This is a proof of concept for a mod free and self hosted private build server.
It uses the recently added creative commands; as well as a couple custom maps that give plenty of room for experimenting with different builds and concepts.
The zip for this project comes from the Rust Wiki regarding servers.
It is important to acknowledge that this isn't for everyone and there are already great ways to practice building in a variety of ways.
These are superior because they have great tooling for being creative and UX, such as symmetry and saving/loading designs.
This POC exists as a standalone from these for a few reasons:
- Build servers can be extremely laggy and getting kicked is not uncommon.
- Fortify is a fantastic tool, but lacks the sense of feeling and scale from seeing a design in game.
- Both Fortify and sandbox servers can come with a pricetag, so this is a free alternative.
To begin, download the server.zip from the Releases, this contains all the necessary files and configs needed.
Getting a server started will be pretty easy, as some maps are provided and the config files are written in a way that makes sense for what we want.
Simply unarchive the project to reveal the strucute:
Before running anything, there are two files that need to be modified to fit you. These being server.cfg and users.cfg.
In server.cfg, change the path to the .map files to their respective locations in your file system.
In users.cfg, add your respective information from Steam to be added as an admin.
Now that we have done that, we can simply run run_ds.bat.
This will download the rust server, keep it up to date, and use the configs we set.
Once this is done, we can connect from our Rust client.
Open Rust, and press F1 to open the console. Here we will type connect localhost:28015
This will connect us to our locally hosted server on port 28015. connect should resolve to client.connect.
Keep in mind, we have not exosed this port to the outside internet. No one will be able to connect to this except for those on the local network. This means we keep unwanted individuals out, but no friends can join either. If you wanted to allow friends to join, you would have to forward this port on your router and not set the server.levelurl to be a file. But that is beyond the scope of this POC.
To disconnect, you can open the console again, and type disconnect, which maps to client.disconnect.
This is pretty easy, you just have to press ctrl + c in the console that started the server.
It will then prompt you to terminate the batch job, to which you type y and press enter.
There are two really useful commands you will want to bind to hotkeys while building.
These being noclip and ent kill.
noclip enables flight and going through objects.
ent kill is basically a "remove" for whatever entity you are looking at.
Here are examples of binds you could set:
bind z ent kill & bind f noclip
Z isn't bound to anything and is easy to reach, so it seemed like a good choice.
F is bound to flashlight/laser, but other builds servers use it to enable noclip so it seemed fitting.
Feel free to set these to be whatever you want.
There is a config value global.god that should be set to 'True'.
It will prevent you from taking damage and needing to eat/drink.
If it isn't working at first, press F1 in game, and type global.god True in the console;
There is a config value global.admintime that should set the time statically to noon. But this may not work, or you may want to change it.
Simply press F1 in game, and type admintime n in the console; -1 <= n <= 24
While using the building plan, you can set the grade of what you place by using Q and E.
You will likely want to spawn objects and items to place around your base or use.
A good flow for this is to press F1 then Tab, which will bring you to the "Items" tab. Admins can spawn anything in from here.
You will also notice that your cursor is automatically placed on the search bar, so you can begin typing what you want. In this example, a tool cupboard.
Close this by pressing F1 again or Esc.
The server will auto save every so often. But it you want to ensure a save happens right before you stop the server, type save into the console that is running run_ds.bat.
Save files will appear inside of the my_server folder. Deleting them will wipe your work, so be sure you have backups or are intentially wanting to remove these.
If you're wanting to know how I created the .map files, or you want to create some of your own, check out Rust Edit.
The website is pretty bare bones, but the tool is great and pretty intuitive to figure out.
Useful Console Commands - Rust Wiki
Admin Commands - Corrosion Hour
I will update this if problems are found, better configs are needed, or new maps are desired, etc.
I have thought about writing some plugins for Oxide that would provide similar tools to Builder's Sanctuary or UKN Sandbox, but that is a lot of work and I am unsure if anyone would even be interested in that. So for now I will leave it as this and if people are wanting this I can look into it!
Cheers