Soulmask Dedicated Server Hardware Provisioning via AMP

Soulmask is one of the heaviest Unreal Engine survival titles to host. A 50 player tribal world easily passes 12 GB resident, the saved game folder grows past 4 GB inside a week of active play, and the Steam update cadence is aggressive. AMP by CubeCoders handles the lifecycle cleanly: it provisions a Soulmask instance over SteamCMD, exposes a scheduled task system for rolling backups, and pipes lifecycle events into Discord through outbound webhooks. This guide builds the full operator surface on Debian 12.

Prerequisites

• Debian 12 with at least 16 GB RAM and 8 modern CPU cores.
• A licensed AMP installation (ADS controller already running).
• UDP 8777 and UDP 27015 open at the firewall.
• A Discord webhook URL for the operations channel.

Step 1: Create a Soulmask Instance

In ADS, click Create Instance and select the Soulmask module. Name it soulmask-main, allocate 14 GB of memory, and let AMP run SteamCMD on first boot. The initial install pulls roughly 18 GB.

$Maximum Memory Usage: 14336 MB
$CPU Limit (soft):       0   (unlimited)
$Process Priority:       AboveNormal

Step 2: Server Configuration

$Server Name:     Vardoran Tribes
$Max Players:     50
$World Save Name: world_main
$Game Port:       8777
$Query Port:      27015
$Admin Password:  REPLACE_LONG_PASSWORD
$PvE/PvP Mode:    PvE
$EAC Enabled:     true

Step 3: Scheduled Rolling Backups

Soulmask's save directory contains both the live world database and an autosave staging folder. Naively zipping the whole tree mid save creates corruption. Use AMP's scheduled task chain to first Send Console Command "saveworld", wait 30 seconds, then archive.

$Step 1: Send Console Command
$        Command: saveworld
$Step 2: Wait
$        Duration: 30s
$Step 3: Run Shell Command
$        Command: tar -C /home/amp/.ampdata/instances/soulmask-main/Soulmask/Saved \
$                 -czf /opt/soulmask/backups/world-$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M).tar.gz SaveGames
$Step 4: Run Shell Command
$        Command: find /opt/soulmask/backups -type f -mtime +7 -delete

Step 4: Discord Webhook for Lifecycle Events

AMP exposes a trigger system that can fire HTTP requests on instance events (started, stopped, crashed, player joined). Wire each interesting event to a Discord webhook so the operations channel always reflects live server state.

$Event: Instance Started
$Action: HTTP POST
$URL:    https://discord.com/api/webhooks/XXXXXXXXXXXXX/YYYYYY
$Body:   {"content":"Soulmask: instance soulmask-main is ONLINE."}
$
$Event: Instance Crashed
$Action: HTTP POST
$URL:    https://discord.com/api/webhooks/XXXXXXXXXXXXX/YYYYYY
$Body:   {"content":"@here Soulmask: instance soulmask-main CRASHED, auto restart triggered."}

Step 5: Scheduled Steam Update Window

$Step 1: Send Console Command "saveworld"
$Step 2: Wait 30s
$Step 3: Stop Instance
$Step 4: Update Application (SteamCMD)
$Step 5: Start Instance
$Step 6: HTTP POST -> Discord webhook
$        Body: {"content":"Soulmask: nightly update window complete."}

Performance and Tuning

• Always run saveworld before any backup or update, the autosave window is not deterministic.
• Keep at least 30 GB free on the volume that holds backups. The world archives are large and they accumulate fast.
• Pin the AMP CPU priority to AboveNormal, not RealTime. RealTime starves the AMP web UI itself.

Conclusion

With AMP doing the heavy lifting (instance lifecycle, scheduled save, archive, and update chain, plus Discord visibility), a Soulmask server stops being a fragile single binary and becomes a managed service the operator can actually sleep through.