there. So for an attack, many connnexions can be simulated. So, we are probably facing DoS/DDoS attacks. We easily see that by running `netstat` Even if the will of the author(s) is not known yet, we suppose they only want to destroy the game or some players. However, what we must do is to face that attacks as it should be. C - What I am experimenting Knowing that, it is clear that closing all connexions using a firewall on the port 5222 won't solve the issue. But in another hand, the attacks are coming from tiers through pyrogenesis. And this is our luck ! In fact, Operating Systems allow using firewalls on applications to only allow secure (or encrypted) connexions (even not tiers?) trusted by those applications(or only coming from them?). After doing that stuff, I performed many tests on the game and the result was pretty surprising. On 7 games (by a day with many attacks), 6 ended well and the 7th was according to me due to a connexion issue from me. What I have noticed and what is making me confidant on this is that we have often felt the attack coming (the connexions were dropping slowly). And my hypothesis is that the author(s) of the attacks was/were trying to perform his/their attack when my firewalls were at the same time stopping their entering connexions. That is pretty much all. I'm waiting for your remarks and suggestions. I will publish soon a detailed guide on how to perform the solution proposed here on Windows and Debian cores (if it's agreed by the community). Kind regards,

Is there a way thru the console or UI to see how many hours I've played 0AD? Also when is an estimated time of arrival for alpha 24? I'm super excited! Thank you to the 0ad team for the game, I've spent entire days in it and I've still much to learn.

@mysticjim even called @Dakara as @Dizaka liberally and interchangeably in one of his videos! @BoredRusher generally, if everyone disconnects, the host is on the receiving end of the DDoS. There are different levels of attacks that the attacker does. Small attacks to make you lag so that host boots/kicks you. Maybe you're annoying enough to them. Larger attacks to make your connection seem unstable. You can drop from game. You could be pushing the right buttons. Even large attacks if you anger particular players. You likely will drop from game and/or unable to access internet for 2-5 mins. At this point DDoSr is emotionally invested. Largest attack has been about a 25-35 min disconnection from the internet on commercial-grade equipment using a 200mbit connection. Probably because the DDoS'er has no emotional self control. Attacks on host to disconnect everyone. Maybe because they wanted to get in on a game but don't want to wait for one to end? Random night attacks. My guess whoever does this has a script running through IPs at night to agitate other players with blind shots. This could be just to deflect attention from them and onto players for "having bad internet connections." Interestingly, there's a limited number of players in lobby mocking others for "crappy internet." The only way to stop attacks, from my perspective, is through 'bot hosts' hosted on Amazon, Azure, or some other cloud service with DDoS protection who rejoin the 'lobby' upon disconnections so players can rejoin. This protects players from joining hosts of compromised players who do those attacks (therefore, they can't get new IPs). Additionally, this prevents someone from lobby getting the host IP addresses (player IP addresses) and, instead, getting a cloud IP address that has the counter measures necessary to alleviate the DDoS. In general, 0ad has GOOD network code and a majority of players have GOOD connections. The issue is some dumbass from the community ruining it for others pretending he has a NASA host. In the end your realize it's a child with a lot of growing who is afraid to reveal who they are. Finally, whoever does this has interesting control over the attack. I've noticed two ways attacks are done: Large packets being sent to you. Tons of small packets being sent. I haven't setup Wireshark but there are players who have (who, actually, professionally do telecom) agree that it is a DDoS. @BoredRusherAlso, not saying it's berhudar (could be someone else if Wolo has static/same ip) but worth cross-checking IP his addresses with those of other players and also checking if he plays behind a proxy. An admin maybe could do that.

You meant @Dizakaperhaps? Or maybe dakeyras, dakora, darkcity..

@user1

Another Update: Mission 19: On the Road to Siwa (332 BC) After conquering the fortress of Gaza, Alexander was greeted in Egypt as a liberator and a living God. He set out to meet the Oracle at Siwa, and on the way, he and his bodyguards seek shelter at a small village. Little do they know that the village's warrior princess has been kidnapped and needs to be rescued while remaining Persian holdouts and anti-Greek Egyptian rebels plot an attack.

Update: Added Mission 18: The Siege of Gaza (332 BC) If you played any of these, please let me know, even if you think they totally suck! Always looking for feedback.

Testing a new pc performance on blender changed a bit the 4th row walking animation. @Nescio Current animation could be used when the syntagma is currently advancing to attack nearby enemies maybe. Tought the 4 animations are now Straight and keeped both animations on Blend Files.