This guide will describe how to perform mod setup and management tasks for your game server within the Hosting Dashboard. This guide will describe the usage of the in-dashboard mod management capabilities and does not preclude your ability to manage mods on your game server using FTP, should you own that FTP Addon for your server.
Supported titles as of October 2024: ArmA 3
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction to Mod Management
Revelation Hosting has introduced a custom mod management solution into our Hosting Dashboard to allow for server owners of supported game titles to quickly add mods to their server with a UI that feels informative and intuitive to use. Each game title's mod management implementation is designed to take advantage of all native mod management tools and templating available to players. For example, for ArmA 3 servers, we allow for you to import the HTML mod list file that the ArmA 3 client launcher can generate, allowing admins to quickly set a server up to match an existing mod configuration.
The Mod Management UI
Mod List
Annotation 1: Activate and Deactivate mods. This toggle turns on and off which mods will be loaded when the server starts. For ArmA 3, we inject the '-mod=<mods>' string to the first line of the parameters.txt file, based on your selection of mods that are activated.
Annotation 2: Delete the mod from your mod list, and from your server. Note: If your game server is stopped (soft stop doesn't apply) we have to start your server to delete a mod from it. We will not however start the game server. So the server, as in the Windows VM, will start but the ArmA server in this case will not be started. Otherwise, we have no way to delete the mod files from the server if the VM is off. If you delete a mod and then want the game server to start as well, use the soft start function on the Overview tab.
Mod Management
Annotation 1: Add a single mod, using it's Workshop ID to the mod list.
Annotation 2: After making changes to the mod activation states in the mod list, save their state to the database. Note: This does not deploy the mod files to the server or make any changes to what mod files are present on the server. It will influence which mods are loaded when the game server starts, does require a restart or soft-restart to take effect.
Annotation 3: Sets all Mod Activated toggles to true and saves that to the database.
Annotation 4: Sets all Mod Activated toggles to false and saves that to the database.
Annotation 5: Deploys all mods in the mod list, regardless of Activation State, to the server's file system. This is also the button you will use to update your mods from the workshop if needed.
Annotation 6: ArmA 3 Specific! Upload the mod preset that the ArmA 3 Launcher creates for your server to match that configuration. Note: We recommend hitting the Disable All Mods button prior to running this import if you already have mods in the list. This HTML preset upload will not disable or delete mods already in the mod list, if a mod from the HTML already exists in the mod list it will be enabled automatically. You don't hit the Save Mod States after importing an HTML file, it performs the same save function after it completes unless you want to make additional changes.
Mod Deployment Process
Starting off with a new server, the flow of how you add mods to your server is quite simple and involves the following steps:
- Add the mods you want to use to the mod list individually or as a mod-list preset like ArmA 3 provides.
- Set the mod activation state to how you want them and his Save Mod States.
- Click Deploy Mods to Server
- Wait for the Mod Initialization and Mod Update status to complete
- Start the game server using the Soft-Start function
- Join the server and have a blast!
Potential issues
Issue: Game server won't launch correctly with mods loaded
Solution: The most likely problem is that you have a mod loaded but not it's dependencies. Our mod loading system does not automatically resolve and load mod dependencies for you, so if you see encounter errors with mod loading, start there. If you believe all dependencies are loaded, ensure the mods you are trying to use are actually server-side mods, some mods are only for the client. Also check to make sure the mod you are loading supports the game server version you have; this is most pertinent to something like Minecraft where you always have to match the version exactly but could potentially show up for Steam-based workshop mods. If all else fails, and the logs aren't useful, contact support and we can work to get the issue resolved.
Issue: The mod deployment starts running but stops short of completion and doesn't deploy all the mods to the server. Example symptom would be the server status jumping from something like "Mod Updating (4 of 20)" to "Online"
Solution: For Steam Workshop-based mods, we issue a series of commands to download those mods with SteamCMD. Sometimes, Steam likes to give us the middle finger and is either down entirely, or something with their download distribution network goes sideways and we start getting rate limited. In either of these cases, we abort the mod deployment to not make the problem worse and reset the server's state to online to try again later. Typically, the issue resolves in around 30 minutes, if you experience something like this, I recommend checking Down Detector just to see if it's a regional or global issue. If not, contact support and we can most likely intervene to get things moving.
Issue: I deleted a mod, but the mod files are still on the server. What gives?
Solution: A quick support ticket can alleviate that, but the explanation is that most likely something, potentially your game server (which we do attempt to kill the process of prior to running a mod deletion) could still have that mod folder locked, which means it won't get deleted. It is also possible that a mod will create other assets in your game server's folder that are not tracked by our delete script and you through FTP or our support team would just need to go in and clean those up manually.
If you have any issues not outlined in this, go ahead and contact support and we can probably get you sorted out!