Hey guys, time for another blog. No pictures, just a bunch of text, how boring hey...

So as I'm sure everyone is well aware, with PR:BF2 v1.2 it brings in support for PRMasterServer. But what is PRMasterServer, what does it do, why is it so important? Well let me explain...

With GameSpy shutting down, it takes with it the online services for Battlefield 2 (as well as many other games that were also announced in the shutdown). While BF2 is still playable right now (it shuts down June 30 according to EA), after the services are shut down you can no longer login to your online accounts, there's no more server list, there's no more online play. It will kill BF2, and all associated mods (unless you only play co-op offline of course).

So yeah, that's not good, not good at all. Screw that I say, PR:BF2 still has players, it needs to live right? So in order to keep it alive and kicking, we needed to develop a replacement for GameSpy. This means a new login server, a server list server, and CD Key verification (or rather, say yes to all CD Keys ). GameSpy also handles BF2 statistics, but since PR:BF2 doesn't support stats, it's not replaced. So off I go to code it up. I'd like to note here that there was some code floating around on the internets for a login server emulator. We did look into using this, but ultimately it wasn't up to scratch, and it wasn't used. Besides, the login server is only half the issue.

Before anything happened, FH2 contacted me to see what were our plans. Because I already had custom written code for all the client-side implementation of GameSpy's functionality, as seen in PRLauncher (login) and PRSPY (server list), it was not an issue for me to do the server-side functionality. So I told them that I'd get it done no worries and they could use our server if they wanted. They were cool with that (well of course they were ), so FH2 was on-board.

And yeah, when I had some spare time after work, I slapped some code together, and PRMasterServer was born. Took about 3 afternoons, maybe 20 hours all up to get it all working. Of course, after that testing had to be done, stress testing, bugs fixed, etc. But since releasing v1.2, apart from a couple of issues that were fixed reasonably quickly, it's been pretty solid. And PR:BF2 survives another day .

Now that's all well and good for PR:BF2 and FH2, but what about the rest of Battlefield 2? Well there's been a few other people taking up the slack, ReviveBF2 being the main group that have been getting all the media attention. But they are yet to release their solution. Looks like they've run into some issues with their server list, but I'm sure they can sort it all out in the next 10 days or so. Which leads me onto my next point.

Because I'm a nice guy, in order to help the other people working on solutions for BF2, BF2142, and any other game affected by the GameSpy shutdown, I've open-sourced PRMasterServer under the GPLv3 license. Hopefully it can prove useful to others working on GameSpy replacements, and hopefully we can keep on playing our favourite games long after the publishers give up...

But alas, any online service does have a use by date, and PRMasterServer is no exception. It does cost money to run these servers, and yes the rumors are true that I pay for this out of my own pocket (I don't receive PR donations - they only go to the website and subversion server payments for PR:BF2, PR:A3 and PR2). But it's all good, PR:BF2 will continue for a long time yet if I have anything to say about it, today is not the day it dies.

That'll do for this wall of text, enjoy, and happy online gaming