Table of Contents
Now you know how to play the various game modes and have had some practice with bots, you are ready to pit your skills against the world! This chapter explains how you can play games against other humans over the Internet.
When you play any of the gametypes (singleplayer or practice matches) mentioned above, it is your computer that controls all aspects of the game – from the generation of game sounds to the behaviour of the monsters or bots you're playing the game with. When you play a game over the Internet, this isn't the case. What happens is that your computer connects to another computer which acts as a server. The server manages connections from all of the players and controls most game-related things (such as keeping track of players' scores and movements round a map). Your computer still takes care of dealing with your input and playing back sounds, but it doesn't control the match being played in any way.
So, to join an Internet game, you need to connect to a server that other people may also connect to. There are many QuakeWorld servers out there but most don't provide the accessibility features that AudioQuake does. You'll need to connect to a specific AudioQuake server in order to play the game.
We're hoping that AudioQuake will become popular enough that many people start running servers and many people start playing on these servers. This will mean that, as with sighted games, you'll always be able to find some humans to game with. It will, however, take time for such networks to spring up. In the meantime, we've set up a couple of servers you can use, but please feel free (and encouraged) to set up your own servers for you and your friends!
When you install AudioQuake, your player name will be set to “AGRIPUser”. Before you join a multiplayer game, it is a very good idea to change this to something else, so that your friends can recognise you (and so that everyone has a different name).
To change your name, you can use the following console command:
name yourname
Most characters are acceptable in player names. If you include any carets in your name, they won't be displayed as they are a signal to Quake that you want the next character in your name to be displayed with a highlight.
If you're going to be playing a team deathmatch game, you'll probably want to give yourself a team (maybe the collective name that you and your friends play under, or perhaps a colour). You can do this with the team, as described in the first chapter of this part.
There are two other personalisations you can make regarding your appearance to others in multiplayer games. These are the colour of your character's uniform within the game. The console commands topcolor and bottomcolor can be used to change these. We mention them here for completeness.
Now you've made yourself a little more unique in the virtual world, it is time to join a game...
We have set up a few game servers under the AGRIP banner (details can be found in an appendix), but you're certainly not restricted to playing AudioQuake on one of these – in fact, we encourage you to seek out other servers on the Internet to play on and/or to set up a server of your own. This can be especially rewarding if you know a few people that you'd like to play the game with. Anyone who sets up a server (covered later in the manual) can have it automatically advertised to every other AudioQuake player, via the AGRIP master server. This keeps a list of all active AudioQuake game servers on the Internet. By using a program that searches this list (known as a server browser), you can find a game to join. As server admins are free to chose any gametype and selection of maps that their server runs, you should be able to find a match that suits your tastes.
To search for games over the whole Internet, you can use either the AudioQuake Stats and Servers site, or a command-line program called QStat. This is a very powerful, popular and accessible tool, which allows you fine control over your searches. For more information on using QStat, visit it's web site at http://www.qstat.org/. Information on the AudioQuake Stats and Servers web site can be found in the next chapter.
When you've found a server to join, you can connect to it from within AudioQuake by issuing the connect command, specifying the IP address or host name of the server. For example, the following two commands both connect to the primary AGRIP server:
connect agrip.org.uk connect 195.137.71.106
Remember to seek out and join servers other than the official AGRIP ones, especially if they are geographically closer to you, as they'll offer better performance. This will also encourage others to run third-party servers, thus spreading the AudioQuake work network.
When you're in the game, you may notice some additional messages being announced, other than the usual item/powerup-related ones. These are chat messages that are being sent from one player to the other players on the server. You can send a chat message too; in the console, issue:
say message
This will broadcast a message to all other players. Your message can contain spaces and there is no requirement to surround it in quotes. If you only want to send a message to your teammates (perhaps because it reveals where you are or some other tactical information), you can use the following command:
say_team message
Be nice to the other people on the server – if you're not, the server admin has the power to kick you from the game and ban you from reconnecting!
It's quite likely that, in the heat of battle, you'll miss some chat message uttered by other players. The following keys can be used to havigate around the chat history whilst you play:
To move back through the history, from the newest to the olders message, press PAGE UP. Your position in the list is remembered, even when new messages arrive.
To move from older to newer messages, press PAGE DOWN. Again, your position in the list is saved even when new messages come in.
Pressing END mutes all speech and moves you to the newest message in the history.
If you simply want to repeat the last message that came in, but don't want to lose your place in the history, press HOME.
There is not much to say specifically about this stage, other than have fun! Try to be considerate of your teammates, if you're playing a team gametype. If not, then friendly competition is always good!
To view the current scoreboard press the TAB key. Players are listed from the leader down. Scoring is relatively simple; you get one frag for each enemy you kill. If you kill a team-mate or yourself, you lose a frag.
The scorebaord will display different information based on what game mode you're playing in. Team information, for example, is displayed in team deathmatch games.
As you play games on any of the public servers, your progress is tracked and can be viewed relative to that of other players on the web. Please read the section on the AudioQuake Stats and Servers Site for more information.
There are three main ways to leave a game:
Say bye to everyone and leave with the disconnect command. This will remove you from the game in progress, returning you to the console.
Network problems may forcibly disconnect you from the server. If this happens, you could try reconnecting with the reconnect command.
You may have been kicked from the server because of unacceptable behaviour. Leaving a game in this way is not recommended.
When you've left a game, you'll be back at the console. From here you can quit AudioQuake, or start a new single or multiplayer game.