Game Servers

This guide is going to show you some of the best kept secrets for making the most out of your game server. Everyone can name some of the best and most popular game servers for their game, but would your game server fall within this title? Unfortunately for the majority this probably won't be the case, but through optimising the game server possibilities I will show you what I have learn over my years in the gaming industry and how you can very easily have your server populated to maximum capcacity 95% of the time, even at obscene times at silly hours of the night.

I would like to first say that this won't apply for every game but for this example I will be using Counter Strike and Counter Strike Source as the case studies because I have most experience with these two game servers and the majority of game servers that are hosted world wide are one of these two games.

So, how do you get a popular game server for your clan, games community or just for your self?

Following several easy steps, I will explain the basics, of what to do and what not to do.

To begin with, the most important thing second to none is making sure that your game server is hosted on a quality network with quality hardware. Not only does this become a problem for game play, but your clan name can suffer consequences if you host with a poor quality provider. If you are hosting in the US you can probably find some good providers from checking out popular gaming forums, but if your looking for European hosting you need not look any further then Invision Gaming for your game server.

Game Servers

Now that you have a game server, you need to think how do you want to optimise it. Because of the volume of game servers we host and the amount of servers I have seen come and go, I know exactly what works and what falls down by the way side. The choice, is to either maximise a single game server, or use two game servers. I will go in to detail a little later as to why two game servers are considerably better then one (but by no means whatsoever required), but if you use a single server it becomes a lot more difficult to maximise on potential visitors because you may find that you will have to run things on your server that you don't particularly want, but are loved by other gamers.

I see a lot of gamers that purchase a game server with the hope of becoming popular but don't optimise on the very basic configuration possilities that will gaurentee extra visitors.

What is the first thing that people see before they connect to your game server?

Well this changes from game to game, but for counter strike source, the possibilities are:

The hostname, the latency, the players connected, the current map and are any bots connected.

Now, each one of these is as important as the next as I will now explain.

1. Game Server Hostname

The first thing that anyone will see when clicking on your server to join and the main thing that people will use to filter through the junk and the quality servers. You need to use a term in your game server name that people want to see! Don't just name is, 'My Clan Site', because as accurate as this name is, its not what people will filter for. Optimise on what you run on your server, if you run a mod (which is a HUGE part of optimisation) then say what it is. For instance, the most popular server that I have ever created was a 16 man server which was always full, the title was:

Deathmatch / RPG Mod 100 Tickrate - 24/7 Texture

This is very accurate and specific to what people may be looking for in a game server, for instance, when I want to play on a gungame server, I search and filter by the servers that begin with 'G', the same goes for Deathmatch servers, I look for 'Deathmatch' in the hostname. It also includes the fact that the server runs 100 Tickrate and it generally, alot better then just naming your game server 'My Clan Server'

2. Game Server latency

I know that most gamers sort by latency. This is basically, the time it takes for a packet from your network to be sent to the game server and back to you (Basically). This is essential for gamers and reiterrates the desparate need to purchase a server on a high quality network. Each game will display a different latency, but for CSS something around 20-55 is best. Anything above that and you may face performance problems. (Remember that latency isnt the only factor in game server performance and just because a game server has a high latency does not mean that the provider is at fault - high lantecy can be caused by increased traffic on your network, such as downloading, or renting your bandwidth from poor quality ISP's)

3. Players Connected

Do you join a server with 0/16 players connected? Nope, I didn't think so, the same goes for other people, so how can you combat this? The most common thing that people do is add bots that auto leave a server. This is the biggest mistake for many game servers. There are correct times to use bots on a server and for 90% of game servers, using bots will actually cause less people to join, although it will increase the number of players connected, its only a superficial number that will cause people to promptly disconnect if they did not realise upon joining.

So what available remedies are there?

Fake clients - Its really as simple as this. Unfortunately this isn't available on every game server type, but for Counter Strike Source, it most definately is an option that should be used by as many game servers as possible.

Fake Clients is a mod that uses MetaMod to fake the amount of clients connected and allows you to create names for them and scores. Now, your probably thinking how is this any different to bots? The answer is they are connected to the server but they do not actually play and when someone joins they won't see them playing, in addition they use ALOT less resources, (although do still use a considerable amount, its nothing compared to the amount of CPU drain a bot will have on your server)

Links for Fake Clients will be included at the bottom of the article.

4. The Current Map

I can't even stress how important this is for every game. Some maps are great fun and will pull in the visitors like wildfire, but then you have to realise that some maps on default map rotation will cause your server to suffer problems because, as much as I genuinely love to play havana, I think I am alone in the CSS community with this. Unfortunately its as simple as this, some maps just cant sustain a popular base of players and if you continually cycle through these maps every 30 minutes, you will see your visitors drop and continue to stay at zero.

So what maps should you remove from the map rotation? This is a completely objective question which you should answer your self. The more the better. On the majority of popular servers that we host, a lot will only use 1 map, 2 map or 3 maps. Predictability and continutity is something that gamers enjoy. On my servers I will run 24/7 Maps, such as Dust2 24/7, Italy 24/7 or a mistake of 1hour intervals between the two.

Which maps do you prefer and stick with them? You will find you will create a fan base of gamers who continue to return back to your server because they know what maps will continue to be hosted on there.

In addition to this, you do not even have to stick with default maps. Custom maps are increasing in popularlity. If you find a niche in a map that drives traffic to your server, continue to use it? Its all about experimentation to see which maps empty your server and which pull in the visitors.

Some good maps include: breakfloor (although a HUGE resource drain, make sure you restart your server regularly if you use this) and aim_ag_texture series, my personal favourite is aim_ag_texture2

5. Bots

For those people who make use of the advanced filter possibilities in the steam/css game browser, having bots on your server when people filter then off will result in a large portion of people looking for a game server to play on, skipping straight past yours. Dont use them unless you specifically need to use bots!

So this highlights the need to optimise your game server before people even connect to you, In part 2 of this article. I will go into more detail on how to optimise your game server for people who are connected.

Continue to Part 2