Server notes

VastServer 0.9 - Public Alpha

VastServer is used to serve IMML and manage multi-user connectivity. It is capable of hosting multiple environments simultaneously and keeps some basic metrics on hits. This is a very early alpha and the UI is quite simple. The server itself is relatively stable and will run on any Windows XP with SP2 and above PC.

Usage:

1. Create a directory for the hosting to run out of. This directory can be located anywhere, so put it somewhere convenient. Mine is at x:\hostingroot\
2. Within that new directory, create a folder with the name of the park you want to host. Mine is called Park1. Each subfolder of the hostingroot directory is a self-contained vhost.
3. Inside Park1, create a new folder called client. The client folder is where the client-side IMML will be hosted.
4. Inside x:\hostingroot\Park1\client\ place the .park you would like to host
5. Install and run VastServer
6. When the application first starts it will ask you to specify the hosting root, which is the root directory that hosting occurs from. Point it to the directory you created in step 1
7. The default content port is 8278, its recommended this port is used and that your firewall is allowed to send TCP traffic outbound on that port.
8. If everyting is setup correctly, you should now see an "Active Host Engines" UI with one listing for the .park stored in step 4. Click on it to see the stats. Note that there will always be at least one connected client to a given hosting as the server makes a self connection for state management.

Note:

• The server needs to be restarted if you wish to add a new hosting (ie: create a new folder with a new park)
• The server will pick up changes to a park if the filesize of it changes and immediately serve out those changes to new clients
• Advanced users can look at the settings.xml which is generated in each hosting directory to customise hosting options
• To allow multi-user connectivity, the data-port as specified in the settings.xml will need to be opened on your firewall for UDP traffic
• Server-side scripting support is incomplete

AVG users with the latest update of the virus definitions have reported getting a virus message on downloading the apps. It's a FALSE positive alarm from AVG and will be fixed in the next update of the virus definitions from AVG.
The error is related to our installer, NSIS (http://nsis.sourceforge.net) and the functionality contained within to download the correct version of the .NET Framework for your system, if required.
AVG offers to heal the file and you may be able to do this without suffering any problems, otherwise ignore AVG's alert.