Server Help Server Creation Error

Hey Everyone,

I haven't played Starbound in a little while, probably almost 6 months to a year now, but I want to get back into it with a friend. Creating multiplayer servers used to be no problem but now I'm having some issues. I can't start a server anymore with an error coming up. It keeps saying

"Fatal Exception caught: (UniverseServerException) Could not aquire lock for universe directory"

This only happens when I launch a server with a single player world up, however, when I don't have the single player loaded the server "launches" but no one can connect to it. I'm not sure what to do from this point. Do I reinstall everything or am I doing something wrong? Any help would be awesome!

Thanks
-Kronos

 

You can't run single-player and a server at the same time from the same directory. Both programs would attempt to write to the same files when the game saves the worlds, with disastrous results. The game prevents you from corrupting your own saves by locking the universe folder when either the server or single-player-mode client is launched so that launching a second server or single-player-mode client will fail.

You can:
A) Run a server then run the client and select the multiplayer option to join on the same machine (or a different machine).
- You'll still be playing in your single-player universe as the server and client both use the same universe if they're run from within the same Starbound folder (assuming a default configuration).
- If you're running out of the Steam folder, you'll still be able to easily update both server and client.
B) Copy the entire Starbound folder elsewhere and run a single-player game out of one and a server out of the other. Starbound doesn't have any DRM (Steam doesn't need to be running to play the game), it only uses Steam for easily distributing and updating the game files.
- The save locations will be different so the universes will be independent of each other.
- Game saves are isolated, if the universe of one gets corrupted (trolling, griefing, etc on the server) then the other (your single-player universe) will not be affected, however you would need to launch the server and join via multiplayer if you wished to play by yourself in the server's universe.
- You'll have to copy the game binaries and assets to the new location every time you wish to update the game.

Server connection issues are another matter. If you've already searched the forums here for guides and advice (there are a ton of posts asking for help with setting up a server), then please list what steps you've taken so far to get your friend to connect so someone can see where you're getting stuck.