FireDaemon

How do I increase my Game Performance

Games often require you to have a fast computer.  Especially newer games. If you encounter 25 FPS or lower in your games, then something is slowing it and affecting your game performance. You should (if possible) be running a minimum of 30FPS at all times or else it will be difficult to play the game smoothly.

The following steps will help you to increase your game performance:

1) Check your process list before starting your game.  Often anti-virus software and other applications that read or write to the hard drive will slow down your game performance.  Especially applications that defrag it, they really slow it down. › Continue reading

Tags: gaming, speed boost, tips, tweaking

HLSW for Server Admins – manage your game server

HLSW or Half-Life ServerWatch is an awesome administration tool to manage your game server. It’s primarily a tool for admins, but regular players can use it too (as a server browser).

With HLSW you can chat to players on your server without ever entering the server! You can execute RCON commands, change the map, etc.

HLSW supports many games aside from Half-Life 1 and Half Life 2. Some of the more popular ones are; Battlefield 2, Call of Duty (all games), Crysis, Neverwinter Nights and more. You can see the complete list at http://hlsw.org/hlsw/supported_games/

HLSW is freeware and compatible with Windows 2000 SP4, XP and Vista.

You can download it at http://www.hlsw.org

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HLSW

Tags: HLSW for Server Admins

GoldSRC/SRCDS RCON Security

Every GoldSRC and SRCDS server needs an RCON password. RCON passwords allow you to remotely control your server from the console or a 3rd party tool like HLSW.

Lately there have been more hackers who try to brute force guess your password. If they do guess your password, they can take complete control of your server like ban/unban players, change the hostname and change cvars.

There are a few things you can do to keep this from happening. The first thing is to pick a password that is not based on a dictionary word. It’s best if your password is over 12 characters long and has a mixture of letter, numbers and symbols. The symbols are key to make it extremely hard to crack. A good example password would be something like: ^#&r@p*RsG0.

Another thing you can do to stop or at least slow the hackers is to enable rcon protection cvars.

Use the following code in your “server.cfg” file (works in GoldSRC and SRCDS):

sv_rcon_banpenalty 60
sv_rcon_maxfailures 10
sv_rcon_minfailures 5
sv_rcon_minfailuretime 45

The code does the following:
sv_rcon_banpenalty : Number of minutes to ban users who fail rcon authentication
sv_rcon_maxfailures : Max number of times a user can fail rcon authentication before being banned
sv_rcon_minfailures : Number of times a user can fail rcon authentication in sv_rcon_minfailuretime before being banned
sv_rcon_minfailuretime : Number of seconds to track failed rcon authentications

This should slow down the hackers. It won’t stop them completely though.

Speeding up your SRCDS Server/Increasing System Speed

You can drastically increase the speed of your Windows SRCDS server with the following trick:

Download this tool and leave it running all the time. It’s best to give it its own FireDaemon service. You can also accomplish the same thing by running “Windows Media Player” but WMP uses far more memory (around 30MB compared to this app that uses 4MB).  You might be wondering what it does exactly?  Well it increases your server FPS by increasing windows responsiveness to download packets.  In other words, it increases the timer frequency.  By default, SRCDS servers run at 256FPS.  With this little tool running, you can run the server over 512FPS !

There is another very very useful thing about this tool.  It also increases general system responsiveness. This means that windows will load faster and so will any games you play!  It’s also good to use it on web servers.

As far as i know there is no adverse problems with using the tool 24/7 as Windows Media Player itself does the same thing and Microsoft never issued any warnings.

Troubleshooting SRCDS Crashes

The majority of Source Engine crashes are due to plugin errors and exceeding engine limits on maps. When you’re faced with a constant crash on your server, there are a few steps you should take to pinpoint the culprit.

First ask yourself a few questions: Does it always happen on the same map? Were players in the server when it crashed? Does it crash on startup or on map change?  Once you have the answers to these questions you can then start troubleshooting.

First off, try running the server with no plugins.  This means dont load metamod, sourcemod, Eventscripts, etc.  Let the server run like this for a few days.  If there are no crashes then you’ve at least pinpointed that its not a corrupt installation.  If it still crashes, than either you have a misconfigured CVAR or your installation is corrupt (delete all steam files and re-run the update process).  You will know if there is a crash by looking in the root directory of the server for MDMP files, MDMP files are created whenever you server crashes and are created at the time of the crash.  You can’t see whats in the MDMP file though, only the developer of the mod or game can.  MDMP files are just usefull so you know the date and time of the crash.

To troubleshoot plugin problems, first try running the server with the default plugins that came with your administration tool.  Than every day or few days after that add 3 to 6 of the custom plugins you are using.  If the server crashes again, than its likely one of the last few plugins you added so remove a few of them and let the server run for a few days again. This method can take a few days to a few weeks, but its the best way to find the plugin that is causing the crashes.

Running Insurgency Dedicated Server (INS DS) as a Service

Insurgency is a first person action game.

You can run your dedicated server as a Windows Service and by doing this you can start your dedicated server automatically at boot prior to login, start multiple instances of the dedicated server, restart the dedicated server if it shuts down or crashes and so forth.

We’ve created an easy step by step guide on how to run it as a Windows Service.

Let us know in the comments section what other games are you interested in? › Continue reading

Running Half-Life 2: Deathmatch Dedicated Server (HL2DM DS) as a Windows Service

Half-Life 2: Deathmatch is a first person action game.

You can run your dedicated server as a Windows Service and by doing this you can start your dedicated server automatically at boot prior to login, start multiple instances of the dedicated server, restart the dedicated server if it shuts down or crashes and so forth.

You can also use Trinity or PanelDaemon to manage FireDaemon and other Windows services via a web browser.

We’ve created an easy step by step guide on how to run it as a Windows Service.

› Continue reading

Tags: dedicated server as a service

Team Fortress 2 Dedicated Server (TF2 DS) as a Service

Team Fortress 2 is a first person action game. The dedicated server component can be run as a Windows Service using FireDaemon. FireDaemon will allow you to have the dedicated server start automatically at boot prior to login, allow you to start multiple instances of the dedicated server and so forth. This HOWTO will show you how set it up. You can also use Trinity or PanelDaemon to manage FireDaemon and other Windows services via a web browser.
› Continue reading

Tags: FireDaemon Tips & Tricks