Game Panels - My Saga

Has anyone here tried out any (hopefully) free game panels? In the past I’ve always just used Linux Game Server Manager for Steam games as that’s always worked flawlessly. I’ve always been on the lookout for a game panel that’ll let me be able to delegate access to others to use (without needing to give them ssh or ftp access to my main box). Finally decided to kick myself in the ass and do something now that my Master’s class wrapped up last week. Now for the run down…

The game servers I typically host are:

  • Counter Strike: Global Offensive
  • Day of Defeat: Source
  • Mound and Blade: Warband (requires wine if running on Linux)
  • Holdfast: Nations at War (also requires wine)

My search first led me to XenoPanel. Seemed pretty neat and has a lot of cool features. Developers are really active on their Discord. I tried to install this quite a few times and ultimately gave up as their installation scripts were just failing miserably. Never did reach out via Discord for help, as the installation process left a bad taste in my mouth.

Next I stumbled on Open Game Panel. What first struck me was how outdated the website looked. Looks like this project started back in 2011ish. I guess that gives it some credibility as it hasn’t become abandonware at this point after so long. I also liked the fact that they had both Linux and Windows daemons available for running servers. Ultimately decided not to give this one a shot as the next one took the cake.

Thus, after digging some more I remembered a panel I had tried about a year or two ago – Pterodactyl. I think I tried it out, had some issues deplying a server, and subsequently gave up. I decided to give it a shot. First impressions – I was completely blown away by their docs section. Fucking hell, these guys probably spent days on end amassing this. Everything was very simple to follow, and just works. I installed the web panel on a VPS I was idling (win!) in a short period of time.

Today I installed the daemon on my SYS game server I picked up during their 30% off sale. Also was a piece of fucking cake. Then the time came to test the sucker out. Allocated an IP and port for a CS:GO server. Launched it. Watched htop on my SYS node. Saw the sweet spikes as the server was installed (status was even updated real time in the panel [installing, running, stopped, etc.]). And just like that the server was up and running. It was beautiful. Simple. Elegant. Absolutely mesmerizing. Alright I stop now :stuck_out_tongue:

Here’s some sweet screencaps -

My next steps are figuring out how to add some other games to the mix. The part that excites me the most about Pterodactyl is that the servers are deployed in Docker containers (I’m a huge Docker fanboy in case you didn’t already know :stuck_out_tongue:). Next on the agenda is wrapping up a M&B Warband server in a container (with all the wine dependencies and all that jazz) and adding it as a custom game. They seem to have a very active community on their discord, so I’ll start there first to make sure no one has already done it. If not, I’ll share it with them once I’m done. Shouldn’t be too hard since I’ve installed servers requiring wine to run on Linux boxes before.

Sorry to ramble on. Hopefully some others will find this semi-interesting. I have a nerdgasm when two of my hobbies co-mingle (game servers + Docker) so don’t mind me. If anyone has any interest in giving it a go and runs into any issues, feel free to give me a shout :wink:

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Can you tell me how it goes. I have an aging community I run, and want to give my admins a way to manage it while I hop ship to do other things.

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Absolutely. What servers do you typically run? They have most Steam games covered using their container that uses srcds.

8 years ago I worked with game panels for some time and it was fun. It was the age of Swift Panel, but the summer never came for the long-awaited 2.0 version :frowning_face:

The Pterodactyl looks really cool btw.

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Nice! :slight_smile: Did you work with them as a hobby or as a host?

Seems like the current go to for hosts is TCAdmin. Though, it’s far from being free and open source :stuck_out_tongue:

I was just playing with it like a hobby. There was also gamecp which worked pretty well back then.

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I used GameCP in the past and liked it, but I’m not sure if it’s still actively developed.

A panel that I would like to try is AMP - Game Server Control Panel. It’s from McMyAdmin guys, so I would presume it is built very well

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TCAdmin is also absolutely terrible, which is the reason Pterodactyl was created. It’s like a much worst version of the SolusVM situation.

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Interesting. Wish there was a free tier.

Team Fortress 2, also known as Hat Fortress 2

I believe they already have a template for that. I’ll double check when I’m on my computer later tonight. If it’s there, I can set up a test user and server if you’d like to test it out.

If anyone else wants to test out the panel and see what’s like for users of the panel, give me a shout and I’ll create a user and test server for a game of your choice.

Looks like out of the box it can support:

  • Minecraft Variants
    • Vanilla
    • Spigot
    • Spigot (SpongeVanilla)
    • Bungeecord
    • Forge Minecraft
  • Steam Games
    • Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
    • Team Fortress 2
    • Insurgency
    • ARK: Survival Evolved
    • Garry’s Mod
    • Custom (needs Game ID, I assume not every game works)
  • Voice Servers
    • TeamSpeak 3 (probably limited to 32 slots)
    • Mumble
  • Rust

So let me know if you want to try one of these out :slight_smile: I can probably leave it up for you for one or two weeks to give you ample time to test.

If Somebody Is Willing To Create a Pterodactyl Panel For Me I Am Willing To Pay $$

Installation is a piece of cake, mate.

https://pterodactyl.io/panel/getting_started.html

You can do it, I believe in you.

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I uninstalled Ptero and went back to LGSM & command line. It wouldn’t update servers, which meant I had to do a reinstall every time an update was released. It didn’t do shared files and separate servers simply by config, so I also had to take 30GB of disk space for each game server.

RIP. Gotta do what you gotta do.

Shame it wasn’t autoupdating the server. I haven’t used pterodactyl for steam servers regularly, just non-steam games so not sure what might be causing your update issue. But you’re definitely right about the disk space needed per server instance – not bad when the game is only a few gigs, but adds up quickly when it’s 10+ gb for each install.

I gotta say Pterodactyl is the best panel I tried in forever, it’s just a weird bug or whatever, if I had more time and energy then I’d actually dig into the source and find out what’s going on… but not one of those situations unfortunately as I donate the servers similar to NanoKVM and I just want it to work for them with as little effort from either of us. Really hope they do look into adding the shared gamefiles thing, but I doubt it because from what I can tell most development push comes from the original company that created it for themselves, and now they make most improvements to their own private version?

I would still recommend Pterodactyl to anyone desperate for a panel.

We are working on a new control panel that has been in the works for some time now. We’ve taken a look at all available control panels and have integrated their features in our system. The panel also fully and properly supports both Winodws and Linux, and is fully scriptable via our scripting system, allowing you to easily add new games and expand support for it. It has been designed with allowing you to host whatever you want in mind since the start of the development.

If anyone’s interested in staying up to date with the development process, check out our Discord: GameDash - Game Server Control Panel! and website: https://gamedash.io

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Can’t wait! :smiley:

We can’t wait to get it in to your hands!

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