SpiffoCON

Remote admin console for Project Zomboid (Build 42) dedicated servers, over RCON. Windows, .NET 10, WPF.

Download the latest version (then SpiffoCON updates itself: see Updates).

The tabs, and the windows of a player and of a vehicle. The options, the sandbox and the map are those of a B42 test server; players, vehicles, animals, chat and mod updates are sample data.

Getting started

1. Download the installer from the latest release: Full includes the .NET runtime, Light needs the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (x64).
2. On the left, enter the server's host, RCON port and RCON password (the server's RCONPort and RCONPassword options; your host's panel shows them), then Connect.
3. Optional, for logs, accounts, sandbox settings, mod files, the map and the bridge: tick Use SFTP and enter the SFTP user and password your host gives you.
4. Optional, for player positions, inventories, vehicles, heal and weather: add the SpiffoCON Bridge mod to the server. You don't have to publish anything: use the Workshop item below.

Updates

Once a day SpiffoCON asks GitHub for the latest release (only its version number is sent). When there is a newer one it shows what is new, with Install and restart (the installer of the same edition, Full or Light, is downloaded, checked against GitHub's SHA-256, and run quietly; servers, passwords and settings are kept, and SpiffoCON opens again), Skip this version or Later. Check for updates, in the status bar's corner, looks right away from any tab; the Maintenance tab turns the daily check off. A copy that wasn't installed by the installer (a build, a copied folder) doesn't check by itself, and opens the releases page instead.

Features

• RCON client written for PZ: replies matched by request id (a late reply is never shown for the next command), long replies in one or several packets, automatic reconnect before the next command after a drop, UTF-8.

• Console with history (Up/Down); a leading / is stripped.

• Broadcast editor for servermsg: colors (<RGB:r,g,b>), multi-line (<LINE>), live preview, safe quoting (inner " become '), and a reply check that does not report a delivered message as failed.

• Catalog of items and vehicles, mods included: search, filter by kind and by mod, mod item icons, give items (additem) and spawn vehicles (addvehicle) for an online player.

  • The base game comes from a bundled snapshot (src/SpiffoCON.Core/Data), so no game install is needed.
  • The server's mods come from showoptions (Mods=, WorkshopItems=), in its load order. Mod files are read from, in this order: the server over SFTP (only scripts, English translations and icons, only from the folders the game loads, over 4 parallel connections, one copy per server; mods unchanged since the last copy are skipped, according to the server's appworkshop_108600.acf, and without it every mod is checked again), the local Steam workshop folder, SteamCMD (anonymous download of whole mods, asked first, cached in %LOCALAPPDATA%\SpiffoCON).
  • Base-game icons: Game icons… reads the Item_* sprites from the texture packs (media/texturepacks/*.pack) of your own Project Zomboid install into SpiffoCON's cache. The dedicated server has no textures, and the game's art is not shipped with SpiffoCON.
  • B42 layout (common + the newest 42.x folder), JSON and legacy translation files, vehicle names through carModelName / template!, mods that change base-game items.

• Players tab: online list (auto refresh), kick and ban (with reason, optional IP ban), unban, voice mute, access level, teleport to a player or to coordinates, god mode, invisibility, no clip, XP per skill. Command syntax comes from the B42 server's @CommandArgs annotations, and replies were checked against a real B42 dedicated server (access levels are the lowercase B42 roles: user, priority, observer, gm, moderator, admin).

• Events tab: rain with intensity (1-100), optionally stopped by SpiffoCON after a number of minutes (the server has no rain duration), thunderstorms lasting a number of game hours, stop rain / stop all weather; lightning, thunder or a zombie horde on a random online player, on every online player or on one player; helicopter and gunshot events (the server picks the player for these two), and a button to call the helicopter off. Every reply is checked and listed. Syntax and replies checked on a real B42 server. Weather (bridge v5): fog, clouds, wind, temperature and snowfall set to a value, as the game's own admin Climate panel does; the server sends it to the players at its next climate update (within ten game minutes). The game keeps the settings with the world until Back to the game's weather.

• Kits tab: sets of items (starter kit, event prizes) built from the catalog ("Add to kit"), shared by all your servers, given in one go to a player or to every online player.

• Maintenance tab:

  • Mod updates: the server's installed copies (its appworkshop_108600.acf, over SFTP) against Steam, mod by mod: newer on Steam, not installed yet, up to date, or not public; each row opens its Workshop page in the browser.
  • Restart with a countdown: warnings in chat as the time runs out (message and color editable, {time} filled in), then save and quit; starting the server again is up to the host. SpiffoCON tells you when it answers again. Restart now skips the countdown: one line in chat if anyone is online, then save and quit (asks first).
  • Desktop notifications (tray icon): players joining and leaving, chat messages containing chosen words (from the Logs tab while it follows the chat log), connection lost and back; by default only while SpiffoCON is in the background.

• Options tab: all 144 server options grouped like the game's settings screen, with descriptions, defaults and ranges (dumped from a real B42 server by tools/DumpServerOptions.lua, built by tools/MakeServerOptions.cs). Values are validated before changeoption and each reply is checked, since the server silently keeps the old value on bad input. ResetID, ServerPlayerID and Seed have no default and ask before changing.

• Sandbox tab: the 269 sandbox options, edited in the server's <name>_SandboxVars.lua over SFTP or in a local copy. Only the changed values are rewritten (comments, order, line endings and unknown mod settings stay), a backup is kept, and the server applies the file at its next start (checked on a real B42 server, also on an existing world).

• Logs tab: follows the server's Zomboid/Logs over SFTP (or a local folder) every 5 s: player chat (which RCON can't see), broadcasts, joins, admin actions and any other log the server writes. Switches to the new files by itself when the server restarts. The box under the log answers from there: a Broadcast (servermsg: large on every player's screen), or, with the bridge (v17), a line of Chat under a name of your choice, as a player's.

• Accounts tab: every account the server knows, online or not, from a copy of its SQLite databases read over SFTP (or a local Zomboid folder): role (banned included), last login, character name, last saved position, dead or alive, and the kick/ban history with reasons. Password hashes are never read. Ban, unban and "To Players tab" (with the last position) go through RCON.

• Bridge tab, with the SpiffoCON Bridge mod (bridge/SpiffoCONBridge, B42, server side only): the players in the game with position, health, role and vehicle, the vehicles in loaded areas and world state, which RCON can't give. It talks through files in the server's Zomboid/Lua folder, read and written over SFTP (spiffocon_in.txt / spiffocon_out.txt). Bridge v2 adds admin actions, each done the way the game's own server code does it (with its client sync) and written to the admin log: full heal, remove items (not worn or attached ones; bridge v3 removes them from the container they are listed under), repair, refuel or remove a vehicle, all asked for confirmation. Bridge v5 sets the weather (Events tab). Bridge v6 removes the zombie corpses within a radius of a spot on the map or of a player, on every floor (those of players and animals stay), as the debug Horde Manager's Remove bodies does. Bridge v7 adds:

  • more to clean up within a radius: items lying on the floor (counted first, then asked; what is in containers, on tables and shelves, or inside a safehouse is not touched) and fires (not lit campfires);
  • the safehouses, drawn on the map with their owner, and removing one (what is in it stays);
  • a player's sheet (now in Character details): profession, traits, skills, and what is wrong with them (infection, bites, hunger, panic...);
  • the zombies near each player, in the sidebar and in the players list;
  • the time of day (Events tab): the clock skips forward to the next time it is that hour, the only way the game's clock goes, and the world ages by the hours skipped (a time just behind the clock, almost a day away, is refused);
  • a key of a vehicle for the selected player;
  • two bags of the same name in one inventory told apart ("School Bag #2").

  Bridge v8 adds:

  • items on the ground: right-click a spot of the map for the item and quantity chosen in the Catalog tab, or for a whole kit of the Kits tab (at most 500 objects at once; only where the server has the map loaded, that is near a player);
  • the deaths of players: the last 100, kept by the bridge across restarts, with where and by whom (zombies or a player), as red crosses on the map and as desktop notifications (right-click the map to clear the crosses on your PC: the bridge keeps its list, new deaths show as usual);
  • the zombies of the loaded areas on the map, red, deeper where there are more;
  • wrecks (burnt and smashed vehicles) removed within a radius, counted first, then asked; cars that can still be driven, and a wreck with someone inside, stay.

  Bridge v9 sets a player's hair style (right-click a player, Hair and beard…): any style of their gender the server knows, mods included, saved with the character and shown to the players near them, as the game's own hair cut does. For characters gone bald by mistake.

  Bridge v10 adds:

  • curing a player's zombie infection (right-click a player, Cure zombie infection…): Heal completely, as the game's own heal, mends every body part but leaves the infection of the whole body, and the player still turns;
  • beard and colour of hair and beard in the same window as the hair style (Hair and beard…), with the colours the game offers when a character is made;
  • the character's own name ("Ray Jones") next to the account: in the Bridge tab, the player's sheet, on the map and in the deaths;
  • animals kept out of the deaths: in Build 42 an animal is a kind of player for the game, named "Bob", so bridges v8 and v9 kept every dead animal as a death of "Bob" (v10 drops those once from the file they left). Who killed a player is the game's last attacker, and an animal's attack does not set it: "killed by an animal" shows only when the game happens to name one.

  Bridge v11 adds to a player's sheet, for the Character details window: the body part by part (health and wounds, as the game's health panel), what is held, worn and attached with its condition, the weight carried.

  Bridge v12 adds to each skill of the sheet its experience (gained in the level, and what the next level takes, as the game's skill bar) and the id addxp wants, so experience can be added from the window whatever the language of the server.

  Bridge v13 is about vehicles:

  • a vehicle part by part, for the Vehicle details window: the condition of each part, what is in it (the item, the fuel, the pressure of a tyre, the charge of the battery), the parts that are gone, who sits in it, and the repair of one part (made whole, or put back when it is gone, as the Repair Part of the game's own mechanics window);
  • a complete repair that is checked: the game's repair already makes every part whole and puts back the ones that are gone (a wheel, a window, the battery...); the bridge installs itself what was left out, and names what was put back or is still missing;
  • the missing parts of each vehicle in the vehicles list;
  • the vehicle of a player found through the player, driver or passenger: Their vehicle… and Repair their vehicle… of the player menu (before v13 the repair finds only the one they drive).

  Bridge v14 finds and replaces the containers that lost their liquid part (the Bridge tab's Fix containers and stations…, Fix liquid containers… before 0.26.0, and the same in the player menu for one player). A bucket, a bottle or a pot holds liquids through a part of its own; while the item is put down in the world the game keeps that part on the object on the square, saved apart from the item, and after a server crash some come back without it. Such a bucket shows as a plain "Bucket" (a whole one is "Empty Bucket" or "Bucket of Water"), is left out of the game's Fill menu, and stays so. The bridge looks at what the players online carry, and at what is put down or stored in crates and shelves within 50 squares of each; SpiffoCON says how many and where, asks, and each is replaced by a new, empty one of the same type in the same place (one put down keeps its spot and the way it is turned). One that is worn or attached to a belt is left. Built things (a rain collector, a trough) come with bridge v15. SpiffoCON also looks by itself when the bridge connects and when the first player is back after the server was empty (as after a restart), and says so in the Bridge tab and with a notification when it finds some.

  Bridge v14 also says the state of the items a player carries (the condition of weapons, clothes and anything damaged, what is left of a battery or a lighter, how full a container is, blood and dirt) and does things to them, for the menu on an item in Character details: repair (as new: the condition, the head of a tool, the edge of a blade; clothes mended and washed), clean, fill with water, empty, recharge. Each is told to the player's game the way the game's own actions do it.

  Bridge v15 adds:

  • built things to Fix containers and stations: a feeding trough that lost its water part (it has one unless it holds feed; without it no water can be poured in) and anything built from a script that gives it one, such as a rain collector. Their part is made again in place, the way the game's own code does it; nothing is replaced;
  • Repair what they carry… in the player menu: everything a player holds, wears and has attached, as new, in one go;
  • the animals of the players (not the wild ones) near the players online, in the Bridge tab: kind, position, health, hunger and thirst, the hungry and thirsty ones first; one or all of them fed and watered (hunger and thirst to nothing, as the game's own cheats set them), and the feeding troughs filled with water (one with feed in it is left). Animals inside a hutch or a trailer are not on the map: they are listed since bridge v16.

  Bridge v16 adds:

  • Restore their needs… in the player menu: hunger, thirst, tiredness, exertion, stress, panic, boredom, unhappiness, pain, drunkenness, sickness and a cold go to nothing (wounds stay: that is Heal completely);
  • traits: Change… on the traits of Character details gives a trait or takes one away, from the game's own list, as its admin window does (the trait and the experience boost that goes with it; traits that exclude each other are not checked);
  • the name the game shows for each item of the inventory when it says more than the name of the type: "Empty Bucket", "Bucket of Water", "Jacket (Worn)". A container that lost its liquid part shows as a plain "Bucket", so it is told apart at a glance;
  • the animals inside a hutch or a trailer in the animals list, where the hutch or the trailer is;
  • what every level of a skill takes, so that a level can be set from Character details (the + of a skill, Set level): up or down, by adding or taking away the difference with addxp, as the game's own admin window does. Going down is asked first.

  Bridge v17 adds:

  • writing in the chat: in the Logs tab, Chat instead of Broadcast sends an ordinary line to the General chat, under the name beside the box ("Admin" at first). The server can only send alerts by itself, so the bridge passes the text to each player's game, where the mod shows it in the chat window with the colour, time and size of the player's own chat settings; a player who muted that name does not see it. It is written to the server's chat log like a player's message, so the Logs tab shows it too. A chat mod that replaces the game's chat window may not show it.

  Bridge v18 adds:

  • Objects around them… in the player menu: what stands on the squares around a player (furniture, walls, doors, lights), in a window, with Remove… for each. For the thing the game no longer lets anybody pick up or dismantle (half of an object made of two squares, say): it goes out of the world as with the game's own Destroy tile, and what it held is left on the ground;
  • Server performance in the Bridge tab: the server's updates of the last minute, second by second (it makes about ten a second), with the longest wait between two as a bar, read again every 5 s while open; and the zombies, vehicles and memory it has loaded. Walk a player to the spot that lags: bars that grow there are the server's doing; if they stay low, the stutter is on the player's own PC;
  • Generators near the players in the Bridge tab: fuel, condition, on or off, connected or not; each refuelled, repaired, switched or connected, and all refuelled at once;
  • a line of chat for one player alone: To a player in the box of the Logs tab, or Write to them… in the player menu. Only that player sees it, marked Private;
  • zombies removed on every floor: Clean up around > Zombies in the player menu and the map's Remove the zombies count them first and clear each floor that has some (the removal itself is RCON's removezombies; without bridge v18 it does the one floor and does not count).

  It also fixes the food put on the ground, which was rotten on a server that had run for a while: the game aged it like the loot it lays out itself, as old as the world. It is put down new now, as the food given to a player always was.

  Bridge v19 extends Fix containers and stations to every built station: a drying rack, a workbench, a furnace, anything built from an entity script, that lost any of its parts and became a picture nobody can use. What it should have comes from its own script, as the game makes it (the parts of an object of several squares on its main one), and only what is missing is made again in place, empty: what a lost part held (the grain on a rack) went with it.

  Why they break: while nobody is near, the game takes every part off a thing whose parts keep working (drying, crafting, a furnace, water) and keeps them in the server's memory, saving the thing without them; they reach the disk only with the server's full save (save, a clean quit, or SaveWorldEveryMinutes, which is 0 unless set). A server killed before that loses them. Restarting with save and quit (SpiffoCON's maintenance restart does) and setting SaveWorldEveryMinutes make it rare.

  Bridge v20 can do it by itself: By itself, next to the button, makes the bridge look every 10 minutes with players online (the first a minute after the first player is back on an empty server) and fix what it finds, on the server, with SpiffoCON closed too. The switch is kept with the world. A thing whose parts the game is still giving back is left alone; what it fixes goes to the admin log and SpiffoCON tells it in the console and with a notification.

  The bridge runs while the server runs a game: an empty server with PauseEmpty=true is paused and the bridge waits; while it is connected to the server (RCON), SpiffoCON connects to the bridge by itself when someone joins.

• Map tab: the game's world map (drawn like the in-game map from the game's own worldmap.xml and forest images, with building types in color and place names, or the game's top-down satellite view) with the players and vehicles the bridge reports, updated at each bridge refresh (every 15 s). Wheel zooms, dragging moves, clicking a player (on the map, or in the sidebar while the Map tab is open) selects and can follow them; right-click teleports the selected player there, copies the coordinates, spawns a horde there (createhorde2, number and radius set in the toolbar), removes the zombies around (removezombies) or their corpses (through the bridge). The server places zombies only where the map is loaded, that is near a player, and says "invalid location" elsewhere. The map files are read from a Project Zomboid or dedicated server install on this PC, or copied once from the server over SFTP (about 17 MB, 50 MB more for the satellite view) into %LOCALAPPDATA%\SpiffoCON. Maps added by mods (the server's Map=) are drawn too, merged the game's way (the first map in Map= with data in a cell draws that cell); their map files come from the workshop folders on this PC (Steam, SpiffoCON's SteamCMD) or are copied from the server over SFTP (only worldmap.xml, worldmap-forest.xml and the place names: a few hundred KB). Mods without a worldmap.xml show nothing, as in the game.

• Online players sidebar on the right, always in view (refreshed every 30 s), with each player's position when the bridge is connected; double-click opens the player in the Players tab.

• Player menu: right-click a player wherever players are listed (the sidebar, Players, map markers, Bridge, Accounts, chat lines in Logs): their Character details, show in the Players tab or on the map, teleport to another player or bring one here, give a kit, lightning / thunder / horde, full heal, their needs taken away (bridge v16) and cure of the zombie infection, the vehicle they are in (its details, a complete repair), what they carry repaired at once (bridge v15), the containers that lost their liquid part (bridge v14), clean up around them, hair and beard (bridge), god mode, invisible, no clip, access level, voice mute, kick, ban, unban, copy the name. Each reply shows in the status bar.

• Character details: the first item of the player menu, or a double click on a player in the sidebar or the Bridge tab, opens a window of its own for that player, with everything in one place: who and where they are, health (with bridge v11 part by part: bites, bleeding, fractures, bandages...), needs and moods, traits, skills (the level, with bridge v12 the experience towards the next one, and a + that adds some: addxp), what they wear, hold and have attached (bridge v11), the inventory with its remove buttons (items show the icon the Catalog has for them and, with bridge v14, their state; a right click on an item, or on something worn or held, repairs, cleans, fills, empties or recharges it, gives one more, removes it, or shows it in the Catalog), the account (last connection, kicks and bans, when the Accounts tab was read) and every action of the player menu as a column of buttons on the right. It follows the bridge's refreshes; one window per player, several can stay open.

• Vehicle details (bridge v13): Their vehicle… in the player menu and in Character details, or a double click on a vehicle of the Bridge tab (or its Parts… button), opens a window for that vehicle, as the game's mechanics window: a plan of the vehicle seen from above with each part in the colour of its condition (green whole, red worn out, a dashed outline where a part is gone), the parts under the game's categories with their percentage and what is in them, the overall condition, engine, weight, rust and who sits in it. Each part has its own button: Repair (to 100%, a tyre inflated, the tank filled) or Put back when it is missing; no question asked for one part. The whole vehicle can be repaired, refuelled, given a key of to a player online, shown on the map or removed. It follows the bridge's refreshes; one window per vehicle.

• Crash notice: when SpiffoCON connects, and when the server answers again after going away, it reads how the run before the current one ended. A server that stops as it should ends its debug log with its shutdown lines ("Shutdown handling finished"); one that crashed, was killed or lost power just stops writing. In that case the Console tab says so, with the last lines of that log, and a notification is shown (under Connection lost and server back). Each start of the server is judged once. It needs the Logs folder over SFTP, where the server keeps the logs of earlier runs in logs_<date> folders.

• SFTP probe (optional): looks for Server/*.ini, workshop folders (content/108600), Zomboid/mods and logs. The SSH host key is saved at the first connection and checked afterwards. With SFTP on, connecting also connects the bridge, follows the logs and loads the server's mods into the Catalog over SFTP (never with SteamCMD: that stays with Load from server, which asks); a box in the SFTP settings turns it off.

• The connection panel hides by itself once connected (the arrow at the top left brings it back or hides it again) and is always shown while not connected.

• Server list: save several servers (name, RCON, SFTP and the folders found on each), add, duplicate or delete them, and switch while disconnected; every tab starts clean for the new server. The list lives in %APPDATA%\SpiffoCON\servers.json (the single profile.json of 0.9.2 and earlier is imported once); passwords are encrypted with DPAPI (current Windows user).

Build

dotnet build SpiffoCON.slnx
dotnet test tests/SpiffoCON.Core.Tests

src/SpiffoCON.Core holds everything that is not UI (RCON, commands, SFTP, catalog, Steam) and targets plain net10.0.

To refresh the base-game catalog after a game update, download the free dedicated server (steamcmd +login anonymous +app_update 380870 +quit) and run:

dotnet run tools/MakeVanillaSnapshot.cs -- "<dedicated server folder>"

The bridge mod

Using it

The bridge is published on the Steam Workshop: SpiffoCON Bridge, Workshop id 3809683986, mod id SpiffoCONBridge. Any server can use it; nothing needs to be uploaded. The item was unlisted up to bridge v13 and is public from the upload after it: while unlisted it doesn't show in searches nor in hosts' mod browsers, and is added by hand.

1. On the server, add SpiffoCONBridge to Mods= and 3809683986 to WorkshopItems= (the Bridge tab's Copy server settings puts both on the clipboard; the Options tab edits these lists), then restart the server so it downloads the mod.
2. In SpiffoCON, with SFTP set, the bridge connects by itself when you connect (or press Find on server in the Bridge tab).

It works on the server. On a player's game it does one thing: it shows the chat lines an admin writes from SpiffoCON (bridge v17). It acts only on requests SpiffoCON writes into the server's Zomboid/Lua folder, so only someone who can already write the server's files can use it. SpiffoCON checks the bridge version and greys out what an older bridge can't do.

Publishing it (maintainer)

bridge/SpiffoCONBridge/workshop.txt keeps the Workshop id, so new uploads update the same item. To upload an update:

1. In SpiffoCON's Bridge tab press Prepare Workshop upload: it copies bridge/SpiffoCONBridge to %USERPROFILE%\Zomboid\Workshop\SpiffoCONBridge.
2. Start Project Zomboid, open Workshop from the main menu, pick SpiffoCON Bridge and upload it (workshop.txt sets it public, and its description says the bridge version and links the latest SpiffoCON release).
3. Servers get the new version at their next restart.

A new version of the bridge has its number in three places, which a test keeps together: VERSION in the Lua script, modversion in mod.info, and "Bridge version" in the description of workshop.txt.

A fork that wants its own Workshop item removes the id= line from workshop.txt (Steam refuses an upload to someone else's item; the game writes the new id there after the first upload) and changes BridgeMod.PublishedWorkshopId in src/SpiffoCON.Core/Bridge/BridgeMod.cs, which Copy server settings uses. tools/MakeBridgeImages.cs redraws preview.png and poster.png.

Installers

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File installer\build.ps1

runs the tests, publishes publish\light (framework-dependent, needs the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime) and publish\full (self-contained), and builds with Inno Setup installer\Output\SpiffoCON-Setup-<version>-Light.exe / -Full.exe. The version comes from <Version> in src\SpiffoCON\SpiffoCON.csproj. Installs per user by default (all users can be chosen); Light and Full replace each other. User data (%APPDATA%\SpiffoCON, %LOCALAPPDATA%\SpiffoCON) is never touched by setup or uninstall. tools/MakeAppIcon.cs redraws src/SpiffoCON/Assets/spiffocon.ico.

License

MIT, see LICENSE. Project Zomboid, its art and its text belong to The Indie Stone; SpiffoCON is not affiliated with them. SpiffoCON ships none of the game's art: item icons are read from your own game install, and the map from the game's files on your PC or on your server. It does ship three text files made from the game's files by the tools in tools/, so it works without a game install: the base-game item list of the Catalog (item ids, names, categories; src/SpiffoCON.Core/Data/vanilla-catalog.json.gz) and the server and sandbox options with their defaults, ranges and descriptions (server-options.json, sandbox-options.json).