---+ Server Admin Guide
---++ Server Admin Guide
This article is -unfinished-. You may help out by clicking the Edit box at the bottom.

---+++ System and bandwidth requirements
Bandwidth requirements for Paintball 2 are lower than most online games. Each user will consume about 30 kilobits per second (that's about 3 Kilobytes) – slightly more during lots of action. However, ping times are important, and most cable modems/DSL connections will not provide sufficiently low latency for hosting game servers.

System requirements are also low. A server running Windows 98 or above (NT/2K/XP recommended) should have 128 MB of RAM and a 300 mhz processor.
---+++ Software
For Windows and Linux, you will need the Paintball2 standalone distribution, and any maps you want to throw in.

For Linux, you may need some additional libraries. Glibc version 2.3 is the most common one that people need. Your distribution no doubt includes a package for this; check your distribution's package manager (in Debian, type:)

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade glibc
---+++ Configuration
Locate the server.cfg file in the pball/configs directory (paintball2 standalone) or pball directory (Quake2 mod). Read every line of this file carefully. The Generic Server Info section contains the information you will see in your server browser. The Message of the Day and Rotation files should be edited as well, more on that later. Uncomment the logging lines if you want logging. Below the logging options, you will see the game settings, beginning with the paint and smoke grenade count.

A brief explanation of the key variables:

Autojoin – Determines whether players will be assigned to teams on connect. Can be normal or off.

Ffire – Friendly fire. Usually off on public servers.

Grenadeffire – Determines whether your own grenades can kill you and your teammates.

Public – If this is set to 1, server will periodically contact the planetquake master server and insert itself into the public server list.

Tripping – This was an experimental way to curtail bunny hopping. It's annoying. Leave it at 0!

Real_ball_flight – Causes paintballs to shoot in random directions unless you have a barrel.

Ball_addplayerspeed – If set to 1, causes your velocity to be added to the velocity of any paintballs you shoot.

Elim – Elimination time in seconds.

Bouncy – If set to 1, paintballs bounce instead of break.

Deadtalk – If set to 0, eliminated players' chat will not be heard by alive ones.


Also, if you want a maplist, you will also need to edit rotation.cfg.

---+++ Running the server

NOTE: The Linux build of Quake2 requires glibc. To see if you have it, type ldd quake2 at your shell prompt. It comes standard with most modern Linux distributions. If you don't have it, consult your distro's package tool's documentation for help on how to install it.

In Windows, go to the Run dialog and type the following:

C:\path_to_paintball\paintball2.exe +set dedicated 1 +set maxclients 12 +exec server.cfg +map battle

In Linux, go to your quake2 directory and type the following:

NOTE: The & at the end of the command line indicates that the server will run in the background and all the console messages will be hidden. If you are starting the server for the first time, or if you are running in a desktop environment such as X Windows or KDE that supports multiple shell windows open at once, you may want to omit the & sign.

./quake2 +set game pball +set deathmatch 1 +set dedicated 1 +set maxclients 12 +exec server.cfg +map battle &

You should now be able to connect to your server.

Note: It is not recommended to run both the client and the server on the same computer.

---+++ Shutting Down the Server

Windows or Linux console: The server runs as a console window. In the window, type 'quit' and press enter.

Linux (background): The server runs as a process which can be killed with the kill command. Type ps or ps -a to get a list of processes on the system, then type kill , where  is the number of the process. The process is called quake2. See man kill and man ps for more information.