QuakeMap Explorer

Multi-player games


How to organize files for multi-player modem or network Quake games ?

QuakeMap does not directly support multi-player games. When running Quake from QuakeMap, you will always start single-player games. However, QuakeMap can produce maps and QuakeC code for multi-player games.


The Server and the Clients

A multi-player Quake game always relies on the same principle : one computer is the server, and every player in a game is playing on a client computer connected to the server. The server can be located on the same machine as one of the clients - it is always the case in single-player games - or it can be on a separate machine, which is recommended if there are a lot of players in the game.


Which files need to be copied where ?

Basically, every computer must have access to every file. The only exception is the file Progs.dat, containing the compiled QuakeC code, which is only used by the server computer. The QuakeC code is executed on the central server, and the server sends to the client information such as the position of entities, computed from the QuakeC code.

  1. With modems or slow networks : you must first copy on each computer the full directory QMAPEXEC, created by QuakeMap in your Quake directory - except Progs.dat, which is not useful on non-server computers. Even with two-players modem games, one is the server and the other connects to it. The latter doesn't need Progs.dat.

  2. With fast networks : the easiest solution is to share a net directory among all computers which will run Quake. Put Quake in this directory, and run it directly from there. This avoids installing Quake on each machine. Tell QuakeMap that Quake is in this directory, too, so it will put its QMAPEXEC with all the required files there.

  3. Internet servers : you must tell your clients they must download the required package and install it first. Put the whole QMAPEXEC directory in a .zip file - except Progs.dat - and tell your clients to extract it with the -d option to preserve the directory structure. The clients don't need QuakeMap. Another solution is to distribute the .qme file you used, so that anybody can rebuild the directory structure itself. This has some advantages, like allowing everybody to easily customize keys for special actions. For this option, the clients need QuakeMap or at least its lightweight DOS Run-Time version.


Running Quake

On each machine, you run Quake as you would normally, except you give one option more : -game qmapexec. Example :

quake -game qmapexec

Note that there exists a Windows NT version of the Quake server. QuakeMap runs well on NT ; Quake doesn't. However, to make and test multi-player-oriented maps and code patches, you can work with QuakeMap on NT. Just run the NT Quake server (WINDED) instead of Quake, and connect to it the other machines running Windows 95. If you want QuakeMap to automatically launch WINDED instead of Quake, edit file QM.BAT and replace the line

Quake -game QMapExec %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9

with, for example :

Winded -game QMapExec -mpath %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9

Note that you can put any command-line parameter for Quake or Winded here. On Windows 95, you can also tell QuakeMap to launch Quake in multi-player mode with the following line :

Quake -game QMapExec -listen 8 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9


Back to the main page
Date: 2.02.97, by Armin Rigo