I'm just writing this here for now until I get back to my own computer.
Step 1: Requirements
The main requirement is bandwidth. Worst-case, each client will take about 10k/s up (absolute max of 14k/s), however 3k/s is probably a more typical value.
Cable and DSL connections don't typically make good servers because their upload rate is usually capped about 30k/s, meaning any more than 8 players will probably bring it to its knees.
The hardware requirements are pretty minimal: 200mhz + 32mb and possibly even lower would probably be plenty for a dedicated server.
Step 2: Configuration
There is a template included at paintball2\pball\configs\server.cfg. Rename that so it won't get overwritten by the server.cfg included with new versions. For simplicity's sake, call it myserver.cfg. Now open up myserver.cfg and adjust the settings to your desire.
Server Name and Info
The first thing you will want to change is the "hostname" as that is what is displayed in the serverlist. You can also have additional variable names that will show up in the server info, such as location and admin contact information. These are optional. Adding an "s" to the end of the set command will put that variable in the server info. For example:
set location "Houston, TX" s
Rotataion
The next thing you may want to edit is the map rotation. Let's call the new file myrotation.txt:
set rot_file pball/configs/myrotation.txt
Open up the sample rotation.txt, make whatever changes you want, and do a file|save as "myrotation.txt". Also, a recent feature allows you to edit and save map rotations remotely while the game is running. You can do this through the remote admin menu or with the "rotation" command. See below for how to set up remote admin options.
Remote Admin
Paintball2 has a handy way of controlling who can use what commands: Operator levels. You can have up to 5. These are set toward the end of the server config file.
For example:
set oppass1 "dog"
set oppass1level 50
set oppass2 "king"
set oppass2level 150
Once the server is up, you can type "login dog" and it will give you an op level of 50, or "login king" and get an op level of 150. The op levels required for each command can be set in pball\configs\commands.txt, but you shouldn't need to edit those.
Step 3: Starting the Server
Create a shortcut to paintball2.exe (right click and drag paintball2.exe to the desktop or wherever you want the shortcut to be, then select "Create Shortcut(s) Here" from the dropdown). Right click on the shortcut and go to "Properties." Under the "Shortcut" tab, click on the "Target:" edit box. Press the END key, and add the following: " +set dedicated 1 +exec myserver.cfg +map midnight" (without the quotes). Make sure there's a space between the "exe" and the "+set". Now just hit OK, doubleclick on the shortcut and it should start up. It'll pop up a window with something like "====== Paintball II Initialized ======". You can copy this shortcut into your start menu under start|programs|startup and it will run every time windows loads.
Once you get your server all set up, you will have to contact jitspoe (jitspoeATplanetquakeDOTcom) to get it added to the list. Hopefully in the next version, it will be automated.
Troubleshooting
The most common problems when setting up servers are routers and firewalls. If the server machine goes through a router, make sure you set the router to forward port 27910 (or whatever port you're running the server on) to the server machine. Likewise open up port 27910 on your firewall and ensure that paintball2.exe is allowed to act as a server.
