So, you have fun playing Unreal Tournament 2004 over the internet but wish you had your own server to control and setup. Before you take the plunge from player to server administrator, let me offer a few words of wisdom (or warning). Please note that all statements below apply to the Windows dedicated server.
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The Unreal Tournament 2004 Dedicated Server is NOT user friendly.
I was kind of surprised how difficult I found the server installation and setup to be. The thing that surprised me the most is that "out of the box", the "installed" dedicated server will not function. So, before you even begin tweaking, you have to tweak it to even get it to run.
- You will need to e-mail Epic to get a server registry key before you can start.
- The dedicated server has no installation routine.
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Don't bother if you don't have enough bandwidth.
This probably goes without saying, but don't even think of using dial-up for serving...
As far as broadband, keep in mind that most consumer broadband connections will have more download capacity than upload. This makes sense because 90% of the internet using public is more interested in download speed than upload speed. When you're serving UT2004, your server capacity is based upon your upload bandwidth.
What you need to know is you upload bandwidth. Once you have this bandwidth, you can determine how many players you may host. Here is a simple formula for doing this:
# of clients = ( UL * 1000 ) / ( CR * 8 )
UL = Upload Bandwidth (kilobytes per second....256 KB for my connection)
CR = Clientrate (set in the UT2004.ini server file, 15000 by default. This defines how much traffic is sent to the client. This is analagous to the quality of connection your server will provide. I recommend 7000, this is a good compromise of connection quality and bandwidth useage).
Keep in mind that server spectators use bandwidth traffic. So, be sure to include them in your number of clients.
Also, the server has no real graphical user interface (by default). All that it has is a simple text window that shows the server as running (like a command window). So, if you're not comfortable with .ini and .bat file tweaking, this may not be for you. The good thing is that you can activate a special option called Web Admin. This is the pseudo GUI for the server: a HTML based interface that works very well. Once activated, this really makes thing a lot more simple. But, this is NOT activated by default...why, I don't know.
When you download the dedicated server, you will note that it's not an executable. Instead, it's a huge zipped file. All you have to do is unzip the file to any drive with enough size. I like it this way as there aren't any registry keys (except for the key which you can save) that make it difficult to backup. Once you have your server running, all you have to do is copy the entire folder called ..\UT2004server\ if you want to backup. I find this to be cleaner.