For whatever reason, you might want to run your own server instance. The official install guide may sometimes be a bit confusing. Therefore, here is a tutorial to install and configure your own Pwn Adventure 3 server.
note: Should you want to quickly deploy the server in a docker, LiveOverflow has created a tutorial for that: https://github.com/LiveOverflow/PwnAdventure3
According to the requirement listed on the official page, you need an Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit with at least 2Go of RAM. I recommend the desktop version since at some point you will have to run the client version in order to get the data (map, texture, game engine, etc) files locally.
note: Ubuntu 16.04 Server/Desktop works as well
In my case, I installed Ubuntu Desktop VM with 5.5Go of RAM on VirtualBox.
You first need to create the user pwn3. Once the installation done, you should install the latest updates:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
Then you will need to download both the server and the Linux client archives and extract them in a new folder ~/PwnAdventure3:
mkdir ~/PwnAdventure3
cd ~/PwnAdventure3
wget http://pwnadventure.com/PwnAdventure3Server.tar.gz
tar zxvf PwnAdventure3Server.tar.gz
mv PwnAdventure3Servers servers
wget http://pwnadventure.com/PwnAdventure3_Launcher_Linux.zip
unzip PwnAdventure3_Launcher_Linux.zip -d client
rm PwnAdventure3Server.tar.gz
rm PwnAdventure3_Launcher_Linux.zip
I renamed the folders servers and client to make things easier for this tutorial.
The downloaded client ~/PwnAdventure3/client/PwnAdventure3 is a actually a launcher to download the data files. If you are in Ubuntu Desktop, you simply need to execute the launcher and wait for the data to download (around 2Go).
chmod +x ~/PwnAdventure3/client/PwnAdventure3
~/PwnAdventure3/client/PwnAdventure3
If you are using Ubuntu Server and don't have a graphical interface, you will have to run the game in another Linux VM then transfer (e.g. scp) the folder to the server. Or you can download the prepared ZIP file here (08/10/2017).
Now let's install PostgreSQL. By default psql is is not installed on Ubuntu 14.04 Desktop.
sudo apt-get install postgresql
PostgreSQL is used to store the team, the players, items, etc. According to the official Pwn Adventure 3 install README, the servers requires the following setup:
- postgresql installed
- A Unix user account on the postgres database, password accounts are not supported
- A database called "master" on which the Unix user account has access for creating and modifying tables
In order to create the user and the table, we first need to switch to the postgres user:
sudo su postgres
# template1 is the default source database name for CREATE DATABASE
psql template1
# We create user "pwn3" without password
# Note: You just need to type "CREATE USER pwn3;"
template1=# CREATE USER pwn3;
# We create the database "master"
template1=# CREATE DATABASE master;
# We grant all privileges on "master" to "pwn3"
template1=# GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE master TO pwn3;
# Quit the psql interface
template1=# \q
You are still authenticated as postgres, so now you need to get back to your pwn3 user:
# Get back to pwn3
exit
Just to make sure everything went as expected, you can try to access the database "master" with the user "pwn3":
psql -d master -U pwn3
If this works, you can leave the psql console (\q). Now let's initialise the master database. A SQL script is available in the server folder:
psql master -f ~/PwnAdventure3/servers/MasterServer/initdb.sql
This will create all tables and populate the database. If you want to change the greetings message when you start the game, you can either change the two last line of initdb.sql, or you can run the following comment:
psql -d master -U pwn3
master=# UPDATE info SET contents='My custom server' WHERE name='login_title';
master=# UPDATE info SET contents='Hello everyone and welcome to my customer server!' WHERE name='login_text';
The first thing to do is to create a server account so that the game servers can be authenticate on the master servers:
cd ~/PwnAdventure3/servers/MasterServer/
./MasterServer --create-server-account
A username and a password will be generated for you. Those credentials will be used to configure the game server later on so keep these values somewhere. In our case, the credentials are:
Username: server_5451700dc668731a
Password: a29eb785c128a76ef45e1543
The next step is to create the admin team. As an admin, you will be able to teleport to regions and give items using an in-game console command. The command to create an admin team is:
# Change "WeAreRoot" with the name you want for the admin team
cd ~/PwnAdventure3/servers/MasterServer/
./MasterServer --create-admin-team WeAreRoot
This command will give you the team hash. Whenever you create a new player account in the game, you will asked to enter a team hash. If you want to create a new team, leave the field empty. At the end of the registration, you will receive a new team hash to share with your friends so that they can join your new team. If you want to be admin, you will have to enter the team hash generated in this last command.
You should now be all set to start your master server:
cd ~/PwnAdventure3/servers/MasterServer/
./MasterServer
You shouldn't see any error message or debug message. You can also run netstat to make sure the master server is listening on port 3333 on all interface:
$ netstat -plnt
Active Internet connections (only servers)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State PID/Program name
...
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:3333 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2853/MasterServer
...
Once done, you can stop the master server by pressing Ctrl + C.
The master server is ready, now let's configure the game servers. First, move the PwnAdventureServer in the Linux binary folder:
mv ~/PwnAdventure3/servers/GameServer/PwnAdventure3Server
~/PwnAdventure3/client/PwnAdventure3_Data/PwnAdventure3/PwnAdventure3/Binaries/Linux/
Now a little bit a cleanup:
mv ~/PwnAdventure3/client/* ~/PwnAdventure3/servers/GameServer/
rmdir ~/PwnAdventure3/client/
Then you will need to change the game servers config file to point to your master server:
vi ~/PwnAdventure3/servers/GameServer/PwnAdventure3_Data/PwnAdventure3/PwnAdventure3/Content/Server/server.ini
note: Use nano or your favourite text editor if you don't feel comfortable with
vi
Since my game servers will run on the same machine as my master server, I can configure the master servers's hostname to localhost. However, the hostname of the game server will be forwarded to the client, therefore, we will set a custom hostname the we will later add on the client's /etc/hosts file.
For the game server username and password, use the credentials generated earlier (./MasterServer --create-server-account).
Based on the recommendation from the official README, I decided to limit the amount of instances to 5. Here is the final content of my server.ini file:
[MasterServer]
Hostname=localhost
Port=3333
[GameServer]
Hostname=pwn3.server
Port=3000
Username=server_5451700dc668731a
Password=a29eb785c128a76ef45e1543
Instances=5
That's it, now you can run your freshly configured server. You will need to run the MasterServer from its folder otherwise you will have an issue with the certificate:
cd ~/PwnAdventure3/server/MasterServer/
./MasterServer
# Open a new terminal
cd ~/PwnAdventure3/servers/GameServer/PwnAdventure3_Data/PwnAdventure3/PwnAdventure3/Binaries/Linux/
./PwnAdventure3Server
Instead of running the master and game server separately, you can use the following script bash script pwn3.sh:
(cd ~/PwnAdventure3/servers/MasterServer/ && ./MasterServer) & (cd ~/PwnAdventure3/GameServer/PwnAdventure3_Data/PwnAdventure3/Binaries/Linux/ && ./PwnAdventure3Server)
note: Don't forget to set execution permission with
chmod +x pwn3.sh
On your client (i.e. the computer you will use to play the game) download the client archive, extract the archive and run the executable. Here again, it will download the data file (about 2Go). Once done, you can close launcher and edit the server.ini file available here:
- Linux:
PwnAdventure3_Data/PwnAdventure3/PwnAdventure3/Content/Server/server.ini - macOS:
Pwn\ Adventure\ 3.app/Contents/PwnAdventure3/PwnAdventure3.app/Contents/UE4/PwnAdventure3/Content/Server/server.ini - Windows:
PwnAdventure3_Data/PwnAdventure3/PwnAdventure3/Content/Server/server.ini
Here we want to point the master server to our server instead of the official one. For this, we will replace the Hostname value of the [MasterServer] to pwn3.server:
[MasterServer]
Hostname=pwn3.server
Port=3333
note: You can remove the
[GameServer]part
Almost done, now we need to add a line in our client's hosts file to redirect the hostname pwn3.server to our master/game server.
- Linux:
/etc/hosts - macOS:
/etc/hosts - Windows:
C:/Windows/System32/Drivers/etc/hosts
note: You need to be sudo/administrator to edit this file
For instance, if you server has the IP 192.168.1.11, you can add the following line:
192.168.1.11 pwn3.server
Now you should be good to play!