[Tutorial] How to deploy on Digital Ocean! (+some questions)

[stan]

I've decided to share a quick tutorial on how you can run dedicated servers on digital ocean! But I also have a few questions towards the end!

• Go to digital ocean and create a droplet (the 10$ is good!) with ubuntu 16.
• Once it's created, SSH into it with "ssh root@DROPLET_IP_ADDRESS"
• run "sudo apt-get update"
• now we need mono to run the TNServer.exe, so "sudo apt-get install mono-complete"
• now we can run the TNServer.exe -- easiest way to transfer the TNServer.exe to your droplet is probably creating a github repository with it and then just pull it to the droplet
• now you can run "mono TNServer.exe"!

The first question to Aron: I remember a long time ago this forum required verification? Where can I verify my purchase (I own both NGUI and TNet 3).

Also, when deploying this in production and distributing our modified version of TNServer for users to run their own servers (like rust or minecraft), how do we handle steam authentification? It seems like all steam games have "SteamCMD" (http://www.rustafied.com/how-to-host-your-own-rust-server/), do we hook this up to TNet?

[cmifwdll]

As far as I know, SteamCMD is basically a headless steam client. I may be wrong, but I think if you want your players to be able to download your server application through Steam (or SteamCMD) you'd have to register the server app just as you would your actual game and get it its own unique appID. I don't know how publishing on Steam works because I'm not a real game developer yet, so you probably have a better idea of how that process works.

You could also just pack your server with your client (like in a separate Server folder), but I think you already know that.

[ArenMook]

Steam server hosting is different from TNet. It's meant for a very small number of players (think no more than 4-player coop games), and it's done by basically sending messages through Steam's API that will be forwarded to other clients. It's nothing more than a mirror to bounce your packets against.

TNet is not related to that in any way, nor does it need Steam. That said, I've done Steam integration in the past with Windward, and most recently with Sightseer, if you can call it "integration". I basically host a local TNet server as normal then use Steam's API to set the user's public status to be playing the game, with a public IP address that their friends can then join by right-clicking the friend's name in their friends list. Doing so effectively sends a notification to the Steam's API that you can then catch and initiate the connection within your game.

[cmifwdll]

I think he was asking how to distribute just the TNet server to his players. Like how if you go to Library > Tools in Steam it'll show a bunch of game servers you can download and run. These can also be downloaded through SteamCMD.

But yeah, Steamworks.NET would be what you'd use for the Steam client integration. Valve provides documentation for the Steamworks API on their partner site: https://partner.steamgames.com/documentation/api
Might find some stuff about registering a separate dedicated server appID there too.

[stan]

Just what I needed -- thanks for the replies!