[Stryker412]

I had a chance to talk to Kevin Lockitt (www.blackbagops.com), creator of the server manager for Battlefield 1942 and now Battlefront 2.


For those that may not know you, could you give a brief back story on who you are, and how you got started making server managers?
Okay, well my name is Kevin Lockitt and I’m 36 years old. I’ve been working in the IT industry since Sept. 1989 in a variety of roles, mainly hardware and software technical support roles. I’ve always had a keen interest in games and software development throughout this time and I recently decided to jump tracks and make a career out of both by going back to university and studying for a degree in computer science. I’m currently finishing up second year (and looking forward to the LONG summer break). :-)

I got into making server managers quite by accident. When Battlefield 1942 was released, I was constantly setting up and running LAN servers for games at work and home (since I was the IT admin at the time). The tool provided for this purpose by the makers of that game was quite basic, and so I initially wrote a new tool to make my life very easy when it came to setting up BF1942 dedicated servers. I released this tool on the Internet in October 2002 at my website “Black Bag Operations” for other admins to use and it became very popular with game server admins the world over. Everything kind of snowballed from there.

How were you contacted by Pandemic to create the server manager for Battlefront II?
I was initially contacted by an associate producer at Pandemic to see if I would be interested in developing a game server management toolset for Battlefront II. The answer, of course, was “yes.” Pandemic were informed about my work by several keen fans of my BF1942 server manager, and they decided they wanted a similar tool for Battlefront II.

How has your experience with them been so far, and what liberties were you given in making the latest server manager?
My experience working with Pandemic has been excellent. I’ve primarily been working with the lead multiplayer programmer on Battlefront II (Brad Pickering a.k.a Drone) and I would say development has gone very smoothly. Initially, it looked like collaborating with Brad would be difficult due to the schedule and availability problems imposed by my university studies, but with some work I found a way around this problem that let Brad and I do the required work when it fits our personal schedules. This made things a lot easier for both of us.

How will users of your Battlefield 1942 server manager feel using your new manager? (i.e. will they already be familiar with it’s interface, options, etc)
BFSM users will feel right at home in SWBF2SM! It’s the same toolset that fans of my previous work know and love. Everything you know about BFSM applies in SWBF2SM, so you’ll be able to set it up and run with it from the get-go.

How different was this experience than working on your Battlefield manager?
My experience working on SWBF2SM was very different from BFSM in the sense that I was able to custom design and streamline the management system to simplify things for us programmers and make the tools more reliable at the same time. It was the perfect opportunity to “start again from scratch” and improve on the previous system. I’m very happy with the work we’ve been able to do on these tools.

What types of options are you allowing the server admin to have in setting up a server?
All the admin functions BFSM had are available in SWBF2SM. Briefly, the tools allow you too manage:
• server settings
• map rotation
• players
• bans
• SWBF2SM user accounts
• server schedule
• management clients
using a GUI interface (you won’t want a command-line tool after you have used these tools).

The server manager also performs a number of “automatic admin” functions:
• “auto-kick-on-minus-score”
• “auto-kick-on-high-ping”
• “auto-kick-on-banned-word” (in player names and chat messages)
• “auto-announce”

All of these functions can be performed local to the server using SWBF2SM or remotely using SWBF2RM.

Will there be support this time around for Linux server administrators?
Pandemic and LucasArts haven’t yet said one way or the other whether or not they will provide a Linux version of the dedicated server application. You’ll have to ask them about this.

After your work on Battlefront II do you have any plans to return to your Battlefield roots for a Battlefield 2 manager?
It depends on whether or not such work could replace income-earning work (university doesn’t pay for itself you know!). If we can tee up some sponsorship or other funding I will definitely look at the possibility of making a Battlefield 2 server manager.




Discussion of this interview will be in this thread.