User:Nosoop/Guide/Setup

This section assumes that you're starting out with nothing besides a desktop computer, an internet connection, and a drive to program some SourceMod plugins. No programming experience; no problem.

This page will walk you through manually installing server software for a game of your choice, installing SourceMod, and selecting a text editor to use for development.

There are a number of other third-party tools that can automate most of these steps, but we'll take the long way here so you understand exactly what goes on.

Installing the Server

To install the server software for the game of your choice, we will use steamcmd. If a game server provider (GSP) is hosting the server for you, skip this step.

steamcmd is Valve's command-line Steam client. It is used to install and update dedicated game servers.

Refer to the SteamCMD section in the Valve Developer Wiki for download instructions. This varies on the operating system you're running the software on; you can either work on your own desktop or have a hosted (physical or virtual) machine off-premises.

Once steamcmd is extracted, you will need to install a game. Continue reading the above wiki page to run the application, sign in (anonymously), and download your game server.

For your convenience, the following dedicated Source servers use the given Steam AppIDs:

• Day of Defeat: Source: 232290
• Team Fortress 2: 232250
• Counter-Strike: Source: 232330
• Counter-Strike: Global Offensive: 740
• Left 4 Dead: 222840
• Left 4 Dead 2: 222860
• Half-Life 2: Deathmatch: 232370

For post-install server configuration, take a look at the Game Server Configuration page.

Installing Metamod:Source

Before you can install SourceMod on your server, you must first install Metamod:Source. Metamod:Source (MM:S) acts as a middleware for different Source Engine games, providing a unified interface for plugins to operate on the game.

SourceMod itself is an MM:S plugin.

1. Download Metamod:Source. In most cases, you want a stable release. Use the download package according to your server's operating system.
   • If the latest download is unavailable, go down the "Latest 20 Builds" until you get to one that is.
2. Copy the contents of the archive into your game's mod directory (one level below srcds.exe or srcds_run; the mod directory should contain steam.inf).

Installing SourceMod

See Installing SourceMod on the AlliedModders wiki.

You will also want to download SourceMod for your platform and extract the addons/sourcemod/scripting/ folder to a location on your computer.

Picking an IDE

Now that you have the game server and SourceMod installed, you have most of the tools you need.

If you've never done any programming, you'll need a text editor. It's completely possible to write code in plain old Notepad and invoke the compiler directly, but having a proper development environment makes it much easier to work with code.

The following editors are known to have good support for SourceMod plugins:

• Spider (highly recommended when starting out due to it being zero-install; once you have multiple projects, move on to one of the non-web text editors)
• BasicPawn
• Notepad++
• SPEdit
• Sublime Text 3
• Visual Studio Code (VSCode)

For more details on each editor and, if necessary, how to set it up for writing SourceMod plugins, look at the Development Environments section.