How to set up a Tribes Football server

At 09:00 PM 2/14/01 -0500, you wrote:
What do i do man, you have to lead me thru the whole process because i do not know anything about anything in hosting servers, but i'd like to and i realize that your very good at it.

Here are the quick instructions for setting up a dedicated server (this is specifically focused on a Football mod server, but the same principles apply no matter the mod).

1) ALWAYS install a fresh copy of Tribes to a new folder on the machine that will host the server. (For the purposes of this email, assume the path to be C:\Tribes and I will call this the root folder. Any folders within that folder will be indicated like \base or \temp)

2) Download the 1.0 to 1.11 patch and apply it to the new installation. The files are about 6MB.

3) Download the classic football maps (or, alternately, the GSL football maps) file from my site. Extract the maps to \base\missions. The zip also contains a serverprefs.cs file specifically made for the football mod. Put that file in \config.

4) Download the football serverside code file from my site. Extract the files to \base. You should end up with a folder named Football, with a file named scripts.vol and football.vol inside.

5) Open the footballserverconfig.cs and edit the appropriate fields to make the server 'your own.' You *MUST* edit at least the following lines (the file is commented to help you do this):

$Server::HostName
$Server::Info
$Server::JoinMOTD
$AdminPassword
$telnetpassword

6) Right-click the program named infinitespawn.exe in the root folder, and select Create Shortcut.

7) Right-click the Shortcut you just created, and select Properties.

8) In the Target field of the Properties dialog box, enter the following (amend as necessary to point to the correct path on your hard drive, and note that the config script does not have .cs after its filename):

C:\tribes\InfiniteSpawn.exe *tribes +exec footballserverconfig -mod football -dedicated

9) Make sure the Start In field shows C:\tribes (or your equivalent)

10) Click OK on this dialog box.

11) Double click the Shortcut file to start the server. You will see two windows pop up immediately: one is the Infinitespawn window, the other is the server console (it looks like a DOS box). When you see the line "Dedicated Server initialized" appear in the console, then you know you're working and online.

A few other things you need to know:

If you hit the close box on the server console window, it will close and then pop open immediately. This is how Infinitespawn keeps the server alive. Note that the infinitespawn window will increment it's "restart" count each time you do this.

The very last thing that should display in the console when a server starts up correctly is "Dedicated Server Initialized." If you don't see that, close it and let it restart. DO NOT click anywhere inside the console when it's running or it will freeze. If that line does not appear the second time you restart, open the footballserverconfig.cs file and check EVERY LINE to make sure you did not introduce an error or delete one of the semicolons that must be at the end of every line.

If you plan to use Tricon, you will need to take note of the $telnetpassword and $telnetport settings in the ...config.cs file and enter them, along with the IP address of your server (just the octets) in Tricon's Connect to Server dialog. Edit the $telnetport to something other than the 2800x series, which are the game ports. If you run Tricon on the same machine as the server console, connect to IP 127.0.0.1 instead of the machine's IP.

The server and infinitespawn will run just fine if you minimize both windows. But a number of things can cause lag: a screensaver starting up; starting another application on the same machine (especially the Tribes game--NEVER play on the machine you host your server on); antivirus software starting an automatic background scan.

Turn off all automated processes, and disable the Automated Tasks item in Windows. Right-click and shut off any extraneous programs in the System Tray, like Realplayer Startcenter, ICQ, Napster, or AIM.

If you choose to log the console (the $console::logmode = 1; setting in the .cs file) make sure you move the console.log file out of the root folder every day or so. If the log gets larger than a megabyte or two, the server can start to slow down.

If you want to run more than one server on the same machine, be sure to take your bandwidth and amount of physical RAM into account. The chart on this archive of the old Tribesplayers page can help you figure out the maximum number of players--between all the servers combined on a single machine--your bandwidth can support. A dedicated server on a Cable or DSL connection can handle only 8 players total, but a T1 can support 32.

Never, EVER try to play a game on the same machine as the dedicated server. You will lag out faster than a snowflake melts in Hades! ;)

-=Spike