arcattackandClaude Opus 5
3a694485bf
Operator report: "if a player disconnects from the console, it leaves their name
up in the roster ... it should turn their seat back to empty." I had not noticed
or fixed this -- the earlier review raised adjacent roster issues (lights mapped
through the untrimmed tag list after a trim) but not this one.
CAUSE. The GUI only ever WROTE walk-up names into the table. On a disconnect
the relay pops seat_info, the write-back loop hit `if not info: continue`, and
the cell kept the departed callsign for the rest of the session -- while the
pilot light beside it correctly said "waiting". So the table and the light
disagreed and a free seat looked occupied.
Two changes, because the relay's two seat-clearing signals are NOT symmetric:
* SessionMonitor now pops seat_info when a pilot goes idle from EITHER signal.
"PLAYER n LEFT" is only printed inside the beacon-close branch gated on
`if seat not in self.by_host` (the relay's own comment: "never claimed:
player left"), so a player who was fully REGISTERED and then dropped
produced only `game[...] dropped` -- the common case, and the one that left
the name up. Keying "seat is empty" off LEFT alone could never have worked.
* _refresh_pod_status stashes the operator's configured callsign/mech PER
OCCUPANCY when a seat fills, and restores it when the seat empties.
Per-occupancy rather than once at egg load, so an edit the operator makes
while a seat is empty is respected instead of being overwritten by a stale
snapshot.
It restores the CONFIGURED PILOT, not a literal blank, deliberately: that cell is
editable and is what gets written to the egg on Save, so a placeholder like
"-- empty --" would end up in the mission file. The "unoccupied" signal is the
grey `waiting` light beside it.
NOT CHANGED, and explained instead: a vacated seat is held for its player for 90s
(seat_reclaim) so a crash or a reconnect returns them to the same seat and mech.
Assignment skips claimed/reserved/reclaim-held seats, so a brand-new joiner in
that window gets the next free seat, or ROSTER FULL if there wasn't one; after 90s
the seat is fair game. The operator said they were happy with players keeping
their seat/address, so this stays -- it is now documented in both docs rather than
silently removed.
VERIFIED: scratchpad/test_operator_roster.py (new, 14 checks) drives the REAL Qt
widget offscreen and feeds it the REAL relay log lines: a walk-up name appears;
after REGISTERED then `dropped` the light returns to waiting AND the seat shows
the configured pilot again; the seat is reusable by a different player and clears
for them too; the `PLAYER n LEFT` path clears it as well; an operator edit made
while the seat was empty survives an occupancy; and a neighbouring row is never
touched by another seat's traffic. Other suites still pass (rearm 19/19, net
17/17); checkctx CLEAN.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
10 KiB
BattleTech 4.11 — Operator Console Guide
How to run a games night: set up a mission, get pods seated, launch rounds, and recover when something sticks. Written for the sysop at the console, not for players.
Engineering detail (ports, protocol, state machine) lives in context/operator-console.md.
Player-facing instructions ship in the zip as README.txt.
1. Starting the console
cd C:\git\bt411
python tools\btoperator.py
A window titled BT411 Operator Console opens. That is the console.
One thing worth knowing: there are two programs.
btoperator.pyis the window you use.btconsole.pyis the headless relay it starts for you in the background — all the actual networking. You never launch that one directly; its output is what scrolls in the log pane at the bottom of the window. When this guide says "the relay said…", that is where to look.
2. Set up the mission, then start the session
Work top to bottom:
- Pick the mission settings — map, mission length, weather, experience level, and the seat
(pod) count. Every dropdown is populated live from
BTL4.RES, so anything offered is valid. - Set the seat count to roughly who you expect. It does not have to be exact — you can launch with fewer (see §4) — but a wildly oversized roster makes the staging messages confusing.
- Choose the mode: Relay (internet) is normal — players dial out to you, so they need no port forwarding. Mesh (LAN) is the original cabinet direction for a local network.
- Press Start Session. The relay comes up and begins accepting pods.
For internet play, you must be reachable. Forward/allow these TCP ports to this machine (default console port 1500):
| Port | Why |
|---|---|
| 1500/tcp | the console channel (hands out the mission egg, sends the launch) |
| 1501/tcp | game traffic between pods |
| 1501/udp | the fast update channel (position/motion) |
Port 1507/tcp is the operator control channel — only needed if someone drives this relay remotely.
Players give their client BT_RELAY=<your address>:1500; players/join.bat handles that.
3. Watch the pods arrive
Each pilot row lights up as they progress. In order:
waiting → seated (claimed a seat, callsign and mech shown) → egg sent → registered → ready (mission loaded) → LAUNCHED.
You will see this in the log and it is normal, not an error:
console conn 1.2.3.4:5678: egg HELD (3/8 pods present)
The mission file is deliberately held until every seat is present, so that every pod's copy contains everyone's callsign and mech choice. If you are not waiting for the rest, just launch — see next.
4. Launch a round
Press 🚀 LAUNCH MISSION.
- If everyone has loaded, the round starts within a few seconds.
- If some seats are empty, launching is still correct — the relay shrinks the session to the players who are actually here and starts. You do not need to edit the roster down first.
- The relay holds the start until every pod reports ready, so nobody loads into a mission already in progress. If one pod is slow you will see who, every 10 seconds; after 3 minutes it starts anyway rather than letting one wedged client hold up the night.
The mission then runs on its own clock (the mission length from the egg). ⏹ END MISSION stops it early.
5. Running back-to-back rounds
When a round ends, players' clients relaunch themselves and reconnect. Once they are back, press LAUNCH again. You can change mission settings between rounds and press Apply first.
If LAUNCH looks dead — press ↻ Re-arm
This is the fix for the most annoying failure this console had. If a round has ended and the LAUNCH button is greyed out, or pressing it does nothing:
Press ↻ Re-arm, then LAUNCH.
Re-arm clears the finished round's state and re-opens the launcher while keeping everyone who is already connected. You do not need Stop Session / Start Session, which disconnects everybody.
Why this happens: the console used to only consider itself ready for a new round if every player from the last round came back, or if all of them left. In between — the normal case when one person closes their window or their client crashes — it got stuck, and said nothing. That is fixed (an explicit LAUNCH now re-arms by itself), and Re-arm is the belt-and-braces button. If you ever see the old behaviour, it is a bug worth reporting.
6. Known limitations — buttons that are not what they appear
Read this once; each of these is a control that looks live but does nothing in that mode.
Mesh (LAN legacy) mode: the mission buttons do not work. LAUNCH, END MISSION and Re-arm all log
">> operator … sent" and are then silently discarded — the mesh console has no command channel.
Apply mission settings is also inert (mesh reads the mission file once at startup). Mesh launches
its rounds by itself once the pods have the mission. If you want to control launches, use Relay
mode.
Remote relay mode (driving another machine's relay) is now a full console — LAUNCH, END MISSION, Re-arm, Apply and Launch-local all work, and the pilot lights populate from the relay's own roster when you connect. Two things still differ: Stop Session only disconnects you (the remote relay keeps running, which is usually what you want), and Restart Session likewise just reconnects the control link rather than restarting that relay.
Other sharp edges:
- Start Session overwrites your egg file on disk, without asking. Keep a copy of any mission you care about under a different name.
Applyonly pushes the six mission settings (map, time, weather, scenario, temperature, length). Callsign / mech / colour / badge / patch / experience edits need Save. Changing the seat count mid-session is refused outright — that needs a session restart.- The Colour dropdown offers colours the game cannot paint. Only Black, Brown, Crimson, Green, Grey, Tan and White work; anything else silently comes out grey. The relay warns in the log.
- If the relay dies on its own,
Launch local instancesstays clickable and will start clients against nothing. Press Start Session first. Public hostis used only when exporting player scripts; it does not affect what the relay binds or advertises.
7. When a player leaves
Their pilot light goes grey (waiting) and the seat's callsign reverts to whatever you had configured for that row — so a free seat no longer looks occupied by a departed player.
Their seat is held for them for 90 seconds. That is deliberate: someone who crashes or gets dropped comes straight back into the same seat with the same mech. During that window a brand-new player is given the next free seat instead, or told the roster is full if there wasn't one. After 90 seconds the vacated seat is fair game for anybody.
So if a new arrival can't get in right after somebody left, wait a minute and have them retry — or raise the seat count if you're simply out of seats.
8. Troubleshooting
| What you see | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
egg HELD (n/N pods present) |
normal staging — waiting for the rest of the seats | wait, or press LAUNCH to start with who is here |
| LAUNCH greyed out after a round | the launcher is still holding the last round | press ↻ Re-arm |
LAUNCH pressed but NO players are seated yet |
nobody has claimed a seat | check the players are pointed at the right address/port |
LAUNCH pressed but NOT all seats have ACKed |
some pods are still taking the mission file | wait a few seconds; if one is never coming, press Re-arm |
launch HELD -- still loading: PLAYER n |
that pod has not finished loading | wait; it force-starts after 3 minutes |
*** WARNING: ... EMPTY seat(s) ... the mission will STALL |
can be a false alarm after the roster is trimmed | if the round starts and plays fine, ignore it |
seat RECLAIMED by identity |
a player who dropped got their seat back | nothing — this is working as intended |
game[...] dropped: closed |
a pod disconnected | normal at round end; mid-round it means they crashed or lost connection |
| A player gets ROSTER FULL | no free seat in the current round | Re-arm between rounds so the roster re-opens, then let them join |
| Console window stops responding | the relay stalled on a dead connection | Stop Session, Start Session; please keep the log (below) |
| A player says they cannot connect at all | ports, or wrong address | confirm 1500/1501 TCP + 1501 UDP reach this machine |
The one thing to do before restarting a session
Copy content\operator_relay.log somewhere first. Start Session overwrites it — so
restarting to clear a problem also destroys the evidence of that problem. If something misbehaved,
save that file and hand it over; it is timestamped line-by-line and it is what makes these bugs
diagnosable.
9. Match reports
At the end of each clean round, every player's client uploads its own match report to you
automatically (relay mode only). They land in matchlogs\ named by the sender's address. You do
not need to ask players to send anything.
Exceptions worth knowing: a client that crashes mid-round loses its report, and players on
solo or Steam have no relay to upload through. In those cases ask them for
content\matchlog_*.txt directly. Their crash log, content\join.log, is never uploaded — ask
for it explicitly when something went wrong on their end.
10. Local test instances
Launch local instances starts game clients on this machine against your own session — useful for testing alone or filling a seat. Stop games closes them. In relay mode the session must already be started, or a local instance has nothing to dial.
11. Which build everyone needs
All pods must run the same build as each other. Build 4.11.554 changed what pods tell each other about scores, so a mixed session shows disagreeing KILLS/DEATHS columns (nothing crashes — the remote numbers just do not move). When you hand out a new zip, make sure everyone takes it before the session.