Killing Floor 2 Linux Server

This is (was) a setup of code running on a (free-tier) EC2 AWS instance, to setup and manage a Killing Floor 2 server.

One of the biggest issues I (and some of my friends) have had with playing KF2 has been finding the perfect server to play on. Using the server browser to find a map that meets all of the criteria you wanted was a chore at best and an impossibility at worst.

The following categories are things we considered when finding a server, and would be lucky to find even just 3 matching criteria:

Map/game mode (and to make matters more complicated: custom maps)
Max player count
Difficulty (normal, hard, etc.)
Map length (short, medium, long)
Server location, and ping, for all the people that want to play
Password protection (for the sake of friends-only, if we didn't want to be bothered by random joiners)

The last criteria alone is pretty impossible via just the in-game server browser, so it seemed like hosting our own server would be the best overall solution.

NOTE:

I initially ran this on an EC2 instance, but you could run this locally or in any of your preferred cloud computing solutions - whatever you want. For EC2, you might have to, unfortunately, either go above a free-tier to get an instance with enough drive space to download KF2 onto, or open an extra volume and attach it to your free-tiered EC2. (which will probably increase the cost as well)

Getting Started

This assumes a couple of things:

You have steamcmd installed for Linux.
Your Steam installations are hooked up to ~/Steam/.
You've cloned this repo into your $HOME directory. (~)
The ./kf2/update.steam-script.txt file has the first line modified to point to where you want to install KF2. (you can symlink ~/Steam/ to this location later if needed)

# Pre-req
sudo apt install steamcmd

# Install/update
~/kf2-server-manager/kf2/run-update
# Start the server
~/kf2-server-manager/kf2/start-server

If the location for this repo is NOT ~/kf2-server-manager, you need to run the above server scripts with the env variable SERVER_MANAGER_HOME set to your preferred location. This value is ~/kf2-server-manager/kf2 by default.

Running the Server

Simply run:

$SERVER_MANAGER_HOME/start-server

Which runs the KF2 Linux executable at ~/Steam/steamapps/common/kf2server/Binaries/Win64/KFGameSteamServer.bin.x86_64.

Use start-server --help for usage info.

`start-server` CLI

Flag	Description	Value(s)
`-h,--help`	Show help menu.	-
`-m,--map` `<map>`	Choose the map to set on server start. Default is `kf-bioticslab`.	Look at maps in `[KFGame.KFGameInfo].GameMapCycles` in `KFGame.ini`
`--game-mode` `<mode>`	Choose the game mode on server start. Default is `survival`.	`survival`, `versus`, `weekly`, `endless`

NOTE: There is an (optional) systems check script that runs before startup of the server. This is more specific to my personal setup of the server, and can be disabled via SYSTEM_CHECKS_ENABLED=false.

Configuration

In ~/Steam/steamapps/common/kf2server/KFGame/Config/ exists multiple *.ini config files:

KFGame.ini
- General game config for the server. (stuff like, server info, name, password, game mode, game maps, etc.)
KFEngine.ini
- Server port management, server tick rate
KFWeb.ini
- Web admin config options

NOTE: The real names of the above config files will have a prepended system name. (ie: Linux/Windows)

Map List

The start-server script depends on an existing maps.txt file within $SERVER_MANAGER_HOME to display available within the CLI help menu, and to more importantly populate the initial map rotation list for the server on startup.

The map names need to follow the KF-<name> convention that matches the ID of the map. You can find this manually by navigating to <steam-installation>/kf2server/KFGame/BrewedPC/Maps/<map-name> and looking for a correspdoning $MAP_ID.kfm file (will usually follow the pattern of KF-<MAP>.kfm, ie: KF-BioticsLab.kfm).

The maps.txt file will be automatically update via the run-update script in accordance to the GameMapCycles configuration in KFGame.ini. Keep that file updated on your own!

Custom Maps

Add the workshop ID into KFEngine.ini:

; This section will exist already if there are custom maps already set up...
[OnlineSubsystemSteamworks.KFWorkshopSteamworks]
ServerSubscribedWorkshopItems=2998243647 ; <-- Add a new item with the workshop ID

Additionally, the map name needs to be added to the KFGame.ini > [GameMapCycles] config, as mentioned in the above "Map List" section.

Updating

$SERVER_MANAGER_HOME/run-update

This will install any new updates/patches for Killing Floor 2 from Steam.
Additionally, the maps.txt file will be auto-updated according to the existing GameMapCycles config for your server.

Resources

For the official docs, refer to the Killing Floor 2 Wiki's Dedicated Server Guide.

Most of the notes here are retranscribed from there, for brevity and easier referral. There are additional notes here that are specific to my implementation.

malouro/kf2-server-manager