Temporary Solution to Server Outage, not endorsed by publisher, created by community

[Nielk1]

The official server is back online please revert any changes to your hosts file!!!

The official server is back down again as of 2025-04-10, not sure when it will be back

The official server is back online please revert any changes to your hosts file!!!

This is not created or endorsed by Rebellion. I am not an employee of Rebellion nor Big Boat Interactive. I am a long term community member, beta tester (in the credits), and for the limited purpose of dealing with trolls a community forum moderator.

Temporary Solution to BZCC Server Outage

I have created a temporary replacement matchmaking server for BZCC. This is a community provided solution and is only temporary until Rebellion is able to resolve the issues with the official server.

How do I use this temporary community server?

To utilize the server you must edit your system's hosts file (in Windows, it's something else for Linux) to redirect requests for Rebellion's server to my own. The full path to the file is "C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts" and you must run notepad as Admin to edit this file. You must map "battlezone99mp.webdev.rebellion.co.uk" to "54.200.83.68" to redirect requests to my server. An example of the hosts file with the needed addition is below:

# Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
#      102.54.94.97     rhino.acme.com          # source server
#       38.25.63.10     x.acme.com              # x client host

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
#    127.0.0.1       localhost
#    ::1             localhost

54.200.83.68    battlezone99mp.webdev.rebellion.co.uk

How will I know when it's time to remove this?

This temporary game list includes a fake game to indicate the status of the official server. When this fake game in the list says "Rebellion's server is UP" instead of "Rebellion's server is DOWN" it's time to re-edit the hosts file and remove the line to return back to the normal server. If my server is operating as intended it will actually show games on the official server as well as my own, however joining these games listed from the official server will likely not work (so it's time to get back to the real server when this happens).

Limitations

This server's NAT-Negotiation and NAT-Punch capabilities may not be as good as those of the official server (or ironically might be better, this isn't really tested) so you may have issues hosting sessions in some complex network configurations. Additionally the network relay function is disabled due to bandwidth cost limitations, however this function is very rarely used so no one should notice any difference here. The server may be slow because it will occasionally check on the official server to see if it is back. It also uses a very simplistic SQLite database to hold the list of active sessions which is a rather limited database but good enough for our small community.

Murphy's Law

Now that this option is available I expect that Rebellion will have the official server fixed very soon. I hope that during whatever period my server is used that it fulfills everyone's needs. If anything goes wrong please contact me so I can try to correct it.

[0wca]

Thanks for the temporary solution!

[yeah]

thanks indeed.

[BlackDogs]

Well done, great work. Glad to see the community keeping it alive

[chiller_56]

nice job mate, been working on a spare computer to do something similar... but my IT help has limited time to help. would like some insight on how to get my old G66 mods up and working to be able to share those files with others = has colonial vipers and corvettes and the old bats ... Great to see the community stepping up and remaining positive

[Nielk1]

Originally posted by chiller_55:

Great to see the community stepping up and remaining positive

We're doing the best we can! I got lucky here in that a lot of the work I had done prior for when BZ2's matchmaking was down still applied here, though I had to work around several game specific quirks that had me stepping over the game's disassembly in a debugger to actually uncover a bug that was causing games from my list not to show.

[Herp McDerperson]

Originally posted by Nielk1:

Originally posted by chiller_55:

Great to see the community stepping up and remaining positive

We're doing the best we can! I got lucky here in that a lot of the work I had done prior for when BZ2's matchmaking was down still applied here, though I had to work around several game specific quirks that had me stepping over the game's disassembly in a debugger to actually uncover a bug that was causing games from my list not to show.

wasn't GBD doing the stepping?
:D

[Nielk1]

Originally posted by Herp McDerperson:

wasn't GBD doing the stepping?
:D

A bit of both, I needed to find the general location in the disassembler and then I asked him to step because it would save about 10 hours.

[Thargoid]

Thanks Nielk1.

[chiller_56]

got the old version running in my old pc, star wars was the mod I was looking for and still have the zip folder with files... now just gotta get the relic connected to internet to be able to share, gonna look in community to see if already out there... no reply to my last inquiry to rebellion about server but have been getting my gamming fix thru IP connections but really hope the servers come back up.... fingers crossed ,,,,0,o

[yeah]

Best to try Nielk1's fix with current BZ, because I suspect there will be almost no players on the old version 1.3 version. However on 1.3 you can use GameRanger as external matchmaking service. But with the community so small it is important that all stick to the same matchmaking service.

[Herp McDerperson]

Rebellion's own server appears to be functioning again.

[Nielk1]

The official server is back online, please revert any changes to your hosts file!!!

I will keep this service online for some time. I see that the dummy game I added to the list properly indicates that rebellion's list is now online so people should see the notice in game.

[Nielk1]

The official server is down again. I am not sure how long it will be down for, but this backup is still available and working!

[ocfernan]

Hi Nielk1. I modified the file as instructed and am still unable to see any games (and still get the "no games on server" error) even though there are definitely people playing games. any ideas?

[Herp McDerperson]

Originally posted by ocfernan:

Hi Nielk1. I modified the file as instructed and am still unable to see any games (and still get the "no games on server" error) even though there are definitely people playing games. any ideas?

If you did it correctly and added "54.200.83.68 battlezone99mp.webdev.rebellion.co.uk" to your hosts file, you should see, if nothing else, the fake game he has up with the name "Rebellion's server is DOWN". Double-check the file.
I just looked and there were no actual games (on Nielk1's server) at this time. (other than the aforementioned "announcement" one)