From time to time I keep getting the question on how I/we set up our servers. In this short guide I will walk you through the steps on how you can setup your own steam game server. For this guide we’ll be setting up a Rust server as well as running a garry’s mod server. This guide is meant for people who want to run the game servers from their own/separate pc or if you have a VPS or dedicated server box.

Requirements

The system requirements depends on which gameserver you want to host. Where Rust needs at least 8Gb of ram, a simple Garry’s Mod TTT server can run fine with 2GB of ram. That is, if you don’t clutter your server with addons that new players have to download for 3 hours while they HAVE to listen to your shitty dubstep track.

If you’re not sure on what the specs are, I would suggest doing a quick google. I’m sure you are able to find your answers.

SteamCMD is your friend

You might have heard about it before, SteamCMD (Steam command-line console). SteamCMD is used to install and update dedicated servers of games which use the SteamPipe content system. This means that for all those games, you can set up your own dedicated server. Great right?

How to Install SteamCMD

No matter how many server you have active, always keep a good folder structure. Keeping things organised will lower the chance of you “messing up the wrong server”. With that in mind you, will be creating two folders.

First, create a folder for SteamCMD (for instance C:\Servers/SteamCmd)
Create a folder for you server (for instance C:\Servers\YourGameServer)
Download SteamCMD (direct download)
Place the zip file within the folder which you just created for SteamCMD
Extract the zip file and run Steamcmd.exe

You will be greeted with the following screen. This is SteamCMD updating itself, don’t worry.

Install the game server

Once SteamCMD is done updating you can start feeling like a hacker and type in some text. Every game on steam has an AppId. This also counts for the servers. Rust servers have an ID of 258550 where Garry’s Mod’s ID is 4020 for instance. We use these ID’s to tell SteamCMD it should download the correct game server files.

Right, type in the following lines one by one to get your server files:

For installing a Rust server:

login anonymous
force_install_dir "c:\YourGameServer\"
app_update 258550
quit

For installing a Garry’s Mod server:

login anonymous
force_install_dir "c:\YourGameServer\"
app_update 4020
quit

Configuring your game server

The serverfiles are installed on your server, great job! You are almost ready to go. Now it’s time to Let your server know what to do once it launches. We do this by creating/editing the batch script file. A batch script is basically a text document which stores some commands which will run once you run the file.

Creating a batch file

Head over to the folder where your gameserver files are (C:\YourGameServer) and create a new text document (not a Word file!). Open the document and paste in the following text. Be sure to edit the information such as map and servername afterwards!

Server Commands for Rust:

echo off
:start
C:\steamcmd\steamcmd.exe +login anonymous +force_install_dir c:\rustserver\ +app_update 258550 +quit
RustDedicated.exe -batchmode +server.port 28015 +server.level "Procedural Map" +server.seed 1234 +server.worldsize 4000 +server.maxplayers 10 +server.hostname "Name of Server as Shown on the Client Server List" +server.description "Description shown on server connection window." +server.url "http://yourwebsite.com" +server.headerimage "http://yourwebsite.com/serverimage.jpg" +server.identity "server1" +rcon.port 28016 +rcon.password letmein +rcon.web 1
goto start

Server Commands for Garry’s Mod:

@echo off
cls
echo Protecting srcds from crashes...
echo If you want to close srcds and this script, close the srcds window and type Y depending on your language followed by Enter. title srcds.com Watchdog :srcds
echo (%time%) srcds started.
start /wait srcds.exe -console -game garrysmod +map gm_flatgrass +maxplayers 16 +gamemode sandbox
echo (%time%) WARNING: srcds closed or crashed, restarting.
goto srcds

You just installed your own server!

Great stuff! You can now launch your server and start playing. In the next guide we will walk you through on how to set up moderator and admin permissions in Rust, how to setup ULX for Garry’s Mod, how to install Oxide for your Rust server and how to setup fast download for your Garry’s Mod server