Starbound Ampere Server

This is my attempt on running Starbound dedicated server in an Oracle Ampere A1 Compute instance.

Warning

Downloading from nightly.link is currently not available, file structure also slightly changed. At this moment, the script would download v0.1.14 release for x86, and fall back to build from source for arm64.

Warning

No docker image is available for download, you have to build it yourself, I made this only to let myself host Starbound in this very specific instance and play with my friends, I do not guarantee that this will work on your machine. No support will be provided!

Features

1. Multi-arch Starbound dedicated server
   • Vanilla Starbound in arm64 is emulated by using box64 or FEX-Emu at your choice.
   • OpenStarbound has native arm64 support, older versions before that are compiled from source.
   • There are proberly hundreds of projects out there that can do this, if you only want a simple x86 server, theirs might be a better choice.
2. Use manual mods (*.pak)
   • Native feature of Starbound, not much to talk about.
   • You can use unpacked mods, but this script only handles the backup of *.pak files, be aware if you want to include mods in your backup.
3. Use Steam workshop mods
   • Another common feature of similar projects...
   • This is achieved by using steamcmd’s workshop_download_item command, and then the script creates symlink to let the game read them.
4. Use Steam workshop collection mods
   • Very convenient if you use workshop collections to manage your mods, you can even combine multiple collections.
   • The script uses Steamworks web API ISteamRemoteStorage/GetCollectionDetails to get workshop item ids from the collection ids you provided.
5. Backup data at launch
   • Backups your universe into a *.zip file before starting the server, useful if you accidentally dropped a nuke in your base.
   • Able to keep multiple versions, what if this is combined with some external script handling auto server restart...

Build

docker build -t starbound-ampere-server:local .

Note

This will take a long time to compile, about half an hour on my 4-core VM.Standard.A1.Flex instance, or 15-20 minutes on Apple M4 depending on how fast I can download FEX-Emu and vcpkg. When building for linux/amd64 it just downloads OpenStarbound's release assets, if an linux/arm64 build becomes available from them in the future, I will use that too instead of compiling everything. OpenStarbound linux/arm64 build is now available after commit 9f76581, the build script now tries to download the arm64 artifacts, if that fails, it falls back to build from source.

Docker Compose

services:
  starbound:
    image: starbound-ampere-server:local
    pull_policy: never
    container_name: starbound
    user: 1000:1000
    ports: [21025:21025/tcp]
    volumes:
      - ~/.starbound-mods:/server/starbound/mods
      - ~/.starbound-storage:/server/starbound/storage
      - ~/.starbound-backup:/server/backup
      - ~/.starbound-data:/server/data
    restart: unless-stopped

This docker-compose.yml example only mounts some user serviceable paths, but if you have more needs, here's the directory tree:

/server                 # The container's working directory
|-- backup              # Backup data
|-- data
|   |-- container.log   # Log file of the main script
|   `-- starbound.env   # Environment variables controlling the script’s behaviour
|-- openstarbound       # Pre-compiled OpenStarbound ARM build
|-- rootfs              # FEX's rootfs location
|-- starbound
|   |-- assets          # Starbound and OpenStarbound's assets
|   |-- linux           # Game server binaries
|   |-- logs            # Game logs (OpenStarbound)
|   |-- mods            # All .pak mods and workshop mod symlinks
|   |-- steamapps       # Workshop mods' download location
|   `-- storage         # Save files / game logs (Vanilla Starbound)
|-- starbound.sh        # Main script
`-- steamcmd            # SteamCMD binaries
    `-- home            # The container user's home directory, steamcmd logs are here

Steam Guard and packed.pak

You do not need to disable Steam Guard if you have mobile authenticator enabled. Steam will use an interactive notification in the app to let you proceed with the login request, it might ask you few more questions if you are logging in from an unusual location, for example, a VPS in another country.

With OpenStarbound being the default game engine used in this image, you do not need to login to Steam to download vanilla Starbound, but the packed.pak that comes with it is still a problem. To solve this you can use the packed.pak from the Starbound copy you own, bind /server/starbound/assets to host and put packed.pak inside to eliminate the need of Steam login.

It can be found in the following locations, it is recommended to copy from dedicated server, it contains the minimal needed files for server to operate.

[Steam Root]/steamapps/common/Starbound Dedicated Server/assets/packed.pak

The one from client also works.

[Steam Root]/steamapps/common/Starbound/assets/packed.pak

Environment Variables

These variables should be modified in starbound.env instead of docker-compose.yml because the main script will read them from starbound.env at runtime, if you still prefer that you can place an empty starbound.env to bypass re-creation.

Variable	Default	Example	Info
STEAM_LOGIN	"anonymous"	"myusername mypassword"	Your Steam credentials, required to download the game, workshop mods are always downloaded anonymously.
OPENSTARBOUND	true	false	To use OpenStarbound instead of vanilla Starbound, however you still have to use Steam to download (or provide your own copy of) packed.pak .
LAUNCH_GAME	true	false	Starbound will be launched after all update operations (if any) are finished.
FEX_ENABLED	false	true	Use FEX instead of box64 for x86_64 emulation.
BACKUP_ENABLED	true	false	Backup save data on start, before any update and game launch.
BACKUP_VERSIONS	10	5	Decides how many copies of backup data will be kept.
BACKUP_COOLDOWN	1800	3600	Number of seconds that must be passed before a backup task can run again, this is to prevent backups being overwritten by broken repeatedly restarting container.
BACKUP_MODS_MANUAL	false	true	Include manual mods in backup.
BACKUP_MODS_WORKSHOP	false	true	Include workshop mods in backup.
UPDATE_STEAM	false	true	Decides whether to update SteamCMD or not, if UPDATE_GAME or UPDATE_WORKSHOP is set to true this option will be ignored.
UPDATE_GAME	false	true	Decides whether to update all game files or not, if LAUNCH_GAME is set to true and the game is incomplete, this script will still re-download the missing parts.
UPDATE_WORKSHOP	false	true	Decides whether to update workshop mods or not, whilst skipping already installed mods.
UPDATE_WORKSHOP_FORCE	false	true	Changes UPDATE_WORKSHOP behaviour to verify and download every workshop mods if needed.
WORKSHOP_ITEMS		1115920474,729427436	A list of Steam workshop ids of individual mods, the id can be obtained from the URL of the item page.
WORKSHOP_COLLECTIONS		3468099241	A list of Steam workshop ids, but only for collections.
WORKSHOP_CHUNK	20	0	Workshop mods are downloaded in groups to avoid downloading a huge list all at once, this option decides the group size, set to 0 to turn off.
WORKSHOP_PRUNE	true	false	Delete workshop mods that are no longer included in WORKSHOP_ITEMS or WORKSHOP_COLLECTIONS.
WORKSHOP_MAX_RETRY	3	5	Number of retries should be performed when there are errors downloading mods, container will exit after all retries are exhausted.

Credits

Starbound

https://store.steampowered.com/app/211820/Starbound/

OpenStarbound

https://github.com/OpenStarbound/OpenStarbound

...and to compile OpenStarbound for ARM

OpenStarbound/OpenStarbound#263

Box64

https://github.com/ptitSeb/box64

FEX

https://github.com/FEX-Emu/FEX