Setting up a server with a pre exisiting map.

[Bopher]

I apologize in advance since for some reason I am having a heck of a time find any information on doing this, and may be looking in the wrong spot here too. We are looking into moving a map that a friend was hosting on his pc to a dedicated server, now we want to make sure that the map can be moved to one and everything shows up in it before we go and rent on so we were testing moving the map to just using the dedicated server in Steam.

I have downloaded the map, edited the serverconfig.xml, and can get the map to load and look around in it. trouble is that none of our building is there, any edits to the map are gone, and its Day 1, as is my character as well. We are up to like day 50 or something.

This is currently running 18.2 but we were also having trouble on 18.1. What am I doing wrong or what thread am I missing that can tell me exactly what files are suppose to go where. Biggest difference I can see with the folders is that there is a Player folder and a ConfigsDump folder that is not present in the Navezgane or the Pregen folders.

The folder that he sent me was the Voluya Territoy, so I made sure to update the "Gameworld" to match and the "GameName" to match the world folder under data.

I'm assuming with as quickly as some of these updates come out that's why we cant find any concrete guides on what we are doing wrong.

 

Like I said, we got the map to move to a pc running the dedicated server, but player information and any edits we have done, i.e base progress, placed chests for loots etc are gone like the map is nice and clean. But we want to pickup where we left off.

[meganoth]

That you didn't get a Player directory from him might indicate that you probably got sent the wrong files.

 

From his install-directory you only need one thing, the serverconfig.xml. Make sure you don't change anything that goes into making the game seed or path where it is looking for the game.

 

And then you only need his "SaveGameFolder" directory (you find the path if you use the game launcher to tell you. It is different dependent on operating system, I could only tell you the linux paths from memory). Preferably you should get the whole folder or you also might just copy the world you are playing, it should be something like "SavegameFolder""GameName""WorldGenSeed" (or the other way round)

 

If he didn't start a separate headless server, his savegames might be separated into "SavesLocal" and "Saves", you need "Saves".

 

After starting the server you should look into the logfile of the server. In it you will find the paths 7D2D is really looking for your save game. If that is different from what you expect, you need to edit serverconfig.xml. You can also name the savegame/world directly, it is explained in the comments in serverconfig.xml.

 

There is also a separate directory where newly created worlds are generated, the "UserDataFolder" in serverconfig.xml. In it new RWG worlds are generated. Ideally the same world is created if you just use the same seed. But there are bugs which might lead to small changes between the same world generated on different machines or operating systems. You could also copy this folder (which should be larger than the savegame) over instead of generating it new if you want to avoid such discrepancies. If you used Navetgane or one of the PREGEN worlds, that step is not necessary.

[Bopher]

meganoth, thank you for the response to the trouble we are having.

 

For the most part we've gotten it to start up and following you directions it is reading from the correct area for the map. But is seems to not want to save the map, every time I start the server and log into it, the is giving me day 1 time 7am and no matter where I log out I am always back at the same spawn location. It seems that even though I have specified where the player files are located it is ignoring them.

 

This trouble with not being able to move to a dedicated server and continue our current build and day seems like a crazy one. Not sure what we are doing wrong. The person who hosted it to start sent me everything in their app data and the entire 7dtd directory. I still cant find why the structures we've built are not there.

 

Originally the game was hosted from a Windows 10 machine and run as an open to friends game. I've been trying to get the dedicated server program in Steam to run the game in the background and that is a Windows 10 machine as well. I do have a Linux server that I could attempt to run from but fear the RAM on that machine will be to low. And trying to get it to run as dedicated is just to get a grasp on how to transfer everything to a rented server. Unless there are services out there that would say rent from us and send us these exact files and we'll set it up for you with no fuss.

Lag is the issue, before a certain point we could run the game hosted as is with 5 people online but after some sort of update not sure if Windows or 7dtd once a 3rd person connects ping shoot up so that opening boxes is a full 40 - 60 seconds of wait time. If anyone has solutions that may fix that issue that would be helpful too.

I'm going to pastebin the current serverconfig and folder structure I have on my system to run the dedicated server.

Config: https://pastebin.com/ZELUqVUc

[meganoth]

Just an idea: You might be having problems with file system rights.

 

Make sure your server has the right to read and write to the files your friend sent over. Look into your savegame, some of the files there should have modification times from when you were trying to log in the last time.

 

Another possible problem: You set up your "UserDataFolder" as "SaveGameFolder"\\Player. Note that UserDataFolder is used to store RWG generated worlds, i,e, the procedurally generated world data that is (AFAIK) never touched again. This can be even used by another game session started with the same seed, both games would just save the differences to this pristine world !

 

The player data, i.e. your player levels, your inventory contents and all the blocks you ever changed in the world are stored in "SaveGameFolder".

 

I'm not sure if putting UserDataFolder inside SaveGameFolder does anything bad. For that to happen there would have to be for example paths in both directories pointing to the same file or maybe file locks to the directories blocking threads of 7D2D.

[joshh_889]

Hello, I looked all over for a solution to your problem stated above because I also had the same issue. I followed these instructions:

 

Alpha 18 specific instructions

Note: you can only upload worlds also generated in the same version the server is using, you cannot use pre 18 worlds

1. Every world you generate is saved in its own folder that can usually be found in c:\Users\{YOUR WINDOWS USERNAME}\Documents\7 Days to Die\Saves 
   Zip up the folder that is your save folder (Must be .zip, not .rar/.7z etc
2. Log into your game panel > game services > select your server
3. Go to file manager and go into the "Saves" folder, upload your zipped save folder then click it after its finished uploading and select unzip.
4. Once the folder has unzipped you should see Saves\map-name\Your world name, come out of file manager and go into configuration files > configuration editor and edit the pingperfect.xml config
5. Set "Game World" in pingperfect.xml to the same name of the folder immediately under Saves (Secexe County in this example)
6. Set the "Game Name" field to the exact name of your saved World in the folder below the map-name
7. Example - World uploaded is Saves\Secexe County\my world name, you would enter "my world name" in the game name field
8. Set seed and map size to the same values on the server / PC the world was generated on
9. Save config and start your server.

 

After all of that I loaded into the map and nothing was there. As last ditch effort I unzipped the folder over the one created and did not touch the XML file and.... voila! It worked! All my stuff (Base, materials, and Backpack. I forgot to check my XP) was there... there was one minor exception, the clock reseted to day 1. I realize that this post is months old but I wanted to share my fix in case someone else goes through the trenches of google to find an answer. 

 

Take care.

 

Joshua