Add information to MTA Server List ("rules" table provided by ASE)

[Fernando-A-Rocha]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

In order to easily improve the Server Browser by showing more server information to the client, we should merge #3761 which adds new default "rules" that a server can set to define its description, social media URLs, etc. All of this information can already be stored in the rules key-value pairs of the server's ASE query response (Port 22126 UDP by default).

So, we need a way to obtain this information in the client, to then display it correctly in the Server Browser (e.g. showing a server's tags).

Describe the solution you'd like

The Server Browser obtains the server list from MTA's servers

mtasa-blue/Client/core/ServerBrowser/CServerList.h

Lines 43 to 60 in 55d3922

	enum
	{
	ASE_HAS_PLAYER_COUNT = 0x0004,
	ASE_HAS_MAX_PLAYER_COUNT = 0x0008,
	ASE_HAS_GAME_NAME = 0x0010,
	ASE_HAS_SERVER_NAME = 0x0020,
	ASE_HAS_GAME_MODE = 0x0040,
	ASE_HAS_MAP_NAME = 0x0080,
	ASE_HAS_SERVER_VERSION = 0x0100,
	ASE_HAS_PASSWORDED_FLAG = 0x0200,
	ASE_HAS_SERIALS_FLAG = 0x0400,
	ASE_HAS_PLAYER_LIST = 0x0800,
	ASE_HAS_RESPONDING_FLAG = 0x1000,
	ASE_HAS_RESTRICTION_FLAGS = 0x2000,
	ASE_HAS_SEARCH_IGNORE_SECTIONS = 0x4000,
	ASE_HAS_KEEP_FLAG = 0x8000,
	ASE_HAS_HTTP_PORT = 0x080000,
	ASE_HAS_SPECIAL_FLAGS = 0x100000,

See https://master.multitheftauto.com/ase/mta/ (list of server info such as name, player count, etc in ASE format), which can be fetched and parsed using a script such as https://github.com/Fernando-A-Rocha/ase2json_py

Several things need be done, imo:

• Add new ASE Flag to return the Rules table which you can also call Rules Map or Rules List (see Client/core/ServerBrowser/CServerList.h)
• Modify the Master server list MTA service (requires backend access) to return the data
• Edit the C++ scripts so they can fetch and parse the string key-value pairs from the Rules table fetched
• (FUTURE) Revamp the Server Browser UI to parse and use the new information

Describe alternatives you've considered

Doing nothing will unfortunately not allow us to make progress in getting the issues #3761 resolves easily, without having to refactor/rewrite A LOT of code.

Additional context

Curiosities:

This is how ASE format includes key-value pairs in its structure

This is how OpenGSQ-Python parses the ASE response, in particular the rules part

Game-State is dealing with the rules table that servers provide in their ASE response properly 🥳
(not an advertisement) e.g. https://www.game-state.com/164.132.200.104:22003/ contains:
Author: AGRP Team
Script Version: 24.08.12

The JSON server list provided by https://mtasa.com/api/ also does not contain the server Rules array. I am unsure where this API is used, but it would be nice to also update it.

Security Policy

• I have read and understood the Security Policy and this issue is not about a cheat or security vulnerability.

[Fernando-A-Rocha]

#3761 was merged.

I would like to create a proof-of-concept server browser using the information provided by the MTA Masterlist(s):

• https://multitheftauto.com/api
• https://master.multitheftauto.com/ase/mta/

These two formats (All-Seeing Eye and JSON) provide the full list of online MTA servers that can be displayed in a pretty UI (with incomplete data).

Anyone can create and host a server list "browser" interface, using this publicly available info.

I would like to ask the infrastructure team to add the recently implemented "rules" / "server variables" to the information provided for each server entry in the public masterlist (see #3761). E.g. "website_url", "description" and "tags".

This way, me or anyone will be able to design a functional server browser with much more information than just server names and player counts.

[botder]

As NanoBob wrote on Discord, you can already do that yourself, but first you have to wait for most servers to actually provide these values.