BeanheimNet

BeanheimNet

Networking fixes for Valheim dedicated servers. Install it on the server and on every player's game. It sends more of what players need, sooner, and stops sending updates nobody needs. It also writes network stats to a log file so you can see what your server is actually doing.

Why

Vanilla Valheim keeps at most 10 KB of updates in flight per player and caps Steam's send rate at 150 KB/s. A player 150 ms away can receive about 68 KB/s at most, and the same limit caps what each player uploads. Building pieces always go out before creatures, carts and dropped items. Fish and ambient animals send an update every frame they move. On a busy server you see creatures that stutter or teleport, carts that freeze and snap, drops that show up seconds late, and hits that land late.

What it does

| Feature | What it does | Default | |---|---|---| | SendWindow | Sizes each player's window from their ping instead of the fixed 10 KB | on | | SteamTransport | Raises Steam's per-connection send rate from 150 KB/s to 1 MB/s | on | | Scheduler | Sends to every player each round instead of one player per frame | on | | RelayThrottle | Sends fish, far creatures, far items, floating logs and sound effects less often. Near a player only fish (6 updates/s) and sound effects (10/s) are slowed | on | | Priority | Creatures, carts and drops next to a player no longer wait behind a distant building backlog | on | | Deadband | Whoever simulates an object skips updates for movement under a centimetre or a degree, and sends one exact stop when it comes to rest | on | | Telemetry | Network stats every 10 s in the BepInEx log and in BepInEx/BeanheimNet-stats.log | on | | Items | Reports dropped items on the server. Can also delete old floating junk | report on, delete off | | ItemMerge | Merges nearby stacks of the same plain item | off | | Diagnostics | Frame profiler and reflection sampler, for chasing long frames | off |

A dedicated server's frame cap also goes from 30 to 60 fps (Scheduler.ServerTargetFrameRate). That setting follows the master switch, not the Scheduler switch.

What you might want to change

Most servers need nothing changed. The server and the clients pick their own defaults on first start.

• Server short on CPU: set [99 Advanced] Scheduler.ServerTargetFrameRate = 0 to go back to

vanilla's 30 fps.

• Too many dropped items lying around: set [01 General] RunItemReport = true to see what is

out there, then ItemCleanup = true to delete items that have sat for 6 hours of play more than 200 m from everyone. By default only items in the water go. Enchanted items, gear, anything above quality 1 and anything near a base are never touched.

• Piles of small stacks: [01 General] ItemMerge = true merges nearby stacks of the same plain

item.

• Less log output: [01 General] Telemetry = false, or switch off just the extra lines

(PeerExtras, ClientExtras, DesyncCounters).

• Something seems wrong: [01 General] Enabled = false puts every patch back to vanilla behaviour

within 5 s, without a restart.

Install

• Install with your mod manager on the server and on each player's game. A player who doesn't have

it can still join; they just don't get the client side of it.

• The config is BepInEx/config/helix.beanheim.net.cfg. Changes are picked up within 5 s, no restart.

Every on/off switch is in [01 General] (the General group in ConfigurationManager). The tuning values are in [99 Advanced], named Section.Key (for example Scheduler.SendIntervalSeconds), and the diagnostics in [12 Diagnostics].

• Some defaults differ between server and client: a dedicated server gets a 60 fps frame cap,

Scheduler.SendIntervalSeconds 0.033 and RelayThrottle.OtherHz 0,5,3, while clients keep 0.05 and 0,0,0. The values are written into the file, so don't copy a server cfg to a client or the other way.

• Coming from 0.2.1, 0.2.2 or 0.3.0, your settings move on the first start (switches into [01 General],

tuning values into [99 Advanced]) and anything you had changed is kept. A 0.2.0 cfg uses older section names and starts at the defaults. Older versions can't read the new layout, so if you go back, put back your old cfg too.

• A dedicated server has no console. Use the one-shot keys in [01 General] (RunCensus,

RunItemReport, RunItemCleanupOnce, RunStats): set one to true, it runs and resets itself.

• On a client the console command is bnet stats | census | items | cleanup dryrun|run | reload | config.
• To uninstall, remove it in your mod manager. Nothing stays in the world except items deleted by

ItemCleanup or merged by ItemMerge, if you turned those on.

Compatibility

BeanheimNet is not compatible with other mods that rewrite Valheim's network send code: Smoothbrain Network, ValheimTune, NetworkPerformanceSystem, ReturnToSender, BetterNetworking, BetterNetworking_Valheim, VBNetTweaks, FiresGhettoNetworking, SkadiNet, WarheimNetwork and NetworkTweaks. Use one or the other. If one of them is loaded, BeanheimNet logs a warning naming it and keeps running anyway.

Mods that only touch the same methods in passing are fine. At startup BeanheimNet lists every other mod that patches the methods it uses ([owners] lines in the log). If a game update changes something it relies on, it switches off only the parts that need it and logs why. An error inside one of its patches is logged at most once a minute, and that call falls back to vanilla.

Measured

Version 0.3.0, two players, one on LAN and one at 48 ms ping, at a large base on a heavily modded server. All features were switched off for ten minutes and back on for ten, live, with the stats running the whole time. The server and the LAN player's game were switched; the other player stayed on 0.2.2 throughout.