Hosting a fan server
>> PROJECT – GOBLIN6 Outbreak Server <<:// INTRO
It was during the generation of the Sony PlayStation 2 and the original Microsoft XBOX when I first started gaming online. My current PC was decent, it even had an NVIDIA graphics card out of the box, but back then I was a console-gamer. 100%, no question about it.
The last console I had owned in earnest before that generation was the Sega Genesis, the model 2 Genesis to be exact.
I was on the fence about which console to get, hell, I even worked my first (shitty) job just to get a console. It was an easy choice to make once I read in Electronic Gaming Monthly that there was a new Resident Evil coming out. On Sony’s PlayStation 2. With online play.
Holy. Shit.
Resident Evil Outbreak had been available for a little over a month when I finally bought it.
There were countless hours put into that damn game, not to mention the same amount of hours (probably more) put into Outbreak File 2.
Then, just as sudden as the gaming gods blessed me with the original announcement of Outbreak coming soon to PlayStation 2 with online play, CAPCOM dropped the bomb 4 years later that they were going to pull the plug on both servers.
It actually sucked, by then I was not playing Outbreak as much. Due to the dwindling numbers of users online. Fuck, even in it’s prime Outbreak probably only had about 300 users online. And that was at night, when it was prime-time to log into Raccoon City.
As the last day of the original service came and went, I looked at my trusty fat PS2. One day someone will figure it out, Outbreak will be back online. That was the simple thought that brought a smile to my face.
Then, suddenly, that day had arrived.
Eight years later…
:// RESIDENT EVIL OUTBREAK COMES BACK FROM THE DEAD
One fateful day in January 2015 (whilst on vacation), Twitter actually proved to be of use. I saw a post with the #ResidentEvil hashtag that Outbreak was back online, playable via original hardware or emulator. Fortunately, I had both.
The process to actually soft-mod the PS2 was pretty straightforward. Fortunately by then, my soft-modding skills were pretty damn good if I do say so myself. I had already proven myself to be somewhat of an experienced tinkerer, with the crown jewel being my ability to soft-mod an original XBOX and FTP into it (holy shit).
My years of “hoarding” (as my wife calls it, I actually don’t hoard, I save shit which I know will one day be useful) payed off. Part of the process required the use of an Action Replay in order to copy a file to the PS2 memory card. Luckily, I had the best Action Replay available. What sucked was that (at least for me) I needed a specific type of USB stick in order for the PS2 to recognize it.
Over 10 USB sticks later, I finally got it to work. I was back online playing Resident Evil Outbreak 1 and 2 with my fat PS2 (HDD included baby). And if the blasphemous need ever arise: emulator as well.
OBSRV.org is a pretty good hub for the crew running the fan server. The setup was extremely simple:
Once you console is modded, or once your PCSX2 emulator is setup just create an account on their forum, and use those credentials to log into Outbreak.
Simple. Elegant. Sexy.
The posting on their forum was standard fair, conversations about the Resident Evil series in general, along with threads about in-game activity.
There was a time early on when people were asking (bitching) about updates on the actual server tech being released to the public. The answer was simple, a solid “no” (probably in caps).
Personally, this was respectable. These guys put in the work, so of course they could choose wether or not to make their tech open-source.
Then, just as that magical day in January 2015, Wesker smiled upon me once again.
The announcement on the forum was life changing.
The announcement read: Plans to go open source.
Once again, the thought that came to me was simple, yet full of many challenges: Here we go.
:// DO WORK
It took a few weeks for the guys at OBSRV.org to upload the files and instructions to get the server up and running. There was a lot of excitement on the forum, the enthusiasm was through the roof. There was a mix of total noobs (like myself) and some veterans who surely knew their way around the command line.
I started brainstorming at home, trying to set a list of priorities of what to work on first.
The first order of business was to figure out what to host the server on. I had this crack pot idea of hosting the server remotely. I looked into Amazon Web Services & Google. The price seemed reasonable, conservatively speaking I was looking at around 20 USD a month in fees.
What sucked was the implementation, there was way too much info. All I wanted was simple: I wanted to load a .ova and run it on a virtual machine. Pretty simple right? Well there was an inundation of information online. YouTube tutorials by my peeps in India that were about 5 years old.
Fuck that.
The next best option was to dust off two old PCs. One was an Aspire Revo which is a net-top that I had previously used to archive my digital collection. That bad boy had Linux Mint on it. Then there was my DELL 3D workstation. I decided to start there, since the RAM and graphics card would be overkill. I installed Manjaro i3 on it (which is damn sexy in my opinion). However, that machine started to freeze on me. To be fair, I did put that box through immense stress in the years I had it as my main machine.
Hell, this site and its content were created using that beautiful piece of silicone.
Once that option was off the table, I decided to move over to that Aspire. The many years that little box had spent abandoned in the attic were starting to show though.
This is the part of the story where I should back up for a second. Because the original release of the Outbreak Server actually contained everything needed to compile it. What I had to do on my end was create an Apache Server (which I had never done) and adjust some scripts to run a DNS server, this would trick the PlayStation 2 into thinking it was connecting to a Sony Server for authentication.
I fucking tried man, for months to get that thing to work. I would always make a little more progress, only to get stuck on a step and then deciding to just re-install Linux and start off fresh. Damn that sucked.
One of my good buddies whom I tapped to help me on the server was all in. There were about two or three times where I finally decided to tap out, since putting this thing together was way out of my wheel house. Thankfully, he would message me (almost on queue the next day) asking me how progress was going. That boost would make me dust myself off and try again.
Finally, one day on the forum some beautiful creature released a .ova with the server ready to go. It even had scripts that would launch both servers on start-up. Crazy stuff.
:// LORD WESKER GIVETH, LORD WESKER TAKETH AWAY
What probably sucked the most about crashing and burning so many times what that I even bought a Raspberry Pi 4, with the hope that I could run this thing for almost dirt cheap.
Once I learned that the Pi cannot run a .ova I was shit out of luck again.
This is when I decided to take one final swing.
I have a decent laptop with Manjaro KDE on it. I use it mostly for site related tasks. Like writing up these blog posts, some work for GOBLIN6 as well. It took me about one night to learn how to install and run a virtual machine (that terminal baby).
Then, following the instructions religiously for the final time, I ran the server.
IT WORKED.
IT FUCKING WORKED.
After having spent months trying out every single method I could think of, after reading and re-reading the same thread on the forum over and over it worked. I put the keyboard down, covered my mouth and leaned into my desk. The moment that I had dreamed of for over a decade had finally happened.
For the fourth time in my life as an adult man, I cried.
Resident Evil fans from every corner had pitched in to make the original OBSRV, released the tech, then members of the community spent hours getting it to work, then sharing it with everyone else.
I leaned back into my chair, and took a long, hard swig of a can of Monster (it was the white one, I think). I held the liquid in my mouth for almost a minute, I could feel it losing its cold flavor. I swallowed and quickly launched PCSX2 and ran the net setup for the PlayStation 2, pointing it to my outbreak server. I launched Outbreak 1 and held my breath again, it took me a moment to gather the courage to click on NETWORK (this is the option that starts up the PS2 connection to the server). As I saw the net connection loading bar go from 0% to 100% I felt my heart skip a beat.
After that screen everything turns black, then a NOW LOADING message appears on the bottom right. If everything is up and running, the next screen is the log-in screen for the server.
A lot of people on the forum had made it up to this point, but for some reason, their servers would fail here.
There she was, the log-in screen for my server popped up.
For the fifth time in my adult life, I cried (again).
digitalgeth X hobbes_182
:// GOBLIN6 ONLINE
After that life-changing moment I created a lobby, and beat the first level of Outbreak 1.
A few days later, I got my man Fllad up and running (he’s the dude that said he would be all in if I ever got the server working), we did a quick connection test and he was able to create his account and log in.
That in itself was another step that could have tanked the entire project, because I had to learn how to port-forward (which itself could be a separate blog post probably twice as long as this one).
I decided to dip into the coffers one last time, I found a cheap mini PC on Amazon.
This thing was a steal, for those specs and that price, shit I actually feel like I scammed the seller. After about three more nights (I usually get about 2 hours a night to work on projects if I’m lucky) I had re-done all the set-up to get that little box ready for prime-time.
As of December 31st 2020, the GOBLIN6 Outbreak Server has been online.