Barotrauma FAQ

There are a couple of things that you can check if you’re not able to start the game or if it keeps crashing. If these steps don’t fix it, please see further below for where to find more help.

Please verify integrity of game files. It could be that something just didn’t get downloaded properly, so it’s good to check this one off the list first. Head over to you Steam Library, right-click on Barotrauma on the list and select ’Properties’ from the menu. Select the Local files tab and click the ‘Verify integrity of game files…’ button. Steam will then verify the game's files, which may take a while to complete.

Are you playing on Windows 7? Please make sure your Windows installation is up to date – you should make sure to get at least the following updates:
Convenience rollup update for Windows 7 SP1

Platform Update for Windows 7

Are you using any mods? To rule out the possibility of a mod breaking your game, it’s a good idea to disable all mods. There are a few ways to do this:

If the game starts, you can simply go to the game settings and uncheck all the mods from the list.
If the game crashes before you can get to the settings, you may need to disable the mods by finding a file called “player_config.xml” inside the game folder and deleting it. This will reset your game settings and disable all mods you have installed.
If the game still crashes after that, the crashing may be caused by the game trying to autoupdate some mod you have subscribed to. In this case, you should either unsubscribe from mods or open the previously mentioned “player_config.xml” and change the line “autoupdateworkshopitems=”true”” to autoupdateworkshopitems=”false”.

Does your computer have an integrated or low-end GPU? With Barotrauma’s continued development, low-end GPUs may not meet the game’s minimum requirements anymore. Please see the bottom of our store page for the up-to-date technical requirements.

You can see if updating your graphics drivers will help, and we will be making further optimizations with future updates that may improve the situation for you. Even so, we unfortunately cannot guarantee that you'll be able to play Barotrauma with a low-end GPU.

Are you playing on MacOS? Apple has introduced notarization prerequisite changes that may cause Barotrauma to crash. To fix this, we need to modify the game to adhere to the new notarization prerequisites and implement new workarounds to deal with Mac's translocation process. This will unfortunately take some time, and we’re sorry about the downtime for our Mac players!

Couldn’t find what you were looking for here? Thanks for reading anyway! Please see below for what to do next.

Please see the pinned messages on our Steam forums – all the different subforums of our Steam discussions have their own pins with useful information. Unfortunately, we’re not able to translate all pins, so most of the others are in English only.
Please search our Steam discussion forums and write a new post if you can’t find your question answered. We’ll get back to you as soon as we can, or another player may be able to help you.

When writing a new post about an issue in the game, the more information you can give, the easier it will be for us to figure out what went wrong. So please include crash reports in full, error messages exactly as they appear in your game, and information about your operating system and hardware with as much detail as you can!

Welcome to our official Discord! Just post your question in the relevant channel, and you’re likely to get advice from other players and developers alike.

Our public roadmap on Trello is updated regularly, and it contains known issues and workarounds as well as our plans for Barotrauma’s development.

You can also report bugs and technical issues directly in our GitHub issue tracker. To do this, you will need to make a GitHub account, and if you use the issue tracker, please search for similar reports before writing a new one. You can then follow your issue and read and write comments.

If you do not wish to make an account, you can also use this contact form to report issues.

Please follow the instructions and provide all the required information, in English – your report will be sent directly to our programmers, so please make it easy to read :)

We hope you found these tips helpful! If you think something is missing, please let us know.

The easiest way to host a Barotrauma server is to click the "Host server" button in the main menu. If you run into any problems when trying to host a server or want to use one of the more advanced server hosting options, please read the instructions below.

The easy option: hosting directly from the game
--> Open the "Host server" menu from the main menu.
--> Enter a name for your server and adjust the settings in the menu as you see fit (password, number of players, karma settings...)
--> Click "Start".
--> If you receive a prompt from Windows Firewall with your antivirus or a similar software asking whether to allow the application to connect to the internet, make sure you allow it to do so.

Advanced option: dedicated server

The dedicated server is a command line application, meaning that it has no graphical interface. It's more lightweight than the client application, meaning that it takes less of your computer’s resources to run. It may be the preferred option if you want to leave the server running in the background without playing on it yourself.

--> Launch a file called "DedicatedServer" inside the game folder.
--> If you wish to modify the settings for your server, you can edit a file called "serversettings.xml" inside the game folder. If the file is not present, it can be created by launching the DedicatedServer executable.
--> If you receive a prompt from Windows Firewall, your antivirus or a similar software asking whether to allow the application to connect to the internet, make sure you allow it to do so.
--> If the computer you wish to run the server on has a private IP, you may need to forward ports on your router (either manually or using UPnP port forwarding) to allow players to connect to your server. See the "forwarding ports" section for more instructions.

Advanced option: hosting using SteamCMD

This is a more complex way to host servers, mainly intended for people who want to run a dedicated server 24/7 on a remote machine. Unlike the previous options, it does not require logging in to Steam.

--> Install SteamCMD following these instructions
--> Log in to SteamCMD using the command "login anonymous".
--> Install the Barotrauma dedicated server using "app_update 1026340 validate".
--> Make sure you've configured the server settings, port forwarding, firewall settings and such as instructed in the "dedicated server" section above.
--> Launch the server using "app_run 1026340".

Forwarding ports
If the computer you wish to run the server on has a private IP, you may need to forward ports in your router to allow players to connect to your server.

Some routers support a feature called UPnP (universal plug and play) that can be used to automatically take care of port forwarding. You can enable it by selecting the "Attempt UPnP port forwarding" checkbox in the "Host server" menu, or when using the dedicated server, setting "enableupnp" to "true" in the "serversettings.xml" file.

Once you've enabled UPnP, you can check if others can connect to your server either by asking some else to join it, or by using some remote tool (see the "Resources" section below).

If others are unable to join your server after UPnP has been enabled, you may need to forward ports manually. We’re working on an alternative solution to remove the need for port forwarding, but for now this is how you can do it:

On many router models you can access the settings by navigating to http://192.168.1.1/ using your web browser, finding the port forwarding settings (sometimes called “application sharing”) and forwarding one of the ports using the following settings:

Game port (used to communicate with clients)
Service/Application: barotrauma
External Port: The port you have selected for your server (27015 by default)
Internal Port: The port you have selected for your server (27015 by default)
Protocol: UDP

Query port (used to communicate with Steam)
Service/Application: barotrauma
External Port: The port you have selected for your server (27016 by default)
Internal Port: The port you have selected for your server (27016 by default)
Protocol: UDP

If you are playing the old, non-Steam legacy version, you only need to forward the game port (14242 by default).

Resources
Remote Port Testing URLs
http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/open-ports/
http://www.canyouseeme.org/
http://www.t1shopper.com/tools/port-scan/

Help with Forwarding Ports
http://www.howtogeek.com/66214/how-to-forward-ports-on-your-router/
http://portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_forwarding

If you’ve read the hosting guide on these forums and are still unable to host or join, the most likely suspect is your antivirus or firewall. Please take a look in the settings to make sure nothing on your end is blocking the game!

Unfortunately there’s not much we can do. The servers are not hosted by us, so you should reach out to the owner of the server instead. Server owners may also want to consider giving moderator/admin rights to some trusted players on the server and to enable vote kicking.

When playing multiplayer, you must be using the same content as the server. So, if the server is using mods, you must have the same mods installed.
If you are getting this error when joining the server, despite no mods being used on the server on in your game installation, it's possible that some of the game files have been corrupted (or intentionally modified). You should be able to fix this by right-clicking the game in your Steam library, selecting "Properties", going to the "Local files tab" and clicking "Verify integrity of game files".

The game’s source code will stay public in our GitHub repository – we want to give modders as much freedom as we can and make sure people can keep developing more extensive mods by modifying the source code itself. However, modders should note that Barotrauma’s EULA does not allow distributing standalone versions of the game, meaning that you are allowed to use the source code to create mods and share the modded files with players, but not to share the entire game in a way that would allow players to play it without purchasing it on Steam.

We’ve tried to keep the game as backwards-compatible as possible with mods developed for older versions. Some mods will directly work on the new version, but others may need minor changes from the developer of the mod to make them compatible with some of code/gameplay changes in the Steam version. The Steam version will also have better built-in modding tools (such as a character/animation editor and a level editor) and full Steam Workshop integration, so the release will also make it much easier to mod the game and to find and install new mods. Read more about upgrading mods here.