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RUNNING_A_SERVER.md

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INSTALLATION

First-time installation should be fairly straightforward. First, you'll need BYOND installed. You can get it from https://www.byond.com/download. Once you've done that, extract the game files to wherever you want to keep them. This is a sourcecode-only release, so the next step is to compile the server files.

Double-click BUILD.bat in the root directory of the source code. This'll take a little while, and if everything's done right you'll get a message like this:

saving tgstation.dmb (DEBUG mode)
tgstation.dmb - 0 errors, 0 warnings

If you see any errors or warnings, something has gone wrong - possibly a corrupt download or the files extracted wrong. If problems persist, ask for assistance in irc://irc.rizon.net/coderbus

Once that's done, open up the config folder. You'll want to edit config.txt to set the probabilities for different gamemodes in Secret and to set your server location so that all your players don't get disconnected at the end of each round. It's recommended you don't turn on the gamemodes with probability 0, except Extended, as they have various issues and aren't currently being tested, so they may have unknown and bizarre bugs. Extended is essentially no mode, and isn't in the Secret rotation by default as it's just not very fun.

You'll also want to edit config/admins.txt to remove the default admins and add your own. "Game Master" is the highest level of access, and probably the one you'll want to use for now. You can set up your own ranks and find out more in config/admin_ranks.txt

The format is

byondkey = Rank

where the admin rank must be properly capitalised.

This codebase also depends on a native library called rust-g. A precompiled Windows DLL is included in this repository, but Linux users will need to build and install it themselves. Directions can be found at the rust-g repo.

Finally, to start the server, run Dream Daemon and enter the path to your compiled tgstation.dmb file. Make sure to set the port to the one you specified in the config.txt, and set the Security box to 'Safe'. Then press GO and the server should start up and be ready to join. It is also recommended that you set up the SQL backend (see below).

UPDATING

To update an existing installation, first back up your /config and /data folders as these store your server configuration, player preferences and banlist.

Then, extract the new files (preferably into a clean directory, but updating in place should work fine), copy your /config and /data folders back into the new install, overwriting when prompted except if we've specified otherwise, and recompile the game. Once you start the server up again, you should be running the new version.

HOSTING

If you'd like a more robust server hosting option for tgstation and its derivatives. Check out our server tools suite at https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation-server

If you decide to go this route, here are /tg/ specific details on hosting with TGS.

  • We have two directories which should be setup in the instance's Configuration/GameStaticFiles directory:
    • config should be where you place your production configuration. Overwrites the default contents of the repo's config directory.
    • data should be initially created as an empty directory. The game stores persistent data here.
  • You should incorporate our custom build scripts for TGS4 in the instance's Configuration/EventScripts directory. These handle including TGUI in the build and setting up rust-g on Linux.
  • Deployment security level must be set to Trusted or it will likely fail due to our native library usage.
  • We highly recommend using the BYOND version specified in dependencies.sh to avoid potential unrecorded issues.

SQL SETUP

The SQL backend requires a Mariadb server running 10.2 or later. Mysql is not supported but Mariadb is a drop in replacement for mysql. SQL is required for the library, stats tracking, admin notes, and job-only bans, among other features, mostly related to server administration. Your server details go in /config/dbconfig.txt, and the SQL schema is in /SQL/tgstation_schema.sql and /SQL/tgstation_schema_prefix.sql depending on if you want table prefixes. More detailed setup instructions are located here: https://www.tgstation13.org/wiki/Downloading_the_source_code#Setting_up_the_database

If you are hosting a testing server on windows you can use a standalone version of MariaDB pre load with a blank (but initialized) tgdb database. Find them here: https://tgstation13.download/database/ Just unzip and run for a working (but insecure) database server. Includes a zipped copy of the data folder for easy resetting back to square one.

WEB/CDN RESOURCE DELIVERY

Web delivery of game resources makes it quicker for players to join and reduces some of the stress on the game server.

  1. Edit compile_options.dm to set the PRELOAD_RSC define to 0
  2. Add a url to config/external_rsc_urls pointing to a .zip file containing the .rsc.
    • If you keep up to date with /tg/ you could reuse /tg/'s rsc cdn at http://tgstation13.download/byond/tgstation.zip. Otherwise you can use cdn services like CDN77 or cloudflare (requires adding a page rule to enable caching of the zip), or roll your own cdn using route 53 and vps providers.
    • Regardless even offloading the rsc to a website without a CDN will be a massive improvement over the in game system for transferring files.

IRC BOT SETUP

Included in the repository is a python3 compatible IRC bot capable of relaying adminhelps to a specified IRC channel/server, see the /tools/minibot folder for more