Mastering a server: Getting started

  1. Create a new Turbo Sliders directory
  2. The easiest way is just to copy the whole sliders directory (with its subdirectories) or to extract the installation packet to another location. Two Turbo Sliders processes should not be run at the same time in the same directory as this could result in the ini, player and record files being modified by two processes at the same time.

  3. You must mark the directory to be a dedicated server directory
  4. This is done by creating a file 'autoserver.srv' in the sliders directory. The file can contain anything but it must exist. After this, you cannot any more run the game in normal mode in this directory.
    create an autoserver.srv

  5. Running the server
  6. Automatic server is started with the command line option "-autoserver 1". To make starting server easier in Windows, I suggest you create a shortcut for this.

    shortcut
    Automatic server can be run in full mode even if there is not a full license for normal playing. However, if you want to run the server in demo mode (to allow non-full game players join), use command line option "-demo 1". So the full shortcut for demo-autoserver is like: "C:\Turbo Slider -autosrv\sliders.exe -autoserver 1 -demo 2".

  7. Shutting the server
  8. For quitting the server, I suggest you make the following file (and name it for example "quitserver.bat"):

      del autoserver.cmd
      echo /quit > autoserver.tmp
      rename autoserver.tmp autoserver.cmd
    

    quitting the server

    The rename stuff is there to make it a bit less probable that the server process happens to read the file before it has been completed. You can also try simply "echo /quit > autoserver.cmd" but there might be a slight probability that it fails.

    If you just kill the server process, some data files can get corrupted and you must delete autoserver.lck before the next time you start the server. The lock file is there to make it hard to run two autoserver processes at the same time.