Thanks for the response. The instructions for making a server are a little bit unclear about the fact that you have to make a forge server only including it at the end as an additional step, regardless i did make my amp server using forge version 14.23.5.2860 as required and selected the forge-1.12.2-14.23.5.2860.jar as startup jar. as for the java args i tried launching the server without any and it was crashing with this error message:
A problem occurred running the Server launcher.java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
08:44:25
at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.DirectMethodHandleAccessor.invoke(DirectMethodHandleAccessor.java:109)
at java.base/java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:580)
at net.minecraftforge.fml.relauncher.ServerLaunchWrapper.run(ServerLaunchWrapper.java:70)
at net.minecraftforge.fml.relauncher.ServerLaunchWrapper.main(ServerLaunchWrapper.java:34)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassCastException: class jdk.internal.loader.ClassLoaders$AppClassLoader cannot be cast to class java.net.URLClassLoader (jdk.internal.loader.ClassLoaders$AppClassLoader and java.net.URLClassLoader are in module java.base of loader ‘bootstrap’)
at net.minecraft.launchwrapper.Launch.(Launch.java:34)
at net.minecraft.launchwrapper.Launch.main(Launch.java:28)
at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.DirectMethodHandleAccessor.invoke(DirectMethodHandleAccessor.java:103)
Thanks Potato king. that seems to have done it. Is there anywhere i can find a full list of the minecraft versions and which ones require what java versions?