Exporting for dedicated servers

If you want to run a dedicated server for your project on a machine that doesn’t have a GPU or display server available, you’ll need to use a server build of Godot.

Platform support

  • Linux: Download an official Linux server binary. To compile a server binary from source, follow instructions in Compiling for X11 (Linux, *BSD).
  • macOS: Compile a server binary from source for macOS.
  • Windows: There is no dedicated server build for Windows yet. As an alternative, you can use the --no-window command-line argument to prevent Godot from spawning a window. Note that even with the --no-window command-line argument, you’ll need to have OpenGL support available on the Windows machine. If your project uses C#, you’ll have to use a Mono-enabled server binary.

    “Headless” versus “server” binaries

    server download page offers two kinds of binaries with several differences.
  • Server: Use this one for running dedicated servers. It does not contain editor functionality, and is therefore smaller and more optimized.
  • Headless: This binary contains editor functionality and is intended to be used for exporting projects. This binary can be used to run dedicated servers, but it’s not recommended as it’s larger and less optimized.

    Exporting a PCK file

    There are two ways to export a project for a server:
  • Create a Linux/X11 export preset, define a custom Release export template that points to the server binary then export the project as usual.
  • Export a PCK file only, preferably from a Linux/X11 export preset. Both methods should result in identical output. The text below describes the PCK file approach. Export PCK/ZIP at the bottom of the Export dialog then choose a destination path. The Export With Debug checkbox in the file dialog has no bearing on the final PCK file, so you can leave it as-is. Exporting projects for more information. Note If you’re exporting the project from a headless editor, call the headless editor with the —export-pack option while in the project folder to export only a PCK file. Note The PCK file will include resources not normally needed by the server, such as textures and sounds. This means the PCK file will be larger than it could possibly be. Support for stripping unneeded resources from a PCK for server usage is planned in a future Godot release. On the bright side, this allows the same PCK file to be used both by a client and dedicated server build. This can be useful if you want to ship a single archive that can be used both as a client and dedicated server.

    Preparing the server distribution

    --main-pack command-line argument:
    1. ./godot-server --main-pack my_project.pck

    Starting the dedicated server

    _ready() method:
    1. if "--server" in OS.get_cmdline_args():    # Run your server startup code here...    # Using this check, you can start a dedicated server by running    # a Godot binary (headless or not) with the `--server` command-line argument.    pass
    Alternatively, you can make the dedicated server always start up if a headless or server binary is detected:
    1. # Note: Feature tags are case-sensitive! It's "Server", not "server".if OS.has_feature("Server"):    # Run your server startup code here...    # Note that using this check may break unit testing scripts when    # running them with headless or server binaries.    pass
    If your client and server are separate Godot projects, your server should most likely be configured in a way where running the main scene starts a server automatically.

    Next steps

    create a systemd service. This also lets you view server logs in a more convenient fashion, with automatic log rotation provided by systemd. Docker container. This way, it can be used more easily in an automatic scaling setup (which is outside the scope of this tutorial).