Utility, by 
Back a few months ago, there was some discussion revolving around the concept of a program that could scan JJ2 servers to find out when a certain player is online. While this is not by any stretch of the imagination that program, it is nonetheless a program with similar goals. ServerScan attempts to – and quite successfully does – find certain servers depending on certain specifications as they come up. There are a few possible uses beyond looking out for specific servers, though. Dull day? Set ServerScan to scan the list looking for any server at all. This also applies to late-night gaming sessions when a 1.23 server is about as rare as a decent resteraunt in Montana. Some other possibilities include waiting for a server to come up matching the IP of a JDC host (that is, when JDC comes along), for a specific hotel server, or just when someone has said they are going to serve but it is taking them a while. I tested every single feature on all four testbeds, except, under Windows XP Pro and Windows NT 4, the one that plays a .WAV file when the specified server is found. I can only assume this works, as I lack a working speaker set on these two test systems.
The Interface
The first thing you notice about the program when starting it is, as always, the splash screen. The splash screen in this program is delightfully irrelevant to anything. Granted, it looks nice, but it is a bit misleading. It displays a somewhat futuristic-looking layout with various messages from the program splattered randomly. It is a bit misleading as to how the program looks. This, of course, deserves no markdown. While it is cool looking, it is nothing more than that.
SPLASH: Good looking but, as usual, completely useless.
The program uses the icon from what looks a bit like the Find Files & Folders function under Win9x. This is an okay icon, although it is a bit difficult to distinguish it as a program from it. Perhaps the letters “JJ2” across the icon would have been preferable.
The actual program interface is fairly nice. The first prompt is for a list server (the options being Monolith’s or Logicware’s or a user-typed one). Beyond the options of what to do when the server is detected and what specific things are being looked for to alert for, the only other options are those defining whether ot not to show the list server actively refreshing to the right side of the program and whether private servers should or should not be scanned. After the Jazz 2 locations and whatnot are filled out (the only thing the program remembers between executions are the locations of the various versions of Jazz2.exe; that information is stored in the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VB and VBA Program Settings\Jazz 2 Server Scan\Paths), the user can customize what they want to happen when the server is detected (options include opening Jazz 2, playing a .WAV file {untested}, and displaying a customized message box). Finally, the user customizes what server they want to look out for. Options include version number, name, IP address, and game type. Not all of these have to be filled out for the program to work, but – obviously – at least one does. The interface is fairly clean and everything, although having the Logicware list server automatically chosen unless specified otherwise would have been nice. Also, it would have made more sense if “Include Scanning Private Servers” was listed under Miscellaneous Options instead of its current location, Notify Configuration. If there is one thing this program has problems with, it is customizability. This is sort of disappointing, especially when you consider how much of this program can potentially be user-defined. Such options as refresh rate are completely lacking reperesentation, putting those who do not wish to have it refresh so often because of bandwidth issues out of luck. More advanced options would definitely be welcome additions.
MAIN WINDOW: Your basic Visual Basic program interface with little room for tweakaholics to play.
Features
This program has a good supply of features. Unfortunately, it could easily have many more. Aside from the lack of much in the way of user-defined options, the program also lacks a few things which potentially could make it great. Boolean logic would do wonders for this program. As stated in the previous review, the program is greatly missing the ability to detect a server which is not matching the defined configuration. For instance, if you were waiting for a server to come up and the only current server crashed and has been pinging for sixteen hours because of this, it would be nice to have the program wait for a server that was any server but the pinging one. This feature, among others, is missing. While on the subject of pinging, there is another feature that could be added: the option to ignore servers which are currently pinging. This would be useful in situations such as the one described previously. Some other possibilities include an exclusion list, the ability to load a currently active server’s properties by right-clicking on it, the ability to look for a server that matches one or more of the specified criterea but not necessarily all, and even the ability to check which players are playing (much like JazzTool, except hopefully without the annoying flashy colors). The problem of “JazzTool attacks” (flooding a server with JazzTool probes until it is unplayable) could be easily solved with a cross-program floodguard (as in, if more than one ServerScan was active on a machine, they would make sure that there could be no flood of this type between eachother and natively to that one program instance). I think, above all, though, the features this program are most missing are definitely the ability to have more than one query going at once without having to open an entirely different instance of the program and the ability to use modifiers such as asterik () and maybe even question mark (?), notably in the IP field. For instance, if you know someone has a dynamic IP address but is in the range 127.5.35.xxx all the time, being able to input 127.5.35. would be very helpful. To a lesser extent, this would also be welcome in server names. For instance, if you were waiting for a JDC server, putting in “JDC” or “pregame” would be a lot easier than guessing the name of the server. Another problem that I found during testing was a field that should be ignored in some situations. As many long-time Jazz 2 add-on users know, private servers have their IPs masked. This can be problematic in this program, especially if the user is using the IP lookup function. A user might be confused and think that they are able to find private servers by IP address, which is not possible. For instance, say that a user was waiting for a friend’s server who used the IP 192.0.34.166 and had a static IP address. They might put in the version (say, 1.24), name (perhaps “Come John”), game type (battle, in this instance) and the IP address, as well. Even though the server might match everything other than the IP address, ServerScan would make no alert because it is unable to lookup the IP address and considers it to not be a match because of the IP lookup failure. I propose that the program might instead ignore the IP address if the server in question matched all of the other criterions, there was a minimum of one other criteria in addition to IP address, and the other criteria was not version. There are a few things this program could do that would be quite nifty, but more problematic than anything. As cool as being able to specify which level would be looked out for, what player would be in the server, or similar things that require a probe to the server to be known, such things would make the program much more annoying than it already is. At this state, it is completely invisible to server hosts beyond a refresh of the list server and causes absolutely no problems or annoying “OMGWOWCOOLBOT“-like messages. The program’s stability is not an issue at all. It does require Visual Basic 6 and its respective .dll files along, naturally, with the Common Controls DLL and Mswinsck. Most systems already have these DLLs, although an upgrade to Visual Basic 6 (not included) might be necessary to run ServerScan on some systems. The program claims support of Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows NT 4, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. The program was functional under Windows 98, Windows ME (which apparently was, as it often is, forgotten in the compatability listing, despite being functionally almost a carbon copy of Windows 98 Second Edition), Windows NT 4, and Windows XP and is probably functional under the other operating systems as well, although I lack a way of testing those. The only notable stability annoyance was a minor to moderate one, in that the program freezes until the notification .WAV file (if applicable) finishes playing. For longer WAV files, this could be somewhat of an annoyance.
Conclusion
ServerScan is an excellent program in every way. It is, however, a first-generation program and does suffer because of this. There are an ample number of options to entertain most program enthusiasts, but it lacks the features of a highly refined program and also suffers from a general lack of customizable things. Still, this program does what it claims to do in a nearly flawless manner. The interface is good, although it probably could stand to be reorganized a bit and, in testing, it did everything it was intended to do without any major problems. ServerScan is a fine program with many uses and, while it does not have the features that it could, and really should, have, this is not a sign that this program is bad as much of a testament to how good this program could be. With a bit more refining, ServerScan could truly be a program in the league of JazzTool, Controller, and the like. For now, though, ServerScan is an excellent example of a good program with great potential that has long been painfully missing from the repertoire of Jazz 2 add-on programs.
Test Conditions
On all test systems, the program was ran both with mIRC, AOL Instant Messenger, QuickTime, Trillian, WinZip, and CuteFTP running and without. There was no measurable difference in the stability of this program with or without these programs running.
Test System One
3GHz Pentium 4 Processor, 1024MB of RDRAM, ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 9700 Pro, and Windows XP Professional in safe mode.
Test System Two
450MHz Pentium 4 Processor, 96MB of SDRAM, Diamond Viper V560, and Windows 98 Second Edition.
Test System Three
Dell Inspiron 8000. 650MHz Pentium 3 Mobile Processor, 128MB of SDRAM, ATI Rage 8MB Mobile Graphics, and Windows ME.
Test System Four
Micron DeskPro. 250MHz Pentium MMX Processor, 32MB of SDRAM, Integrated Graphics, and Windows NT 4.
The Good, the Bad, and the Rating
PROS: Very useful and stable program with a great future ahead of it if work is continued on it.
CONS: Suffers from first-generation syndrome. Not very customizable. IP lookup and private servers do not mix. Freezes until .WAV is finished playing.
RATING: 8.5
EDIT: Disregard part about variables like * and ?. This is supported already.
- Trafton
