Dedicated Server Configuration options on your windows PC

I really like the arma3 community’s set of dedicated hosting tools …

… but some of them don’t allow me to feed in my Missions > Params fully – which is a big deal if your mission PBO depends on certain settings.

So here is some of my findings that I had to learn to do more …

---

For starting out I recommend you use something from armaholics which has great reviews.

• Tip
  • I started with Tophe’s – Link
    • The disadvantage being that it rewrites the file everytime it opens & runs so you can’t paste in your own parameters

---

Using a shortcut

• Advantage
  • amazingly simple
  • Arma3 takes a wide range of parameters so it works really well
•  Disadvantages
  • You have to specify the full path of file locations if they aren’t in the arma3 server directory (which if you test more than one server or map … ouch)
  • This is a problem as windows shortcuts have a maximum character count (how many things you can do)
  • arma3server.exe – Link
  • Not meta data scripting
    • Do you want track how often you call this?
    • Do you want to display the paths being called before this?
    • Do you want to list the actual memory allocated and memory used by the machine before starting out?
• Tip
  • This limit of character count for the shortcuts can be by passed by using windows environmental variables to hold the path of the -config & other commandline parameters for the arma3server.exe – Link
  • My setup for the shortcut
    • “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Arma 3 Server\arma3server_x64.exe” -port=2302 -name=test-server -cfg=%ArmaBasic% -config=%ArmaServer% -profiles=%ArmaProfiles% -serverMod=@AntistasiServerMembers`
    • The environmental variables contained – Link

---

Using a batch file

• Advantage
  • You can do just about anything
• Disadvantage
  • You need to learn how to use this huge wide open system
• Tip
  • Find some of the simple examples
    • Here is mine file – Link
  • Use echo %var% & Pause to read the variables are correct before executing the start of the server
    • Might need to enabled delayed variable usage – Link
  • I got my reminder to use batch files from
    • Last Resort Gaming – Link
    • My batch
    • Example of output

---

Dedicated Server – understanding the setup

• Maps
  • names
    • map folders are stand in’s for the names
    • should only have a single .
      • the part after the dot is base map name which the mission runs – not sure why this is a thing, but if you mess it up – it will be an issue
    • should not have _ character
  • Multiple player maps go in mpMissions
• Arma 3 Server app has to have it’s own steam app ID, but you have to change it to the Arma 3 ID later