Gandanur v11.9.1

The previous update of Gandanur contained a very annoying bug: At random times clients would get the "server closed down" message while the server was still running. This resulted in random players being "kicked" from the server. Considering this is a serious bug I have spent the last few days debugging it and the cause has been found.

The bug occurred because Gandanur incorrectly handled an obscure error that was thrown by Windows when the server receives an ICMP unreachable packet. Without going in too much detail, some firewalls actually block those packets (and those hosts weren’t affected by this bug), while other firewalls allow this packet (those hosts were affected by the bug). Thanks to several testers the bug is now fixed in version 11.9.1 of Gandanur!

So everyone who is having this problem please update to Gandanur 11.9.1.

Also notice on the right side of this page that there is a link to report bugs. So if you have a problem with Gandanur first check if someone else already reported the problem, and if not please report it so I can fix it.

Gandanur v11.9.0

As mentioned in the previous post I wanted to release the next version of Gandanur this month last month. At the time I started writing this post it was the last day of the month, but Gandanur still needed to be tested a few more days to be sure I knew it was stable. Hence why I'm a few days late. However the new version of Gandanur appears to be stable and running well, so with pleasure I'm announcing the public release of Gandanur v11.9.0!

In this update there are three new main features: AFK kicking, Ping kicking and Stats uploading.

AFK Kicking

The first one is AFK kicking. This enables you to automatically kick inactive players. To increase the usability of this feature it has an option that kicking is only enabled once a certain number of players are in the server. Another advantage is that Gandanur will always monitor players but not necessarily kick them. In practice this means you can disable automatic kicking but can still manually check for afk people by using sv_afk_list. For more information see the manual on AFK Kicking.

Ping Kicking

Similar to ping kicking Gandanur can also kick people with a too high ping. Again it's possible to enable kicking only after a certain number of players are in the server. Another similarity is that you can use sv_ping_list to manually monitor players instead of letting Gandanur kick them automatically. The consistency between these two features should make them easier to learn and understand. Find more information in the manual on Ping Kicking.

Stats Uploading

The third major feature is the ability to upload player statistics to the HaloRank project. HaloRank is a next gen HaloPC and HaloCE statistics tracking and competition platform. Basically it will track the scores of all the players on your server, automatically record games, assigns ranks to players, and so on! For more information check the manual on Stats and the HaloRank website.


Apart from these three new features several bugs have been fixed:

• Chat messages send when someone connected when game has ended are ignored, as they should be.
• A bug that could potentially crash the server when executing sv_players_more has been fixed.
• Correct ping of players is displayed in a server query.
• The output of sv_cdkeycheck is now correct.
• Performance "bug": The server will no longer lag when a new players joins and you have a big Alias file.

Other improvements and additions are:

• Several performance upgrades. Attention has been given so Gandanur doesn't affect the pings of players. This has been tested in detail on several popular servers and also tested in collaboration with HaloRank. In short special attention has been given so server hosting companies will know that Gandanur won't cause any lag.
• The command sv_dep_enable has been added. This command can provide improved security against potentially unknown exploits in the future. Read the manual for more information.
• During mapvote players can also vote by simply typing the number of the option. This means that typing both "vote 1" or "1" will be registered as a vote for option 1.
• I have created an xfire community for Gandanur. Feel free to join!
• All Gandanur servers are now displayed as "classic" game servers. This means that Gandanur servers will have the little ring in the server lobby. This is especially useful if you want to find a Gandanur server since only few servers are classic game servers.

Another important addition for administrators that is Gandanur is now available in two versions: Unrestricted and Restricted. The unrestricted version contains all the functionally that Gandanur can offer. The restricted version doesn't contain the sv_cdkeycheck command. This is useful because some server hosting companies will not allow you to run a server that can potentially accept players who pirated the game. In such a situation the unrestricted version of Gandanur will be prohibited, but you will be able to install the restricted version of Gandanur!

Slowly but well

Slowly but well Gandanur is taking over the world. Okay maybe not really, but nevertheless progress is being made ;)

The last few months the webhosting has been a mess. Partly because finding a non-expensive but reliable host has been problematic, partly because I keep changing URL's. However the work done in the background is slowly paying off! Gandanur how has its own new URL: http://www.gandanur.com! To keep things reliable all downloads are mirrored in this public dropbox folder.

The Gandanur manual is now also back online. As you'll be able to see it already contains an overview of the new features that the next release of Gandanur will contain. I'm still planning on releasing Gandanur this month. It's a tight schedule and will depend whether are not critical bugs will be find during the tests we're running now.

Also I'm planning on getting a forum back up and running. But first I have to test if my current webhost can handle an active forum properly without too much downtime and/or slow loading speeds.

Upcoming features

Lately I've been working on some new features of Gandanur. They are the automatic kicking of inactive players (afk kick), and the kicking of players with a high ping. These features have just been finished and will now be tested.

So the next release will include those two new features. It will also provide a separate download that doesn't include the sv_cdkeycheck command. You can use this version of Gandanur on game servers that currently don't allow you to run Gandanur because of the existence of sv_cdkeycheck.

There will also be some bugfixes and tweaks with regard to performance. In particular the server will never lag when a new player joins. This was caused by the alias module when it's updating the information of the player that is joining. Minor improvements have also been made to assure pings stay stable so Gandanur won't affect the performance of the server.

On a more unrelated note, an interesting post was made on the Modacity forums. Apparently the Principal Engine Program of Halo at Microsoft wants to know what the community is doing with the Halo PC engine. I've made a post about Gandanur in case you're interested.

Stay tuned!

Website is back

Note: For now you can use the old manual. Although it's outdated it's better than nothing. I'm working on getting the new one back online.

What has happened?

Due to problems at my old webhost I was forced to move my website. My new webhost then took a while to properly configure the domain for goemitar.com. But all is working now. The old content is gone however. This means the forum and parts of the wiki (= the manual) are lost.

I will work on finishing this website so people can easily download Gandanur again. Then the forum and wiki will be brought back online (and with new content).

What about Gandanur?

I've worked on Gandanur in collaboration with halorank.com. To keep it short: Gandanur is used to track statistics of the games played on a halo server. Here HaloRank relies on Gandanur to provide a stable server tool that is able to gather and send player and game statictics.

The next features of Gandanur will include afk kick and the ability to broadcast messages.