What Stoke is

Come join us by the fire.

Stoke is a web panel you run yourself. It runs the game servers your group plays on, and it is where the group meets around them: voice chat in the game and the browser, text chat, friends and direct messages, who is playing where, and a live map of each world.

How it fits together

• The panel is one Docker container on a machine you control: a spare PC, a home server, or a VM. Everyone uses it from their browser.
• Game servers run inside it, as many as the machine can carry, each with its own world, mods and ports. Stoke downloads each game’s server from that game’s own source when you make one.
• The Stoke launcher is a small Windows app for players. It signs them in to the panel, installs exactly the mods a server runs, and starts the game.
• Companion mods on the servers (the Stoke server mod for Valheim, the Stoke plugin for Paper and the Stoke server mod for Fabric) report positions, chat and changes to the panel, so the map and the Hearth stay live.

Fewer games, each done properly

Stoke will never support every game, and that’s on purpose. Plenty of panels can start any server you point them at. Stoke takes the other road: each game it adds is built for, one at a time, as its own experience.

When a game comes to Stoke, it gets:

• Its own way of running. How its server installs, updates, saves and shuts down safely, and what its log means.
• Its own mods, from the place its players already get them: Thunderstore for Valheim, Modrinth for Minecraft.
• Its own map, drawn the way that game’s world looks, with its own coordinates and landmarks.
• Its own companion on the server, so players, chat and the world reach the panel live.
• It speaks the game’s language. The panel calls things what that game’s players call them: plugins on a Paper server and mods on Fabric, the spawn temple on a Valheim map and the world spawn on a Minecraft one, distances in blocks or meters.

Everything social (the Hearth, voice, friends, accounts, backups) is built once and shared by every game. What’s particular to a game is made for that game.

So the list of games grows slowly, and a game is added when it can be done well. If your group plays one Stoke doesn’t support yet, Stoke isn’t the panel for that server, at least not yet.

Who does what

• Whoever hosts installs the panel, makes the servers, and decides who may join. Admins run the whole panel; operators look after the servers they are given.
• Players get a link from their host, sign in (with Steam, or an account the host made), and play. They don’t need to install anything but the game, though the launcher makes mods painless.

What it isn’t

• Not a hosting company. Nothing runs on our servers. Your worlds, chat and voice stay on your machine.
• Not a panel for every game. Stoke supports the games it is made for (Valheim and Minecraft today) and knows each one well. See Fewer games, each done properly.
• Not official. Stoke is an independent project, not made or endorsed by Mojang, Microsoft or Iron Gate.

What’s planned

These are on the way, without dates. Until they arrive, the rest of these docs describe Stoke as it is today.

• Open source at 1.0. The panel, the launcher and the mods, under an open license, from the 1.0 release.
• Hosting on Windows without Docker. Stoke as a Windows service, with an icon in the tray and an installer, for hosts who’d rather not run Docker.
• Sign in with Microsoft. So Minecraft players, and Valheim’s Xbox and Game Pass crossplay players, can sign in without Steam. It waits on Mojang approving Stoke.
• Voice from the launcher. One voice system for every game, Minecraft included, with push to talk that works wherever you are.
• Every game through the launcher. Minecraft next, then each game Stoke adds: its mods, the game started, and the Stoke tunnel connected, from one Play button.
• Install templates for NAS systems, such as Unraid, TrueNAS and HexOS.
• Parental controls and moderation tools a server can turn on.
• Stoke’s mods on the mod sites: Thunderstore for Valheim, Modrinth for Minecraft, alongside the launcher.

More, in Ben’s own words: Why Stoke.