What does "public_slots_free" mean?

[Ronald Reagan]

I never noticed this before, but when I was looking at the list of variable settings in my server using Gamespy, I saw one that says public_slots_free 6. I have maxplayers=18 on my server and no reserved slots. Does this variable limit the number of players that can join the game to 6? If so, how can I set this variable? Should I set it to 18? I tried putting "public_slots_free 18" in my server.cfg but it still said 6 when I checked it from the server console.

[Harrowed]

I beleive it to be because of people bitching about reserved slots.. And having 2 reserves slots when in game(crap)spy it'd list 2 spots free, you'd try and join and you'd get a message saying "Sorry, Server Admin has reserved 2 slots for non public use, try again later.". There have been floods of complaints about it and this was a solution, enable a exported cvar of the # of slots currently vacant on server.. :)

So if you have MAXPLAYERS of 22, but 2 reserves slots, and 20 people were on at the time, there'd be no actual spots free unless you were authrised to use reserved spots..

[Ronald Reagan]

Well it was saying public_slots_free 6 when there was no one playing and I have no slots reserved. But I guess it doesn't matter because it now says public_slots_free 18 even though I didn't change anything. I guess as long as it stays that way, it doesn't really matter why it changed...

[alfred]

You need to refresh your gamespy view of the server to get an accurate number.
It shows the number of possible slots free for public players. So a 20 player server, with 2 reserved slots and 10 players currently on would show 8 :)