Mac Server Tutorial

Written and tested by Jesse O. for the AssaultCube community

This tutorial is an attempt to cover every step of making a server on a Mac

computer. If you encounter any errors in this tutorial, please send me an email at
jesseo@rochester.rr.com.

Copyright Jesse O. / Offy Studios 2009

STEP 1: PORT FORWARDING
This is the first and most confusing step, yet still the most vital, as without
forwarding your ports, you will not be able to host an internet server (this applies
to any game/ game engine). To forward ports go to http://portforward.com/. Once
there, scroll down and you will see a giant list of router names. The router is the
little box with lights that connects you (wirelessly or with a cable) to the modem,
which opens your computer to the lovely Internet. Popular router brands are D-
Link, Linksys, and Netgear. Find the router in your home and look for its brand
name and model name (i.e.: D-Link DI-624). Once you have that information, find
your router on that giant list on portforward.com, click on it, and you will be asked
to choose one of many applications for port forwarding procedures.
AssaultCube will not be on that list, but click on any application (I
recommend Age of Empires, but it really doesnʼt matter). Ok, now for the tricky
bit. Your router has a default IP address (192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 are quite
common). Type that number with the decimal points into your web browser and
press enter.

You should have loaded a page that asks for a password and what type of login
(admin, user, etc). Choose admin and find out what your password is. Common
default passwords are admin, password, and (typing in) nothing. Check this list if
all else fails: http://www.phenoelit-us.org/dpl/dpl.html. If you are still with me, you
should have loaded some weird page that has a menu bar on top and on the
side.

Note: Your page will not necessarily look like this image, depending on your
router information.
You should see on the top bar an “Advanced” category. Click that. Now a menu
on the side should have popped up. This is where things get very different. You
should see a button on the side that says Port Forwarding. If you donʼt, then click
on Virtual Server. Chances are the portforward.com tutorial covers this. If not,
Google it.
 When you find the port forwarding menu, you should see a place to type in
an application name, a TCP, UDP, or BOTH section, and your computerʼs IP.
How this page is setup will vary. Hopefully the portforwarding.com instructions
will help you through these steps.

For Application Name, case sensitive, type in the exact name of your app
(AssaultCube). For the IP address, type in your computer's IP address (note, this
is similar, but NOT the same as the one you typed into your browser to get here.)
For the UDP and TCP section, type in both 28763 and 28764. You might have to
select both, just make sure that both numbers are stored for both port types.
Finished putting in the info? However you do it, you should end up forwarding
28763 and 28764 for TCP and UDP. Save settings, reboot you router (should be
automatic after saving,) and you have finished step 1!!

A few of you may have to look for the firewall tab and change that to open.
Most Macs probably wont have this turned on as it is a bigger problem for PCʼs.
STEP 2: SETTING UP A SERVER
Open AssaultCube. You should have a nice little window that lets you change
certain settings. Click on “Servers” on the top menu bar. If you followed the steps,
you should see this:

To set up the server, you need to give AssaultCube settings for the server
(description, max clients, etc) and you must do this in an odd way. Each setting is
preceded by a “ – “ followed by a certain letter. Here are some commands and
their function:

-o (message of the day)

-n (server description)
-c (max clients)
-D (permanent demo recording. Note the capital D, that's important)
-k (kick threshold)
-y (ban threshold)
-x (admin password)
-N (system log string)

Note: there are more, but these are all you need to get started. They are also
case-sensitive.
Here is an example of how it works:
You want a message of the day (MOTD) to say "Welcome to my Server". In the
Advanced Options, you'd type that in like this: -o"Welcome to my Server"
It might not read the quotes correctly, but that's ok for now.
Max clients of 12 = -c12
Password of 1234 = -x1234
Get the idea?

So here is a basic server, with a description as "My_Server", 10 max clients,

admin password as 1234, "Welcome" as the MOTD, -4 kick threshold, and -5 ban
threshold.

-nMy_Server -c10 -x1234 -oWelcome -k-4 -y-5

Copy paste the above line directly into Advanced Options and click Start on the
bottom right, if it works, it should say, "Master Server reply: Registration
successful…"

Notice I didnʼt add any quotations. This is because the MOTD and description
were one word, respectively. If you want the description to be multiple words then
just type in your description in the empty box at the top of the window, without
quotes, instead of in the Advanced Options. This is due to the quotations being
misread.
STEP 3: ADDING COLOR
Adding color is what makes the server description and MOTD look cool. It also
gives clans a chance to categorize their servers.
To add colored words in the MOTD and server description, all you have to do is
this add \f followed by a specific number:

\f1 = blue
\f2 = yellow
\f3 = red
\f4 = dark grey
\f5 = white
\f6 = dark red

Now, for example, to make a server that says "My" in yellow and "Server" in red,
you simply type in \f2My \f3Server for the Server Description box. Notice that you
don't need a space between the code (\f#) and the words.
Step 4: Controlling Your Server
Now itʼs time to spice up your server! You probably want to claim admin
powers, change maps, add a blacklist, and add a whitelist to your server.
The easiest is claiming and dropping admin powers:

/setadmin 1 yourpassword this claims admin power

/setadmin 0 yourpassword this drops admin power

To change the game mode and map, type in:

/mode # when you type in /mode, a small menu comes up. Pick the
number of your choice and put that in for #. For example,
/mode 1 will make a coop edit mode.

/map mapname correct spelling of the map name is necessary here.

Remember that when youʼre admin, calling a new mode or map will not
raise a vote as you have supreme power on your server. This also applies for
when you are voting on other peopleʼs votes.

For the next steps, you will have to right-click on the AssaultCube app and
select Show Package Contents as seen below. (My AssaultCube icon is slightly
different than yours.)
 Once you have done this, a new window will pop up with a folder named
Contents. Click on it, then click on the gamedata subfolder, followed by the config
subfolder.

To change maprot settings (maprot activates maps on the server

automatically) click on maprot.cfg. There are instructions written into that file as
to go about and change the settings, so I wont bother talking about them here.

You can also specify which maps will never be allowed on your server by
editing mapblacklist.cfg. To add a map, just type in the map name on a separate
line. It is recommended that maps with inappropriate names be placed here.
 Now for the most entertaining and useful part of server operation:
nicknameblacklist.cfg. Click on that file (this is still under the config folder). Here
is where you can put nicknames that will be banned from your server. You can
also specify nicknames to be allowed on the server too.
You can find an official blacklist on the assault.cubers.net/forums website.
Go to a new line and type the following in to block someone:

blocki name blocki tells the server to block any spelling of name.

Here is an example of the actual AssaultCube blacklist:

Note: text preceded by // will be interpreted as comments.

To protect a name, such as clan-mates, switch blocki with accept.

accept {CLANAWESOME}name

This is useful if you blocked (example) noob but want to accept noobkiller. If you
didnʼt put accept, noobkiller would be blocked since noob is in their name.

To add info to you server (accessed through the in-game menu) open up
the serverinfo_en.txt file. At the bottom, write whatever you want. This will be
added to the server info tab. Here is an example from my info (liable to change):
If you want a hardcoded password for your server go to the serverpwd.cfg file.
All you have to do here is type in:

password yourpword Now you donʼt have to do the –x command I showed

you at the very beginning of the tutorial.

You may have noticed that a lot of interesting files are under the config subfolder.
Feel free to look into them and change them, but I warn you to save backups in
case you do something bad.

Step 5: Alternate Server Setup

To do this alternate server setup, download the required application from:
http://www.mediafire.com/?iieyiyumkqz

This application, contributed by Silent from the AssaultCube community, is an

extremely easy, terminal server.
Once downloaded, expand the file and open the AssaultCube Server.app:
 For the first two tabs, find the location of your AssaultCube.app folder
(which should hold the file in it.) It would be best to put it in the /Applications
subdirectory, as thatʼs what has been defaulted here. If it is somewhere else then
you have to type in the correct path to your file (capitalization matters).
Once that has been done, you can skip the second tab, as that does not
need to be changed.

For the remaining tabs, type in whatever you want. The best thing is that
you donʼt need quotations around the words and that you can use the color
commands mentioned earlier.
Donʼt end the MOTD or Description with an exclamation point. It seems that
it is read as code.

When you press Start Server, the terminal will open up and record everything that
happens on your server. Quitting the terminal will stop your server.

Enjoy your server and please donʼt abuse your powers. You want to keep a good
reputation with the AssaultCube community.