So got a new wild hair and decided to jump into trying to make a private game server for myself and select individuals to play on. No fancy pictures but lots of words so TL:DR I have a game server DM me if you want to play (insert game here).
Most people use a spare pc they have laying about but my spare doesn’t have a solid state anything so i opted to buy a mini-pc. Its about 5x5x2" and packs a Ryzen 7, 32gb ram, and a terabyte of hard drive space. It set me back about $400.
After general set up I opted to loading in a management program ($20 license fee for options i chose) to give me a gui and simplify everything because im a complete infant with server things. After initial setup of that program I installed the first game server for Valheim, a viking inspired survival/building game. Thats when trouble started.
Took me a while to nail the right IP for the server (localhost only works if same machine aparently ) and got it where anyone on my lan could connect reliably. Required making a dedicated IP in my lan network but first success.
Then i went through the frustration of setting up a ddns host name (free for how i did it) so others outside my house can connect without me constantly having to update outside players of my external IP. After much hair pulling and port forwarding and deals with internet daemons I got this reliably working for external users to join. Bonus also allowed me to set the web gui for the management software so i can remotely manage all my servers from any browser, even my phone.
So mission accomplished after one weekend. Have a new server people are playing on that i can manage from anywhere any time. If anyone wishes to play Valheim send me a DM and I’ll message you with the domain name and the link for my private discord server for voice chat room. Looking at adding other games.
EDIT: In Game Pictures of my small Viking settlement myself and a few other players have made. The massive main structure is my construction with some other helping deforest the area around for wood.
In the sense of traditional in-the-same-room-with-network-cables no, but in the everyone can hop on and play at the same time yes.
My Valheim server is running right now and if people coordinate they can all play at the same time together. Add a mic and discord voice channels and its pretty much a lan party.
And thats kind of the good thing about an always-on server is that even if you can’t be on at the same time you can work on projects as long as there is some way to leave notes for people, which is where discord or a forum comes in handy.
I’m probably going to add a Minecraft Bedrock or Java server to my machine and im looking at free-to-play games Veloren and/or Project 5:Sightseers.
Ok, I have added a Team Fortress 2 and Minecraft Bedrock to my server. Looking for people to test the systems. If you wish to play either game the server hostname is:
-removed-
Put that address in when asked what game to join and that should get you in.
Any bedrock version of Minecraft should be able to connect (Xbox, Playstation, PC).
Please let me know how either run if you connect. I literally set both up while on a break at work.
If you need any help with the networking stuff let me know, I am Cisco Network Admin trained and I taught the Linux section of my A+ class cuz my teacher figured out I had more confidence in that than she did. I run several websites for small businesses and a minecraft java server.
I also used to run a Private World of Warcraft Server, which is where I taught myself SQL.
Don’t wanna take any of your joy of learning away just if you need any help with anything let me know.
Tried getting on your minecraft Bedrock server, but couldn’t connect probably did something wrong there, don’t play bedrock.
Test1 is using internal IP which reports all the stuff like it should, Test2 is using the hostname which acts like it can’t find the server but does connect if i just tell it to do it.
Edit2: External connections should ping the minecraft bedrock server correctly now.
Chained Together looks like one of those games designed to end in murder.
Im thinking after my adventures in game servers that i might see if IT has a desktop with OK equipment and try to plop a game server on it for local play inside MakeICT. Might make for a good lan party feel for those that are inclined.
Added a Valoren server. It is a voxel based MMORPG (Think minecraft visuals but World of Warcraft play) that is free to download and play. It requires you to make an account but the account is free and needs nothing from you but a user name and password so fairly annon-friendly. It’s Alpha release and has bugs but for an alpha release looks pretty amazing. Server is complete with a massive world with NPCs and monsters and randomly generated dungeons and quest encounters. Any MakeICT member can feel free to mull about and try it out. Player limit is set to 50 so I think I have plenty of room.
Edit: you can try adding ":14004" after the hostname (minus the "") and that should aim it directly to the server port the game is communicating on.
Protips for the game: start off small, hunt little creatures. Stay near towns. Death just takes away from equipment durability which you can repair in town for free at a repair bench.
I connected to the veloren server and it connected fine for me (I just used the address, it didn’t need the server port). I also tried connecting to the Team Fortress 2 server, maybe I’m doing something wrong, but I couldn’t connect to that one.
Unfortunately I removed my server hostname from this post. Few days ago someone tried to brute force then honeypot their way into the server. Luckily all the ports had the right protects on and the individual got ip banned but since this was the only place I posted the server seems most likely where the bad faith actor came from. If anyone is interested in playing on any of my game servers please DM me and I’ll send the particulars.
Sadly, this is just normal for anything connected to the internet. If ports are open, they will be found and probed. I once opened an external SSH port on a Raspberry Pi with default credentials and it was taken over within 30 minutes. The IP/domain were never shared with anybody, it was probably hit by a script that just constantly probes for easy targets.
It is also good to remember that this is a public forum, so anything posted here can be viewed by anyone with an internet connection and crawled by bots. I wouldn’t recommend posting personal information like phone numbers, personal emails, etc.
Oh there are systems that constantly scan for a open port 22. Anymore if I’m gonna run SSH I always use a public private key authentication scheme. It’s not foolproof nothing is, but it’s a lot lot better.
) and got it where anyone on my lan could connect reliably. Required making a dedicated IP in my lan network but first success.
I have about 180 hours in Valheim with friends!