For the last few years, we have been using an outside stats/ranking service known as http://www.gameme.com. They were a commercial service that grew out of the over-wall "HLStats" family of stuff. It was a good solution, since it did not require hosting another database and web-site for the stats/ranking system.

Unfortunately, http://www.gameme.com has announced to their customers, that they are effectively shutting-down their operation in the near future. Here is a quote from their "admin" page:


Consequently, we are in the process of setting-up our own "HLStats" system. The latest version I could find was HLStatsX:Community Edition (aka "HLStatsX:CE"), from about five (5) years ago, from this GitHub[github.com],

So, the code is a bit old, but everything basically seems to still work.

Work is in progress to reconfigure each of our game-servers to be attached to our own HLStatsX:CE system, instead of http://www.gameme.com.

As a consequence, all stats/rankings are effectively reset to zero.

The base starting points has been changed from new players starting with 1000 points, to starting with 1 point (I never liked that 1000 point thing!), along with a few other setting tweaks.

The URL for the new HLStatsX:CE system will be:
http://hlstats.weaselslair.com

Please note that work to convert each game-server from one stats/ranking system to the other, i still a work-in-progress.

In particular, in-game prompts for stats/ranking information may not work correctly at the moment. Also, I am still working on tweaking how bots are treated in the system.

PS: Sometime on October 1st 2024, I will "reset" any stats on the new HLStatsX:CE to zero as the "official" start of that system for a new/clean month.

For anyone interested in setting-up their own game-servers ...

I just finished a new free-to-use and easy-to-use system for setting-up, hosting and managing dedicated game-servers on Linux (specifically Debian family Linux distributions).

• New (v2) guide on Steam:
  Weasel's Game-Administrator / Server-Manager (wGASM), for Linux - v2
  
• New (v2) content on GitHub:
  Weasel's Game-Administrator / Server-Manager (wGASM), for Linux - v2[github.com]

• Detailed instructions for preparation and installation in the guide.
  
• Easy-to-use script, to prepare Debian Linux for the system. It installs all required packages, offers to create the unprivileged user, offers to install Webmin[webmin.com], etc.
  
• Easy-to-use script, to install the system under the unprivileged user. It downloads the stuff from GitHub, puts it in the expected folders, offers to install SteamCMD for you, and offers to download and install the latest "Stencils" archive.
  
• Some moron-detection to prevent you from running things under the wrong Linux user (i.e. do NOT run game-servers under root, etc.)
  
• Configuration options are driven by a text-based configuration file.
  
• Server details, game-types and other data stored in easy-to-edit plain-text and tab-separated-value (TSV) files.
  
• No requirement to know how to use SteamCMD yourself - it does it all for you!
  
• Supports 30+ games on Steam!
  
• Of those, 10 have been fully tested and included in the examples.
  
• See the guide for the full list of games that "should" work and "tested" to work.
  
• Optional integration with Webmin[webmin.com] to operate everything in a web-browser!
  
• Even the Webmin[webmin.com] stuff is driven by easy-to-edit plain-text files.
  
• Minimal Linux experience required (know how to access with SSH, enter commands in the shell, not much else).
  
• Minimal system requirements (2+ vCPU, 2+GB of Memory, 100+GB Storage) - how much depends mostly on what games you are hosting.
  
• Minimal access requirements (SSH access, seperate root (or privileged sudo-enabled) and unprivileged game-servers accounts).
  
• Supports creating and using "Stencils" (canned-configurations) that maybe be "Painted" onto (applied to) game-servers - making setting them up quicker. Examples are available for the 10 tested games.
  
• Little (if any) script editing required - maybe just for scheduled cron jobs if you're into that.
  
• If you want to setup scheduled cron[en.wikipedia.org] jobs to do maintenance (scheduled backups, graceful automatic updates, and automated health-checks), there are functions for that you can schedule for that!
  
• Inexpensive support! ("best effort")

I added some custom music to the Counter-Strike 1.6 (CS1) servers. Each now has their own musical "theme". The music only plays:

• During download of other custom content (map, sounds, etc.)
  
• When in spectator mode.
  
• As soon as you rejoin the game-play, it stops.

The musical theme for each Counter-Strike 1.6 (CS1) server is as follows:

• 162.248.88.40:6103 Cartoon-Strike! = "Weird / Alt" music theme.
  
• 162.248.88.40:6113 Boomer-Strike! = "Retro" music theme.
  
• 162.248.88.40:6123 Unfriendly-Fire! = "Gangsta" music theme.

At some point (probably around the time of the 25th Anniversary Update for Half-Life), the so-called "fast-download" feature on dedicated servers for games based on the ancient "GoldSrc" engine stopped working. This includes game such as:

• Half-Life (HL1)
  
• Counter-Strike 1.6 (CS1)

Unfortunately, I did not notice notice - until I happened to be working on adding some custom in-game music.

So, my apologies to anyone who may have been trying to connect, and download all the custom stuff, and had a VERY long wait time ahead of them!

Anyway, this issue is now resolved.


Remember to enable the "Allow custom addon content" option when connecting to [WeaselsLair.com] Half-Life servers!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3264139276


Remember to enable the "Allow custom addon content" option when connecting to [WeaselsLair.com] Counter-Strike servers!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3264149520

All Weasel's Lair game-servers will be down for some maintenance during the day today. This will include tasks such as:

• Applying any needed operating systems updates for Debian.
  
• Perform some off-line backups.
  
• Conversion to new (v2) generation of Weasel's Lair server management scripts, which will be publicly published on git-hub in the near future (probably later this week).
  
• Conversion to US/Pacific[en.wikipedia.org] time zone (aka "Valve-Time"). Still physically located in Chicago, but changing time-zone for ease of administration. Was formerly set to UTC[en.wikipedia.org]. But, Valve-dependencies (for Steam) make it easier to just use "Valve-Time".