[term]

Something I found interesting while browsing some of the game panel type solutitons available in the market, and reading their general marketing speel is that they talk about how they all 'Automate game server management'

However, after reading up on the various features, they really do nothing of the sort. They dont make managing servers any easier unless you could argue the ability to install to various hosts is automation, since this is really the only autonomus task performed.

What game panels do very well is work out how to distribute funds and manage the whole 'how do I get my money' issues which is common for the rental server company owners out there.

What they dont do, is consider how users would need to actually manage the server, or more importantly, groups of servers, and find ways to remove as much of the sheer configuration file madness imposed on these users.

As far as I can see, if your only consern is the money, these types of systems are fantastic. If you have a genuine interest in providing a great platform for your users to get the most out of their servers, then prehaps GameCreate is more your thing. Anyway, just a brainfart after reading some marketing trash!

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[holback]

As a user of some of the other game panels...
This system is by far the best for configuration and ease of use I have ever seen. The only thing I would bring up at this time is when doing a game install. Thr progress shown is not really the progress of the install. Can be confusing. My install of cod2 has been showing 34% for an hour, but the progress is still ongoing as it is installing the maps. It needs to update better to let people know the install has not stalled and is in fact still chugging along.

[Bigbadabing]

It is a great panel. Two things though need to be able to install to more than one hard drive and have to be able to use more then one IP. With out those things you can only rent one game of each type on a box because everyone who rents a server is going to want the default ports. It does not provide much flexibility.

I know I know it has been delay but I just can’t wait lol.

Another good suggestion is too put a server in the USA central like Dallas or Chicago. Install all your supported games and charge people a monthly few to be hook into your fast downloads then they don’t have to wait so long for installs of a new game.

But already this is the superior panel out there with out these things. Once it has these features it will be perfected.

Thank you for allowing us to try this panel out free of charge.

See ya in the game
Bigbadabing

[Andrew]

Thanks for the feedback!

We are busy with a few other things at the moment, and we do plan to introduce IP Address selection for servers - ie, bind a server to another IP address.

Your concern about disk space is interesting.
Usually you would have at least a 20GB disk drive in your server to host the installed games. We can consider in the future being able to specify additional drives/directories to span game installations over.
However, you may want to consider (in the mean time) merging drives to one logical drive for the increase in space.

Bigbadabing, if you are running some form of rental / GSP provider, I can hook you up with our content server script which will allow you to locally keep a copy of your game installations on your physical hosts in your data center.

From here, you can tell GameCreate to download the game installation from a host in your data center, as opposed to all the way over here in Australia

This would allow you to have complete control over the content your host downloads, and allow you to update each installation independantly from us.

I have just sent you a copy of this script to your email address in your forum profile, if you are interested.

[Bigbadabing]

Ty for your script and all your help.

See ya in the game
Bigbadabing