Hello gentlemen.

First of all i want to thanks for the people who host and developed the server, thanks for letting me experience TMB Online!

Some time ago i could check the server status by visiting http://173.198.252.240/ now it isn't possible anymore, is this happening just with me or something has changed?

I even get some cheat codes from there, like activate game chat by just pressing [] and the ability to use Auto network settings...

Thanks in advance!

Yeah that link no longer works. It was changed but I forgot the reasoning behind it. All I can say is there are suppose to be some games going on in the next hour (9PM EST) though if you're interested in playing tonight.

Fury-K96 wrote on 04/07/16 at 00:47:21:

Hello gentlemen. First of all i want to thanks for the people who host and developed the server, thanks for letting me experience TMB Online! Some time ago i could check the server status by visiting http://173.198.252.240/ now it isn't possible anymore, is this happening just with me or something has changed? I even get some cheat codes from there, like activate game chat by just pressing [] and the ability to use Auto network settings... Thanks in advance!

Aced14 is the one that handles the website stuff. I'll let him explain what's going on.

Well, here's the basic story behind the TMBO revival server's website and where it currently stands.



A while back, around the time we figured out how to get accurate game room/player information to appear in the revival server's lobby, I came up with a functional proof-of-concept of a website version of the lobby.

At some point afterwards, DARKFORCE setup a web server on the revival server's WAN IP address and hosted the aforementioned pages on it. He later created various content pages, a basic website layout and some other related things. We also made enhancements to the web-based lobby.

I personally wasn't a fan of the state of the website. It felt far too preliminary. It was frames-based, used HTML4 Transitional and pretty much resembled something that came out of the late 90s. IMO it had the starting pieces of something with potential, but was by no means ready for prime time. So I pushed back against publicizing its existence until I got around to fixing it up. That's why no direct links to the website were posted in this forum (prior to this thread), YouTube, NeoGAF, nor Kotaku.

My intent was to go in and significantly revamp the site prior to formally unveiling it. I got part way through it. I revised the code of all the content pages to use semantic HTML5.1 markup, adjusted some parts of its CSS and started working towards replacing its frames setup with something more ideal. That's pretty much where things left off.

There's still a lot of website work left, but I haven't had the time for it as of yet. I haven't been very active in the revival server's development in recent times, either. But when I am, the website usually takes a back seat to enhancing the revival server itself. IMO there are currently much bigger, more pressing development priorities than fixing up the website.



As for where the website went...

A few months ago, a user in another forum posted a link to the revival server's DNS IP address. I guess they realized they could just copy/paste the revival server's DNS IP address into a web browser to access its preliminary website.

I was worried that search engine crawlers would potentially pick up on that post's link and start crawling through the site. Crawler traffic could've potentially hurt the revival server's performance and unexpectedly publicized it on Google/etc. Not to mention that search engines wouldn't be able to properly catalog its pages due to its use of frames. I also didn't want to risk further word about the site spreading until it's in a better state.

We ended up adding a robots.txt file to tell search engine crawlers not to go through the site, hid the preliminary site and replaced its main index page with the revival server's Terms of Use.



I didn't realize there were active TMBO players (apart from a couple of developers/testers) that had been regularly using the site before we hid it. Given that reality and my lack of recent development contributions to the site, maybe there could be value in unhiding it (while keeping the robots.txt file in place for the time being). Just be aware that at some point down the line, it'll likely undergo major changes.

DARKFORCE, thoughts?

I'm cool with bringing it back.

TMBO Revival Server Home Page
http://173.198.252.240/

TMBO Revival Server Lobby Status
http://173.198.252.240/lobby.php

Enjoy!

Thanks for sharing.

Awesome! Thanks guys!