The last six months and our future goals
It's time to get back to talking about Lyd Hosting and our recent news, as well as our future ambitions for the service so that you can get to know our roadmap for the future.
Our service has been in development since 2022 and is the fruit of a long history dating back to 2011. The service was born out of the desire to revive an old service called BikeHosting, which offered free web hosting.
Instead of going back to web hosting, we decided to develop a DayZ offering to meet the specific needs of the game by integrating practical features for server administrators. A good choice that helped us grow without difficulty.
We've been growing in the French community - with an excellent reputation - since we opened on 6 January 2023. The year 2024 is devoted to improving the offer, but we have started to expand further in the English-speaking market.
A few changes to our offer
The end of 2023 was a turning point in the history of our little company, with the bold decision to abandon our previous offers - starting at 32.50 euros - in favour of a single offer at 64 euros per month.
This was a deliberate decision to limit the company's growth by limiting the number of technical customers to a maximum of 24. This was increased to 36 following the recent addition of a new machine.
This choice enabled us to improve our finances. At this time, we were paying 50% of our gross turnover/month in charges. Excluding taxes and other charges payable to the French government.
This was not a sustainable situation. What's more, it has enabled us to reduce the workload in customer support so that we can concentrate on improving our offering throughout 2024.
Changes rolled out on 15 June...
During the transition to our unique offering, we did a lot of work to improve the back end and the various scripts we created to add new functionality to TCAdmin panel we use.
Efforts have focused on abandoning our various Powershell / Batch scripts in favour of using Python. This choice is justified by the fact that our infrastructure will migrate to a Linux distribution in the future.
After rewriting the code in Python, we had to devote the first phase of this year to improving the existing code. Once this work is complete or at a satisfactory level, we can start work on adding new features.
This patch was finally rolled out to all our customers on 15 June. To summarise, it includes major fixes, notably to our reboot system, which was malfunctioning on some servers.
The same thing happened with the alert system for mod updates from Steam Workshop, where the existing system sometimes failed to send alerts, leading to a sudden mod update.
But there are a few new features
We have made improvements to our backup system to an external server located in Finland. The previous system tended to produce corrupt archives, but this is no longer the case.
Regarding backups, all customers benefit from them:
- The "storage_1" folder on your card is saved each time your server is restarted ;
- Important files (addons, keys, serverprofile, mpmissions) are backed up every 12 hours and sent to Finland.
All these backups can be restored using the "Restore Server Data" tool on our panel. The process has been highly simplified and should be easy for our customers to understand.
Other new features include the ability to configure our Discord notifications to mention a ping role. And a toolbox has been added with a few tools:
- A script can be used to test the sending of private or public notifications on your Discord server in order to check the validity of your configuration ;
- A script can be used to schedule a server restart in five minutes by sending alerts to your players connected to your server.
Other practical scripts will be added to the toolbox in the future. To find out more about the work done a full changelog is available :
Changelog - v1.0.55
New Features:
- A new .bat file is available on exported (local) servers for faster startup.
- Integration of a backup system for servers with local storage and data storage on an external server.
- The "Restore Server DB" script has been renamed "Restore Server Data" and can be used to restore important server folders.
- The script used to send alerts in the event of an update from Steam Workshop has been completely rewritten.
- The BattlEye configuration file (in "ServerProfile") now has a system for automatically repairing it in the event of an error.
- Public Discord notifications can include ping role(s).
- Introduction of the "Toolbox", which will give server managers access to various tools in the future.
- Added a tool to the Toolbox to restart a server in 5 minutes with alerts.
- Added a tool to the "Toolbox" to test the sending of private/public notifications on Discord.
Modifications:
- Improve of the "Create CE Folder" script to prevent users of the feature from creating a folder that includes spaces.
- Overhaul of the "Remove Persistance Files" script (renamed "Wipe My Server") to make wiping the server even simpler.
- Mods with a "publishedid" of 0 are now repaired during installation. No more Discord notifications will be sent out.
- Fixed a bug that caused a server to be excluded and locked after restarting to update a Steam Workshop mod.
- Fixed "AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'group'" error when running the "Before Workshop Update" script.
- The recent version 2.0.190.0 of TCAdmin could prevent a server from restarting after a Workshop update.
- Fixed a bug that prevented a mod from being added in the "-mods=" command line when a mod including its name followed by a space was already present (e.g. @Trader Revival prevented @Trader from being added).
- Various corrections made to mod installation and uninstallation scripts to better manage mods that had been moved to "-servermod=".
- Some files were not preserved when the server was updated to a new version of the game (cfgignorelist.xml; cfgplayerspawnpoints.xml).
- Updating a mod that had been renamed on the Steam Workshop resulted in the creation of a new folder and prevented access to the server until a manual reinstallation.
- Regular deletion of the SteamCmd cache to force it to download the most recent files when an update occurs.
- The script for backing up the database of the card used on a server continued to back up the DB of the previous card when "ServerDZ.cfg" was modified outside the panel.
- A error caused the "BackupFiles" folder not to be created in "Lyd_Scripts", making it impossible to preserve files during a manual update.
- It is now possible to disable the production of admin logs (.ADM) via the Commandline Manager tool.
- The command line parameters mods="" and servermod="" are saved in the logs before each mod installation and uninstall operation.
- Numerous corrections have been made to the export system used to create a local development server.
- The script used to exclude players with the nickname "Survivor" has been revised to make corrections.
- XML files inside "CustomXML" were not created when a server was first launched.
- The "Create CE Folder" script caused a CE folder to be created in the wrong folder when the map was modified in ServerDZ.cfg outside the panel.
- Displayed a more explicit error when the HTTP response did not return "200" when attempting to communicate with DZSA Launcher.
- Fixed an error that caused the "Kick Survivor" feature to work even when it was disabled.
- Bidirectional synchronisation of backups stored locally and on the remote backup server.
- The script used to send update alerts for Steam Workshop mods was trying to send alerts when the server was down.
- Updating a mod could be prevented when its folder had previously been deleted by a user.
- Fixed an error preventing the "Create CE Folder" script from working properly on certain host machines.
- The following files can now be opened via the panel's "File Manager": .log; .map; .ADM; .RPT.
Our ambitions for 2025
As you can see, 2024 will be devoted to fine-tuning our offer and enhancing its uniqueness. In 2025, we want to take things to the next level by starting to make our first investments.
These investments will enable us to strengthen our autonomy by creating our own infrastructure in France. The design of this infrastructure will need to be carefully thought out so that it can be replicated internationally.
On the hardware front, we will be using the new Ryzen 9 9950X processors, due for commercial launch in July 2024. These will deliver performance gains on our shared services. (approximately +10 to 15%)
We plan to work on a better defence against attacks, along with a system for caching Query requests on front-end servers to improve ping stability and the response time displayed on launchers.
It's quite probable that the servers we use in Germany will benefit from a migration to these new processors. But we can't confirm this with absolute certainty, as it will depend on our provider.
Pricing changes to improve accessibility
The year 2025 will also be the occasion for a new overhaul of our offering, with the aim of reintroducing packages similar to what we used to offer. With prices starting from €35 - €40 for shared servers.
We also want to offer dedicated servers specially designed to meet the specific needs of community servers with an imperative need for dedicated resources, using (probably) overclocked processors.
However, this does not mean a reduction in the quality of our offers. Quality of service will remain a central element of our company philosophy and will never be compromised.
Our long-term ambitions
If we achieve all our targets by 2025, we'll be able to start extending our offering to other continents, starting with North America and then Australia. And we plan to add further locations in Eastern Europe.
We are also planning to develop our own panel in order to have greater control over the user interface, which leaves something to be desired on TCAdmin. This will also enable us to better integrate our functionalities.
Our ultimate ambition is to offer Bohemia Interactive a serious alternative to Nitrado's B2B offering by shaping a package tailored to the specific features of DayZ, Arma Reforger and soon Arma 4.
Eventually, we hope to have worked hard enough to forge a partnership with the studio to host the official servers and make our offerings available to console gamers. Offering a real gain in server performance.
We want to develop a strong bond with the community and defend its interests, and will do so whenever possible. In the event of a partnership with Bohemia, we want to defend the idea that DayZ servers on consoles can be self-hosted.
Our support for the community extends
Our involvement in the DayZ community has grown over the last few months and will continue in the future. We've formed some partnerships and decided to sponsor a few initiatives recently and we'd like to tell you about them.
- Supporting the development of Scotland Map
This is our first major act of support for the community and its creativity. This 224 km² map is based on real geographical data in Scotland (UK). It will benefit from its own building assets in addition to those native to the game.
We are providing a server for the map developers to facilitate the conception of the map. The map and its assets will be made public once development is sufficiently advanced.
- Sponsorship of the "Survivor's Diary" server
We've entered into a genuine partnership with Marks, known for his DayZ videos on Youtube, to support his initiative to create a server that's fairly close to the vanilla game, with a few modest modifications.
Announcement of server opening
We maintain the server, receive feedback from players and help players in-game when they encounter a problem. Feel free to join the Discord server to find out more about the server.
- "DayZ France Community" is a new partner
Our integration into the French DayZ community is growing, after being supported by DayZ France PC and having formed a partnership with DayZ Aide, we're adding a new string to our bow with this new partnership.
Initially, DayZ France Community will join our affiliation programme to benefit from additional income. This will enable members of its community to support them indirectly when they purchase a server.
Don't hesitate to visit this new partner Discord server if you haven't already.
Conclusions and thanks
I'd like to thank Boydy (87.8 Survivor FM) for the interest he's shown in Lyd Hosting since we first spoke in 2023. He has given us a lot of referrals from members of the English community and this helps us alot.
Although we are finding it very difficult to attract new customers from outside France, we are gradually seeing the dikes disappear as time goes by. We will continue to work hard to earn your interest.
The story of Lyd Hosting began in 2022 during my first development sessions on the product. And this story is far from over and will continue to be written in the months and years to come.
Rémi Gaffet
Founder of Lyd Hosting