Server hosting is an important part of every multiplayer game, and a critical component of Venice Unleashed.
Up until recently, hosting a Venice Unleashed server required a Windows 7 / Windows Server 2008 R2 (or newer) host, along with several other third-party dependencies. However, we understand that not everyone can afford a Windows Server license (and the hardware to run it), and we therefore extended our efforts to make Venice Unleashed Dedicated Servers usable on more platforms.
Today we're happy to announce that these efforts have paid out, and VU Dedicated Servers can run on fully headless Linux machines.
In the above video you can see the main VU game instance, as well as the terminal of an Ubuntu 14.04 Server running in a local VM. The VU Dedicated Server is launched from the Ubuntu VM, and then joined from the VU game instance. Since the VU Dedicated Server can run in completely headless mode, it means that you can run unattended instances on Linux machines that don't have physical (or virtual) video output.
Even though VU Dedicated Servers on Linux aren't fully native (they run using the wine compatibility layer), their performance appears to comparable to their native Windows counterparts.
Additionally, setting them up is extremely simple, with no need for advanced configuration or lengthy integration techniques. This means that even those who are not that tech-savvy should be able to easily deploy and use VU Dedicated Servers on their Linux machines.
Now, it should be noted that all this is still in prototype stage, and even though initial testing hasn't showed any issues, we will only be able to fully assess the system and its performance once we more thoroughly test it during the next open testing session.
From everyone at Emulator Nexus, thank you, and stay tuned for our next status report!