Behind the Eyes

Tag: Games

  • Quake 4 on Ubuntu 24.04 that Actually works!

    Hello everyone. I hope you are doing well and staying safe. Welcome to another blog entry on gaming on Linux, primarily Ubuntu 24.04.2.

    I am a huge id Software fan. Have been since Wolfenstein 3-D in the early 90’s. However, one of my favorites is Quake 4. The story and everything about it is awesome. It’s a direct sequel to Quake 2, which is probably by second favorite Quake game in the series.

    So, I wanted to install my copy that I have on DVD that has worked really well in the past, only to my chagrin did I find out that this is was going to be a journey. So if you are having issues setting up Quake 4 on your Ubuntu 24.04 machine, and getting it to run at all with sound included, read on and please like, share and comment so I know that this guide helped you as well.

    So, I’ve installed Quake 4 on Linux many times. In fact, it’s one of the first things I install on Linux once everything is all setup. It’s like a reward for a job well done. So here is what I had to do to get it to work.

    First thing I did was pull out the old DVD from my desk drawer, and put it in my DVD drive. On my Intel NUC, which is now my primary desktop machine now, I just plugged in a USB one and Ubuntu mounted the DVD with no issues. It was mounted in /media/wililupy/QUAKE4/ directory.

    I then created the directory I wanted to install Quake 4 to, which is /usr/local/games/quake4. I have to copy all the pk4 files to this directory, so I opened a terminal and ran the following command:

    sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/games/quake4/q4base/
sudo cp /media/wililupy/QUAKE4/Setup/Data/q4base/*.pk4 /usr/local/games/quake4/q4base

    This took about 10 minutes to copy all the pk4 files. I then needed to download the quake4 linux binaries. Luckily, I had a copy I previously downloaded because the id software FTP site is no longer online. For those of you in the same boat, here is a link to it off of this web server:

    NOTE: Make sure you “right click” and Click Save link as: otherwise it will load this script in the web browser

    quake4-linux-1.4.2.x86.run

    Once you have downloaded the binaries, you need to enable it to be executable:

    chmod a+x quake4-linux-1.4.2.x86.run

    Now, here is where I was stuck for a while, but I finally figured out how to get this binary to work correctly.

    I had to install the following packages to make sure everything would work, including adding a PPA for libxp6, which isn’t available for 24.04:

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:zeehio/libxp
sudo apt update
sudo apt install libxp6 \
     libssl-dev \
     libasound-plugins:i386 \
     pipewire-alsa:i386

    I could then install the quake4 binaries by running the following command:

    sudo sh ./quake4-linux-1.4.2.x86.run

    I accepted all the licenses, and when it asked where I wanted to install Quake 4, I used the default path, which is where I uploaded the pk4 files:

    /usr/local/games/quake4

    I also installed Punkbuster, but I don’t think it is even still around, please comment if that is true or not.

    Once it finished installing, I started Quake 4, and it failed to start. It appears that the included libraries are not compatible with Ubuntu 24.04.2, so I created a folder in the quake4 directory called temp and moved the lib files there:

    cd /usr/local/games/quake4
sudo mkdir -p temp/
sudo mv lib* temp/

    I then created symbolic links to the ones installed on my system to the quake4 directory:

    sudo ln -s /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libSDL-1.2.so.0 libSDL-1.2.id.so.0
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 libgcc_s.so.1
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 libstdc++.so.6

    I then ran quake4-smp to run and the game fired up with full audio. The only issue I had now was the game was in Spanish. To fix this I updated the Quake 4 configuration file in my home directory:

    vi ~/.quake4/q4base/Quake4Config.cfg

    I searched for sys_lang and changed it from "spanish" to "english" and saved the file and then restart Quake 4 and everything started and worked normally. I can now play my favorite Quake title on my favorite OS.

    Now, these next few things are optional, but I like them because it makes playing the game a little more seamless. I like to have an icon in the Application Launcher for Gnome. Quake 4 comes with a bitmap icon, but the background is magenta and an eye sore. So I use GIMP to make the background transparent and remove the magenta color and then save it as a PNG file. Then I put this icon png file in /usr/share/icons and call it “quake4.png”

    I have a link to the png I use here. You can download it and save it to /usr/share/icons and then it will be the icon when you create the desktop link file.

    Next, I create an .desktop file called quake4.desktop and put this file in /usr/share/applications. Below are the contents of the file:

    [Desktop Entry]
Name=Quake 4
Comment=First-person shooter - sequel to Quake 2
Icon=quake4
Exec=quake4-smp
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Game;ActionGame;

    Save the file and give ownership to root and make sure it has 644 permissions:

    sudo chown root:root quake4.desktop
sudo chmod 644 quake4.desktop

    I hope this helps you and everyone else that is running into this and wanting to play a game.

    Happy Fragging!

  • Minecraft Server for Ubuntu 20.04.2

    Hello everyone. I hope you are all doing well. I am writing this blog entry because I created a Minecraft server for my kids some time ago, but I had a hardware failure in the system and never replaced it. At the time, it was no big deal since the boys decided that they were done with Minecraft. But lately, with this new version of Minecraft, they have gotten back into it, and they wanted to have a shared sandbox that they can play with their friends on.

    So, I rebuilt their Minecraft server, but this time, I did it from 16.04 to 20.04. It was pretty straight forward and not much has changed in the way of doing this, but this is here for those of you that want to deploy your own Minecraft server.

    NOTE: This will only work for the Java version of Minecraft. If you are using the Windows 10 version or the one on Xbox or Switch, you will not be able to connect to this server.

    So, the first thing you need is a clean installation of Ubuntu 20.04.2 Server. The system specs should be at least 4GB of RAM and 2 CPU Cores and 80GB of Storage. After you install Ubuntu, do the normal first boot practices, update, upgrade, reboot if required, etc.

    sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

    Once that is completed, you need to install a couple things on top.

    One thing I like is the MCRcon tool from Tiiffi. I use this to do backups and statistics of my server, and it is really easy to use, and it’s super small. So I install the Build-Essential package as well as git. Minecraft also leverages Java, so I install the Open Java Development Kit packages with headless mode:

    sudo apt install git build-essential openjdk-11-jre-headless

    Once that is completed, I then create a minecraft user so that when I run this as a service, it is a lot more secure, and I have a location where to keep all the dedicated Minecraft files.

    sudo useradd -m -r -U -d /opt/minecraft -s /bin/bash minecraft

    This creates the Minecraft user with the home directory in /opt/minecraft. This also doesn’t create a password for this account so we don’t have to worry about someone gaining access to our system with this account. You can only access this account via sudo su - minecraft with your local admin account.

    Now, we need to switch to the minecraft user and run the following:

    sudo su - minecraft
mkdir -p {server,tools,backups}
git clone https://github.com/Tiiffi/mcrcon.git ~/tools/mcrcon
cd ~/tools/mcrcon
make

    This will create the required directories for Minecraft, and download and build the MCRcon tool. You can verify that the MCRcon tools built successfully by running the command:

    ~/tools/mcrcon/mcrcon -v

    You will get the following output:

    mcrcon 0.7.1 (built: Mar 26 2021 22:34:02) - https://github.com/Tiiffi/mcrcon
 Bug reports:
     tiiffi+mcrcon at gmail
     https://github.com/Tiiffi/mcrcon/issues/

    Now, we get to installing the Minecraft Server Java file.

    First, we need to download the server.jar file from Minecraft. You can go here to download the file, or what I did, is I go to the link, and from there, I right click the link and select ‘Copy Link Address’ so I can paste it into my terminal on the server and use wget to install it.

    wget https://launcher.mojang.com/v1/objects/1b557e7b033b583cd9f66746b7a9ab1ec1673ced/server.jar -P ~/server

    Now, we need to run the Minecraft server. It will fail on the first run because we need to accept the EULA. We also need to modify the server.properties file since the first run creates these files:

    cd ~/server
java -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M -jar server.jar nogui

    After the program fails to start, we need to modify the eula.txt file and change the eula=false at the end of the file to eula=true. Save this file and exit.
    Next, we need to enable RCON in Minecraft. Open the server.properties file and search for the following variables, and change them accordingly:

    rcon.port=25575
rcon.password=PassW0rd
enable-rcon=true

    Also, while you are in this file, you can make any other changes that you want to the server, such as the server name, listening port for the server, the MOTD, etc. Also, choose a complex password so that not just anyone can remote control your server.

    Now, I like to have this run as a service using SystemD. To do this, create a service script. First you have to exit as the Minecraft user by typing exit and getting back to your local admin shell. Then run the following:

    sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service

    Paste the following in the file:

    [Unit]
Description=Minecraft Server
After=network.target

[Service]
User=minecraft
Nice=1
KillMode=none
SuccessExitStatus=0 1
ProtectHome=true
ProtectSystem=full
PrivateDevices=true
NoNewPrivileges=true
WorkingDirectory=/opt/minecraft/server
ExecStart=/usr/bin/java -Xmx2G -Xms2G -jar server.jar nogui
ExecStop=/opt/minecraft/tools/mcrcon/mcrcon -H 127.0.0.1 -P 25575 -p PassW0rd stop

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

    Save the document. Next, run

    sudo systemctl daemon-reload

    This will refresh systemd with the new minecraft.service.

    Now, you can start the minecraft service:

    sudo systemctl start minecraft

    To get it to start on reboots, execute the following:

    sudo sytemctl enable minecraft

    The last thing we have to do is create the backup job for your server. This uses the MCRcon tool and crontab to clean up the server as well.

    Switch back to the Minecraft user and perform the following:

    sudo su - minecraft
vi ~/tools/backup.sh

    Paste the following script into the new file you are creating:

    !/bin/bash
 function rcon {
   /opt/minecraft/tools/mcrcon/mcrcon -H 127.0.0.1 -P 25575 -p PassW0rd "$1"
 }
 rcon "save-off"
 rcon "save-all"
 tar -cvpzf /opt/minecraft/backups/server-$(date +%F-%H-%M).tar.gz /opt/minecraft/server
 rcon "save-on"
 # Delete older backups
 find /opt/minecraft/backups/ -type f -mtime +7 -name '*.gz' -delete

    Now, create a crontab to run the backup:

    crontab -e
0 0 * * * /opt/minecraft/tools/backup.sh

    Now exit as the Minecraft user and return as the local admin. Lastly, because I leverage UFW for my firewall, I need to open the port to the world so that people can connect to it. I do that with the following commands:

    sudo ufw allow from 10.1.10.0/24 to any 25575
sudo ufw allow 25565/tcp

    This allows the Remote console to be accessed only by my internal network, and allows the Minecraft game to be accessed by the outside world.

    Now, you are ready to connect your Minecraft clients to your server and have some fun!

    Let me know if this guide worked for you or if you have any questions or comments, please leave them below.

  • RetroPie on the Intel NUC Hades Canyon

    RetroPie on the Intel NUC Hades Canyon

    Hey everyone! Been a while since I wrote a blog and I figured this would be a good one. So, because of the COVID-19, and everyone Social Distancing and schools being closed down. I decided that I was going to do a project. Me and my boys love retro gaming. We have used RetroPie in the past on Raspberry Pi’s and loved it, but we wanted to play some more modern games like from their Wii or Gamecube or PlayStation2, and those just can’t be done on the Raspberry Pi version of RetroPie.

    I read a blog about running RetroPie on an Intel NUC, which I followed and for the most part, I got it working right. Some of my lessons learned will be in this HowTo. But after a while, we noticed that it just didn’t perform like it does on the PC or laptop with a decent graphics card. So after doing some research I found the Intel NUC gaming section, and purchased a Hades Canyon, which I feel will give us the performance we are looking for. Plus it will definitely give us the storage since PS2 Games are HUGE!

    So, without further ado, here is how to get RetroPie working on your Hades Canyon (or regular NUC):

    First thing you going to want to do is install Linux on the NUC. Burn the 18.04 Server ISO to a thumbdrive. I downloaded the Live Server version, but you can use the alternate. I recommend Server since you don’t need to install the full Desktop expirience, and I can use the space savings for more ROMS!!

    Next, plug it in to the front USB port. Connect a keyboard up to the other USB port and connect the video and network. Luckily I have a mini switch next to my TV, so I just connected to that. Hades Canyon and NUC have WiFi, but I don’t use it.

    Power on the NUC and it will automatically boot off of USB. You’ll get the GRUB menu and it will start the Live Installer for Ubuntu. I kept everything default, full disk, no LVM, no Encryption, DHCP on the Ethernet settings, and clicked install.

    Setting up the user, I kept this simple and as close to the regular RetroPie settings:

    • User: Retro Pie
    • Server Name: retropie
    • Username: pi
    • Password: raspberry

    I also told it to enable SSH and to download my public SSH keys from Launchpad.net and to allow remote password authentication.

    After a few minutes, the install completed and I unplugged the USB thumbdrive and reboot the NUC. It restarted in Ubuntu 18.04.4.

    I like to use the HWE kernel for my RetroPie since the newer kernel’s have new features and RetroPie might make use of them. So I do the following:

    sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install --install-recommends linux-generic-hwe-18.04

    And then you reboot the NUC again. Once it comes back up you are ready to do RetroPie installation. This is what I did:

    SSH into the NUC

    Set it so the the pi user can execute sudo without a password (makes scripting much easier)

    sudo sed -i -e '$a\pi ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL' /etc/sudoers

    Type the pi password and you’re all set. You won’t have to type that password again if you use sudo.

    Now to add the universe repo and all of the RetroPie dependancies:

    sudo apt-add-repository universe
sudo apt update -y
sudo apt upgrade -y 
sudo apt install xorg openbox pulseaudio alsa-utils menu \ libglib2.0-bin python-xdg at-spi2-core dbus-x11 git \
dialog unzip xmlstarlet --no-install-recommends -y

    Now we need to create an OpenBox autorun script to start terminal and start Emulation Station

    mkdir -p ~/.config/openbox
echo 'gnome-terminal --full-screen --hide-menubar -- \ emulationstation' >> ~/.config/openbox/autostart

    Next, create the .xsession file:

    echo 'exec openbox-session' >> ~/.xsession

    Now we need to make it so X11 starts on reboots:

    echo 'if [[ -z $DISPLAY ]] && [[ $(tty) = /dev/tty1 ]]; then' >> ~/.bash_profile
sed -i '$ a\startx -- -nocursor >/dev/null 2>&1' ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i '$ a\fi' ~/.bash_profile

    Next, we make it so the that pi user automatically logs in and that way Emulation Station will be what you see on the screen:

    sudo mkdir /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d
sudo sh -c 'echo [Service] >> /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.servcie.d/override.conf' 
sudo sed -i '$ a\ExecStart=' /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d/override.conf
sudo sed -i '$ a\ExecStart= /sbin/agetty --skip-login --noissue --autologin pi %I $TERM' /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.servcie.d/override.conf
sudo sed -i '$ a\Type=idle' /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.servcie.d/override.conf

    Now we are ready to download RetroPie from the Git Repo and run the installation scripts:

    git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup.git
sudo RetroPie-Setup/retropie_setup.sh

    This will start the RetroPie installer. Accept the EULA and select Basic Installation. Select Yes to install all packages from Core and Main. They system will then start downloading and building RetroPie directly on the NUC

    Note: This takes some time. Grab a beverage, some food. I’ll wait.

    Once building and installation is complete, you can reboot the NUC from the menu. However, I have a few more customizations that I do.

    I use an Xbox One Controller with my NUC, so I have to install the driver for it on Ubuntu. To do that, cursor down to Driver, and select the xboxdrv and install from source. It takes about 3 minutes to download and build the driver. When it completes, you are back at the Menu. Select Back from the bottom to go up a level, and do it again to get back to the main menu.

    I also install Dolphin Emulator, and the Playstation2 Emulator, and they are found in the experimental section. They can be a trick to setup and work correctly. For me to get Dolphin to recognize the Xbox Controller correctly, I actually had to change my .bash_profile to enable cursor and window mode so that I could use the mouse on the screen so I could point and click the settings. Now that I have that done, I backed up the configuration from the old NUC, and just copied it to the new one with ease.

    I also use Dolphin for Wii games, and I have a Dolphin Bar so that I can use my Wii controllers. This was a slight bear to setup. First, you need to create a couple udev rules:

    sudo touch /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules
sudo vi /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules

    Now paste the following into your rules file:

    #GameCube Controller Adapter
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", ATTRS{idVendor}=="057e", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0337", TAG+="uaccess"

#Wiimotes or DolphinBar
SUBSYSTEM=="hidraw*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="057e", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0306", TAG+="uaccess"
SUBSYSTEM=="hidraw*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="057e", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0330", TAG+="uaccess"

    Now, you can plug in the Dolphin Bar to a USB port and connect your controller. Make sure you are in Mode 4 for emulation mode on the Dolphin Bar, and then start Dolphin emulator by running it from /opt/retropie/emulators/dolphin/bin/dolphin-emu and select controllers. In the middle of the dialog, you will select “Emulate the Wii’s Bluetooth Adapter” and for the Wii Remotes, select Real Wii Remote. You won’t be able to configure them, but that is ok. Also check Continuous Scanning and save. Restart the NUC and now it will work. To verify, start Dolphin again, and make sure that the Wiimote is connected to the Dolphin Bar, when the game starts, the Wiimote will rumble letting you know its connected.

    Also, Playstation and Playstation2 require BIOS’s to work.

    After installing all the Emulators I want, I then go back to the main menu and select Configuration / tools.

    I then configure Samba so that I can access my NUC’s ROM’s and am able to upload them using Samba. After it install Samba, select to Install Retropie Samba shares.

    And now you are all done. This is where I reboot the device.

    Now we are ready to setup the XBox One controller. First thing is to go to RetroPie Configuration in Emulation Station, and select Bluetooth. This will install the required Bluetooth libraries and binaries. Next, we need to SSH back into the box and make a setting change. XBox One controllers don’t use ERTM. Create a bluetooth.conf in /etc/modprobe.d/ and add the following line to the file:

    options bluetooth disable\_ertm=Y

    Reboot the NUC again. Now, go back in the RetroPie Configuration in Emulation Station, and select Bluetooth, set the Xbox Controller to be discoverable by turning it on, and holding the small button near the left bumper on top of the controller until the Xbox button flashes fast. Then in Emulation Station, select Search for controller. After a few moments it will be listed as Xbox Wireless Controller. Select it, and select the first option for connection and it will successfully connect. Back on the main screen in Emulation Station, press Enter or Start on another controller and select Configure Input. Select Yes and when it asks to press ‘A’ on a the controller, press A on the Xbox One Controller and you can configure it.

    These next steps are just to make the system pretty. I don’t log the default Linux Boot up text scrolling on my TV, so I use Herb Fargus’s Boot themes using Plymouth, and set it to the RetroPie PacMan default setting:

    sudo apt update
sudo apt install plymouth plymouth-themes plymouth-x11 -y
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com.com/HerbFargus/plymouth-themes.git tempthemes
sudo cp -r ~/tempthemes/. /usr/share/plymouth/themes/
rm -rf tempthemes
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/share/plymouth/themes/default.plymouth default.plymouth /usr/share/plymouth/themes/retorpie-pacman/retropie-pacman.plymouth 10
sudo update-alternatives --set default.plymouth /usr/share/plymouth/themes/retropie-pacman/retropie-pacman.plymouth
sudo update-initramfs -u
sudo cp /etc/default/grub /etc/default/grub.backup
sudo sed -i -e 's/GRUB_TIMEOUT=10/GRUB_TIMEOUT=2/g' /etc/default/grub
sudo sed -i -e 's/GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""/GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="quiet splash"/g' /etc/default/grub
sudo update-grub

    This piece hides the last login information before starting OpenBox:

    sudo sed -i -e 's/session optional pam_lastlog.so/#session  optional pam_lastlog.so/g'/etc/pam.d/login
sudo sed -i -e 's/session optional pam_motd.so motd=\/run\/motd.dynamic/#session optional pam_motd.so motd=\/run\/motd.dynamic/g' /etc/pam.d/login
sudo sed -i -e 's/session optional pam_motd.so noupdate/#session optional pam_motd.so noupdate/g' /etc/pam.d/login
sudo sed -i -e 's/session optional pam_mail.so standard/#session optional pam_mail.so standard/g' /etc/pam.d/login

    And to hide the terminal in Emulation Station:

    sed -i '1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ use-theme-colors false' ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i '1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ use-theme-transparency false' ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i '1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ default-show-menubar false' ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i "1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ foreground-color '#FFFFFF'" ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i "1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ background-color '#000000'" ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i "1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ cursor-blink-mode 'off'" ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i "1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ scrollbar-policy 'never'" ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i '1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ audible-bell false' ~/.bash_profile 
cp /etc/xdg/openbox/rc.xml ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml 
cp ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml ~/.config/openbox/rc.xmlbackup 
sed -i '//a ' ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml 
sed -i '//a true ' ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml 
sed -i '//a no ' ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml 
sed -i '//a below ' ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml 
sed -i '//a no ' ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml 
sed -i '//a yes ' ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml 
sed -i '//a ' ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml

    And lastly, if you want to suppress cloud-init, lets just remove it since we don’t need it:

    sudo apt purge cloud-init -y
sudo rm -rf /etc/cloud/
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/cloud/

    And you’re done. May need to do some tweaks with the graphics to get good performance. I found that running in 4k tends to slow the games and audio down to unplayable, but found that if I play in 1080 mode, they work better. Before the game starts and it asks you to press a button to configure when running retro-arch, hit A button and select the emulator resolution from the list. Find one that works the best for you.

    Happy Retro Gaming!

  • Setting up Unreal Tournament 2004 Game server on Ubuntu 16.04

    Hey everybody.

    Been a while since I wrote here. Figured I would write up a howto to setting up a Unreal Tournament 2004 server. I really love this game. It brings back tons of memories, playing this when I was in the Navy with my friends on the sub.

    My boys have some break time off from school, and they played a little bit back in the day, so I decided to spin up a server so that we could play. I looked for a way to do this online, and couldn’t find anything so I figured I would write something up, so here you go.

    So, the good thing is that because the game is pretty old now, over 13 years old now, it doesn’t really require a lot of CPU or memory or storage. I deployed a KVM with 2 cores and 4GB of RAM and 20GB storage server running Ubuntu 16.04.3, and got all the updates installed. I then spent the next few hours searching for the ut2004 dedicated server package. Never could find it. Luckily, I had a backup copy, which I have uploaded to this server so you can download it here. You’ll also need the patch, which you can download here.

    I created a directory for the game in /usr/local/games/UT2004 and extracted the .zip here:

    sudo unzip -d /usr/local/games/UT2004 dedicatedserver3339-bonuspack.zip

    Once that was complete, I then untarred the patch and had to manually install it, since it creates a directory called UT2004-Patch so I had to actually go into each directory and move the files into their respective directories in the UT2004 directory. Once that was complete, you now have a system capable of running Unreal Tournament 2004 server. However, I needed to do a couple more things.

    Next, you need to install libstdc++5 package. This is required so that Unreal can run. Run the following command to install libstdc++5:

    sudo apt install libstdc++5

    One, I decided to start the web admin. In the /usr/local/games/UT2004/System/UT2004.ini. Find the UWeb.Webserver section and modify it:

    [UWeb.WebServer]
Applications[0]=xWebAdmin.UTServerAdmin
ApplicationPaths[0]=/ServerAdmin
Applications[1]=xWebAdmin.UTImageServer
ApplicationPaths[1]=/images
bEnabled=True
ListenPort=80

    You can change the ListenPort to what ever you want, you just need to change bEnabled=False to True to enable it.

    Next, I decided that I wanted this to run as a service using SystemD instead of just running in the background with me logged in to the server. Below is my UT2004-Server.service file:

    [Unit]
Description=Unreal 2004 Dedicated Server
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=ut2004
WorkingDirectory=/usr/local/games/UT2004/System
ExecStart=/usr/local/games/UT2004/System/ucc-bin-linux-amd64 server CTF-BridgeOfFate?game=XGame.xCTFGame?AdminName=admin?AdminPassword=XXXXXXXX ini=UT2004.ini log=server.log -nohomedir
Restart=on-abort

    Just change the ?AdminPassword= to what you want I then copied the file into /lib/systemd/system and chmod 644 and chown root:root the ut2004-server.service file and now I can control the service with systemctl:

    systemctl start ut2004-server.service and I can get status with systemctl status ut2004-server.service

    One last thing I did as well is I included my cdkey from my game since I was getting errors about a missing cdkey, however, I have tested it, and it is not required. The game will still run, you just can’t advertise your server on the Internet and host Internet games without it, which means your stats also won’t work. You used to be able to download a CD-Key from Epic, but that service is no longer working. I emailed them about this on December 2, 2017 with no reply as to date.

    Happy gaming!

  • Quake3 Arena Dedicated Server on Ubuntu 16.04

    Hello everyone!!

    So I decided to blog this since I haven’t seen this documented anywhere else. All other HowTo’s explaining how to do this are so outdated that it pretty much would make your server obsolete. So I decided to write this blog post for anyone out there that wants to run this really old, but still really cool game as a dedicated server.

    The reason this came about is my boys today wanted to play online games with me, specifically on my XBOX One. I wanted to re-live my glory days when I was my oldest age and have a LAN party.  Like you, they were wondering what that was. Let me enlighten you. Back in the early to mid 90’s, before broadband Internet, if you wanted to play online games, it required either a dialup connection directly to your friend, or a massive network on a college campus with someone hosting the game and maintaining it. Neither worked in my small town I grew up in. So I would host LAN parties at my house. This meant, on Friday night, me and my friends would hang out at my house and play video games. We did this because on a typical Friday night, the girls of our town were too intimidated by our big….brains that they didn’t want anything to do with us. The Jocks were also just as intimidated so to prevent bloodshed, mostly ours, we played video games. We would all gather at my house, jam out and do a mini concert, and then hook all our machines up and play Doom or Quake or Duke Nukem 3D.

    My boys thought this was a great idea so we decided to do it at my house. I was on my Mac, running Windows 10 in bootcamp, and my boys were running Ubuntu 16.04. I installed Quake 3 Arena on all the systems because my boys absolutely LOVE this game. Unfortunately it’s only on Steam on Windows, so I had to download it there and then copy all the files to my Ubuntu machines, but that was simple enough. I also installed it on my boys computers by going to the Ubuntu Store on their machines, searching for Quake 3 and installing it. I then copied all the pk3 files to them and we were good to go and start playing. And it was epic!! It was like all of us were 13 and playing. We were all hopped up on pizza, beer (me) and Mountain Dew (or as my son’s call it, “gaming fuel.”)

    After we finished, I started to think, I used to host this game about 8 years ago on Hardy (Ubuntu 8.04), so I figured I would try it again. I looked online to see if there was an easy “HowTo” on this, and all of them were dated and a pain since you needed files from id Software, and it just sucked. So, here we go, the way I did it, super simple and easy to follow.

    First thing I did, installed Ubuntu 16.04 on a Virtual Machine. Update, patch, ready to go.  After that, I installed quake3-server package from Ubuntu Xenial Universe.

    sudo apt install quake3-server

    When you install it, it will ask if you want to install the Quake 3 files. Say no. We’ll get to that in a few seconds. After that, I copied all my pk3 files from my commercial version of Quake 3. They were located on my Windows computer at <path where steam is installed>/steamapps/common/Quake 3 Arena/baseq3/

    I copied all these files to my Linux laptop so that I could use them to play Quake 3 there. I put them in the first search path that the executable looks:

    /usr/share/games/quake3/baseq3

    This directory doesn’t exist, so I had to create it:

    sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/games/quake3/baseq3

    I then moved the files there:

    sudo mv ~/*.pk3 /usr/share/games/quake3/baseq3/

    Once this is complete, restart the Quake 3 server:

    sudo systemctl restart quake3-server

    Now, we need to extract some config files for the server. There are sample configurations for all the game modes that you can modify for your needs in the pak0.pk3 file.

    sudo apt install unzip
sudo unzip /usr/share/games/quake3/baseq3/pak0.pk3 ctf.config ffa.config teamplay.config tourney.config gamecycle.config
sudo mv /usr/share/games/quake3/baseq3/*.config /var/games/quake3-server/server.q3a/baseq3/

    Now you need to modify those configs to match what you want. You can get details from doing a simple Google Search on Quake 3 Arena Dedicated Server parameters.

    Once you have everything set, all you need to do is change the main configuration of the system located in /etc/quake3-server/server.cfg.

    sudo vi /etc/quake3-server/server.cfg

    You can either set one of the configs you extracted here, or what I recommend is modifying the line with “exec ffa.config” and change it to the config you want. Save the file and then restart the service:

    sudo systemctl restart quake3-server

    Now you can connect to your server and you’re done.

    Hope this helps any of you out there. Please leave a comment if it helps or if you have any questions.

     

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