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Supported Games
 | Halflife: Counter-Strike |
 | Quake III |
 | Quake 4 |
 | Return to Castle Wolfenstein |
 | Tremulous |
 | Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory |
GSB has a number of features, a few of which are listed below.
Flexible user interface
- GSB's many information windows can be arranged to your liking; they can be docked in almost any way desireable.
- The user interface adjusts itself to your Windows XP skin, ensuring it looks like any other modern application.
Supports current and future games
- See the list on the left to see which games are currently supported and which will be supported in the future.
- Supported games are automatically detected on your hard drive (user-overridable).
- Periodic updates add support for new games and enhance support for games already supported.
- If your games are not correctly detected, you can override the detection criteria in the Settings dialog by directly identifying the game executable.
Detailed Server Listing
- The server listing simply displays all the servers that are present in your current selection.
- Fields include: Server Name, Player Count, Ping, Hostname, Map, Game, Times Played, Last Time Played
- Server Name: Some games (i.e. Quake3-based games) support coloring text (server name, player names, in-game discussion) using color code markup. If present, these color codes are evaluated. Standard color coding schemes are supported.
- Player Count: The Player field graphically displays the number of slots used versus free and reserved/private slots.
- Ping: The ping field is colored to visually display ping value -- e.g. green is good, red is bad.
- The colors used in color-coded fields can be changed in the Settings dialog.
Detailed
Player Listing
- Fields include: Player Name, ID, Ping, Score, Team
- Player Name: If present, color codes in the player name are evaluated. Standard color coding schemes are supported.
- Team: Any team information provided by the server is presented graphically. Some servers or games do not either have specific teams, or do not provide any team information outside of the game.
Server
Information Summary
- When you highlight a specific server, information about that server is presented graphically using charting methods.
- Teams Chart: Displays the proportions of players on the server by team.
- Scores Chart (1): Displays total team score; calculated by totalling all of the player's individual scores from that team.
- Scores Chart (2): Displays a histogram of scores on the server; it disregards team information.
- Ping Chart: Displays a histogram of pings on the server, coloring the bars in the same was as the Server List ping field; team information is not used.
Buddy
List
- GSB's buddy list scans all known servers for names you specify. When a buddy's name is found, the name and related server information is added to the buddy list.
- The buddy list is configured by defining groups of buddies ("Clan Members", "Friends", "Enemies") and then adding names to these respective groups with your buddy's names.
- The buddy list will match your buddy's name as loosely or as tightly as you specifiy. You can match via a simple case insensitive match, all the way through using a case-sensitive regular expression.
- Remember that buddy names are only as fresh as your server information, so after a defined amount of time, the buddy names turn to tray to indicate that perhaps that buddy is no longer on that server. Next time you refresh that server, the buddy information will be refreshed as well.
- As a result of the regular expression and other related capabilities, you can specify a name that will even match your team or clan members, assuming they all use a stanard type of tag.
Server
Tags
- Server tags are used to classify or group servers, irrespective of the game represented by the server. Three types of tags are presesnt: Master Tags, User Tags, and Filter Tags.
- Master tags are those tags which represent a specific game. These tags have the game's icon next to the tag.
- User tags are like "favorites" in a web browser -- the user can copy (e.g. via drag-and-drop) a server from any tag to any user tag. By default, the user tags "My Clan Servers", "My Match Servers", and "My Pub Servers" are all created. The user can have any desired hierarchy of tags. User tags have a yellow folder icon.
- Filter tags are used to match servers to a specific set of criteria (described below). Each time the tag is opened, the whole population of servers is matched against the tag and the view is populated with servers that only match the given criteria.
Filters
- Filters in GSB are used to assist the user in finding a servers that one might desire.
- The user can filter based on numerous criteria: Server Name, Map, Game, Player Name, Player Count, Slot Count, Port, Ping, Times Played, or IP address/network mask.
- Within a specific critiera (e.g. Ping), each condition specified is logically "OR"-ed together (e.g. ">= 50, <= 75" will limit the servers to only those with a Ping between 50 and 70).
- Numerous critiera can be specified, that a server must satisfy before it will be included in the results. Separate types of criteria are logically "AND"-ed together -- all of the criteria specified must be met before the server passes the filter.
Server
Monitor
- Monitoring simply refers to periodically refreshing servers.
- GSB allows you to monitor any number of servers.
- Every X seconds (X can range from 1 to 99 seconds), the servers in the monitor panel will be refreshed. If one of these servers is highlighted, the associated panels will update as well (Player List, Server Summary, Buddy List, etc).
- In addition to simple monitoring, action can be taken when a server meets certain criteria (e.g. launching the game).
- Once one of the monitored servers meets the desired launch criteria, the game is launched and you are automatically connected to that server. Since multiple servers can be simultaniously montiored, whichever is first to meet your criteria is the one you would play on.
- You can enable and disable the server monitor via a button on the toolbar.
Remote
Console
- The remote console sends rcon commands to servers which support remote control. When combined with the monitoring capabilies of GSB, the remote console proves to be very useful.
- Most servers require a password for remote console control. This password can be preserved by clicking on the checkbox in the dialog.
Server
Information & Variables
- Most servers expose a number of variables and information that describe the game or mod currently used on the server.
- GSB uses a number of these fields to discover Player Counts, Team Information, and other pieces of information.
Integrated
Updates
- GSB discovers when support is implemented for new games or when new features are added, then automatically updates itself.
- While the process is automated, GSB will still ask if it can download and install the updates once they become available.
Per-user
configuration
- On shared computers with multiple user accounts (e.g. Windows 2000/XP/etc), each user maintains his or her own server lists and playing preferences.
- Administrator access is required to update GSB.
Server list acquisition from existing
master browser(s)
- GSB knows about the masters browsers for each game, so you will see the same server list that you would otherwise see had you been using the in-game browser.
- If there are multiple master servers for a game, each master servers is queried for its server list. Duplicates are ignored.
Completely FREE
- GSB is currently a free tool and will remain free for the forseeable future; I have no intention of profiting from its development. There are no embedded advertisements or spyware components attached.
- If you like this tool, the only "payment" requested is that you tell your friends about it.
