Windows GUI for the AMS2 dedicated server

Setting up the Automobilista 2 dedicated server means editing a config file by hand, and the game does not help you: if you write an attribute name it does not recognise, it does not throw an error — it silently voids the entire session configuration and runs on defaults. You find out when the race is already going.

I wrote a Windows app to stop doing that by hand. It is free.



What it does

• Installs the dedicated server for you (it is a separate ~15 MB program — the game itself is not needed on that machine), or works with one you already have
• Visual editor for the whole session config: lengths, tyres, fuel, damage, penalties, weather, allowed aids
• Validates every value against the attribute list your own DS publishes, before writing anything. That is the part that saves the afternoon
• Track and class rotations, changeable while the server is up
• Warns you when a circuit physically cannot fit the grid you asked for. 75 of the 230 layouts cannot hold 32 cars — and when that happens the DS quietly swaps your track for a different one. If you have ever wondered why your server ran a circuit you did not pick, that is why
• Per-driver BOP: ballast, power and drag scalars
• Remote control from a browser, phone included, so you can start or stop a room without walking to the machine

Download: gonkyracing.com/en/host-your-server

About the optional part
The app can pair the server with an external stats platform, and then its races turn into driver profiles, ratings and lap records. That is opt-in and off until you choose it — the server management works completely without an account. I mention it up front because the platform is mine, and I would rather say so than have somebody find out.

Until today that pairing required registering a community. It does not any more: eight out of nine communities on there had exactly one member, which told me the requirement was filtering nothing and just adding paperwork. There is a short guide for that side here: personal node guide.

Known limits

• Windows only
• AMS2 dedicated server only
• It manages the server; it does not install car or track content onto it

Six languages, and it updates itself. Happy to answer anything here — bug reports especially, I would rather hear them than not.