Server Queries

The Source engine allows you to query information from a running game server
using UDP/IP packets. This document describes the packet formats and protocol
to access this data.

Basic Data Types

All server queries consist of 5 basic types of data packed together into a data
stream. All types are little endian.

Name   Description

byte   8 bit character

short  16 bit signed integer

long   32 bit signed integer

float  32 bit float value

string variable length byte field, terminated by 0x00

Query Types

The server responds to 4 queries:

  • A2S_SERVERQUERY_GETCHALLENGE - Returns a challenge number for use in the
    player and rules query.
  • A2S_INFO - Basic information about the server.
  • A2S_PLAYER - Details about each player on the server.
  • A2S_RULES - The rules the server is using.

Queries should be sent in UDP packets to the listen port of the server, which
is typically port 27015.

A2S_SERVERQUERY_GETCHALLENGE

Request format

Challenge values are required for A2S_PLAYER and A2S_RULES requests, you can
use this request to get one.
Note: You can also send A2S_PLAYER and A2S_RULES queries with a challenge value
of -1 (0xFF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF) and they will respond with a challenge value
to use (using the reply format below).

FF FF FF FF 57

Reply format

Data      Type  Comment

Type      byte  Should be equal to 'A' (0x41)

Challenge long  The challenge number to use

Example reply:

FF FF FF FF FF 41 32 42 59 45 53 93 43 71

A2S_INFO

Request format

Server info can be requested by sending the following byte values in a UDP
packet to the server.

FF FF FF FF 54 53 6F 75 72 63 65 20 45 6E 67 69 6E 65 20 51 75 65 72 79 00

Reply format

Data           Type     Comment

Type           byte     Should be equal to 'I' (0x49)

Version        byte     Network version

Hostname       string   The Servers name

Map            string   The current map being played

Game Directory string   The Game type

Game           string   A friendly string name for the game type
Description

AppID          short    Steam Application number (currently always set to 0)

Num players    byte     The number of players currently on the server

Max players    byte     Maximum allowed players for the server

Num of bots    byte     Number of bot players currently on the server

Dedicated      byte     Set to 1 for dedicated servers

OS             byte     'l' for Linux, 'w' for Windows

Password       byte     If set to 1 a password is required to join this server

Secure         byte     If set to 1 this server is running VAC

Game Version   string   The version of the game

Example reply:

FF FF FF FF 49 02 67 61 6D 65 32 78 73 2E 63 6F    ....I.game2xs.co
6D 20 43 6F 75 6E 74 65 72 2D 53 74 72 69 6B 65    m.Counter-Strike
20 53 6F 75 72 63 65 20 23 31 00 64 65 5F 64 75    .Source.#1.de_du
73 74 00 63 73 74 72 69 6B 65 00 43 6F 75 6E 74    st.cstrike.Count
65 72 2D 53 74 72 69 6B 65 00 00 00 0B 28 00 64    er-Strike....(.d
6C 00 00 31 2e 31 2e 30 2e 31 36 00                l..1.1.0.16

A2S_PLAYER

Request format

FF FF FF FF 55 <4 byte challenge number>

The challenge number can either be set to -1 (0xFF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF) to
have the server reply with S2C_CHALLENGE, or use the value from a previous
A2S_SERVERQUERY_GETCHALLENGE request.

Reply format

The players response has two sections, the initial header:

Data         Type    Comment

Type         byte    Should be equal to 'D' (0x44)

Num Players  byte    The number of players reported in this response


Then for each player the following fields are sent:

Data           Type     Comment

Index          byte     The index into [0.. Num Players] for this entry

Player Name    string   Player's name

Kills          long     Number of kills this player has

Time connected float    The time in seconds this player has been connected


A2S_RULES

Request format

FF FF FF FF 56 <4 byte challenge number>

The challenge number can either be set to -1 (0xFF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF) to
have the server reply with S2C_CHALLENGE, or use the value from a previous
A2S_SERVERQUERY_GETCHALLENGE request.

Reply format

The rules response has two sections, the initial header:

Data        Type    Comment

Type        byte    Should be equal to 'E' (0x45)

Num Rules   short   The number of rules reported in this response


Then for each rule the following fields are sent:

Data       Type   Comment

Rule Name  string The name of the rule

Rule Value string The rules value



━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

(C) 2004 Valve Corporation. All rights reserved. Valve, the Valve logo,
Half-Life, the Half-Life logo, the Lambda logo, Steam, the Steam logo, Team
Fortress, the Team Fortress logo, Opposing Force, Day of Defeat, the Day of
Defeat logo, Counter-Strike, the Counter-Strike logo, Source, the Source logo,
Hammer and Counter-Strike: Condition Zero are trademarks and/or registered
trademarks of Valve Corporation.  Microsoft and Visual Studio are trademarks
and/or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.  All other trademarks
are property of their respective owners.