– to play games with y0ur friends over the internet

Recently, I had a friend reach out, asking to play some CounterStrike over the Christmas holiday. They were traveling, and only had a laptop with integrated intel graphics. because of this, we chose to play CS:CZ instead of anything running the source engine.

Below are the steps I took to set up the server, and how anyone can do it too!

this will all be done using a windows pc.

Part 1: set up steamCMD and install dedicated server

step 1-1: create folder for dedicated server files

I created a directory simply called “steamServer” in the root of my pc. This could be anything, as long as it is unique. some people suggest simply calling it SteamCMD since that’s what we’ll be placing in it.

C:\steamServer\

step 1-2: download server files

download the SteamCMD zip file here:

click here for download

step 1-3: extract and copy the contents of the zip file to the folder.

so now we have the downloaded steamCMD.zip extracted, and the steamCMD.exe copied into the steamServer directory.

step 1-4: run the steamCMD.exe command.

we can run it by double-clicking on it from an explorer window, or navigating to it in a terminal window and running:

steamcmd

this will cause steamCMD to run and download a bunch of updates. when it is complete we can verify functionality by just typing ‘help’ at the steam> prompt.

step 1-5: log in

the thing we need allows us to log in anonymously, so we’ll just run:

login anonymous

step 1-6: Set your ded server install directory

Run the following command:

force_install_dir .\condZero\

create this folder if required.

step 1-7: setup the config

Run the following command. This will tell Steam which mods we want for a particular app id. in our case we want id #90, which is the “HLDS”, or halfLife dedicated server. HLDS is a special app because several other games use it. No matter which game you want, the App ID will be 90, but a mod must be selected to tell it which particular game we want. This is done by setting the app config option mod to the requested value:

app_set_config 90 mod czero

step 1-8: install the server

run the following command: this would also update if you already had it installed.

app_update 90 validate

HLFS has a bug where you have to run that command several times for it to work. let it run and when it’s done, run it again. do this a few times till you see:

Success! App '90' fully installed.

step 1-9:

part 2: configuring and running server

step 2-0: setup firewall to open ports/allow connections.

refer to references below to find the ports needed.

step 2-x: Edit the main configuration file: <game>/cfg/server.cfg to the settings needed

step 2-1: cd into the directory we created and downloaded the mod’ed server within.

step 2-2: run server

for example:

hlds.exe -console -game czero +maxplayers 4 +map de_dust

part 3: connecting to server

step 3-1: run CS:CZ

step 3-2: go to find servers

click on favorites

click ‘add a server’

enter your IPv4 address, or the address the server is running on

click ‘find games at this address’

references:

1. https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamCMD
2. https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Half-Life_Dedicated_Server
3. https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Dedicated_Servers_List
4. https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6470-EIFV-5481&l=english
5. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=729345010