Dedicated Server Feature: a Custom Welcome Screen and Announcement Events

[sunzribe]

Hello,

Thank you for your regular updates on DST!

I recently learned to setup a dedicated server, and wished to share some ideas on how it could be improved:


1.)  A Welcome Screen, similar to what you would see when you join a game of CounterStrike or Team Fortress 2.  When you are first looking to join a server, the Server Description only suffices for scant information.  The Welcome Screen I am proposing can list such things as: server rules, map settings, mods running, tags, player reputations, player ban statuses, and admin notes, such as:  

    > Where to find our main camp: "We are located to the east, past the river, around the frog ponds."

    > Note to noobs: "Make sure to keep a fire going before night falls!" and other helpful notes.  This way if noobs keep asking you the same questions, you can just say: "See the notes in the Welcome Screen!"

    > Maintenance notes: "This server will shut down for maintenance at 9:00 PM Pacific Time."


2.)  It would be nice for an admin to be able to update these notes on the fly, or enable an automatic announcement feature every 10 or 15 minutes, through the console?

3.)  Or an option to update a .txt or .html file that allows you to quickly edit or hot update the Welcome Screen text and Announcement system.

4.) An ability to inject announcements when outside the game, from the desktop, or automatically schedule announcements every 15-30 minutes that are bound to another .txt or .html file.  To be considerate to players, to be able to announce: "Thank you for playing DST. This game session will shutdown in 15 minutes!" rather than abruptly disconnect all of them.  

    > Clients can also toggle off Announcements in options menu if they don't want to see them.


5.)  A way to access the Welcome Screen (and Chat History) through a keyboard bind.  Or perhaps when you click and hold 'TAB' to open the Players Joined screen, have another tab on top, that switches to the Welcome Screen or Server Info screen, and perhaps a third tab, which contains a history of all the chatter or chat activity.   


Thank you for reading!
 

[SethR]

Hey @sunzribe, thanks for the feedback. In fact, you can already do the announcement stuff you mentioned. Excerpted from consolecommands.lua:

-- Show server announcements:-- To send a one time announcement:   c_announce(msg)-- To repeat a periodic announcement: c_announce(msg, interval)-- To cancel a periodic announcement: c_announce()

[sunzribe]

Hi Seth,

Earlier, I tried entering the command: c_announce(Thanks for playing! Server will shut down in an hour!)

 

I logged in as a client to my dedicated server, opened up console (~), pressed Left Ctrl to active Remote Command, and entered the above, and nothing happened.

 

Did I enter it correctly?

 

Maybe it should be: c_announce(msg) (Thanks for playing!) or,

c_announce(msg) ("Thanks for playing!") ??

 

> > >

 

Also, what does the interval stand for?  Minutes?

 

Thank you.

[rezecib]

@sunzribe, You need quotes, because otherwise the function thinks you're giving it variables. The interval is in seconds, but you can do multiplication in the field to get it into easier units:

c_announce("You hear a rumbling in the distance...", 60*5)