2.

LAN / Internet

No IPX, just TCP/IP. John Cash is apparently working on IPX support. Nevertheles s I got word that Quake II v3.10 is indeed capable of IPX networking; apparently Quake II will use TCP/IP but if you uninstall it and leave IPX Quake II will us e it. Again, I've not tested this and the person who told me this isn't capable of writing a "how-to" setup an IPX game like the one below for TCP/IP because of the language barrier. Anyway Stefan Norman told me that v3.10 IPX is indeed ok to use as a protocol for LAN multiplayer. Apparently, there is no special thing you need to do to get it running. Just start a server on one of the machines and the others just do a search. Ron Stockwell: For a straight Windows 95 peer to peer network with more than two PC's, go get yourself a cheapy little 8 port 10baseT ethernet hub. They can be found for less than $100 bucks if you look hard enough, or buy one of the kits t hat comes with 2 LAN Cards and some wire, also for under $100. Install an ethern et card in each PC you want to hook up to your LAN. They run the gambit; you can find generic ones for $20 or brand names like Intel or 3Com for about $100. Let Windows detect and setup your ethernet card. Once you have that done, be sur e to go into Control Panel -> System, and make sure it installed properly; i.e. there shouldn't be any conflicts or yellow "!"' by the ethernet board in the Dev ice Manager. Now, in Control Panel, pick Network, to open up your Network settings. Since you 're already using Dial-up Networking, you will have the Microsoft TCP/IP protoco l already installed. What you will have to do is click on Add, then add it again . This time, it will bind to your ethernet card also. Click on the File and Prin t Sharing... button, check the I want to Share my Files box, and click OK. If du ring the card detection by Windows, it automatically installed IPX and a client for Novell networks, you may remove these because they won't do anything. When you're done, you should have the following list in your Network dialog box: Client for Micosoft Networks Dial-Up Adapter Your Ethernet Card TCP/IP -> Dial-Up Adapter TCP/IP -> Your Ethernet Card File and printer sharing for Micorsoft Networks Go into the Identification Tab. Type in a unique name for your computer. It must be different on every Win95 machine you hook up. Set the Workgroup name to "WOR KGROUP" The description doesn't matter. Click OK. Click the Access control tab. Make sure Share level access control is checked. C lick OK. Go back to the Configuration tab. Click on the "TCP/IP .> Your Ethernet Card" li ne and then click on Properties. Click the IP Address tab. Click on Specify on I P Address. The address I used was 125.0.0.1 for my fast PC that will act as the server. I j ust incremented the last number by one on each subsequent PC (125.0.0.2) (125.0. 0.3) etc. In the Subnet mask, type in 255.255.255.0 Click OK. Click OK to save t hese changes in the Network Dialog box. That's it. Re-boot the computers, start Quake2 on the server, and then start Qua ke and join from the other PC's. They should see the local Server without having to do anything with the address book.

If you don't get the server nd line: ping 125.0.0.1 (or four lines of replies from t will time out if the PC's

to appear, open a dos box and type this on the comma whatever address you gave the server) You should get that address (your server), in like 1 millisecond. I are not talking.

Also, to help in sending patches, add-ons, config files, etc. to the other PC's after you've spent all the time to download them from the internet, do this to m ake your life easier. Open Windows Explorer. Right click on the C drive icon. Select Sharing. Click th e Shared As button, and give the hard drive a unique name. Click the access sett ing to Full and click OK. You can use the password security if you like, but it really doesn't do much. Once you supply the password on the PC that will access this hard drive's files, it remembers it, and you never are prompted for it agai n. On the PC's you wish to copy files to, click the Network Neighborhood icon on your Desktop. You will get a list of all the PC's set up on your network with t he Microsoft Clients. Double click on the PC you wish to access, then supply a p assword if you used that option, and do the rest just like copying or moving fil es in regular old Explorer. You can even run install executables from the other PC without copying the install files over to the destination. Pretty cool. Novell IPX LAN users: You can run Quake 2 on your LAN, under these conditions that I have tested. On a NetWare 4.1 LAN running Windows 95 on the workstations with Novell Client 32. T he Client32 is version 4.11, the latest version. I would not suggest trying this stuff unless you are absolutely sure you can restore the Client32 system if som ething gets messed up. I can't stress this enough: Please know what you're doing before you start messing with your Netware LAN! You can run Microsoft TCP/IP over the same LAN cards in your PC's that are curre ntly using IPX with Client32 for Netware. In Control Panel -> Network -> Add -> Protocol-> Microsoft, just add TCP/IP and it will bind to your LAN card. You may need to do this even if you have TCP/IP for Dial Up Networking installed. Also, in the same dialog box, add the Client for Microsoft Networks. Select the Ident ification Tab, and make sure all the PC's you want to connect have the exact sam e Workgroup name. Select your LAN card and click on Properties. In the IP Addres s tab, give your LAN card an IP address, 125.0.0.1 for example, with a subnet ma sk of 255.255.255.0. Number each PC with a unique IP address, like 125.0.0.2, 12 5.0.0.3 and so on. MAKE SURE that the Novell Client 32 remains the Primary Netwo rk Login. Click File and Print Sharing and turn on the File Sharing, click OK, t he OK one more time and reboot. The first time rebooting, you may not get your normal Novell Login. All I had to do was shutdown once more, and reboot, and the system came back up just fine wi th the Novell Login. Now, this should work fine for the 4.11 version of (Intra)N etWare, especially if you're using TCP/IP instead of IPX for the protocol. But I wouldn't try it with either of the first 2 versions of Novell's Client 32 on an y enterprise LAN. Those first 2 versions were buggy and very, very picky, and if everything wasn't done in the proper order, it didn't work (sometimes not even if you did it right). I know, I've been through the process of going from the DO S/Win3.1 Client all through the various versions of Client 32. Also, if you're running the Network on a hub, be careful. You could cause a huge amount of traffic and slow down your LAN, and even cause excess collisions. If you're fortunate enough to have a Fast Ethernet switch, like the Cisco 1900, the traffic goes only to the destination PC, not EVERY PC on the LAN. Hope these instructions help the needy Quakers out there!

Please remember that IP addresses with "0"s are for LAN only. Use 125.1.1.x to a void problems. If you are using BNC (coax) cabling for your network and you want to connect more than 2 PCs be sure that the wire runs from PC to PC, not each t o a "Y" type connector. This can cause termination problems. Although you may b e able to "see" each other in Network Neighborhood, Quake II may not. Just make sure they are running in a series type setup. This is different than the Cat5 ( 10BaseT) wire I use, which runs fine in a "star" wiring setup with a Hub. CTF is NOT included as standard on Quake II's first release; not enough time. Th e code was implemented by Dave "Zoid" Kirsch one of CTF's original programmers. Also, you are able to trade weapons and inventory items with your team mates. The Internet code in Quake II is pretty much like QuakeWorld (client prediction is in as well). Still, the point release will be made available to improve netwo rk play. Each server can host a maximum of 200 players if the system is capable of it however 64 players is the recommended maximum. Servers won't be dynamicall y linked, meaning you can't jump from server to server through slipgates, etc. Regarding Client Side Prediction: Brian Hook: As far as I know CSP can be disabled at will. No, the number of pol ygons won't cause more lag, but it may reduce framerate. There are issues with u ploadable models that we haven't addressed yet (e.g. really small models that wo uld be impossible to see, etc.), but these are handily addressed by simply disab ling custom models on the client side. We'll try and come up with other workarou nds too to prevent models that are too small. Matt Lazarowitz reports: Here is just some info dealing with servers and clients I found out the hard way. Having a linux server and a windows client with windo ws server code for the mod running is not a good idea. Unclear? Let me try and e xplain a little better. Recently, I finally got may free time project up and run ning, a linux box. Knowing a bit about linux and how fast linux is compaired to Windows, I decided to make this machine a dedicated Q2 server. I then got togeth er with my brother and some friends for some Rocket Arena. Well, some of us coul d move, adn some of us could not. After my brother reinstalled Q2, and copied my RA directory he still had problems. So he re-downloaded the RA client pack. Mag ically the game was working OK. After a little more digging, someone deleted the ir game86.dll file from the RA directory (some of us had the server and client p acks so we could practice). His problems cleared up. So we all tried renaming or deleting out game86.dll file (if present) in Rocket Arena's directory. The prob lem went away, and we were fragging happily one again. Lesson to be learned, cro ss platform server packs do not mix. If you have a server pack for a mod, and yo u intend to be a client instead of a server, rename the game86.dll, or the linux /spark *.so files. It will save alot of headaches. Carey Evans reports: When setting up a local TCP/IP network, you shouldn't just choose a number at random. 125.0.0.0 doesn't seem to be used ATM, but there's no reason to expect it'll stay that way. There are three ranges of addresses that will never be used on the Internet, and are safe to use. These are defined in RF C 1597: Section 3: Private Address Space The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has reserved the following three blocks of the IP address space for private networks: 10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255 172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255

Unless you know what you're doing, the best choice is to use addresses like 192. 168.x.y, where x is the same number on all the machines, and y is different on e ach machine. The netmask should be 255.255.255.0. x and y should be from 1 to 25 4 inclusive. For example, I would call my machines 192.168.1.1, 192.168.1.2, 192.168.1.3, etc . Also, another useful way to check the setup is to go Start->Run and type "wini pcfg". Finally, make sure there is no binding from the Microsoft Network client or shar ing to the Dial-Up adapter, or anyone on the Internet can read and delete all yo ur files if you've given full access. Even with no access at all, they can still crash your PC. I don't have any PCs running Win95 here, so I'm afraid I can't b e more specific. [top] 3. Lag

When you connect to a server, no matter how near it is, your commands (like firi ng, moving, etc...) take some time to arrive there. Then the server's response w ill take the same time to arrive at your comp. This is unnoticeable on LAN games since the computers are too close. Over the Internet, however, lag is the playe r's worst nightmare. :) QuakeWorld om servers though so Multicast manages to reduce lag in half because it doesn't need confirmation fr for movements - client prediction. Firing still requires confirmation it's not a smooth ride altogether. Here is what John has to say about IP:

Are you thinking of using ip multicast (igmp) in your quake server at some point ? I'm sure many routers do not yet support this, but at some point it will be a perfect way to propagate game status information at a reduced bandwith. John Carmack: Actually, multicast won't help. Each client gets a specifically t ailored stream of packets with only the bare minimum information they need. No t wo clients get the same info, so multicast isn't usable. Robert McMillan reports: I was getting ping times for Quake II ranging from 350 to 8000. (It was totally unplayable) I then discovered the following sites and I now get ping times in the low 200's. I think it would be a tremendous service t o include this info or links in the multiplayer section of the FAQ. A headline o n Quake2.com with an overview might be nice too. http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/mr eeves/tips.htm Note this site recommends installing a Unimodem Driver update. The self extract needs to be unzipped in the windows\system dir and should not be applied if IE 4 .x is installed. If you have OSR 2, you probably don't need the update anyway. I 'm not sure if it really did anything for me... A freeware program to give easy access to the TCP/IP registry variables is at th is URL: http://www.mjs.u-net.com/mtuspeed/mtuspeed.htm [top] 4. DeathMatch