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.

Open Game Panel will be Open Source and free as it was before, but with more improvements and better capabilities.

At this time, the sourceforge project name will remain hldstart, so all existing sourceforge services will continue to use the same URLs.

The URL of the project home page will change too.
No word on when the first release of OGP will be ready. We're still working hard though. (0 comments)

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 (0 comments)

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

**** NEW GAME ADDED **** Team Fortress 2 has been added
* New feature - Admin now has the ability to force a game server to run on a given CPU (0 comments)

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.

With that said, the 2008.3 version will be the last release using DB files.

With the help from Solid Snake and Tyger, we are going to take the 2008.3 and convert it a SQL backend, as well as add some great new features.

There will be a conversion utility so your existing settings and users can be imported into the new SQL database.

Sorry for the dramatic change, but the general interest in the community was to use a SQL backend. Most web devs are familar with it, and people wishing to contribute will have an easier time coding it.

Not sure when the first SQL release will be out, but it will **hopefully** be early summer.

The project will probably change names too. Keep and eye out on the project page for news and updates. (0 comments)

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 (0 comments)

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... (0 comments)

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. (0 comments)

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/ (0 comments)

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 (0 comments)

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. (0 comments)