Open Game Panel / News: Recent posts

We're pleased to announce the first sourceforge.net release of the OpenGamePanel web and agent files.
After about a year of development, we have reached a milestone suitable for an official release. It's still alpha code, but has most of the functionality of the old hldStart2.
OpenGamePanel is an administration tool written in PHP for managing game servers. Using remote agents, a single OGP web app can manage many remote game servers.

Hello everyone,
I'm writing to announce that hldStart will be renamed and rebranded as "Open Game Panel" over the next few months.
Since version 2, hldstart has supported more games than just Half-life, so the name isn't really fitting anymore.

The 2008.3 version will be the last version under the hldstart name and branding.

Going forward, it will be referred to as "Open Game Panel" or OGP for short. ... read more

Hello all,
The 2008 Sourceforge.net community choice award nominations have started.
If you like hldStart, please click the link, and nominate hldstart for Best project for gamers

http://sourceforge.net/awards/cca/?group_id=100705

Thanks very much, you're an awesome community!
Greg

It is with much pride to announce that the 2008.3 release of hldstart is now available. There are a number bug fixes, as well as serveral improvements...
-Added ability for admins to set free form CLI startup options (in the section where you set max players)
-Added some links to help the user when settings are missing
-Allow more than 4 IPs to be set per server (unlimited)
-Fixed the bugs and permissions problems with the Admin Server montior
-restart option not getting passed into startup script fixed
-Agent not receiving some additional paramters, fixed that
-Fixed errors in Gentoo init script... read more

Hello everyone -
After some debate, and input from the hldstart user community, I have decided to move hldstart2 over to a MySQL backend, rather than DB flat files.
I wanted to use DB files rather than SQL to reduce the complexity and requirements of hldStart. Now that most Linuxes have MySQL working out the of the box, setting up SQL is easier for most people, and DB flat files are mostly unknown. ... read more

Hello Everyone -
I have enabled Subversion and have checked in a working version of 2008.3
I have some bug fixes in this working copy. It has not been thoroughly tested, but feel free to check out a copy to give it a try:
svn co https://hldstart.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/hldstart hldstart

Thanks to everyone who put up with the bugs in the 22008 version, and those of you who posted them in the forum.
I have fixed them and will be releasing the fixes in the 2008.3 version, along with a new command line update utility that will allow you to easily update your hldstart web installation.
Stay tuned for more info about this release. Testing will begin soon...

Hello all!
My apologies, I had a bug in one of the scripts that managed to make it into my final package.
A Perl script that handles decryption in for remote agent communications was outputting error messages, causing problems with lib_remote.php - make for that "Key Mismatch" error.
Thanks to DF Beyond Devil for posting about the problem, and giving me access to his servers to trouble shoot and find the problem.

After some delays, I'm very pleased to announce that hldStart2 Version 22008 is now available for download! (I know, it was supposed to be version 12008, but things have been busy, and I did lots of testing and documentation.
If you have problems, please contact me in the forum.
http://www.gamehound.net/~hldstart/

The next release of hldstart2, featuring the new remote agent, is coming soon. I have decided to make the agent a required component to help reduce the complexity of coding and management.
Fear not! It will only make your life easier! Read this post for more info:
https://www.gamehound.net/~hldstart/forum/viewtopic.php?p=616#616

My wife gave birth to our baby girl on November 2nd 2007. Her name is Allison.
Needless to say, we've been busy. A newborn certainly is a handful.
Anyway, I'm still plugging along on hldstart when I can. I want to get the next version out as soon as possible.
As I was developing the remote agent and the webpages to support it, I realized I needed to recode/rearchitect some of the web pages that manage servers and IP addresses. I don't think it will be too big of a change. I'll keep you all posted.
Thanks.

Quick announcement -
My wife and I are expecting our first baby in the end of October, 2007. :D

I will still continue to code and answer help requests, but there may be a delay in my repsonses in the first few months following the birth.

I hope to have the next release out before the baby is born.

Thanks to Samu, from xtheclan.de for the awesome new webpage for hldstart!
I helped Samu setup hldStart2, as well as fix some issues he was having on his server.
In return, he created a nice new design for my hldstart project page.
Thanks Samu!

The first release of hldstart2 is now here!
Come and get it!
Make sure you check out www.gamehound.net/~hldstart for the new docs and the change log.
Please use the forum for questions and suggestions.
Thanks!

The first release of hldStart2 will be here soon!
I am finishing up some documentation, and some final testing.
Get Ready!

Wow, today I noticed that hldstart has seen 10,064 downloads. That's great. Thanks to everyone who uses it.
This gives me even more motivation to get the 1st release candidate out for hldstart2.
Thanks again everyone, keep an eye out for hldstart2!

The first lines of code have been written for the beginning of hldStart2.
The core of it's power and flexibility will be in it's revamped user management system. No longer will a user be tied to a single installation of hlds/srcds. Now a user can have multiple game installs, and down the road, more than just Half-life based games.
The backend datastore will be DBM files, like Berkely DB, and GNU DB. They are database files that don't require a database server to be running, therefore reducing the complexity of the application.
DB files are accessed using PHP's native DBA functions. Most Linuxes have some kind of DB manager installed (and can be setup in Windows), with support compiled into PHP.
Currently there is no functioning hldStart2, but I hope to have a working version out in a few months. Stay Tuned!

hldstart-v1.4.2 has been downloaded over 1000 times, the most for any other hldstart release. Even though this pales in comparison to bigger projects that see 1000 downloads an hour, the user base of this project has approximately tripled since last year. I'm glad to see the project is gaining popularity. Thanks to everyone who is using it, I hope you find it useful.

The latest and greatest version yet is ready for download! Thanks to all of you, this project saw the most downloads ever with version 1.4.1a at nearly 1000. I hope to see the same activity with this version.
Check the docs page on http://www.gamehound.net/~hldstart/ for an easy upgrade procedure.
Plans for 1.4.3:
-Enhancements to config file editor
-Populate the mapcycle list on the web page from an hldStart remote listener
-More utilities for checking your system
-Possible map upload utility
-Cleaner/Nicer main page (its still the same basic layout from the very first version 2 years ago!)... read more

In the next week or so, hldStart-v.1.4.2 will be released. New features/enhancements include:
-User editing is enabled in Useradmin
-Bind to IP is now a startup option
-1st release of config file editor
-A version check is displayed on the main page
-Steam client now has an option of DOD:Source
-There is a utilites page for checking phpinfo() and write access to hlds_dirs (useful for me when helping users)

For the first time, a single version of hldstart has been downloaded over 500 times. This includes hldstart_remote and the mappics package. I guess that steam update in August that broke hldstart really woke everyone up to the new version. Thanks for using hldStart. Please spread the word!

This release is to fix recent steam updates that break hldstart. Madquery and Timquery no longer work since a steam update in the beginning of August. This causes the startup to time out, and the monitoring scripts to show now running servers. Now SIquery (based on serverquery), by Tim te Beek (un4given.nl) is used. It works with both HL1 and HL2, so it saves me many lines of code for detecting the server type. Thanks Tim! The new version looks and works great, get it today!
HldStart is a php web based control panel for starting/stopping and administering HL1 and HL2 based game servers.

This version of hldstart, along with the first release of hldstart_remote is now available for download. Sorry for the delay, there have been a lot of summer time type family events going on. This is a great release. Visit http://www.gamehound.net/~hldstart/ for more details. Thanks for using hldstart!

This next version is coming soon. There are some significant enhancements based on feedback from the user forums. The new features are:
Remote startup "daemon":
Not really a daemon, but it sits on a game server and listens for commands coming from hldStart running on your web server. It will start and stop a gameserver without needing a web server installed on it. This allows you to have 1 hldStart installation on a single web server that can start any number of game servers on remote devices
More user restraints:
When setting up a user in useradmin, you can now set which ports a player is allowed to startup game servers on(to limit the number of game instances) You will also be able to set the max number of players each user can start a game with. Look for this release to come out in the week or so.

hldStart-v1.4 is here! There are some great new features in this version. The biggest change is that it work on Windows.
Also there is a web gui for installing/updating game dedicated servers using steam.

hldStart is a PHP web control panel for Half-life and Half-Life2 based dedicated game servers