Considering BZFlag Server Hosting

[AlliedArmour]

Hello all,

I am considering offering BZFlag server hosting on a commercial hosting company. I'm right now seeing if this is a viable offer by checking how many people would be interested in buying a server.

Information and Pricing per user:
30MB for textures, maps, etc.
Additional 5MB per server.

$25 USD initial setup fee.
$10 USD/mo for first server.
$5 USD/mo for additional servers.

Anybody who would be interested in purchasing a server please reply or contact me. If anyone wants further information or has a suggestion to make, please ask! .

Thanks in advance,
Allied

[Winny]

5$ a month per extra server?! Better off to just set a bandwidth cap on their account.

[CannonBallGuy]

The prices seem pretty high to me. I'd want 10 servers with a total of 50 player slots for $5/month and I would not expect a huge setup fee.

[blast]

For the textures, if you're hosting those, then each client has to modify their DownloadAccess.txt file to allow access. So you probably won't even do that.

In your description, you're kind of vague. What kind of access would users get? Would they have a web-based administration page? Do they get SSH? Can they adjust their own configuration? Is there a bandwidth limit? Player count limit? Shot limit? Is there -cacheout hosting to improve map load times? What does the setup fee go towards?

Another thing to consider is taxes. Depending on the income you make on this, you might have to pay taxes on the income. You also have to handle refunds, credits for downtime, and thoroughly tracking all transactions.

[AlliedArmour]

The way I'm currently planning it, users will get access to their storage space via FTP and a web interface for controlling the server. Naturally, hosting textures on this server is only optional - not required and people do not have to.

Bandwidth and player limits I am currently gathering more information for - one of the reasons I posted here, to find out who would be interested. This will help judge whether or not to provide more or less, I would not want to overdo, or underdo it.

As of current results, player limit could be from 10-20, this is still highly "beta" information, treat it as such.

Whether I have to pay taxes or not, is not a concern of the customer . The other things you mentioned are, like most sensitive things - still undergoing discussion.

I hope this clarifies some points, and thank you for pointing out the deficiencies blast.

[ramires_pl]

I am wondering too of commercial servers but ppls will not pay for this so long that BZFlag will be OpenSource. They will think that isnt fair.

I know that isnt fair for hosters but what can we do?

[macsforme]

Good idea, but the setup fee is a bit much, and the more "professional" server owners would almost definitely want SSH access, and probably at least 200MB of space for logs and recordings.

[AlliedArmour]

Logs and recordings is a valid point, I will consider increasing the hard drive space per server per customer. Consider that as increased, exact amount pending.

SSH access will probably be my preferred method of letting server owners handle their servers, but I can't say for sure yet. I will need more input.

Looking over it again, I can drop the setup fee to $10 USD.

[macsforme]

I'd want 10 servers...

Not to dampen anybody's enthusiasm for hosting servers, but we already have like double as many servers as players. Wouldn't most people prefer a higher quality of server (with more players) than having more servers on the list (with more maps, but few or no players)?

[CannonBallGuy]

I'd want 10 servers...

Not to dampen anybody's enthusiasm for hosting servers, but we already have like double as many servers as players. Wouldn't most people prefer a higher quality of server (with more players) than having more servers on the list (with more maps, but few or no players)?

I already host bzflag servers (and pay for the privilege). I was simply stating the minimum I would expect...