Bloodmasters Server Manual
Dedicated Server Requirements
The Bloodmasters Linux dedicated server has been tested on Ubuntu, Debian and SuSE (using Novell Mono platform). The Windows version has been tested on Windows 2000 and Windows XP (using Microsoft .NET platform). The server needs relatively little CPU and bandwidth.
Dedicated servers require not to be disturbed by CPU-intensive applications. This is because the timing of the game server requires to be accurate. Hosting and playing a game on the same machine is not recommended. Dedicated servers also require a connection as close as possible to the backbones of the internet. Home internet connections go through several "hops" to get to these backbones, which increases latency significantly. Therefor, it is not recommended to host dedicated servers at home.
Installing the server on Linux
The Linux dedicated server requires to run with Mono, the .NET framework for Linux. You can download Mono here. For the requirements of Mono, please see the Mono documentation.
Download the Linux server installation from the downloads page and unzip it. In the General.rar directory is a file named glbsp.exe. You must change its properties to make it executable.
You can run the server like this: > mono bmserver.exe
You can specify different configurations like this: > mono bmserver.exe myconfig.cfg
NOTE: The linux version cannot read from .rar archives. You must unzip any .rar archive and make it a directory (WITH .rar extension). This means that if you install a new map with a file named bestmapever.rar, you will have to extract its contents and put them in a directory named bestmapever.rar.
More information on running .NET applications on Mono can be found here:
http://www.mono-project.com/Guide:Running_Mono_Applications
Installing the server on Windows
The Windows dedicated server is included with the standard game download.
Download the setup installation from the downloads page and run it. Follow the setup instructions and finish the installation.
You can run the server by just running bmserver.exe.
You can specify different configurations like this: > bmserver.exe myconfig.cfg
Dragging the configuration file onto the bmserver.exe file also works.
To save disk space, you can delete the files which the dedicated server doesn't need. These files and/or directories may be deleted: Music, Sprites, Flags.rar, Sounds.rar and Textures.rar.