This is a tutorial/brain dump of how to set up an SS14 server. This guide will cover everything you need, from private servers to play with your friends, to production servers for proper server hosts.
There are two methods you can use. A "bare" server that just runs the game server directly, or SS14.Watchdog which handles updates and runs the game server for you. We recommend the latter for more proper deployments and also if you want to be listed on the hub in the launcher.
If you have any questions, ask on Discord and/or ping PJB if you really don't get an answer.
All of the important links on this page in one convenient place.
Regardless of the hosting method you choose, the server is not self-contained (and neither are client builds) and therefore needs a .NET 7 Runtime installed. You only need "x64" under "run console apps" not "hosting bundle" from the downloads page.
For other services such as SS14.Watchdog you ALSO need the ASP .NET Core 7 Runtime (included in .NET 7 SDK).
Robust.Server.exe (or Robust.Server via terminal on macOS/Linux)server_config.toml and remove the # in front of upnp = true under [net]. This will make the server automatically try to port forward with your router. This should work on most modern routers.Just kidding, you don't have any friends.
This will not, of course, handle automatic restarts (in case of a crash) or updates like the watchdog would. This also won't list your server publicly on the hub as advertising defaults to off. If you wish to have your server listed on the hub please read Bare Server Configuration below.
Note that when you run a server like this, the build information that the launcher needs (so it has a version of the client to download) points to our central server. We do not keep those builds around forever so eventually people will no longer be able to connect to the server. Obviously this is not a problem if you want to set up a quick and dirty private server for your friends. Just make sure to download a new version of the server at least every week.
You can configure settings in the server by editing the config file, server_config.toml. The config file is TOML which is basically INI except better specified, somewhat more powerful, easier to misuse, and more annoyingly opinionated (comments NEED their own line).
Settings have one key they fall under and then the name. So if I say game.lobbyenabled it goes under the [game] header like so:
[game]
lobbyenabled = true
Got that? Good.
Some sane defaults you might want to set for your server if you actually intend to host this properly:
Please read through the comments here so you have a solid grasp of what you're doing.
[net]
# Reducing tickrate to 30 is basically unnoticeable
# but reduces server, client and network load dramatically.
tickrate = 30
[game]
# Changes the name of the server as it appears in the lobby and launcher.
hostname = "Foo Station"
# Enables the lobby instead of straight up throwing clients into a game.
lobbyenabled = true
[auth]
# Enforces authentication so that ALL connecting clients must have a proper account.
# Otherwise, guest logins are allowed.
# Possible values here are: 0 (optional), 1 (required), 2 (disabled)
mode = 1
[hub]
# Set to true to show this server on the public server list in the launcher.
# BEFORE TURNING THIS ON, READ THE PUBLIC HUB RULES BELOW
advertise = false
# Uncomment to change the server URL advertised on the master server list.
# Use this if you want an ss14s:// URL or have configured the server behind a reverse proxy or any of that.
# Defaults to "ss14://[public server IP]:networking port"
# server_url = "ss14://..."
See Config File Reference for a somewhat more thorough guide on server configuration.
Please see the rules for hub servers before putting your server on the hub.
Set hub.advertise=true in the configuration. See Server Configuration for details.
If you do want to set up a more permanent server, you will have to re-host the client downloads somewhere. Anywhere accessible via a plain URL is fine.
You will want to edit the server config file (server_config.toml) to add the following to it:
[build]
# Download locations of the entire client build in a zip, as a HTTP (or HTTPS) URL.
download_url = ""
By default, no admin privileges are set. Connections made from localhost are automatically full admin and bypass any authentication requirements. Of course, that's not very useful for real live servers hosted on a dedicated box, so you have a chicken and egg problem.
You can use the promotehost (e.g. promotehost PJB) command on the server's console to temporarily give a connected client full HOST privileges. This will allow them to set up further admin privileges (and set their own permanently) with the in-game admin permissions panel (permissions command). The privileges are lost when the server shuts down. It's recommended to give yourself all permissions so you can grant them to admins later, or admin properly, if hosting alone. (Except +HOST if you don't have a good use for it! If you don't know what it does, don't give +HOST)
+HOSTprivileges are extremely dangerous to give and should only be given to people who already have access to your computer or server.Giving somebody
+HOSTallows them to completely take over your server and/or computer.
Here are some settings you probably want to enable on your server to improve performance:
Environment variable to enable full dynamic PGO, which drastically improves performance at the cost of marginally higher startup time:
DOTNET_TieredPGO: 1
DOTNET_TC_QuickJitForLoops: 1
DOTNET_ReadyToRun: 0
Environment variable to enable AVX operations across the codebase. Depending on your processor, this might hurt performance instead of improving it, otherwise it may improve atmos performance.
ROBUST_NUMERICS_AVX: true
You can set environment variables from the watchdog, see below.
The server obviously needs network ports to be forwarded so that people can connect.
The game server uses two ports:
1212 is used for main game netcode. This is necessary for the client to be able to connect to the server. This can be configured with the net.port configuration variable.1212 is a HTTP status API. This is also necessary for the launcher to be able to connect to the server. You do not need this to connect with a bare client. This can be configured with the status.bind configuration variable (which takes in a string like *:1212 or 127.0.0.1:3000).You can slap the HTTP status API behind a reverse proxy if you want. This is recommended for production servers since then you can do HTTPS (slap it behind nginx and turn on HTTPS). Note that if you do this you have to set the status.connectaddress config variable to specify the UDP address the main netcode should connect to. This has to look like this: udp://server.spacestation14.io:1212 (for our server, obviously substitute with your params).
This is for people running their own codebase and server and/or those who want a more robust hosting solution.
SS14.Watchdog (codename Ian) is our server-hosting wrapper thing, similar to TGS for BYOND (but much simpler for the time being). It handles auto updates, monitoring, automatic restarts, and administration. We recommend you use this for proper deployments.
To set it up, download the code (linked above), and publish it for your platform (dotnet publish -c Release -r linux-x64 --no-self-contained), since we currently don't provide any publishes ourselves. Note that you need to have the ASP.NET Core Runtime installed. Then copy SS14.Watchdog/bin/Release/net6.0/linux-x64/publish to a directory on your server or something.
You will want to edit appsettings.yml to add a server and configure some stuff. Example from our official servers (obviously tokens redacted):
Serilog:
Using: [ "Serilog.Sinks.Console", "Serilog.Sinks.Loki" ]
MinimumLevel:
Default: Information
Override:
SS14: Information
Microsoft: "Warning"
Microsoft.Hosting.Lifetime: "Information"
Microsoft.AspNetCore: Warning
WriteTo:
- Name: Console
Args:
OutputTemplate: "[{Timestamp:HH:mm:ss} {Level:u3} {SourceContext}] {Message:lj}{NewLine}{Exception}"
Enrich: [ "FromLogContext" ]
# Uncomment to have watchdog log to Loki
#Loki:
# Address: "{{ loki_addr }}"
# Name: "{{ server_id }}"
# Username: "{{ loki_user }}"
# password: "{{ loki_pass }}"
AllowedHosts: "*"
# API URL that your watchdog is accessible from.
# This HAS to be set so the game servers can communicate with the watchdog.
# If you don't want the watchdog to be publically accessible, do `http://localhost:5000/` here.
BaseUrl: https://builds.spacestation14.io/watchdog/
Servers:
Instances:
# ID of your server.
wizards_den:
# Name of the server - Note that this is NOT the name of the server on the hub, that is set for each server under game.hostname in their respective config.toml files.
Name: "Wizard's Den"
ApiToken: "foobar" # API token to control this instance remotely like run updates, restart server. This should be confidential
ApiPort: 1212 # API port OF THE GAME SERVER. This has to match the 1212 HTTP status API (described below). Otherwise the watchdog can't contact the game server for stuff.
# Auto update configuration. This can be left out if you do not need auto updates. Example is for our officially hosted builds.
# See below for alternatives.
UpdateType: "Manifest"
Updates:
ManifestUrl: "https://central.spacestation14.io/builds/wizards/manifest.json"
# Any environment variables you may want to specify.
EnvironmentVariables:
Foo: bar
wizards_den_two:
# Name of the second server
Name: "Wizard's Den 2"
etc...
The watchdog will automatically create a folder structure for each server instance. This is at instances/<instanceId>, e.g. instances/wizards_den / instances/wizards_den_two, relative to the current working directory when executing the watchdog.
Each instance folder has the following files and folders:
binaries/: Is used to store client binaries when using the "Local" update type, see below.bin/: Contains the actual extracted server binaries.data/: Stores server data like player preferences.config.toml: Is the config file the server will load (the watchdog overrides the default location, server_config.toml next to the .exe, to avoid it getting deleted when the server resets).Note that although the watchdog handles server updates you may still want to setup the config.toml as per the
Bare Server Configurationsection above.
The watchdog supports 4 different types of update types:
If you wish to obtain more information you can browse the SS14.Watchdog repo to see how they work.
TODO: Explain the update providers better and explain hybrid ACZ.
TBC
You can use the watchdog with local files, and have it automatically generate the necessary build information. This will also host the client binaries for you.
To configure this, use the following update configuration in your appsettings.yml, in the entry for your server instance:
UpdateType: "Local"
Updates:
Version: "foobar" # Version string to use.
The watchdog will automatically host client binaries. Where does it pull them from? The binaries/ folder in your server instance folder! Note that for this to work, the watchdog HAS to be publically accessible via BaseUrl in the config file.
You can edit the Version: specified in the config to tell the launcher that it should update the game next time you connect.
You will have to manually move files around and extract the server binaries.
This provider has 3 options available
TBC
Not supported, but it should be relatively trivial to edit the code for SS14.Watchdog to add support for whatever update mechanism you need. See UpdateProvider.cs.
The launcher needs to download the client binary to be able to run the game. It gets information about this client binary from the game server via an info API.
The information returned from this API is configured in two ways: build.json and build.* configuration variables.
build.json is a file that gets put next to the server executable automatically by the build system. This is how the server knows what the build info is when just downloading a bare server zip. (note that this is NOT done by package_release_build.py, since it relies on extra build information. gen_build_info.py does it in a separate step)
The second option is by specifying configuration variables (from command line or config file, both work):
[build]
# "Identifier" of your codebase. This is used by the launcher to manage installations.
# Try to keep this unique between different codebases.
# Nothing will break if you don't (or if there's a malicious actor),
# but the launcher WILL be forced to redownload files more often than otherwise necessary.
fork_id = ""
# Version string of the current build running on the server.
# This just prompts the launcher to redownload if it's different.
version = ""
# Version of the engine to download.
# Engine versions are hosted by us and will probably stay up forever.
# At least, as long as they are not found to be vulnerable to any security exploits, then we may pull them.
engine_version = ""
# Download locations of the entire client build in a zip, as a HTTP/HTTPS URL.
download_url = ""
# SHA256 hash of client zip files specified above.
hash = ""
Note that SS14.Watchdog specifies most of it for you if you have configured it with auto updates (depending on update provider). It notably cannot provide engine_version or fork_id version, so you're best off specifying the former in build.json (your build system should be non garbage for this) and the latter in a config file.
Things that aren't necessary for small/private servers, but strongly recommended for forks or larger production servers.
SS14 uses an SQL database to store server data like player slots. By default, an SQLite database is automatically used which is sufficient for local testing and small servers. If you want the ability to share the database between multiple servers or such however, the server also supports connecting to PostgreSQL.
Support for MySQL/MariaDB isn't currently planned, but we will accept contributions.
Relevant configuration properties, along with default values:
# Server config file
[database]
# Database type to use. Can be "sqlite" or "postgres" currently.
engine = "sqlite"
# Path to store the database at when using SQLite. Note that is NOT a disk path.
# This is relative to the server data directory, which is specified by --data-dir when starting the server from the command (or automatically set by SS14.Watchdog)
sqlite_dbpath = "preferences.db"
# PostgreSQL database configuration, should be self explanatory.
pg_host = "localhost"
pg_port = 5432
pg_database = "ss14"
pg_username = ""
pg_password = ""
The game server automatically does migrations when it starts up, you do not have to do them manually.
SS14 supports hosting a metrics server that Prometheus can scrape, with which you can then make fancy graphs in Grafana or such. You can find our Grafana dashboards here, in case they happen to be useful.
To configure this, you can use the following config variables:
[metrics]
enabled = true
# Address to bind the metrics server to
host = "localhost"
# Port to bind the metrics server to
port = 44880
You can then scrape this with the following Prometheus config (for example):
global:
scrape_interval: 1s
evaluation_interval: 1s
scrape_configs:
- job_name: "wizards_den_us_west"
static_configs:
- targets: ["localhost:44880"]
SS14 also supports pushing structured log data to Loki. Because this is modern DevOps crap the website doesn't say what it actually does but when combined with Grafana you can go and look at and filter logs in a debatably more sane way than bare text files.
No, you do not need Promtail set up for this to work. SS14 pushes directly to Loki.
To configure this, you can use the following config variables:
[loki]
enabled = true
# HTTP address of the Loki server.
address = "http://localhost:3100"
# Name of this server, gets included in all log messages.
name = "wizards_den_us_west"
# Parameters for HTTP Basic authentication, if you have Loki configured behind it.
# If left out, no authentication will be attempted.
# username = ""
# password = ""
This means the server isn't communicating with the watchdog correctly and the watchdog is forced to assume that the server is locked up or similar. This happens if BaseUrl in the watchdog configuration is set incorrectly or otherwise inaccessible by the game server.
System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'Mono.Posix.NETStandard, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral (...)Current working theory is that this is caused by improper dotnet publish settings.
The below set of test results should help explain.
dotnet publish -c Release -r linux-x64 --no-self-contained SS14.Watchdog -o test
RESULT: Mono.Posix.NETStandard.dll included, System.dll not included (as expected)
dotnet publish -c Release -r linux-x64 SS14.Watchdog -o test
RESULT: Mono.Posix.NETStandard.dll included, System.dll included
dotnet publish -c Release SS14.Watchdog -o test
RESULT: Mono.Posix.NETStandard.dll not included, System.dll not included
Since Watchdog uses Mono.Posix.NETStandard.dll to mark executables as executable on Linux and Mac OS X, it's important to have it around on those OSes.
Open a terminal in the unzipped build directory (it should have the Robust.Server file in it.)
Type ./Robust.Server then hit enter. If you see a bunch of stuff being printed to the screen and it doesn't say error, then the server is running.