ark

Automated dedicated Ark: Survival Evolved server

ToDo

Planned features:

• Try to optimize the baking in of envs one might one to change
• Auto-Restart on mods update, with broadcast & delayed until no more players present

Usage

Start

In order to run the server, you should perform the following operations:

The save game folder /home/steam/ark/ShooterGame/Saved is a data volume. You should either mount in a host path or a named Docker volume container, or else Docker will create a new volume container on every start. Since Ark stores the configs inside a sub-folder Config, we consider them part of the save game and you can edit them there (Game.ini, GameUserSettings.ini, ...).

You will need to publish the following ports: PORT, RAWPORT, and QUERYPORT, the defaults of which are:

• 7777/udp
• 7778/udp
• 27015/udp
• 27015/tcp (if you want your server to show up in the server browser)
• 32330 (if you want rcon support, the password can be found and/or replaced in /home/steam/ark/rcon_pass)

Just changing the environment variables will not suffice for the server to work on a different port, probably the protocol has some ports hard-coded.

If turned on, the auto-update feature will automatically shut down the server when it's empty and the version mismatches. This means you must either configure the container to auto-restart (--restart=always) or disable the AUTO_UPDATE=false.

Stop

Stopping or restarting the server will cause it to try to save the save game, however the default timeout is only 10 seconds for this. In case your save is large or your machine is slow, be sure to include a longer timeout by adding -t 60.

Envs

• SERVER_NAME must be set to your desired server name (visible in the server browser)
• MAP_NAME can be set to load a different map (default TheIsland), other options at the time of writing are the DLCs TheCenter, ScorchedEarth_P and Ragnarok
• MOD_LIST can be set to a comma-separated list of mod ids to include them on the server
• DIFFICULTY can be set to an OverrideOfficialDifficulty value, if so desired, otherwise it will not be used in the start command line
• MAX_PLAYERS can be set to change the maximum players allowed at the same time on the server (default 70)
• BATTLE_EYE can be set to any value besides true to disable it (default true)
• RCON_HOST can be set to the external IP/DNS that your server should be reachable on
• RCON_GAME_LOG_BUFFER sets the max length of the game log via ?RCONServerGameLogBuffer (default 100)
• WHITELIST_PLAYERS can be set to a comma-separated list of steamID64s which will initialize the PlayersJoinNoCheckList.txt file, if it does not exist yet, and set -exclusivejoin. To manage the whitelisted users you can use the RCON commands AllowPlayerToJoinNoCheck <SteamID> and DisallowPlayerToJoinNoCheck <SteamID>.
• ADDITIONAL_COMMAND_LINE can be set to all the additional server parameters (if they are not already supported through another env) you want to use on start-up, e.g. ?NonPermanentDiseases=true?PreventOfflinePvP=true -insecure -noantispeedhack. The Ark Gamepedia is probably a good source for this.
• AUTO_UPDATE can be set to any value besides true to disable it (default true)
• SAVE_GAME_NAME can be set to an individual save game name (useful mainly for clusters, game default is SavedArks)
• CLUSTER_NAME can be set to a cluster id (for -clusterid) so that you can join multiple servers in a cluster. This will also set -NoTransferFromFiltering. If you want to do this make sure that: -- You have multiple servers running, e.g. by creating a local image via docker commit and starting multiple instances (so you don't have to re-download all game files) -- All the servers have the same CLUSTER_NAME set -- All the servers have the same data volume mounted in -- All the servers have a distinct SAVE_GAME_NAME set -- All the servers have the default ports in the container published to distinct ports on the host -- AFAIK the servers do not need to share a network
• PORT can be set to the desired gameport (default 7777)
• RAWPORT must be set to exactly PORT+1 (never set explicitly, is only used for exposing) (default 7778)
• QUERYPORT can be set to the desired query port (default 27015)

Example

This is how I start my non-public Ark servers for the first time at the time of developing this image:

• docker run -d \ -e SERVER_NAME=<server-name> \ -e MOD_LIST=<list-of-mods> \ -e DIFFICULTY=5.0 \ -e MAX_PLAYERS=10 \ -e BATTLE_EYE=false \ -e WHITELIST_PLAYERS=<censored> \ -e ADDITIONAL_COMMAND_LINE=?AllowCrateSpawnsOnTopOfStructures=true?AllowRaidDinoFeeding=true?DestroyUnconnectedWaterPipes=true?EnableExtraStructurePreventionVolumes=false?OverrideStructurePlatformPrevention=true -ForceAllowCaveFlyers -noantispeedhack\ -e CLUSTER_NAME=xcqcluster \ -v /home/steam/ark/ShooterGame/Saved:/home/steam/ark/ShooterGame/Saved \ -p 7777:7777/udp -p 7778:7778/udp -p 27015:27015/udp \ --health-start-period=2m \ --restart=always \ xcq1/ark