Environment setup

Setting up City of Heroes: Volume 2

Making Source Changes

Prerequisite software

• VS2019 Community

Setting up Visual Studio 2019

This section is only necessary if you plan on making changes to the server/client executables. You can download prebuilt executables from Gitlab (referred to as build artifacts). Extract them to C:\CoH\bin if you go that route.

Download Visual Studio Installer. Select "Desktop development with C++" and "Game development with C++" during the install process. Restart your computer after.

Building from the Source repo

Open C:\CoH\build\vs2019\master.sln. Switch the target configuration and platform to Release x86.

Build the solution (F7) and wait. You may close VS after this if there were no errors.

Running a Server

Prerequisite software

• A git client of your choice, i.e. regular ol' Git
• SQL Server 2019 Developer
• SQL Server Management Studio

Downloading the Source repo

I'm going to be using git from the command-line. You just need to clone the repo and submodules, the client does not matter. There is a built-in Git extension in VS2019 to handle commits, or if you use VS Code there is a built-in Git interface to manage commits/diffs there.

Open a command prompt in the root of your C: drive.

git clone --recurse-submodules https://git.ourodev.com/CoX/Source.git CoH

Once this command completes you can continue.

Setting up SQL Server 2019

This section is only necessary if you plan on running the server software.

Download SQL Server 2019's Installer. Select "Basic" installation and leave all settings default. There is no need to restart after this step.

Setting up SQL Server Management Studio

This section is only necessary if you plan on running the server software.

Download SSMS' Installer. Simply click Install and wait for the process to finish. Restart your computer after.

Importing database schemas

This section is only necessary if you plan on running the server software.

Open SSMS. Connect using the default settings.

Run each SQL file located in C:\CoH\Assets\DBSchemas. You can select all the files in Windows Explorer and drag them into SSMS to open them. Click on each tab and press "Run Query" for each tab.

If you do not plan on using an AuthServer (as it's not necessary and can be a hindrance in dev setups), set UseFakeAuth to 1 in C:\CoH\bin\data\server\db\servers.cfg

If you plan on using an AuthServer you will need to add a server entry and register an account:

1. Edit the table "cohauth.dbo.server" -- set id 1, name anything you want, ip external or LAN IP (this is what clients connect to), internal_ip 127.0.0.1 or LAN IP (this is how auth server determines what server has connected internally), ageLimit 0, pk_flag 1, server_group_id 1, client_port 7000.
2. To create an account use the query generator here https://cohstuff.dreamhosters.com/makeaccount.php. Execute the output in SSMS.

Starting the server

Create a shortcut to C:\CoH\bin\ServerMonitor.exe -connect. Launch that shortcut. DBServer will create cohdb and all the necessary processes will finish starting up after a few minutes.

If you don't want to pre-start all maps on startup (useful to avoid mission door bugs, not useful for testing sourcce code changes fast), switch to the Processes tab in ServerMonitor and remove -startall from DBServer's entry. Close everything and open ServerMonitor again to apply.

Connecting to the server

Run Ouroboros.exe -auth <IP>, e.g. 127.0.0.1. Your game will load and you can begin playing.

If you are not using an AuthServer you should use -db <IP> instead.

Making Data Changes

TODO.tl;dr download i2401-bin-server and read the instructions. copy bins to server.