Keen:Dedicated Server Configuration

OFFICIAL CONTENT NOTICE 

OFFICIAL CONTENT

This article contains official content from or verified by the developers at Keen Software House. This information is intended to be accurate at the time it is posted, but may become obsolete over time. If you find errors in this article please describe the errors in the Discussion Page.

Dedicated servers in Medieval Engineers allow players to connect to a third party host, rather than using a player-host, in a peer-to-peer set-up. They are game instances intended for long time multiplayer games. They don’t depend on any player and they run without render and visual/audio effects. This will result to a faster connection and a more fluid multiplayer performance with less lag.

Dedicated servers are available for everyone who owns Medieval Engineers. You don’t need an extra Steam account, you get Medieval Engineers dedicated server for free to your existing Medieval Engineers account.

Note: In order to run a dedicated server, players don’t require a licensed copy of the game. However to legally obtain the game server files, at least one Steam account needs to have a valid license. Multiplayer and Dedicated Servers sub-forum

OFFICIAL DEDICATED SERVERS HOSTS

If you don’t want to host a dedicated server yourself, you can rent one from our official hosts.

DEDICATED SERVER GUIDE

REQUIREMENTS

• A Windows PC with administrator account (only if the server will be run as a service)
• .NET redistributable (version 4.6.1 or higher)
• Static IP address, if you intend to host the game publicly, so that anyone from the Internet can connect to it

INSTALLATION

• On a PC with Steam and Medieval Engineers installed – Congratulations! You already have the dedicated server installed along with Medieval Engineers, just go to the game’s installation directory (browse to “ C:\Program Files(x86)\Steam\SteamApps\MedievalEngineers” or alternatively right-click on the game in your Steam library, select “Properties” and under the tab “Local Files” click “Browse Local Files…”). In the installation directory, you will find a folder named DedicatedServer(64) with the server’s executable.
• On a PC without Steam - Use SteamCMD to download the dedicated server for free.

STEAMCMD

• Download SteamCMD from https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamCMD. SteamCMD does not install so place it in a folder where it can stay.
• Run SteamCMD - it will download additional files the first time you run it.
• Type the following example script into the console to download the ME dedicated server application. Replace {Folder} with your desired install location. Relative paths are acceptable but must start with ./

login anonymous

force_install_dir {Folder}

app_update 367970

quit

app_update can be run with -beta {BranchName} to download a different branch, or with validate to check all of the files.
The example script can be pasted into a text file and run with a single command steamcmd.exe +runscript {FileName}.txt

Additional Notes

• The dedicated server must always be stopped and all windows closed before download updates.
• If you have added a service, it is recommended that you remove and add the service again after any major update of the game.
• You may need to install .Net 4.6.1 from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49981 to run the dedicated server.

QUICK SERVER SETUP

Basic setup as a foreground process

• Run MedievalEngineersDedicated.exe
• Choose “Local/Console” item in list of servers
• Click “Continue to server configuration”
• Here you can set variety of options. They work the same way as in the game.
• Fill in the name of the server
• Press “Save config and start” and you are ready to play

Setup as a service

• Run MedievalEngineersDedicated.exe as Administrator
• Press the “Add new instance” button
• Fill in the name of the service (must be unique system-wide)
• Choose the service you just created from the list of server instances
• Setup your game the same way as with a foreground process
• Pay attention to ports in “Server settings”, as a single port can only be used by one server instance

USER INTERFACE

1. Server list

Here you can see the list of the server instances. There’s always one instance named “Local/Console” and optionally several other instances with custom names. The “Local/Console” instance is run on foreground as a standard application and is always there, while the other instances that the user creates are run in the background as Windows services

2. Global configuration

Here you can set, whether the game log files should have dates appended to them and whether the server should automatically send the log files to Keen Software House upon crash.

3. Admin message

This message is shown when the application is not run with administrator rights. If you want to create or manage the server as a service you need administrator rights. The button “Run as Admin” will restart the application with administrator rights.

4. Buttons

Add new instance

Creates a new instance of the dedicated server as a Windows service.

Remove instance

Removes an instance of the dedicated server

Continue to server configuration

Starts server instance configuration utility for the selected instances

Exit

Closes the configuration utility

SERVER CONFIGURATION

1. GAME SETTINGS

New game

Start a new world generated from a scenario.

Saved worlds

Load a previously saved world^†.

†The previously saved worlds are loaded either from the “%AppData%\Roaming\MedievalEngineersDedicated” folder in your home directory (e.g. “C:\Users\John.Doe”) or from the “%ProgramData%\MedievalEngineersDedicated” folder in the system root. To be able to play a world on the dedicated server that you previously created and saved in the game client, you will have to copy it from your save game directory “%AppData%\Roaming\MedievalEngineers” to the respective folder.

2. SCENARIO SETTINGS

Scenario

Can only be chosen for the “New game” option.

Other settings work as you know them from the game with the added bonus that you can set the numerical options to any value you want. (Warning: Values out of the range allowed by the game user interface are not tested and officially unsupported. They can seriously affect the game experience and performance)

3. SERVER SETTINGS

Listen IP

Address of network interface that the server will listen on. This can be set to “0.0.0.0” (which is the default value) to listen on all interfaces, which should work fine in most cases

Server port

Number of the port that the server will listen on

Server name

Name that will be shown in the server list

Server admins^†

Steam IDs (not nicknames) of the players with administrator privileges on the server (such as kicking and banning other players), each of them on a separate line

Steam Group ID^†

If set to non-zero value, the dedicated server will only be visible for the given Steam group

Mods

Write mod id’s here each in a separate line to add in the game

Pause game when empty

This will stop the world simulation when no players are present

†Note: By “Steam ID” we mean the unique numerical identifier for a Steam account in the 64-bit format. Your Steam ID in this format can be found in the game log after running the game with Steam logged-in to your Steam account (see above) or using external tools like http://steamid.co/ or http://steamidfinder.ru/

3. BUTTONS

Save

Saves the configuration for the current server instance

Save as…

Saves current configuration under a specified name and in selected folder

Edit…

Opens the current instance’s configuration file in a text editor for manual editing

Save and start

Saves the current configuration and starts the server either as a foreground application or as a system service.

Reload

Reloads data from a current config file

Reset

Resets to the default settings

Restart

Restarts the server instance (only for service instances)

Stop

Stops the server instance (only for service instances)

Back to instances

Returns to the screen with the list of server instances

Exit

Closes the configuration utility (but not the dedicated server, if it is running as a service)

COMMAND LINE TOOL

You can run MedievalEngineersDedicated.exe with the following arguments

console

skips instance selection dialog, dedicated server configuration dialog, and goes directly to console application

noconsole

will run without black console window

path

will load config and store all files in path specified (“D:\Whatever\Something” in example)

ignorelastsession

ignores last automatic save of the world and uses values from config file

maxPlayers

overrides maximum players that can be in session

ip

overrides ip address of dedicated server stored in config file

port

overrides port value stored in config file

taskkill /IM MedievalEngineersDedicated.exe

this will stop dedicated server correctly, saving the world etc

to stop it immediately add argument “/f”, that will kill server without asking to stop and without saving the world

ADDITIONAL COMMAND LINE NOTES

We still get a lot of questions about automating start, stop, and restart for servers. There is no easy answer to this right now. Differences in Windows Server versions have different behaviors. Some users run console instances and some run service instances.

CONSOLE INSTANCES

These are a little limited. The are simply a task that runs and they have no input except through the console window. Automation options are only to kill the task as above. If you are running multiple console servers, selecting a specific one to kill is a challenge we haven't yet solved.

Stop

taskkill /IM exe_name (waits) or taskkill /F /IM exe_name (instant, no save will be made)

Start

launch from command line or configurator

Restart

taskkill and start again

SERVICE INSTANCES

Services are much easier to automate but also can have more difficulties. In more recent versions of Windows Server, services can only be managed with administrator access. The workaround for this is to set up tasks in Task Scheduler with the needed permissions. These can be triggered automatically or manually as-needed.

Start

net start service_name /y

Stop

net stop service_name /y (waits for server to close: will wait forever if the server doesn't shut down) or taskkill /F /IM exe_name (instant, no save will be made)

Restart

net stop (or taskkill /F) and net start

ADVANCED USAGE OF TASKKILL

The /F attribute is optional for consoles but is required for services. You can not shut down a service normally with taskkill. The closest substitute is net stop but it is less reliable because it relies on the service itself to handle everything. This means that if there is any issue that prevents the full shutdown of the service, it will never shut down.

taskkill /F /IM exe_name

kills all instances that use the executable (as used above)

taskkill /F /FI "WindowTitle eq window_name"

kills all windows that match the window name. This can be used on configurator windows.

Instance Selector Window Example

taskkill /F /FI "WindowTitle eq Medieval Engineers - Select Instance of Dedicated server"

Configurator Window Example

taskkill /F /FI "WindowTitle eq Medieval Engineers - Dedicated server configurator"

taskkill /F "tokens=3" %%A IN ('sc queryex service_name ^| findstr PID') DO SET pid=%%A

taskkill /F /PID %pid%

kills the specific service by first finding the PID for the service and then killing the PID.

CHANGING DATA DIRECTORY ON DEDICATED SERVER

To change data directory for dedicated server, mklink command may be used.

• Make sure ‘D:\Something\DirForData’ exists
• Make sure ‘C:\ProgramData\MedievalEngineersDedicated’ does not exists
• Run command: mklink /J C:\ProgramData\MedievalEngineersDedicated D:\Something\DirForData

More info here (see Junction): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa365006%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

ROUTER AND FIREWALL SETTINGS

Static IP

If you intend to run a game that people from all over the Internet can connect to, you will need a static public IP address. Your internet service provider should tell you whether you have one or not. Without the static IP address, you will be able to host a dedicated server on your LAN, but people from outside the LAN won’t be able to connect to it reliably.

Port forwarding

The game uses UDP protocol to communicate. The default listen port is 27016, but this can be changed in the config tool. In order for people to be able to reach your server, you will have to configure your router to forward all incoming UDP traffic on port 27016 (or any other that you have specified) to the computer where your dedicated server is running.

Firewall settings

Make sure to set the firewall on your server computer to allow incoming UDP traffic on the listen port.

HOW TO FIND YOUR GROUP ID

If you want to find your Group ID, this is a way how to do it:

• Firstly you will need to create a Steam Group and set the 'custom url'.

• Then it will have an URL like this https://steamcommunity.com/groups/<GroupName>

e.g. https://steamcommunity.com/groups/rps

• Change it to look like this https://steamcommunity.com/groups/<GroupName>/memberslistxml/?xml=1

e.g. https://steamcommunity.com/groups/rps/memberslistxml/?xml=1

• Navigate to your new URL in your web browser

• You will want to grab the long number within the <groupID64> tags.

We've highlighted the number within the Image below to show what section you need to grab from your own webpage.

PROBLEMS LOADING WORLDS ON RENTED SERVERS

Configuration in MedievalEngineers-Dedicated.cfg

If you are using a rented server and don't have access to the configurator app (usually there is a web interface provided instead) you may have to enter the location of the save in the MedievalEngineers-Dedicated.cfg file. Most server providers offer access to this file through some means. Its default location is in C:\ProgramData\MedievalEngineersDedicated\.

Enter the save location in the LoadWorld tag. The full path to the save must be used i.e. <LoadWorld>C:\Users\{user name}\AppData\Roaming\MedievalEngineersDedicated\Saves\{save name}</LoadWorld> or <LoadWorld>C:\ProgramData\MedievalEngineersDedicated\{server name}\Saves\{save name}.

If the full path is unknown, it can be searched for by opening the LastLoaded.sbl from the saves folder. Each of the previous saves that were loaded will be listed as key values with the full path.