Making a Strikeforce 1.75 server

It is quite easy to make a server, the hard part is getting the final things done. This guide describes the steps needed to setup a Dedicated Strikeforce server on a Windows machine. If you need help or has any question about Strikeforce servers, then post the question at the Strikefoce General Discussion forum or you may contact me by E-mail on keymaster@mail.dk or on ICQ# 78312331, and I will try to help you with your problems

First some basic information about the UT Engine that make the base of the Strikeforce server.

Server hardware and bandwith

A strikeforce server does not require that mutch CPU power, a 16 player server will run very good on a Pentiom III 500 MHz CPU with 156 MB memory, a 10/12 players only needs a Pentium II 350 MHz with 128 MB memory. However if you are planning on using an old Intel Celeron PC, you will need a little more MHz, as the 2. level cache is a lot lower than on a Standard Pentium 2 or 3. The UT server makes very good use of the 2. level cache, so CPU's with 256 or 512 kb level 2. cache is prefered.

As for bandwith, you will need at least 40 kbit per player up and down, that makes the servers netspeed at 5000. With this it is possible to run a 12 player server on a 512/512 ADSL line or similar. Bare in mind that not all ADSL lines has the bandwith that you think it has, but never lower the netspeed below 5000, reduce the maxplayers instead. If there is plenty of bandwith avalible, netspeed does not realy matter and you can leave it at the default witch is 10000. The max bandwith the server will use anyway is 6500, so setting the netspeed at 7000 is sufficient, and will make a lag free game for all.

As for the operating system, I personally prefer Windows NT 4.0 SP6a the advantage of Windows NT 4.0 is that you will have

•  less memory used by the OS ( yes it uses less menmory than Linux )
•  you can use the webadmin interface
•  you can use highbit characters in playernames and chat window

The disadvantage is that it costs money, but that is your problem. Linux makes fine servers to, but there is the small disadvantage of not be able to use the Webadmin and the highbit characters in names is not shown. I do not recomend Windows 2000 as it has a bug that makes the server lag very bad. It should be fixed in SP2 for Windows 2000, but Win2k servers still lag. I have no knowledge on how a SF server will run on Windows XP. Windows 98/ME can be used to, but is not recomended.

NOTE: A patch for the IPDRV.DLL has been released by Epic today. This patch should fix the Creeping Ping problem on Windows 2000 Servers. I have not been able to test it, but aparetly it should work. Read the good news at The Admin Page and browse the site, there might be other usefull stuff there for you.

Firewalls and Routers

Some servers are behind a firewall, and therefore you need to open some ports in the firewall or router before players can access the server. Assuming we are using default the ports are like this

UT Server install

There is 2 options for the server install:

1. the server only http://www.fileplanet.com/index.asp?section=670&file=51923
2. the standard UT from the CD and the 436 patch http://www.fileplanet.com/index.asp?section=670&file=51913

The server only does only use less than 200 MB so if you have a problem with diskspace this is the one to use. However some maps does not work on the Server only install, as they have some binding to the UnrealEd programm, and that is not included in the server only install. So to be safe use the UT CD and the 436 patch.

Some say that you also need the UT Bonus packs, well "YOU DONT" it is just because that they want to use some of the sound packs tha came with the Bonus Pack like the Skarrj and the nali cow. You dont need it, so leave it off.

The Strikeforce Server

When UT and the UTpatch 436 has been installed, install the Strikeforce 1.75 like you did on your client, when done start your favorite text editor, like notepad and open the file C:\Unrealtournament\SYSTEM\Strikeforce.ini

I will now guide you through the basic changes to the ini file to make a Team DeathMatch server

1. find the line ServerActors=IpServer.UdpServerUplink MasterServerAddress=master.mplayer.com MasterServerPort=27900 and delete it, MPlayer does not exist anymore so it will produce an error in the console
2. find the line MaxClientRate=10000 and change it according to your bandwith, see above for guidelines
3. find the section [Engine.GameReplicationInfo] and update the ServerName, Administrator and Administrator e-mail address, You may also update the the MOTD lines with some text, you would like the players to see when they connect to the server.
4. find the section [Engine.GameInfo] and change the parameters AdminPassword, GamePassword if it not a public server and MaxPlayers according to your bandwith

These options is basic for the server, the following options controls the configuration of the Strikeforce game

1. find the section [SFGame.SFTeamDM] the interesting parameters here is Rounds=5, FriendlyFireScale=0.000000, TimeLimit=4, bSwapBase=True these values are very close to to what is preffered by the community for a public Strikeforce server, however I would recommend that the Rounds parameter is set to 10 or 11
2. find the section [SF.SFPlayerReplicationInfo] this section will allow to set if players should be able to use Dual Primary Guns, if bDualGun2=True and bDualGun=True then dual guns is allowed, setting them to false, and you are only allowed 1 Primary weapon

That is it! very simple right, now to start your dedicated Strikeforce Server go into the C:\UnrealTournament\SF_SYSTEM folder and dobbelt click on the file TeamDMserver.bat and your server should start and be ready for some fun hours.

IMPORTANT: If you make the server at home on your ADSL line, you will not be able to see the server in the browse list under the TDM server tab, but it will be listed in the LAN servers TAB, this is correct behavior and not an error. Have a friend check to se if the server is in the TDM Server list.

SFMapVote configuration

SFMapVote is pretty much configured, however there are some options that you might whant to change.

KickPercent=51
Getting players to kick a TeamKiller can be pretty hard, so by setting this option lower less votes is nessesary. setting it at 49% will kick the TK with 7 out of 16 votes, and 51% kicks the TK with 9 out of 16 votes. There is actually a big difference and 7 votes will be more appropiate.

RepeatLimit=1
This one controls when the last maps is allowed to be played again. The setting of 1 wont let you vote for the map that you just played. Setting it to 7 would be more appropiate for a public server, and this will also force more maps into play, as 7 maps has to be played berfore you can play the same map again.

bUseMapList=False
If there are some maps that you would like to skip completely, you can have SFMapVote to select maps from the maplists in the Strikeforce.ini file and not load all the maps from the SF_MAPS directory. If you set this option to True, remember to edit the map list in Strikeforce.ini.

By default it is possible to vote for maps in all game types, I would recommend you to leave it like that if you are setting up a public server. In previous versions of Strikeforce there where only TDM servers, and those that would like to play Escape or Hostage Rescue, had no servers to play on.

Other usefull options

[UWeb.WebServer]

The UT engine has a webserver admin interface, this can be used to control some of the options on the Strikeforce server, but not them all. By default the web admin server is disabeld. Find the [UWeb.WebServer] and change the parameter bEnabled= to True. If not listed add a parameter below named ListenPort=8080. Also in the sction below named [UTServerAdmin.UTServerAdmin] here you can change the AdminUsername and the AdminPassword by default you can login with Admin/Admin.

To access the webadmin interface start your web browser and connect to the servers IP address eg. http://192.168.0.3:8080/ and log in with the webadmin username and password

NOTE: Be carefull with the Admin webserver on Linux, as it can make the server lag and eventually crash

[IpDrv.TcpNetDriver]

If you have plenty of CPU power it is possible to increase the number of updates send to the client. The parameter NetServerMaxTickRate=20 makes the server send 20 updates per. second to the client. Setting this to "30" should give better player predictions on the server. Changeing this will result in a huge increase of CPU usage, and I must say that I can't realy feel any difference to the game when changed.

[IpDrv.HTTPDownLoad]

If you are planning on having custom maps on your server it would be a good idea to to have the possibillity for redirected download. The problem is that if you connect to the server that runs a custom map, the download will be sent by the server at the speed defind by the MaxClientRate parameter. This is very slow, so by using the redirected download option, it is possible to use the full bandwith of the client, so if the connecting client has a 512 kbit Internet connection, it will download at 50 Kbytes/sec.

First you need a webserver, unless your server has more than 2 Mbit avalible I would recomend that the web server is placed else where. Modify the RedirectToURL= to point to your webspace like:

RedirectToURL=http://www.somewebhost.com/sfmaps/

Remember the trailing / or it will not work

You will also notice the parameter UseCompression=True, this meens that it is possible to compress the .UNR and .UTX files and make them smaller so the download will be faster. To compress your costom maps, you have to use the dedicated server programm UCC.EXE. After you have downloaded the map, extract them to a new folder on yor disk eg. C:\NEWMAPS\, then open a command prompt and write

C:\UnrealTournament\system\ucc compress c:\newmaps\mapfile.unr

after a few seconds the will be a new file in the NEWMAPS directory with the extension .uz like mapfile.unr.uz this is the compressed version of the map, at this is the file that should be placed at the webhost for the clients to download. I is possible to compress all the file types for UT/SF, and not only UNR files

Strikeforce console commands

Actually it is quite easy to find the command you need to do console admin in UT/SF. Look at the console commands as a "line editor" for the Strikeforce.ini and the SFUser.ini

Now the syntax:
<Command> <Section> <Parameter> <Value>

Now open up your Strikeforce.ini file in Notepad and find the section named [SFGame.SFTeamDM] in that section there is a line that says bSwapBase=True. To change that to false you will have to type the command:

set SFGame.SFTeamDM bSwapBase False

set = Command
SFGame.SFTeamDM = Section
bSwapBase = Parameter
False = Value

So now you know ho to enable and disable BaseSwapping, and you should be able to findout how to modify other parts of the game by console commands. If you do it on a server, you have to be logged in as admin, and you must include "admin" infront of the command like:

admin set SFGame.SFTeamDM bSwapBase False

You can also have the game tell you what the value of a Parameter is by replacing "set with "get" so to find out what the FF is, type

get SFGame.SFTeamDM FriendlyFireScale

Changes that you make is written to the inifile instantly, and they will be active instantly.

Below you can find a list of the most used commands, to save you the time for finding them your self

Other nice things for the Strikeforce server

There are some mutators made by the community that will add some value to your Strikeforce server. I can recommend itseStats if you would like to have some player statstics for your server. It is very easy to install and it works quite well. There is also itseAdmin that will give you some easyer admin commands, and the oppetunity to kick players with the wierd names, without using the Webadmin interface.

There is also the Webchatlogger for Unreal made by BDB that logs all text from the chat console to a webpage and viwed with a browser

You can also check the UT Server Adminpage for tools for your server