Dedicated Game Server

[booman]

I have decided to re-visit Dedicated Game Servers again.
My LAN consists of 6 gaming Windows computer and a Fedora 16 server.

I have hosted many offline games for LAN parties in Fedora and they have worked beautifully in the past... thanks to Valve.

I currently host:

• Unreal Tournament 3
• Battlefield 2
• The Ship
• Quake Wars
• Doom 3 + Mods

I was doing some research and found that Valve has stopped using the hldsupdatetool in favor of the new SteamCMD
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamCMD#Linux

Here is a list of Games supported by the SteamCMD tool:
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Dedicated_Servers_List

I plan to check out these games:

• Alien Swarm
• Just Cause 2
• Left4Dead 2
• Team Fortress 2

It doesn't speicify if the Alien Swarm or Just Cause have Linux versions...
I know Alien Swam didn't have one in the past, so we'll see.

I'm hoping to do some Guides in the process.

 

[booman]

I just got Team Fortress 2 and Left4Dead 2 running as listenserver.
I'll see how well the performance is with 6 computers.
I already ran Team Fortress 2 with 6 computers and everything was smooth as silk.
I had no idea this was already implemented without a dedicated server.
The catch with TF2 is not all maps have bot pathing. Only certain maps.

But I'm sure that Left4Dead 2 will work perfectly because its made for Cooperative gameplay.
So maybe I'll do a guide on how to run a listenserver for offline LAN parties in Linux Steam

 

[Aryvandaar]

I don't have a server I've made yet, becasue I haven't been able to get a computer to use as a dedicated server. However, I do rent a virtual container from Daniel Drobbins. For those who don't know of him, he's the founder of Gentoo, and now currently the project lead for Funtoo.

On the server I run a private Minecraft server with some friends.

 

[booman]

That is great. I'm guessing you are running Linux as your Minecraft server?

I've always had some kind of central repository for all of my files, games, media, backups, etc.
Fedora has served me well.
I used Fedora 8 for years and never updated it or upgraded it. Then I got a SuperMicro server donated to me. So I put Fedora 16 on it.
I still host that list of games on it locally with my 6 LAN gaming computers.
I was just thinking of some more Linux guides, but Left4Dead and Team Fortress 2 are very optimized for listenserver.
So I may have to go "oldskool" and do a guide for Battlefield or Quake Wars.... something like that.

 

[booman]

Turns out Left4Dead 2 also has an 8 player "versus" mode
As long as you aren't hosting games for 32-64 players online, running a dedicated server really isn't necessary.
Or if the game doesn't have a built-in listen server.

Almost all Valve games have a listenserver and you can host the game on your fastest computer.
Should handle it fine