Game Server Watcher

A simple discord/telegram/slack bot that can be hosted on a free service to monitor your game servers and players in style. 😎

About the Project

The main goals of this repo:

1. create a (simple, but capable) service/bot to monitor game servers
   1. get gamedig & steam api server info (eg.: server name, map, players, etc.)
   2. relay real time server information to various channels via APIs (eg.: discord, telegram, slack etc.)
2. should be able to host on a free service (target atm. is fly.io (node.js 20))
3. graciously add more features based on community feedback via discord and github

Screenshots

Project Status

The code itself is stable and continuously tested/deployed from the master branch.

The project is in a mature stage. New customization options and features are added as requested.

Possible features and configuration options to add in the future

• optional player list
  • customizable fields (time, name, ping, score)
  • configurable field & order to sort by
  • max length for player names & nr of players
• optional graph chart
• custom embed fields for discord/slack
• configurable time zone offset for graph x-axis
• refresh on reaction
• watched players (notify when a watched player enters/leaves the server)
• detect when the server goes offline, notify when player number crosses a threshold
• bot commands (reinit message, cleanup, start/stop, post server status, configure)
• more integrations: telegram, slack, ms teams, twillio (email, sms)
• web ui to manage & configure the servers and bots
• put custom information in the channel name or bot status (online status indicator, number of players, map)
• github action workflows to deploy to other cloud providers (aws, linode, atlantic, vultr, pikapods, okteto, ibm cloud etc.)
• SQL, JSON or object store database support (postgres, redis etc.)
• run as stateless serverless function (aws lambda, azure function, heroku, vercel, fly.io machines etc.)
• pterodactyl egg release

Getting Started

These instructions will get you a copy of the project up and running on your local machine for development and testing purposes. See deployment for notes on how to deploy the project on a live system.

Requirements

node.js (version 16.20.0 or later)

Getting the source

This project is hosted on github. You can clone this project directly using this command:

git clone git@github.com:a-sync/game-server-watcher.git

The latest source can also be downloaded as a zip archive.

Installation

Use npm or yarn to install/update all the dependencies:

npm i

Build the artifacts from source:

npm run build

Usage

Start the built artifacts:

npm start

Build, start and auto restart on source changes:

npm run dev

Settings

The behaviour of the watcher service can be configured via environmental variables (env vars).
.env (dotenv) file is also supported, to look at the available values and defaults check the .env.example file.
To get started, you can simply rename the .env.example file to .env.

Refer to the wiki on how to acquire tokens for:

• steam
• discord
• telegram
• slack

Managing the service

GSW Control Panel is a web based UI that let's you configure and control the Game Server Watcher instance.
The web app is served at http://localhost:8080 by default.
Make sure to configure the SECRET env var!

Configuration

Updates the configuration file and restarts the service.

Flush data

Flush game servers data

Removes population history data. (configured by Graph history time span server option)

Flush discord data

If the original message created by the bot gets deleted, you might need to flush the bot data to reinitialize the message.
The bot has no cleanup functionality, leftover messages must be removed manually.

Flush telegram data

If the original message created by the bot gets deleted, you need to flush the bot data to reinitialize the message.
The bot has no cleanup functionality, leftover messages must be removed manually.

Flush slack data

If the original message created by the bot gets deleted, you need to flush the bot data to reinitialize the message.
The bot has no cleanup functionality, leftover messages must be removed manually.

Deployment

Check the wiki page for detailed instructions on how to setup a self deploying free cloud instance at fly.io.
The latest Pterodactyl egg can always be found here: 🥚
Pre-built container images can be downloaded from the github container registry: docker pull ghcr.io/a-sync/game-server-watcher

Hosting via Docker Compose

Make sure to configure the environment variables in docker-compose.yml.

docker-compose up

Hosting via NodeJS runtime

Make sure all the requirements are met!

Build artifacts

npm i
npm run build

Minimum required files on host

Copy the ./package.json file and the ./public/ and ./dist/ folders and their contents to your deployment folder.

Install production dependencies on host

Navigate to the deployment folder and execute the following command:

npm i --only=prod

If you can not install dependencies on the host, do a local install and copy the ./node_modules/ folder to the host.

Service configuration

Create environmental variables to enable the required features and to customize the service.

1. Make sure the service can write to the data storage path. (configured by DATA_PATH env var, default: ./data/)
2. Make sure you create a unique admin secret. (configured by SECRET env var, default: secret)

Running

Run the program from the deployment folder:

node ./dist/server.js

How to Get Help

• Check the wiki
• Ask a question
• Join the support / test discord

Further Reading

• gamedig supported games list
• steamDB
• steam web API documentation
• discord API v10 documentation
• telegram API documentation
• slack API documentation
  • block kit reference
• json-editor documentation
  • json-editor demos
• bootstrap 4 reference
• mustache documentation
• pterodactyl documentation
  • community docu fork

Contributing

Public contributions are welcome!
You can create a new issue for bugs, or feel free to open a pull request for any and all your changes or work-in-progress features.

License

This project is licensed under the AGPL License by default for public use. Businesses or organizations seeking a commercial license, please contact gsw@devs.space.

Authors

Check the list of contributors who participated in this project.

Acknowledgments

This project was inspired by (the sudden disappearance of) "Game Status#5371" bot and its creator Ramzi Saheb on discord.

GSW icon stolen from Marvel’s Voices: Indigenous Voices #1 "The Watcher" by Jeffrey Veregge.

Backgrounds stolen from purple nebulas by Screaming Brain Studios and imgur.

All other libraries and dependencies are listed in the package.json file (dependencies/devDependencies section) and the index.html file (head section).

Similar projects

• https://github.com/soulkobk/DiscordBot_GameStatus
• https://github.com/Douile/discord-gamestatus
• https://github.com/Ramzi-Sah/game-status-discordbot
• https://github.com/Ramzi-Sah/game-status-discordbot-selfhosted
• https://github.com/msniveau/discord-statusbot
• https://github.com/kevinkjt2000/bowser
• https://github.com/negrifelipe/ServerStatusBot
• https://gitlab.com/lxndr/gswatcher
• https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/qstat
• https://github.com/GiyoMoon/steam-server-query
• https://github.com/Fabricio-191/valve-server-query
• https://github.com/sbuggay/srcds-info-proxy
• https://github.com/DiscordGSM/DiscordGSM
• https://github.com/EndBug/game-tracker
• https://github.com/fasko-web/discord-gameserver-bots
• https://github.com/FlorianSW/discord-player-count-bot
• https://github.com/Destarianon/FawxGameDigBot
• https://github.com/patriksh/gameserver-bot