Guide – How To Start – The Forest: Game Server on Windows Server 2016

The Forest is an open world survival horror game. Build, explore, survive in this terrifying first person survival horror simulator.

This is a quick deployment and ready-to-run image.
Simple and rapid installation. Easy to maintain.

How to create and connect to “The Forest” Game Server for Windows 2016

1. Before starting the server, open the “start server.bat” file with a text editor. To do this, click on it with the right mouse button and select “Edit”.

2. Set the parameters in a way convenient for you:

– serverip – server IP address. After this parameter, you must specify the local VM address. To do this, open the console by pressing Win + R on your keyboard, and enter the cmd command.

In the opened console, enter the ipconfig command and copy the value of the “IPv4 Address” field. It must be inserted after serverip. The rest of the fields can be left unchanged.

-serverSteamPort 8766 – Steam Communication Port

-serverGamePort 27015 – Game Communication Port

-serverQueryPort 27016 – Query Communication Port

-serverName – Server display name. How it is seen in the game lobby.

-serverPlayers 8 – Maximum number of players

-difficulty Normal – Game difficulty mode. Must be set to Peaceful / Normal / Hard / HardSurvival

-initType Continue – Must be set to New or Continue. If left on New, the game won’t save and you will have to restart each time.

-slot 1 – Slot to save the game. Must be set to either slot 1 / slot 2 / slot 3 / slot 4 / slot 5.

-serverPasswordAdmin – Server administration password

3. After setting up the “start server.bat” file, run it.
4. To connect to the server, start the “The Forest” game on your PC. Select Multiplayer -> Join Game in the game menu, and go to the Dedicated (Internet) section.
5. Wait until the list of servers is fully loaded, and enter the server name that was specified after the serverName parameter in the “Filter by name” field. Then connect to the server.
   
   

Server update

If you were unable to connect to the server you should update the server. To do this, connect to the VM through RDP and do the following:

1. Close the server
2. Go to the “C:\steamcmd” folder and open the “steamcmd” file
3. Enter the following commands in sequence:

> login anonymous

> force_install_dir “C:\theforest”

> app_update 556450 validate

4. Wait until the server is updated, and run “start server.bat” file from the desktop again.