Admin Module

Battlefield 2 provides for a Python "administrative" module; this module can do pretty much anything, but the Python code that ships with BF2 serves two basic roles:

• It implements the BF2 RCon ("Remote Console") interface
• It implements several in-game automatic administration functions; the standard module automatically balances the number of players on each team, and handles punishment of players for killing teammates ("TK"ing).

The sv.adminScript server configuration directive tells the BF2 game engine which administrative module should be loaded as the engine is starting up; this directive gives the name of the Python module to load in the Battlefield 2 Server/admin directory; the default administrative module that ships with BF2 is called, appropriately, default:

 sv.adminScript "default" 

You can create your own administrative modules; just put them in the Battlefield 2 Server/admin directory and change the setting for sv.adminScript in the ServerSettings.con file.

Module Methods

Any administrative module, including default, has three methods which are called by the game engine itsef:

• init()
  The game engine calls this method while it is starting up; in the default module, this method reads the admin configuration file (default.cfg), initializes the admin system, registers to receive RemoteCommand events, etc.
• shutdown()
  The game engine calls this method when the server is shutting down (shutting down completely--not just after each game round). In the default module this method just closes the TCP socket used for receiving RCon commands from the network.
• update()
  The game engine calls this method roughly every 30ms; in the default module, this method checks for any new input arriving over the network TCP RCon socket.

RCon

BF2 includes an "RCon" (Remote Console) function that allows many administrative functions that can be done from the regular console (the black-and-white curses interface on the machine running the BF2 server) to be done from a "remote console"--either from within a BF2 game client (accessed by a player pressing the "~" key), or via a TCP network interface.

The RCon interface is implemented completely in Python, with the code in the Battlefield 2 Server/admin directory. The game engine provides five facilities that this Python code uses:

• As part of it's start-up procedure, the server imports the Python module in the admin directory specified by the sv.adminScript directive. This is normally the default module, but the fact that it's imported based on a configuration directive means that it could easily be changed to a custom module.
• The game engine provides an event, RemoteCommand, that fires whenever an in-game player accesses their console and types any line beginning with "rcon". The event passes any registered callback handlers the actual command typed by the player. This is how the default module receives RCon commands from players (but it can be used by other Python code, as well).
• The game engine provides a method, host.rcon_feedback, that can be used to send messages to a player's in-game console. This is what the default module uses to send responses to players' RCon commands back to them (but it can be used by other Python code, also).
• The game engine calls the update method of the default module (or whatever module has been specified by sv.adminScript) repeatedly, generally about every 30 milliseconds (roughly 30 times per second). The default module uses this to run a fast check for input on a TCP port (normally port 4711) for RCon commands--this is how the network RCon interface receives commands. More information about the RCon protocol the default module implements can be found in the RCon Protocol Specification
• When the default module decides to execute a console command from a remote user, it passes it on to the game engine for execution using the host.rcon_invoke method. This method isn't specific to RCon commands--in fact, it doesn't execute RCon commands at all--it executes server console commands, and can be used to good effect by any Python code. Note, however, that there is presently a bug in BF2 that prevents any feedback from PunkBuster commands from being sent back to the caller of host.rcon_invoke; since this is the only way remote console commands are executed, it means that RCon users can never see any feedback from PunkBuster commands they send via RCon.

The default module implements just three RCon commands (but could easily be extended to add others):

• login
  default won't accept any other RCon commands until this command is given with the valid password, as specified in the default.cfg file.
• users
  lists players connected to the server, along with their IP Addresses and CD key hashes. [edit by cyber37 (i don't delete last sayed) no it's not that when you unter users the server send to you the ip of admins who are using the rcon protocol for the server]
• exec
  executes any server command.

(Note that from a player's in-game console window, each of these commands must be preceeded by the word "rcon" to cause the game engine to send it to the default module; from a TCP RCon connection, these commands are typed exactly as shown).

Other Administrative Functions

When the game engine imports the default administrative module, one of the things the module does is to import the standard_admin module. When standard_admin is imported, it in turn imports and initializes two other modules:

• standard_admin.autobalance
• standard_admin.tk_punish