America's Army: Special Forces (AA:SF) Dedicated Server

[James Bourne]

How To Run America's Army Special Forces (AA:SF) Dedicated Server as a Windows Service with FireDaemon

AA:SF dedicated server can be run as a Windows Service using FireDaemon. This will allow you to have the dedicated server start automatically at boot prior to login (amongst other things). This is how to set it up. You can also use PanelDaemon to manage FireDaemon and other Windows services via a web browser.

1. Download America's Army from here. The current version at time of writing was America's Army: Special Forces (Link-Up) v2.6.0. The download is big - nearly 900MB. This download contains the dedicated server component.

2. Install AA:SF into the directory of your choice. VERY IMPORTANT The default installation directory is C:\Program Files\America's Army. If you want to run the dedicated server under FireDaemon directly and NOT out of the supplied batch file (System\runserver.bat) you must change this directory name to something that excludes punctuation and spaces. The dedicated server fails to find its map files and launch as a service correctly when installed into a directory containing spaces and/or punctuation . I recommend you install into C:\AmericasArmy (since I know this works). Then apply any relevant patches (there were none at the time of writing).

3. Install FireDaemon Pro. FireDaemon can be downloaded from here.

4. Start the FireDaemon GUI. Click on the "Create a new service definition" button in the toolbar (or type Ctrl+N) and enter the information into the fields as you see below. Obviously adjust paths to suite your installation. Pay special attention to the Parameters list.



The Parameters list defines how the dedicated server is to start. There are four basic parameters to get your server going:

<servertype> <mapname> [log=<logfilename>] [ini=<inifilename>]

servertype
Valid values are lan, global, lantournament or tournament.

mapname
Initial map to load. You must provide the .aao extension. All maps are found in the Maps folder.

log (optional)
Name of file to log to. If not specified ArmyOps.log is used.

ini (optional)
Name of server configuration file. If not specified ArmyOps.ini is used.

Your executable can optionally be C:\AmericasArmy\System\runserver.bat. This batch file contains the command line parameters listed above. It is not necessary to enter values into FireDaemon's Parameters field if you use this file. Using this file will also allow you to launch AA:SF in directories containing spaces and punctuation (eg. C:\Program Files\America's Army). Edit runserver.bat to change the dedicated server's startup parameters.

5. If you want / do not want to observe your dedicated server running, click on the FireDaemon Settings tab, and check/uncheck Interact with Desktop.



6. AA:SF uses a fair chunk of RAM (145MB+) and CPU. This may cause issues and slow the boot time of your server. If you want to delay the startup of the server and change its priority then click on the Advanced tab. Optionally change the Pre-Launch delay to 5000ms and the Priority to High (Real Time is a bad idea).



7. Check on the FireDaemon Dependencies tab. Add 'lanmanworkstation' to the list of Services to depend on. This will ensure the TCP/IP and CIFS stacks are in the process of initialisation before attempting to start the dedicated server:



8. Your done! Click on the Install button and your AA:SF dedicated server should startup!



Issues ... other problems? Please post in the Public Support Forums!

You will invariably have to change the configuration (server.ini and/or ArmyOps.ini to your server's IPs) in order to support network games. Edit these files and change the following sections:

[IpDrv.GameSpyQR]
bNAT=True
IP=your box's ip here

[IpDrv.SCIQR]
;(delete the ';' in front of 'IP=127.0.0.1' when setting your IP)
IP=your box's ip here

For more information on configuring the dedicated server check out the Documentation Sets.