The ForwardObserver America's Army game server browser has been decomissioned. This page is here for historical and reference purposes.

ForwardObserver was a game server browser developed by me as a side project. It supported the U.S. Army's multiplayer
online game: America's Army. ForwardObserver allowed players to easily locate and join game sessions based upon multiple criteria.
· The desktop version (VB6) had more than 30,000 downloads. The original version was released in 2002. It interacted directly with the web-hosted
Apache and MySQL servers.
· The web-based application (PHP and MySQL) exceeded 2 million hits, with over 16,000 active users. The last version was released in 2007. The
game-server IP list was retrieved by the master server database.
· Both desktop and online versions featured buddy lists, player and server searches, complex filtering, map and server statistics.
· It gained recognition from the Army game project developers and their primary server vendor.
· I worked closely with both teams to refine the game’s query payload and worked with the vendor (who has since been acquired by EA games) to
optimize the XML feed to their master server database.
· I also managed global volunteer beta/QA team.

This page is an html rendering of the online server browser:http://forwardobserver.us/foserverlist.html. The original site and PHP code was lost
duriing a data-center decomissioning. Please note that the hyperlinks on the page will not work.

The online server browser was built using the following technologies: · LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)    - Server OS: Linux OS    - Web Server: Apache    - Database: MySQL    - Application Code: PHP · UDP socket queries to game servers · XML master server payload · COM component (custom built) to launch game connect player to selected server via web browser · Custom artwork, logos, icons Approach: · The application retrieved a live XML feed from SCI's master server browser. · The data was injected into the MySQL database, which was used by the server browser, · A cron job would execute a PHP script that would retrieve the IP addresses and the corresponding query ports from the database and execute UDP queries across multiple sockets. · The server responses contained both server and player data. Both were inserted into the appropriate tables. · The application displayed basic server information on the main page, along with the ability to query a selected server to retrieve real-time data. · The updated server and player data would be inserted into the database via table updates. · The application also provided real-time player searches and buddy list functionality. · A custom plug-in was developed so that players could click on a selected server from the web browser to join the game on that server. The America's Army game would be launched with a command to join the server.

This is a link to the official America's Army website where ForwardObserver is referenced: http://www.americasarmy.com/downloads/utilities.php

This is a link to the last version of the ForwardObserver server browser program: http://americasarmy.filefront.com/file/AAO_Forward_Observer_Full;29752

Please contact me at gmtosh@gmail.com if you have questions or comments.