Cossacks Game Server

Multiplayer backend for the GSC family of titles (Cossacks: European Wars / The Art of War / Back to War; American Conquest).

The server exposes a TCP listener for the GSC protocol, a UDP STUN responder for hole-punching, and an HTTP endpoint for metrics and health probes. An IRC service (Ergo) for the in-game chat is bundled in the Compose stack.

Documentation map

Topic	Link
Container build & Docker Compose	CONTAINER.md
Internal package layout	internal/README.md
GSC application	internal/app/gsc/README.md
Templates	templates/README.md
Template pipeline notes	docs/TEMPLATES.md
Runtime configuration	config/simple-cossacks-server.yaml

Connecting a non-Steam client

These steps apply to the classic GSC client.

1. Open Internet\ggwdc.ini.
2. Replace ggwdserver_addr gms.2gw.net with your host or IP.
3. Keep ggwdserver_port 34001.
4. Save and start the game.

Configuration

Runtime configuration is loaded from a YAML file by internal/platform/config. Every key is documented inline in config/simple-cossacks-server.yaml.

Environment variables that override or supplement the config:

Variable	Effect
HOST_NAME	Public hostname surfaced as chat_server and the STUN advertisement target.
UDP_KEEP_ALIVE_INTERVAL	Propagated to the GSC hole_int config and the STUN keep-alive TTL.
METRICS_ADDR	Address for /metrics, /livez, /readyz.
PROBE_ADDR	Override address for /livez + /readyz only.
LOG_FORMAT	user (console) or json.
LOG_FILE	Log file path with rotation.

Local development

From the repository root:

go test -race -cover ./...
make test
make lint

make lint invokes the project's pinned golangci-lint build under bin/; no global toolchain is required.

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/ldmonster/cossacks-game-server
cd cossacks-game-server
cat > .env <<'EOF'
HOST_NAME=YOUR_PUBLIC_HOST_OR_IP
UDP_KEEP_ALIVE_INTERVAL=300
EOF
docker compose up -d --build

For everything else container-related see CONTAINER.md.

Copyright and license

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE for the full text.