Multiplayer Plan Clarifications

[MokahTGS]

Is there a FAQ that covers all of the multiplayer questions? If not, can a dev please clarify the following:

Will Lost Skies support private, dedicated servers that can be either hosted through a hosting service AND/OR preferably hosted locally on your own dedicated server machine for play with friends either on the same internal network or over the internet.

Currently, we have tried the demo and had no problem connecting to Steam friends hosted game, but that isn't a dedicated server.

[Lancebringer]

Locally hosted. I doubt there will be a dedicated, most games that use locally hosted coding dont support dedicated

[Spacebar Jazz]

Not a dev, but it seems to be the plan. Here's some of the Discord posts from one of the engineers last month answering questions about dedicated server plans. (Quotes are from players):

Bossa Fish 1/20/25

They should revise the startup flags by offering settings within the flags

You will be able to specify server config via command line parameter like you specified, or by pointing to a configuration file, where you can specify all the same parameters.

having the server hide behind the game executable / not integrated into the executable.

They will be two different executables on steam, the server one is called "Lost Skies Dedicated Server".

that you need to be logged into steam to run the server is also unacceptable

In principal we're aware of this practice and why it's beneficial. I don't see any reason we wouldn't enable this flow. Maybe the first version will not allow this so we can share it earlier without worrying about some of the security considerations. But it's not especially time consuming to support fully and securely so I'm confident we can do this.

configuration files

The configuration for LS should be nice and clear, so you can have fun with sensible default straight away and customize many options to create many tuned community experiences on different servers.

It would be superb if we can pull the installation from SteamCMD

As addressed above, yes.

using Conan Exiles as an example the dedicated server has a separate steamID

You can expect something very similar.

I'll toss in my minecraft server experience.

Networking.
It feels like an endless battle with ISP/router/PC to get networking working. CGNats ruined the model and made life so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hard.

The other side is server maintaining.
The best experience I had was with a minecraft docker https://github.com/itzg/docker-minecraft-server which has tooling for automatic backups, shutdowns, idle modes etc.

To help with networking challenges I'd recommend most users set up dedicated servers alongside steam, and enable steam networking.

docker... we won't provide like most games unfortunately, I say this as a big fan.

But we will make it as easy as all other major multiplayer games for community docker images.

[Shoshin]

Originally posted by Lancebringer:

Locally hosted. I doubt there will be a dedicated, most games that use locally hosted coding dont support dedicated

uhm, isn't Valheim the exact same setup, but also offers dedicated servers? How about Enshrouded?

[Lancebringer]

Originally posted by Shoshin:

Originally posted by Lancebringer:

Locally hosted. I doubt there will be a dedicated, most games that use locally hosted coding dont support dedicated

uhm, isn't Valheim the exact same setup, but also offers dedicated servers? How about Enshrouded?

Key word, most