Dedicated Server for Defcon

DedCon is a small standalone program that takes over the function of the server loop of the Defcon client. Using the Defcon client for hosting has some disadvantages:

Performance. The process handling the server has so many other things to do.
Stability. A crash in the client code also brings down the server.
Availability. Servers are only available as players provide them.
Temper. Let's face it, servers hosted on clients get shut down.

Having a dedicated server fixes that, but also has drawbacks. The biggest one is that the dedicated server knows nothing about the state of the game world. Features that rely on precise knowledge of the game state cannot be implemented in the dedicated server (at least not in this one), for example:

Scores cannot be determined by the server automatically.
The ship-over-land bug that was fixed in 1.43 cannot be fixed in the same way by this server. It can only be worked around by providing a list of forbidden destinations for navy move commands (one for standard Earth is included).

Visit the Trac Project for a Wiki to share information, to report bugs, to request features, or to get a general idea where the project is standing.

Friendly Fork

There is now a friendly fork (or continuation) of Defcon maintained by the lovely people that also bring you the Defcon Expanded mod that allows you to play the game with eight or ten people! Check it out here.

Test Servers

I run a couple of test servers with always up-to-date code. Playing on them and reporting problems is one of the best ways you can help DedCon development. The server names all start with "DedCon Test". All games on those servers are recorded and logs are kept for debugging purposes. You can download the compressed recordings of past games here, and view the player ranking table generated from the games here.

Note about the Wiki and bug tracker

They're down at the moment, spammed to death. I can't say when they will be back.

Release 1.6.0_git118

Current testing version, label is following the current STEAM release (1.6). We have a new build system based on github actions; seems to work really well. The Linux builds are now for 64 bit systems, macOS builds are for macOS 13 and up; they are now finally for Intel CPUs. Timely! I suppose they work fine on arm Macs. There is also a small functionality change, dedcon can finally track ingame alliance changes. The TEAM_ALLIANCE message has been extended to give the reason of the alliance change.
Download the bzipped tarball for x86 Linux here. Instructions are inside, read README.
Download the bzipped tarball for macOS 13 and up. Instructions: unpack and read the included README.
Download the Windows installer here. Instructions: download and execute. In your start menu, you'll find a DedCon submenu. There is one item to edit the authkey DedCon will be using, one item for the README.txt, one item for the sample configuration file, and various launch items that launch the server with different configuration files you can also edit from the start menu. Read the README and sample configuration for further instructions.

Release 1.6.0

Current stable version, label is following the current STEAM release (1.6). It is mostly identical to the previous alpha build 1.43b_svn1010. For a detailed list of changes, see the included NEWS file. For a list of bugs, see the Bug Tracker. Have a look at the FAQ before asking any questions, please.

Download the bzipped tarball for x86 Linux here. Instructions are inside, read README.
Download the bzipped tarball for OSX Tiger and up here. Instructions: unpack and read the included README.
Download the Windows installer here. Instructions: download and execute. In your start menu, you'll find a DedCon submenu. There is one item to edit the authkey DedCon will be using, one item for the README.txt, one item for the sample configuration file, and various launch items that launch the server with different configuration files you can also edit from the start menu. Read the README and sample configuration for further instructions.
Additional documentation for all systems may be found here.

Release 1.6.0_svn1038

Current testing version, fixes security issues. Frequent join/leave spam is blocked, successful cheats are detected and announced, a backdoor I left for own potential benign custom clients was closed. For a detailed list of changes, see the included NEWS file (Forgot to update it this time). For a list of bugs, see the Bug Tracker. Have a look at the FAQ before asking any questions, please.

Download the bzipped tarball for x86 Linux here. Instructions are inside, read README.
Download the bzipped tarball for OSX Tiger and up here. Instructions: unpack and read the included README.
Download the Windows installer here. Instructions: See latest stable release.

Release 1.6.0_svn1034

Old testing version, fixes a few bugs 1.6.0 had; the widespread use of clients transmitting scores at the end of game lead to a problem with the server trusting them a little too much, out of sync clients are no longer allowed to influence the game so they can't spread their corruption, one instance of premature game start was squished, and resyncs work better now. For a detailed list of changes, see the included NEWS file. For a list of bugs, see the Bug Tracker. Have a look at the FAQ before asking any questions, please.

Download the bzipped tarball for x86 Linux here. Instructions are inside, read README.
Download the bzipped tarball for OSX Tiger and up here. Instructions: unpack and read the included README.
Download the Windows installer here. Instructions: See latest stable release.

Other Stuff

Some mods for DEFCON.