Dedicated Server Mode

Hosting a game in dedicated mode requires substantially less resources than Host-and-Play Mode, because the Targetware Engine will start up without loading any graphics or sounds. This makes it ideal for use on stand-alone servers. Although you can't play on a server running in dedicated mode, you could log in from another computer and play on it, using your same Targetware username and account.

Many of the settings you will wish to control are in the config.txt file and can be changed in any text editor. Please refer to that document for further information.

To set up your server for dedicated mode, open your Config.txt file, look in the [Server] section, and change the Dedicated = x line to read as follows:

Dedicated = 1

After making that change, the next time you launch the Targetware application, it will start up in dedicated server mode, and immediately contact the Targetware meta server to register itself as a game server.

Note: If you are behind a firewall or router, it is likely you will need to manage what ports are available. For additional setup information, please read Advanced Hosting Issues.

Specifying the Starting Scenario

In Dedicated Server Mode, you do not have a chance to select a mod and scenario through the user interface. The game engine will look at whatever scenario is listed in the config.txt file, and use that as the first scenario. By default, that happens to be a Target Korea scenario:

Scenario = /tk/scenarios/a1.scn

You will want to change that line to point to the first scenario you want to serve. Note that the filepath begins in the /Targetware/data/ directory, and starts with the mod directory.

You can also use the admin commands to change the scenario on the fly, after logging in with another computer.

Changing Other Server Settings

You may wish to also change other server settings, to disable or limit auto-update of data files, change label parameters, etc. For all of these settings (and many more), see the [Game] and [Server] sections of config.txt (click here for a full reference to that file). At the very least, you will want to change the name of your server so people can differentiate your server from others. You may also wish to edit description.txt for the same reason.