FAWX GameDig Bot

This Discord bot provides a configurable solution for game server montioring by providing a unified embedded status message for all your servers, as well as up/down notifications in game specific text channels.

Built using:

• .Net 8.0
• NodeJS LTS (20.x at time of writing)
• Discord.Net
• GameDig
• Docker

Features:

• Utilizes the GameDig library which supports hundreds of games and services. More info here
• Highly configurable, including a customizable statistics format per server.
• Optionally sends up/down notifications to a game-specific channel.
• Easy to deploy and lightweight.

Also on Docker Hub

Usage:

This will outline the basics of deploying the bot to a single docker host.

Support for K8S, Swarm or other advanced configurations will not be provided.

Create the Bot registration

First, create a Discord bot registration. Instructions to do so are here. When selecting scopes and permissions use the following settings:

• Scopes: bot

• Bot Permissions: Send Messages, Embed Links, Attach Files, Read Message History

Add it to the server

After inviting the bot to your server, add it to a status channel and any game channels. The bot will use the status channel to post a unified status message for all servers, and will use the game channels to post up/down notifications for each server.

• The status channel should not be used for anything other than status messages. If there are too many messages in this channel, the bot will lose track of the existing statues message and may create duplicates.
• The game channels are optional. If they are not configured for a game server, no up/down notifications will be sent.
• You can specify the same game channel for all servers to send up/down notifications to a single location if you want.

Record the IDs of the channels you are using for the bot. You will need them shortly. To get the Channel Id, open Discord, go to Settings > Advanced and enable developer mode. Then, right-click on the channel and select "Copy ID" to get the Channel Id.

Permissions

The bot will need the following permissions to function properly:

• Send Messages
• Embed Links
• Attach Files
• Read Message History

Create a configuration file

1. Create an appsetting.json file using the contents of the provided appsettings.example.json file as an example. Store this configuration in a secure place on your docker host.
2. In the .json file update the value of BotToken with the Bot Token from your registration.

Warning

Do not use the Client Secret from your App registration. They are not the same thing!*

3. Update the EmbedChannelId with the channel id of your status channel.
4. Customize the EmbedMessageTitle or EmbedMessageColor to adjust the appearance of the status message.
5. Define the servers the bot will be watching using the format described here

Deploy

The recommended way to deploy the bot is using docker compose. A sample docker compose file is provided here. You will need to update the volumes section to point to the location of your appsettings.json file.

services:
  fawxgamedigbot:
    container_name: gamedigbot
    image: destarianon/fawxgamedigbot
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - ./appsettings.json:/app/appsettings.json #Assumes appsettings.json is in the same directory as the docker-compose.yml file

Once you've created your docker-compose.yml file, you can deploy it using the following command

docker-compose up -d

FAQ:

My bot is creating multiple embedded status messages.

• Make sure the status channel is not being used for anything other than dynamic status messages. If there are too many messages in this channel, the bot will lose track and may create duplicates.

My bot is crashing on startup.

• Make sure you have an appsettings.json file mounted to the docker container in the correct place.
• Make sure your configuration file is valid JSON and all the settings are correct. You can use a tool like JSONLint to validate your configuration file.
• You can use the docker logs command to view the logs from the bot container. This may provide more information about the error.
• You can update the "Default" log level in the appsettings.json file to Debug to get more detailed logging.

My bot is failing to contact my servers.

• Make sure the docker host has network access to the servers you are monitoring.
• Make sure you are using the right port number for the server you are monitoring.
• In some cases, you made need to configure docker to use "host networking" because the bot requires an open UDP port to receive game responses.

Details of host networking can be found here. You can enable host networking for the bot container by adding the following to the container definition in your docker-compose.yml file:

network_mode: "host"

My bot is not sending any messages.

• Make sure the bot has the correct permissions in the channels you are using.
• Make sure the configuration file contains the correct Channel IDs.
• Make sure the bot is not muted.

My server is missing from the status message.

• Make sure the server is properly configured in the appsettings.json file.
• If you have disabled per-game notification, make sure you did so as described in the server configuration guide.