Titanfall 2 is getting a fresh lease on life thanks to a new mod called Northstar, which allows PC gamers to set up their custom servers after months of suffering from hackers and DDoS attacks that rendered the game almost unusable.
Players can “run their own Titanfall 2 servers using custom scripts and assets to generate unique content, as well as host vanilla content” using the Northstar mod. Importantly, it considerably minimizes the possibility of crippling server attacks: Although the same flaws exist, the servers themselves are effectively invisible.
“If an attacker wants to crash your server, they will have to track down the server’s IP address,” the SaveTitanfall Twitter account explained. “Private games not on the master server will be impossible to track down and crash.”
Github isn’t the friendliest distribution platform in the world, but the setup process as explained here is quite simple:
- Download the latest version from the releases page
- Copy all the files in the newly downloaded zip folder to your Titanfall folder
- For Steam – Right-click Titanfall 2 > Open Properties > Click Local Files > Click Browse
- For Origin – Click Titanfall 2 in the Library > Click the gear icon > Click Game Properties
- Launch NorthstarLauncher.exe to start Northstar .
If everything went smoothly, you should receive a “thanks for installing Northstar” notice and be able to continue from there. Because Northstar does not launch through Origin, any current startup arguments will be lost, and you’ll have to manually add them to the ns startup args.txt file in the Northstar folder.
On the Titanfall subreddit, the response to the mod has been overwhelmingly positive. Console fans will be dissatisfied, but PC players who have access to the mod appear to be enjoying it so far.
Unfortunately, the chances of a similar mod appearing in the original Titanfall are little to none. The Northstar mod connects into a server.dll in Titanfall 2, but because the original game doesn’t have a solo campaign or local server, enabling such functionality is significantly more difficult, according to SaveTitanfall operator Phoenix.
“Essentially what Respawn did for Titanfall 2’s single-player campaign was take their server code that was used to host servers for multiplayer games, and just include that with the regular retail version of the game,” they explained. “They just made some modifications to the server binary to allow easy use in single-player; most/all of the multiplayer infrastructure is still there in that local server used for the campaign.
“For custom servers to be implemented [in Titanfall], server software would have to be implemented from scratch, versus using the server Respawn already made … It’s possible but very difficult.”
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