Before you get too ahead of yourself; let's take a minute to set up a couple of things. Inside your Half-Life directory (which means, assuming you hard drive is the letter C, go to the C:\Sierra\Half-Life directory) you will find the dedicated server program, named hlds.exe (this is only true if you have the mod version of Half-Life). You can also download the program specifically designed to run your HLDS from the server downloads page. The HLDS is 112.5MB and the CS is 115.8MB. There are periodic updates, but it is your best bet to run your server with this. You need to make a shortcut to it, so right-click on the hlds.exe icon and choose "Copy". You will place the shortcut on the desktop so that you can easily access it. Let's get back to the desktop, right-click on an open area of the desktop and choose "Paste Shortcut". Now, right-click on the new shortcut located on the desktop and click "Properties" to open the properties menu, then make sure that you select the "Shortcut" tab. With this tab in the forefront, you can see the "Target" field which lists the target path leading back to the hlds.exe. You can append this target line with commands, which will be executed along with the hlds.exe. For example, the target line for my shortcut is:

"C:\Sierra\Half-Life\hlds.exe -game cstrike -port 27015 –noipx +log on +maxplayers 20 +map de_chateau".

-game cstrike Tells HLDS which mod it is going to use

-port 27015 Tells the server which port to use. 27016 will enable you to play on the same machine(not recommended).

+maxplayers 20 Sets the maximum number of people that can join your server. It can only be set at startup.

+map de_chateau The first map you want to play. This should be the last in the command line. The next map will be the first in the mapcycle.txt.

-noipx This corrects the message “Could not get IPX socket name, IPX disabled Reason: WSAENOTSOCK”.

+log on Starts logging for your server. This should not be in the server.cfg

You can place everything but the “-game cstrike” in the autoexec.cfg if you would like. This can help if you want to make frequent changes to your startup variables. Please take a look at all the startup cvars you can have.

When you finally run your server, the last basic thing to look for are the words "WON Auth Server" to tell you that you have obtained authorization from WON and you are ready to roll. If per chance you instead see "Outdated server protocol", then this is a message from the WON gods that either you have an outdated version of the server software. If you still don’t get that message you possibly a firewall or proxy is hindering your attempts to reach the WON servers. But basically, it's just not working properly. Here is a list of all the ports needed to run a server properly:

Incoming UDP to local destination 27015.
Outgoing UDP to remote destination 27010, 27012.
Outgoing TCP to remote destination 5273.
Outgoing TCP to remote destination 7002.

As long as you are getting the first off the two messages, then your server is properly sending out heartbeats to the WON master server, and you will be listed in the Half-Life launcher. Well, you have just taken your first baby step.

 

 

 

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