Introduction
The Shacknews TeamFortress 2 Shackbattle server has hosted a plethora of battles over the years. I'm disappointed to say that we haven't been at peak TF2 in a number of years and as servers have dwindled off (note at one time we had four servers going at once; all would be filled during the golden age) one constant has remained the same: server.cfg
In this article I will start at the lowest level of configuration for the server and go over a few things. This may be interesting for some and it may be boring for others.
The actual server.cfg
Items of Note
So now that you can see it; let's break down a few things. Between lines 3 and 11 we have your overall server settings. The biggest item on here other than sv_password being set is sv_pure.
sv_pure determines if you are willing to let client connecting pass items such as skins, tags, etc. from any source, from a very strict white list on the server, or from Steam only. If you ever were to join a server and your tag doesn't show up on a wall after hitting the spray key; this is probably the primary reason why. sv_pure is set to either 1 or 2.
Lines 13 to 17 are what I would consider security settings. They prevent bad dudes from entering. I'm happy to say I've never had to have either of those files used but I keep them around based on server documentation.
Line 21 has sv_region set; if this is set to -1 then it's the world. 0 is US east and 1 is US west. This is mainly reporting; it doesn't affect performance. That's another topic.
Lines 23 to 30 are rcon; ie. remote console. Over the years there have been a few Shackers I have given rcon for them to facilitate map changes or setting sv_gravity or something else nutty when I'm not around.
I can assure you my trust and the rcon_password comes at a high price.
Lines 32 to 39 are performance tuning for the server. These are what I consider the reference values from the TF2 server documentation if you so call it. Given today's CPU/memory/bandwidth peformance over systems from a decade ago I've not had a need to tweak these even with the server now running in a docker container as opposed to the HP DL380 server it used to run on.
Lines 41 to 53 are all gameplay settings. These are always controversial because everyone has a preference on how a server should handle things like win condition, time limit of a map, or even auto balance.
The last few lines I think are self-explanatory but feel free to ask questions in the comments. The biggest items out them would be the setting for the very fun sv_alltalk. Easily the most popular choice of the Shackbattle; I've never had a Shackbattle announcement without the Chatty requesting all talk be set.
Feel free to ask any questions in the article comments. Maybe I'll continue a series of articles on running a dedicated server for a gaming community.
