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12 Setting Up Online FPS Game Servers To round out the book in this chapter, we will look at installing and starting dedicated servers for two specific first person shooter (FPS) games Wolfenstein Enemy Territory (WET) and Half-Life 2. We will focus primarily on getting things started, and leave it to online forums and discussion groups to provide you with tutorials on specific aspects of running and maintaining a dedicated public server. 12.1 Considerations for an Online Game Server Setting up a dedicated server raises many questions relating to expected performance, resource requirements and server monitoring. Given the number of players you wish to support at any one time you will need requirements estimates for CPU speed, memory (RAM), disk space, and network connection speed. It is usually advisable to monitor long-term server behaviour and usage patterns (as discussed in Chapter 9). This involves becoming intimately familiar with the server s own logging facilities and deploying network sniffing tools such as tcpdump. Sufficient diskspace must be allocated to hold server logs and packet tracefiles. Log rotation may be built into the game server (e.g. Half-Life 2) or you may need to implement your own logfile rotation scripts. The network link capacity requirements can be estimated based on game server settings (such as snapshot and command transmission rates discussed in Chapter 10) and typical packet size distributions. (You will probably need to run some in-house trials of each game and map in order to measure the possible range of snapshot packet sizes.) If the server will be placed behind a NAT-enabled router, you will need to ensure the necessary ports are open on the router, so that people outside your network can properly connect to your game server. Some FPS games allow a choice of server platform (usually Linux or Microsoft s Windows). In general, it is far better to use a dedicated PC running Linux or FreeBSD (with FreeBSD s Linux-compatibility mode enabled), because they will simply be more stable platforms than a Windows box. Aside from the zero cost of obtaining and installing Linux or FreeBSD, a Linux-based or FreeBSD-based server can also be managed remotely over the network. This makes it easier to hide the physical box in a cupboard, rack or a Networking and Online Games: Understanding and Engineering Multiplayer Internet Games Grenville Armitage, Mark Claypool, Philip Branch . 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
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