Chapter 6. Setting Up the Game Servers

As great as it would be to run a Counter Strike server on Pi, it is just not possible due to the high requirements of running such game servers. Mostly, this is due to the shortfall of RAM, but some servers also require powerful processors to deliver low latency performance for all players, which could be up to 24 players per game.

In this chapter, you will be introduced to open source games that have been developed by people with a passion for a particular genre of games. These games were reverse engineered, built from scratch, or just became popular due to their simplicity.

Updating to Jessie

At the time of writing this book, the main distribution was Debian Wheezy; but Debian Jessie was added around June 2013 for testing. A lot of game server packages were updated only in Jessie because of newer dependencies.

You can upgrade the entire Pi to Jessie, but you are advised not to do this until the official image is released. Instead, we will install selected, specific packages from Jessie, while keeping the entire distribution stable in Wheezy. These steps can be skipped if you are already using Jessie.

Selective settings

We should add the following two lines into /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian/ jessie main contrib non-free rpi
deb http://archive.raspbian.org/raspbian jessie main contrib non-free rpi

The next step is to tell aptitude to use the wheezy repository for normal updates and that you would like to use Jessie from time to time. These settings should be typed into the file found at /etc/apt/preferences. Create this...

Games servers

We will only be focusing on running the server parts of games that do not require desktop interaction. Instead, you run the client on another computer and connect to Pi. Some clients can run on Pi's X desktop, but they might suffer from low frame rates.

OpenTTD

OpenTTD is a reimplementation of the original Transport Tycoon made by Micropose. The game is dangerously addictive and adding Internet play into the mix gives you an extra competitive edge.

You have to have a passion for logistics, strategy, and real-time simulation to enjoy this game. The goal is just something to do with controlling trains and trucks as efficiently as possible and make profit while transporting cargo.

Installing OpenTTD

The latest package is kept only on Jessie.

Sudo apt-get –t jessie install openttd

Several libraries will be installed during this time. You might be presented with a blue screen, which asks you if you want to restart some services in order to complete the package installation. It is safe...

Summary

In this chapter, we have learned how to use another non-default repository and how to set up various gaming servers on the Pi.

We have also learned how to use the Jessie repository for some packages; how to install OpenTTD, freeciv, and OpenArena from aptitude; and how to set up a high performance Minecraft server using Java Hard-Float. In the next chapter, we will be setting up and possibly even mining for some Crypto Coins.