Renting an OpenTTD server

[Dave4TW]

Hi,
Me and some friends are interested in having our own OpenTTD server which will be up 24/7. Most of the internet servers on OpenTTD run vanilla settings/newGRF and thus the game is quite easy. We are hoping to enrich the existing offer of internet servers by adding a 'Pro server', if you will. This will run, amongst other things, Hard industries, increased landscaping costs, new train sets to spice things up a bit. No more mindless building of tracks & vehicles, you actually have to think very wisely about your investments. For this reason, we will most likely disable planes as well. 2000x2000 map so there's room for everybody. We want to be able to play the game, and come back 12-24h later and still be able to hop into the same company and continue where we left off.
Hosting it on our own PCs would be pricey due to power cost, and renting a dedicated server/VPS is quite expensive as well.

So we were wondering: Does anyone here offer OpenTTD hosting or know anyone that does? In form of gameserver renting basically, for x amount of money per slot.

Thank you for your time.

Edit: If such a server already exists, I would appreciate it if someone could give me the name, so we can simply play on that instead

[Alberth]

Euhm, start openttd, click 'multiplayer', click 'find server' or so, and voila a long list of openttd servers. Why not try a few until you find one that you like?

[Dave4TW]

Oh I definitely have tried quite a few and looked through even more, but there's not a single server out there that's configured exactly the way we would prefer. Maybe we're being picky but the game is just so much more fun when it's harder.

[petert]

Ah, you want a challenge? Download Bigos' patchpack (http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?p=839881#p839881) and join his server (http://www.openttd.org/en/server/23207).

Merry Christmas!

[orudge]

There was talk a couple of years ago about an "official" OpenTTD server renting service. However, that never really materialised. My own company, Zernebok Hosting, does offer pretty reasonable VPS hosting, which you could of course run OpenTTD on. If that's not affordable for you, then we could perhaps come up with something more specific to OpenTTD. Feel free to PM me if this interests you.

[maartena]

I think the powercost of hosting it on your own PC is significantly less then hosting it elsewhere. I have 3 PC's running 24/7, and my winter electricity bill (summer is more because of AC) never exceeds $75 a month. And that is including everything else in my house.

Since a OpenTTD can, under certain circumstances, really produce quite a lot of CPU utilization, especially with large maps, you probably won't find a service that will allow you to run it in a unix shell. I would re-consider hosting at home. You could, if concerned about power, also see if you can use an old laptop for this cause, and configure it to run all the time. Not much noise there either.

[planetmaker]

I think the powercost of hosting it on your own PC is significantly less then hosting it elsewhere.

Add to that the cost of a constant IP address assigned to your landline and you're for that and the needed bandwidth increase you might want to buy as well most probable beyond what a cheap VPS costs you.

So, yes, your statement might be true, if you anyway have the ultimate home flatrate at your ISP and a constant IP provided by them. But that cannot be considered standard, especially the latter. And DynDNS is no option for a 24/7 streaming server (which a running OpenTTD game basically is, even if only at 2kbit / connected client or so and the map uploads).

[Redirect Left]

I've rented servers for OpenTTD before, I use a company called serverFFS. (http://serverffs.com)
Reasonable prices, I use it for Left 4 Dead, San Andreas Multiplayer, Webhosting, and of course, OpenTTD.

PS: If you do buy anything from serverFFS (or anyone else does) I'd appreciate it if you use this link, then anything you pay, I will get cash off anythign I later buy: https://www.serverffs.com/referral/jolteon/ - thanks

[audigex]

If you've got a static IP at home (fairly rare these days, but there are still companies which do it) then your power usage will be cheaper than any rental of a server. The only way you'd get cheaper hosting is if you get it on a shared box, but the company would quickly get fed up of your high cpu usage.

[Redirect Left]

If you've got a static IP at home (fairly rare these days, but there are still companies which do it) then your power usage will be cheaper than any rental of a server. The only way you'd get cheaper hosting is if you get it on a shared box, but the company would quickly get fed up of your high cpu usage.

OpenTTD only uses A LOT of CPU if you leave it running 24/7, and never restarting it (neverending server)
If you restart it after say, 150 years, it's fine. (This is from actual experience with OpenTTD servers)

[MrSmoke]

i would host it for you if you were in australia...but because ur probs not u will get lag so i wouldnt bother lol

[gijs007]

You can rent OpenTTD game servers at Elite Game Servers.net: https://www.elitegameservers.net/game-s ... er-hosting

[Redirect Left]

You can rent OpenTTD game servers at Elite Game Servers.net: https://www.elitegameservers.net/game-s ... er-hosting

Get your own 10 slot server for € 4.70 per month!

€4.70 for 10 slots. You can literally buy a VPS for cheaper than that from many cheap hosts, for about €25 you can also buy a Raspberry Pi 3 and host your own server at home at no extra cost other than usual internet bills (it doesn't need that much upload). Alternatively you can just host a server at home using your normal computer whenever your friends get together to play.

SSD's for the Ultimate Performance!

This 'feature' is of no benefit. OpenTTD servers would perform as expected on even the slowest of normal HDDs.

[_dp_]

CityMania servers are quite a 'pro' ones. But it may not be what you think to be 'pro'. Because it's not that hard to start making decent money there (though many players struggle even with that). But overall setup is quite competitive and we have a high scores that actually make sense. And to beat those you need extremely good game knowlege and building speed.

[NekoMaster]

At the moment hosting my own server on my own computer is the best option as I've already figured out how to port forward in Windows Firewall as well as my current SmartRT router provided by TechSavvy here in Canada.

There was a time when I might have rented a low end server for say, minecraft but 13 dollars a month for a 10 player server is a bit much and I don't want to spend money on something i'm only going to use for a month or two and then move on to the next thing that interests me.

Though honestly if you can figure out how to port forward on your router/modem router, then you should be able to host a bunch of servers as OpenTTD isn't a very demanding game (Back in 2010 I was playing OpenTTD 1.2.0 on a Pentium 1 Laptop with 166Mhz, 16MB of Memory, and 1.1MB of VRAM, and it ran rather well at 800x600).

I imagine that for best results, perhaps run only as many servers as you have CPU cores to keep things running smoothly if you ever want to host multiple servers (maybe to help others out that can't host a server)

I would host a server for others if I felt my computer was up to the task but while I have the computing power with an AMD Phenom II x4, Windows 10 likes to update itself when it feels like it, plus my aging hardware sometimes blue screens for no good reason, and finally the one thing I cannot control is that the power grid in Oshawa can be rather crappy at times, with brown outs and black outs happening. Back in November North Oshawa had a nice black out that left people in the dark all night due to faulty power line work and a major Substation tripping breakers while they where trying to fix the problem.

[pelya]

OpenTTD will run just fine on the cheapest VPS server.
After monitoring https://lowendbox.com/ for some time, I've scored $13/year promo deal for VPS server with 512 Mb RAM and 2 CPUs of unknown speed.
It runs two Quake 3 servers just fine, low ping and low CPU usage, so OpenTTD should work on it with zero issues.
It has random downtimes from time to time, but they happen much less often than power and internet outages on the ODroid shoebox server ar my home (it's basically RaspberryPI with faster CPU).

You can go even cheaper - $10/year, if you will buy a single-CPU host.

[Redirect Left]

If your internet connection is anywhere near modern standards. You can just use a Raspberry Pi (preferably 3) which is very low watt usage compared to a PC, and also has other uses after your OpenTTD addiction wears off.

[pelya]

RaspberryPI CPU was just too slow for Quake 3 server that I wanted to run on it.
I think OpenTTD would do better, if you won't host huge maps.
So I went for another ARM barebones PC called ODroid, it was for around $80.
New Raspberry PI 3 should be powerful enough for Quake 3 though, it's quad-core 1.2 GHz CPU.
Another issue is random power outages at my home, dedicated host works better in this regard.
One problem with dedicated hosts is that all the cheapest ones are in US. Good luck finding anything cheaper than $5/month in Asia or Australia

[NekoMaster]

If ARM isn't enough for your needs, you could also try the LattePanda. It costs around 80-90 dollars for one without Windows 10 installed/activated or 120-130 dollars for one with Windows 10 installed and activated.

Mind you they come with a Quad Core ATOM CPU at 1.8 Ghz with 2GB of RAM. I imagine thats more then enough to host or play OpenTTD.

https://www.dfrobot.com/category-177.html

I saw the LattePanda while watcing "explainingcomputers" on youtube

---

If buying something brand new for around 100 bucks isn't your thing, you could also try your local Thrift shop or pawn shops or ebay for used computers, I imagine you can get a decent enough OpenTTD server desktop for a couple bucks (and maybe a couple more if you want a monitor and mouse/keyboard for it to make things easier)

[pelya]

I have just found a hosting provider that offers VPS Linux box with 128Mb RAM and 2 Gb storage, based on location, for €3.50 per year.

€3.50 per year.

Please allow me to repeat that.

3.50 euros per year.

And they offer servers in Europe, US, and Japan, although Japan location only offers 1Gb storage.

I've started OpenTTD 1.7.0 dedicated server there, with 512x512 map and default settings, it uses 25% of that 128 Mb RAM, it's called 'pelya's showbox', and located in Japan.

You will need some pretty solid Linux knowledge to set it up, they run Debian, and there's no other choice of OS.

Here's their site: http://www.lowendspirit.com/locations.html