chickenbellyfin/taserver repository overview

⁠taserver

taserver⁠ is a community-built replacement for the Tribes Ascend login server. This image runs a Tribes Ascend game server (using taserver's game server launcher) which is accessible through a community login server.

The git repository for this image is chickenbellyfin/taserver-docker⁠

⁠Tags and Image Variants

⁠taserver:latest

The latest release of taserver⁠ with the base game.

⁠taserver:latest-maps

The latest release of taserver⁠ + a collection of community-made maps. More info on the community maps can be found at Dodge's Domain⁠.

⁠taserver:<version> and taserver:<version>-maps

Images built with specific versions of taserver. It is high recommended to use :latest/:latest-maps instead.

⁠How to Run

This command will start a server called "My Custom OOTB Server", which will be available on the default community loginserver at ta.kfk4ever.com.

docker run \
  --name "taserver" -d --cap-add NET_ADMIN \
  -v "$(pwd)/gamesettings:/gamesettings" \
  -p "7777:7777/tcp" -p "7777:7777/udp" \
  -p "7778:7778/tcp" -p "7778:7778/udp" \
  -p "9002:9002/tcp" -p "9002:9002/udp" \
  chickenbellyfin/taserver

⁠Ports

You must open the following ports in your security group and/or firewall:

• 7777-7778 TCP and UDP
• 9002 TCP and UDP

⁠Helper script

There is a helper script in the git repo for this project which will make it easier to launch a game server.

# Download helper script and make it executable
curl -o taserver.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chickenbellyfin/taserver-docker/master/taserver.sh
chmod +x taserver.sh

# Start a gameserver
# This is equivalent to the docker run command above
./taserver.sh -d gamesettings

Servers launched using this script will keep running, even through crashes and reboots. This is useful if you are setting up a 24/7 server.

⁠Docker Compose

services:
  taserver:
    image: chickenbellyfin/taserver
    container_name: taserver
    volumes:
      - './gamesettings:/gamesettings'
    ports:
      - '9002:9002/udp'
      - '9002:9002/tcp'
      - '7777:7777/udp'
      - '7777:7777/tcp'
      - '7778:7778/udp'
      - '7778:7778/tcp'
    restart: unless-stopped
    cap_add:
     - NET_ADMIN

⁠Editing Server Settings

On the first run, the default game server lua config will be copied (only if it doesn't already exist) to ./gamesettings, or whichever directory you mounted to /gamesettings in the run command. You can edit the serverconfig.lua and re-start the container to apply the new settings.

Refer to tamods.org⁠ for how to edit lua gamesettings and available options.

⁠Adding community maps to the rotation

To add the community-made maps to the map rotation, add the following to serverconfig.lua. Players must have the maps installed via TAMods⁠ to play.

ServerSettings.MapRotation.addCustom("TrCTF-Blues")
ServerSettings.MapRotation.addCustom("TrCTF-Incidamus")
ServerSettings.MapRotation.addCustom("TrCTF-Periculo")
ServerSettings.MapRotation.addCustom("TrCTF-Fracture")
ServerSettings.MapRotation.addCustom("TrCTF-Phlegethon")
ServerSettings.MapRotation.addCustom("TrCTF-DesertedValley")
ServerSettings.MapRotation.addCustom("TrCTF-Acheron")
ServerSettings.MapRotation.addCustom("TrCTF-Styx")
ServerSettings.MapRotation.addCustom("TrCTFBlitz-Broadside")
ServerSettings.MapRotation.addCustom("TrArena-ElysianBattleground")

⁠Running Multiple Servers

⁠Ports

If you want to run multiple taservers from your host machine, you must open more ports, depending on how many servers you want to host.

For each range starting at 7777 and at 9002, open N * 2 ports counting up

ex. For 5 servers, add 10:

• 7777-7787 TCP & UDP
• 9002-9010 TCP & UDP

For the 9002- range, only the even ports are used. You may choose to only open the exact ports: 9002,9004,9006,... for extra security.

⁠Running Additional Servers

The helper script⁠ makes it easy to run multiple taserver instances.

For more than one server, you must also add -p <port_offset>, where port_offset must be a multiple of 2.

# start a taserver with port offset 0, game config will be in ./my_server/serverconfig.lua
$ ./taserver.sh -d my_server

# start a second server with a different config located in ./maybe_arena/
$ ./taserver.sh -d maybe_arena -p 2

# Start a third server, identical to the first
# we can re-use the config directory
$ ./taserver -d my_server -p 4

# start 10 identical servers
$ for i in {0..10}; do ./start_taserver.sh -d arena_settings -p $((i*2)) ; done

⁠Resources

In general, reserve 1GB of RAM for each server you want to run, 1 CPU core for each server which can be active (with players in it) at any given time.

For example, on a 2 core, 8GB RAM system, you can have 8 servers available, and 2 of them can have an ongoing game without causing issues.

Details on resources⁠