Monday Night Combat is a third person action game. The dedicated server component can be run as a Windows service using FireDaemon Pro, which allows you to have the dedicated server start automatically at boot prior to login, start multiple instances of the dedicated server and more. This HOWTO will show you how to set it up. You can also use FireDaemon Fusion to manage FireDaemon and other Windows services via a web browser.


Monday Night Combat Setup Under FireDaemon Pro

First download and extract SteamCMD. The download is small (< 2 MB).


Download the Monday Night Combat server files via Valve’s content servers. First before you can download the files, go to the directory where you installed SteamCMD and create a shortcut to "SteamCMD.exe". Next edit the properties of the shortcut and in the target box, at the end of it (with a space before the following), put:

+login USERNAME PASSWORD +force_install_dir "C:\Monday Night Combat" +app_update 63220 validate +quit

Replace USERNAME and PASSWORD with your Steam username and password. The target box should now look something like:

C:\steamcmd\steamcmd.exe +login USERNAME PASSWORD +force_install_dir "C:\Monday Night Combat" +app_update 63220 validate +quit


Now click the shortcut you created and let it run to download the Monday Night Combat server files. It might take a few hours to update everything. You should also run the shortcut every week or so to grab the latest server updates. Make sure to stop your server first.


Note that Monday Night Combat currently does not have any configuration files. All configuration is done through the startup parameters.


Download and install FireDaemon Pro into the directory of your choice, typically C:\Program Files\FireDaemon.


Next start the FireDaemon GUI from the desktop shortcut. Click on the "Create a new service definition" button in the toolbar (or type Ctrl+N) and enter the information into the fields as you see below. Adjust the paths to suit your installation. Note the required parameters.


  • Executable: The path to your mncds.exe file. The path specified in this HOWTO is C:\Monday Night Combat\binaries\win32\mncds.exe.
  • Working Directory: The directory containing your mncds.exe file. The path specified in this HOWTO is C:\Monday Night Combat\binaries\win32.

Note: The parameters below are for "Instance 0 Standard". If you want to use one of the other batch files, you will need to open the batch file in a text editor and copy everything after "@start mncds.exe " into the parameters box on the Program tab of FireDaemon. If the server doesn't start after you do this, make sure you that the parameters list does not contain "@start mncds.exe".

Here’s the full parameter list you should have:

server HostileLobby?game=HostileGame.HGameInfo_PreGameLobby?bAllowJuicePurch=True?bAllowBotPurch=True?bAllowHazards=True?bAllowMascot=True?bAllowCustomClass=True?bAllowChangeClass=True?bForceRndClass=False?bIsLanMatch=False?bIsDedicated=True?bAllowTeamSelect=True?bAutoBalance=True?MatchDuration=2?OTDuration=2?ClassLimitAssault=6?ClassLimitTank=6?ClassLimitSupport=6?ClassLimitAssassin=6?ClassLimitGunner=6?ClassLimitSniper=6?MaxStarRating=4?MinNumToStart=1?ServerDescription="MNCDS - Standard" -ServerInstance=0 -log=DedicatedServer.log -STEAM_DEDSERVER -seekfreeloadingserver -nohomedir

Now click on the Settings tab. If you DON'T want to see your dedicated server running, uncheck the Interact with Desktop check box & select “Hidden” from the “Show Window” dropdown. You can optionally run Monday Night Combat Dedicated Server as the user you installed it as. In the Logon Account field type your username (e.g. Administrator) and then enter the user's password twice in the Password and Confirm fields. You can change the Process Priority to allocate more CPU time to the dedicated server or specify which CPU or core the dedicated server will run on (in the case of multi-processor, hyperthreaded or multi-core CPUs).


Now click on the Lifecycle tab. Uncheck Graceful Shutdown as Monday Night Combat doesn't respond to it.


Now click OK to finish setup and start Monday Night Combat!