For those who don’t know, playit.gg is a free/cheap service for exposing self-hosted local game servers to the wider internet.

But as someone who already has access to a cheapish VPS, I’m curious if anyone knows of any self-hostable alternatives that I could just run as a container on my VPS.

I’ve been toying with using Wireguard UDP tunneling, but it’s proving to be a little bit more difficult and complicated than I was bargaining for. So if anyone knows of anything out there that does something like this, I’d be grateful!

  • Taasz/Woof@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    Pangolin would work, it’s still wireguard underneath but with a webUI to set up things and simplify it. It’s fairly easy to install on your server with their docker compose examples.

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
      0·
      2 days ago

      I think Pangolin would be massively overkill for this. It’s designed to be a CDN layer orchestrator and it’s primarily a HTTP reverse proxy. You can do it with Pangolin but it complicates things and you’d need more resources too.

      All you really need on the VPS is to run a tunnel (WG or OpenVPN) and forward whatever ports the games need from the VPS public IP into the tunnel. Maybe a DDNS tool/script if the public IP is dynamic.

    • Ekky@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      0·
      3 days ago

      The game server is probably behind a NAT. I’m standing in the same situation.

      Got a small VPS with a TCP VPN to access all my devices despite location, and a comparably powerfull server behind a NAT which I would like to host UDP services on.

      It needs to be said that we are talking actual VPNs here, and not “VPN-as-proxy” to spoof your location etc.

        • Ekky@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          0·
          2 days ago

          Can’t port forward through the CGNAT of my ISP, only my own router’s NAT.

          That is, unless I buy a unique IPv4 from my ISP.

      • mrmaplebar@fedia.ioOP
        0·
        3 days ago

        Yeah, that sort of thing.

        I should say that I’m finally having some luck with using wireguard, so I’m making progress. Got a few rounds of Counter-Strike in with a friend about an hour ago!

        • rollin@piefed.socialEnglish
          0·
          2 days ago

          Would that be CS 1.6? Can you get your game server to appear in the public list when you do it this way?

  • smegger@aussie.zoneEnglish
    0·
    3 days ago

    You could look at pangolin as well. There’s a number of guides on YouTube. Essentially a wire guard tunnel to your VPS.

    • mrmaplebar@fedia.ioOP
      0·
      3 days ago

      I was hoping to have servers be more public, so visible on the master server list and able to be joined by random people. (I’m a glutton for punishment I guess. lol)

      • Ekky@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        0·
        2 days ago

        I think I saw that tailscale (or netbird, the open source and selfhosted version) also can reverse proxy UDP traffic.

        I’ll take a look at it later today.

  • frongt@lemmy.zipEnglish
    0·
    3 days ago

    It looks like a VPN, just reskinned as-a-service.

    If manual Wireguard is giving you trouble, try Netbird.

  • hexagonwin@lemmy.todayEnglish
    0·
    3 days ago

    i usually connect two machines with tailscale and use ssh forwarding

    use autossh if you want auto reconnect after ssh disconnects with broken pipe