swung0x48 / ballancemmo

🌍 Ballance Massive Multiplayer Online

BallanceMMO

Build status: ·

What is BallanceMMO?

BallanceMMO is a project which brings online experiences to Ballance.

Getting Started

Client

1. Install Ballance Mod Loader (aka. BML).

   • Download the latest version of BML here.
   • Extract and put BML.dll under $(game_directory)\BuildingBlocks, where $(game_directory) is where you installed your game to.

2. Download the latest mod release from the BMMO download site. Alternatively, try out builds from GitHub Actions which also support BallanceModLoaderPlus.

3. Put BallanceMMO_x.y.z-[stage]b.bmod and required .dll dependencies under $(game_directory)\ModLoader\Mods. (If the directory is not present, you may launch the game and BML will generate that for you)

4. Launch the game and enjoy!

Server

1. Download your desired server builds from GitHub Actions, as currently we don't have a release page for it (maybe we'll make one in the future?).

2. Extract the archive and run start_ballancemmo_loop.bat (Windows) or start_ballancemmo_loop.sh (Linux/macOS), which is our helper script to take care of logging and server crashes.

3. Modify the generated config.yml according to your needs; you may also run ./BallanceMMOServer --help to see if there are any configurable command line arguments (you can also supply them through our helper script!).

4. Type reload in the server console and apply your config changes. Now you're ready to share your address and invite others!

Dependencies or build tools

• CMake 3.12 or later: Generate makefiles
• A build tool like GNU Make, Ninja: Build server binary
• A compiler with core C++20 feature support
  • This project has been successfully compiled under:
    • GCC 9.4, 10.3, 11.3, 12.2, and 13.2 (server-side components; GCC 9 support dropped since January 2023)
    • Apple Clang 13.1 and 16.0 (server-side)
    • Visual Studio 2019 and 2022 (client-side, or specifically, BML-related stuff)
• One of the following crypto solutions:
  • OpenSSL 1.1.1 or later
  • OpenSSL 1.1.x, plus ed25519-donna and curve25519-donna. (Valve GNS has made some minor changes, so the source is included in this project.)
  • libsodium
• Google protobuf 2.6.1+ (included in submodules)
• Steam GameNetworkingSockets (included in submodules)
• Read Evaluate Print Loop ++ (replxx) (included in submodules)
• Dev pack of BallanceModLoader (client-side, release page) and (optionally) BallanceModLoaderPlus

Building server

1. Clone this repo RECURSIVELY

   git clone https://github.com/Swung0x48/BallanceMMO.git --recursive
   

2. (Linux/macOS) Install OpenSSL and Protobuf

   • Debian/Ubuntu

     apt install libssl-dev
     apt install libprotobuf-dev protobuf-compiler
     

   • Arch

     pacman -S openssl
     pacman -S protobuf
     

   • macOS with brew

     brew install [email protected]
     export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$PKG_CONFIG_PATH:/usr/local/opt/[email protected]/lib/pkgconfig
     brew install protobuf
     

   (Haven't tried on a Linux distro with yum as package manager. Sorry Fedora/RHEL/CentOS guys...)

3. Building!

   • Linux/macOS

     • Ninja

       chmod +x build_server.sh
       ./build_server.sh
       cd build
       ninja
       

     • GNU Make

       chmod +x build_server.sh
       ./build_server.sh -G
       cd build
       make
       

     You may also want to supply command line arguments such as -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release when running build.sh, to specify the build type.

     If CMake failed to find openssl for some reason, you may need to specify path to openssl yourself.

     For example:

     $ ./build_server.sh -DOPENSSL_ROOT_DIR="/usr/local/opt/[email protected]/"
     

   • Windows

     We're using vcpkg to take care of our dependencies on Windows. It should be automatically called during CMake setup.

     > .\build_server.bat
     

     Open and compile the generated Visual Studio Solution file in build_server after finishing this, and you should be fine to go.

4. Run your server!

   (Don't forget to navigate to the build directory first: cd BallanceMMOServer)

   $ ./BallanceMMOServer
   

   For help or customization, use the command line argument --help.

   $ ./BallanceMMOServer --help
   Usage: ./BallanceMMOServer [OPTION]...
   Options:
     -p, --port=PORT      Use PORT as the server port instead (default: 26676).
     -l, --log=PATH       Write log to the file at PATH in addition to stdout.
     -h, --help           Display this help and exit.
     -v, --version        Display version information and exit.
         --dry-run        Test the server by starting it and exiting immediately.
   

   Alternatively, use the bash script start_ballancemmo_loop.sh (start_ballancemmo_loop.bat on Windows) which handles file logging automatically and restarts the server after crashes. All command line arguments for the server executable also applies there.

   $ ./start_ballancemmo_loop.sh
   

5. (Linux bonus) Building portable AppImages

   As you may have already seen, our Linux server builds from GitHub Actions use AppImages. This is because some system dependencies used by our build outputs differ in version with different systems/distros, and we can pack them in an AppImage file to increase portability.

   To build the AppImage, you have to first re-run the CMake configuration to tell it that you're trying to build one (append the -G switch if you want to continue with GNU Make):

   $ ./build_server.sh -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -DBUILD_SERVER_APPIMAGE=ON
   

   Then navigate to the binary output directory (this is to ensure that we can find our dependencies) and install the binaries somewhere (e.g. AppDir):

   cd build/BallanceMMOServer
   DESTDIR=AppDir ninja -C .. install
   

   (replace ninja with make if you want)

   We use linuxdeploy to build our AppImages (get its releases here), so download and place it in the binary output directory, then run the command to generate our AppImage (if you can't run this, then try using the --appimage-extract switch to extract and use squashfs-root/AppRun instead):

   $ ./linuxdeploy.AppImage --appdir ../AppDir --output appimage --desktop-file ../../BallanceMMOServer/appimage/BMMOLaunchSelector.desktop --icon-file ../../BallanceMMOServer/appimage/BallanceMMO.svg
   

   If everything goes smoothly then a file named like BallanceMMOLaunchSelector-*arch*.AppImage should appear, which bundles required dependencies and includes other tools like BallanceMMOMockClient (thus the LaunchSelector name). To see its usage:

   $ ./BallanceMMOLaunchSelector.AppImage --help
   Usage: ./BallanceMMOLaunchSelector.AppImage [OPTION]...
   Options:
   -h, --help              Display this help and exit.
   -l, --launch [Target]   Launch the selected target.
   Additional options will be forwarded to the target.
   Available targets (default: `Server`):
     Server
     MockClient
     RecordParser
   Examples:
     To see the server help:
       ./BallanceMMOLaunchSelector-x86_64.AppImage --launch Server --help
     To launch a mock client with a custom name:
       ./BallanceMMOLaunchSelector-x86_64.AppImage -l MockClient -n Name
   

Building client (Game Mod)

Windows

On Windows, we can use the vcpkg package manager. The following instructions assume that you will follow the steps and fetch vcpkg as a submodule. If you want to install vcpkg somewhere else, you're on your own.

Warning Beforehand: DO NOT upgrade (cancel when prompted) when Visual Studio asks you to upgrade the solution/project on first launch. It will wipe include directories which has been set in the project file (wtf Microsoft???). Don't worry, following steps will guide you to switch to your already-set-up msvc toolchain.

1. Install/Modify Visual Studio and CMake

   • In Workload tab, make sure you have installed Desktop Development with C++.
   • IMPORTANT! In Language pack tab, make sure you have installed English.

2. Bootstrap vcpkg

   cd submodule\vcpkg
   .\bootstrap-vcpkg.bat
   

3. Generate the Visual Studio project file with CMake

   • CMake will automatically call vcpkg to take care of our dependecies during the setup.

   • This is the step where vcpkg will fail if you haven't got your English language pack installed. (Again, wtf Microsoft???)

     > .\build.bat
     

4. Extract BML Dev pack and Boost Library, and place the following:

   • BML:
     • include\BML -> BallanceMMOClient\include\BML
     • lib\Debug -> BallanceMMOClient\lib\BML\Debug
     • lib\Release -> BallanceMMOClient\lib\BML\Release
   • Boost:
     • boost -> BallanceMMOClient\include\boost

5. Open the Visual Studio project file BallanceMMO.sln, which could be found in the build directory.

6. Build the project!