Dedicated server

[pedrus]

Hi guys,

A couple of days ago I discovered this open source project and really Im excited. I loved this game for years and now I just discovered this awesome version!!!

I was experimentating with the game and with dedicated servers. There's no problem creating servers, changing options etc. My question is about how they work. If I launch a dedicated server and let it connected for several days, people can enter play with their companies, log off and log in again to continue at the same point they leave it???In this case, if I shut down the server, it could be switched on again at the same point???

Im not sure if thats possible with dedicated servers.

Thanks a lot!!!

[planetmaker]

Yes. And yes.

Company passwords which your players set won't be restored if you restart the server (and load the savegame you hopefully created then before shutting down the server).

In my experience, good and popular servers mostly differ from bad servers in the administration, in that an admin (often from a team of admins) is around when players need one:
"Servers registered as on 2012-11-14 20:40:26 UTC. There are 218 clients, 242 IPv4 servers and 44 IPv6 servers.". Of course there will be an unannounced amount of not-public servers and many more people playing on their machine locally.

[pedrus]

Yes. And yes.

Company passwords which your players set won't be restored if you restart the server (and load the savegame you hopefully created then before shutting down the server).

In my experience, good and popular servers mostly differ from bad servers in the administration, in that an admin (often from a team of admins) is around when players need one.

I just read your comment and made a donation.

So, let me understand: Preconfigure the config file, connect the server(obvious), and what about password for companies???every time server saves (when a player left, etc.), launching server again is just loading last file??? How to configure a goal for the game???

Thanks!

[planetmaker]

The easiest way to configure a server is to prepare the map locally, including the game / goal script and upload it to the server. Just make sure that you have the goal script, its libraries (if any) and NewGRFs (if applicable) also available on the server. Then only the server-side settings in the openttd.cfg need be setup once and for all and that's it.

For the same setup but different maps, you do exactly what you just said, configure all stuff and then start server which will create a map. I'm actually not sure how you can configure a game script for automatically generated maps; that possibility might be missing for all I know.

With respect to savegames: upon startup no game is loaded automatically. You can specify via command line parameter a specific savegame to load, though. Or load one after startup via rcon. You have to know which is "the last savegame". It might be a good idea to activate automatic savegames (yearly or monthly).

Company passwords are obviously set by the players themselves, you have no influence there. But no passwords are saved within savegames, thus if you load a map, all companies will be without password.

[Zuu]

To explore which Game Scripts that are available for the OpenTTD version that you plan to run as server, I would recommend to start that OpenTTD version in GUI-mode and click on the "online content download" button in the main menu. The list will automatically be filtered to only contain content that is marked by content authors to work on your OpenTTD version. For example if you plan to run a 1.2.3 server, you will not see the Game Scripts that need a nightly build to work. (this list actually not only show Game Scripts, but also AIs, NewGRFs, scenarios etc.)

[pedrus]

Thank you very much for the info!!!

Just a last question: so theres no way to save the company passwords after launching the server and loading the game???
Well I told you a lie, one more question , how to load a autosave in console???I tried typing filename, folder\filename, number of filename... and no results :S

[Sylf]

The company password will stay with the company until the server is restarted, or the map is reloaded. So, if a player creates a new company with a password, play for a while, log off for the day, and come back the next day, the password will likely be still there if it's still the same map.

As for loading a sav file, you can use ls and cd commands at console. Once you're in the right directory in the console, use load command to load the file. See the wiki page for a brief summary of console commands.