🦖 AMU — ARK Mod Updater

The all-in-one manager for ARK dedicated servers on Windows — install & update Workshop mods, launch & supervise your servers, and edit every last server setting. One small native app.

Download • Features • Screenshots • Building • License

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v2 is a ground-up C++20 rewrite of the original AutoIt application (2017–2026): a tiny native binary, a fully testable core, and a hardened self-updater.

✨ Features

• 🧩 Mod install & update — drives steamcmd.exe with live per-mod progress, unpacks ARK's .z archives, writes the .mod descriptors, and keeps ActiveMods in GameUserSettings.ini in sync. Names, preview images and update dates come straight from the Steam Workshop.
• 🚀 Server launcher & supervisor — AMU builds the server command line itself (no start scripts): start/stop/restart from the UI, graceful RCON shutdown (saveworld → confirmed fresh save → DoExit), crash detection with auto-restart & backoff, adoption of already-running servers, live status in the sidebar.
• 📡 Update orchestration — countdown broadcasts to your players ({minutes} templating), world-save backup, all-or-nothing mod swap, and the server only restarts if it was running before.
• ⚙️ Full server configurator — ~370 settings for ASE and ASA from the community wiki, searchable and categorized, with typed editors, tooltips, defaults, and raw editors for the array-style setting families (OverrideNamedEngramEntries, PerLevelStatsMultiplier[i], …) that normal INI tools cannot touch. Unrelated lines, comments and encoding are preserved byte-for-byte.
• 🔄 Hardened self-updater — updates ship as GitHub Releases with a SHA-256 manifest; the standalone amu_updater.exe verifies every file before swapping, with automatic rollback. AMU even bootstraps a missing SteamCMD by itself.
• 🔐 DPAPI credential store — Steam login data is encrypted per Windows user; nothing is ever stored in plain text.
• 🗃️ Servers, mods, settings and logs live in a local SQLite database.

📸 Screenshots

Dashboard & mods	Server & launch options
Configurator (370 settings)	Live update run

🏗️ Architecture

Two layers, cleanly separated so the entire core is testable without a GUI:

┌─────────────────────────────┐
│  amu.exe (Sciter.JS shell)  │  HTML/CSS/JS UI, packed into the exe
├─────────────────────────────┤
│  amucore (static lib, C++20)│  everything below is unit-tested
└─────────────────────────────┘

amucore module	Purpose
db	SQLite data layer (prepared statements only)
serverconfig	GameUserSettings.ini / Game.ini access incl. the raw rewriter for array-setting families
launchspec	Pure ASE/ASA command-line builder
supervisor	Process lifecycle: start, graceful RCON stop, crash auto-restart
orchestrator	The mod-update pipeline (SteamCMD → unpack → install → restart)
steamcmd_parser	SteamCMD stdout → typed progress events
zunpack	ARK/Valve .z decompressor
mod_writer	.mod descriptor generator
workshop	Workshop page scraping (name, preview, last update)
rcon	Minimal Source-RCON client
credstore	DPAPI encrypt/decrypt
updatecheck	Manifest + SHA-256 self-update client

Plus cpp/updater — the standalone amu_updater.exe that applies verified updates while the app is closed.

🔨 Building

Requirements: CMake ≥ 3.21, Ninja, MSVC with C++20 (Visual Studio 2022 “Desktop development with C++” workload). All dependencies are fetched automatically via CMake FetchContent (SQLite, zlib, doctest, Sciter.JS SDK) — no manual setup.

cd cpp
cmake --preset default
cmake --build --preset default

The binaries land in cpp/build/ — amu.exe runs directly from there (a loose ui/ folder next to the exe overrides the packed-in UI for fast HTML iteration).

🧪 Tests

ctest --test-dir build --output-on-failure
# or directly: build/tests/amu_tests.exe

🔄 Updates & releases

Each GitHub Release is the update channel — the app checks releases/latest/download/version.txt and offers one-click updates:

• The install is just three files: amu.exe (UI packed in), sciter.dll, lib/amu_updater.exe.
• manifest.txt lists every file with its SHA-256 — the updater verifies everything before touching your install, and rolls back on any failure.
• steamcmd.exe ships as an extra asset; AMU downloads it automatically when missing.
• amu-cpp-<version>.zip is attached for manual installs.

Maintainers: publish.ps1 builds the whole asset set and prints the matching gh release create command.

🙏 Credits

• Sciter.JS — the embedded HTML/CSS/JS UI engine (free tier)
• Valve SteamCMD — Workshop downloads (Valve's software, not part of this project)
• SQLite (public domain) • zlib (zlib license) • doctest (MIT)
• ARK server setting documentation based on the ARK Community Wiki

📜 License & copyright

Licensed under the MIT License — free to use, modify and redistribute, commercially or not. One condition is not optional: the copyright notice

Copyright (c) 2026 oNdsen

must remain in all copies and substantial portions of the software, including forks and derived projects (that is the retention clause of the MIT license itself). Removing the notice is a license violation.

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© 2026 oNdsen — made with 🦖 for the ARK community

⭐ If AMU saves you time, a star keeps the dinos fed.