I've added a multicast server solicitation feature to the Netrek server, and I'm working on finishing up the changes to Cow's parsemeta.c. The feature is intended for finding servers on a local area network, but could also be extended to include a list of favourite servers that are directly queried when a client starts. It works like this; 1. client sends a multicast datagram to 224.0.0.1 UDP port 3521, same format as used for UDP query of metaservers, 2. all servers on the local area network (and the local host), receive the query in netrekd, fork an instance of tools/players, 3. tools/players reads the queue length and player count from shared memory and transmits a reply back to the client, 4. client adds the server to the list of servers displayed. Changes to newstartd.c and players.c are in CVS on SourceForge. Work is still needed on packet format. Here's the current format used by the prototype code ... s,type,n,port,players,queue[,port,players,queue] s = the literal letter 's', as a server response, type = B for Bronco, I for INL, as in existing metaserver packets, n = number of port/players/queue triplets that follow, port = port number to join players = number of players currently in game queue = number of players on queue for this port -- James Cameron mailto:quozl at us.netrek.org http://quozl.netrek.org/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: Digital signature Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/netrek-dev/attachments/20060102/8f12b873/attachment.pgp