GStat, a work based upon Steve Jankowski's excellent QStat utility, is
no longer constrained to the domain of creating server lists.
It now can function as a remote server administration tool for
QuakeWorld and Quake II servers! What does this mean exactly? For
starters, it allows a server administrator to check the status of
their server from practically anywhere that is connected to the
Internet. Since GStat is cross-platform, this can be done on both
UNIX and Windows-based machines. But, checking the status isn't as
useful as being able to change that "status", and GStat deals with
this important issue by allowing the server administrator to send Rcon
commands to their server(s) without having to start Quake II or
Quakeworld. It can be done straight from the command prompt.
In addition to being a server administration tool, it now has a much
improved user interface, and future improvements will be geared
towards making it even better. For starters, users don't have to
memorize master server IP addresses anymore--instead, they can use a
master.dat file, and choose from a list generated from this file.
Error messages are now returned for practically every type of error,
making it easy for the user to fix their mistakes. No longer is it
necessary to type out an option like "-maxsimultaneous". Instead,
there are now short and long name arguments for each function (like
-ms and the equivalent --maxsimultaneous).
Another feature that server list maintainers will appreciate is fast
hostname lookup. Instead of taking 20-30 minutes to process a list of
300 servers, it can take less than 3 minutes!
GStat works perfectly with the experimental Quake II master server
that has been set up.
Finally, GStat now works on many different platforms, and it will be
thoroughly tested on as many additional platforms as possible in the
future.
Oh, and one final note: GStat is completely FREE. There are no
restrictions on using it. Programmers are free to do whatever they
want with the code, whether for a learning experience or their own
creations.
