Mothership


Mail ahnuld...C9 with any server questions or comments.

The map Animal House is currently part of the Quake server map rotation. Unzip the archive and put anihouse.bsp in your id1\maps folder.

The map Trilogy Multiplayer is currently part of the Quake server map rotation. Unzip the archive and put trimp.bsp in your id1\maps folder.

The map Acrophobia is currently part of the Quake server map rotation. Unzip the archive and put dm7.bsp in your id1\maps folder.


[ recent changes | info and policies | configuration | DIY ]

Recent changes

02-11-00: Since our Q3 servers are active but the clan isn't, I've moved the server information to a different page all its own, at http://kitty1.stanford.edu/. I'll keep that page updated and let these C9 pages rest in peace. :-)

07-08-99: Ahnuld has sneakily let the Quake servers lapse without telling anybody. Bad ahnuld.(?) Still got the two Q3Atest servers running, of course. This means that all the Quake server info below is now useless... damn you ahnuld, you make my life a living hell!!!! Or something.


[ recent changes | info and policies | configuration | DIY ]

General information and policies

The Clan 9 From Outer Space Mothership at kitty1.stanford.edu (171.64.65.70) is often engaged in extermination exercises to assist the Clan's preparation for Total World Domination. Actually, Subjugation or Annihilation are also acceptable victory conditions. (Some clan members are lobbying for the additional recognition of Inebriation, Constipation, and Mild Frustration, but their chances of success seem slim.) A free-for-all Quake deathmatch server is available at port 26000, and a ClanRing competition server for organized team games at port 26666.

The Mothership will host any Earthling who wishes to participate. Players with both fast and slow connections are welcome; it is up to each individual player to decide whether or not they are experiencing a fair and enjoyable game, whether they are allowing others to do the same, and how much they care about any of these criteria. We will not kick any player from the server because they are dominating the game because of a fast connection, or because they are cluttering up the game by wandering around with a slow connection. No one will be penalized simply because of the hardware they happen to be playing with. Similarly, we don't care if players "camp" or "snipe" or pursue any other Quake strategy they like.

It is perfectly fine for players to request that other players leave the game, change their strategy, or whatever; we just want to make it clear that players on the Mothership have no "right" to control anything except their own behavior, and so appeals to Clan authority to kick or ban other players will usually be ignored. But. Players may be kicked or banned from the Mothership for an excess of abusive language or profanity, for disrupting the game with autospew macros or other such immaturity, for remaining logged in for excessive periods of time (e.g. days), or for other reasons if we think it necessary. Any Clan 9 member has the authority to kick or ban, and the power to do it on the spot, immediately. Keep this in mind, and also that we may be playing under a pseudonym, or viewing the game chatter remotely rather than being connected as a player. If you're not a jerk, though, there's no reason to worry about any of this.

Below is a list of the current IPs banned from the Mothership. Bans will go away if and when we feel like removing them. If there are special circumstances -- like if you are being blocked by a subnet ban and you don't think that you're the "bad guy" the ban is meant for -- well, we'll talk. Besides certain IPs, we also block out anyone with a carriage return in their name (people who like to "hide" in the status list, screw up obituary messages, and other oh-so-cool pranks), and anyone coyly named "player" (you're not half as "leet" as you think you are).

Banned IPs
(none currently banned)

Well, this has generated a lot of questions. Here are some answers:


[ recent changes | info and policies | configuration | DIY ]

Configuration

The configuration of the port 26666 server may vary in insignificant ways, but generally it's going to be your basic "standard ClanRing server".

On the port 26000 server, fraglimit is 30, timelimit is 40, and items follow deathmatch 1 rules (except for the maps Trilogy Multiplayer, The Dark Zone, and Gloom Keep, which use deathmatch 3). This is a Free-For-All (FFA) deathmatch server. If something moves, shoot it. Also shoot the things that don't move. The current map rotation is

DM4The Bad Place
ANIHOUSEAnimal House
E4M3The Elder God Shrine
TRIMPTrilogy Multiplayer
DM3The Abandoned Base
DM7Acrophobia
DM6The Dark Zone
E1M5Gloom Keep

Resting from rotation: DM2 Claustrophobopolis, DM5 The Cistern, E1M2 Castle of the Damned, E2M4 The Ebon Fortress, E2M5 The Wizard's Manse, E3M1 Termination Central, E3M6 Chambers of Torment, E3M7 The Haunted Halls, E4M4 The Palace of Hate, E4M5 Hell's Atrium, QCON1 Fragstar DM 1 modified, ZTNDM2 Show No Mercy

Retired (for now?): E1M8 Ziggurat Vertigo, E2M1 The Installation, E2M3 Crypt of Decay, E2M7 Underearth, E3M5 The Wind Tunnels, JM Jokey's Madhouse, QCON2 Castlemania III.

The Mothership Quake servers use WinQuake 1.09. The port 26000 server uses the QuakeC patch ServerModules 1.9.6, with the following modules disabled: "ExitRules" (there is no escape!) and "Vote" (are we interested in your Earthling opinions?). As part of the Mothership's multiskin capability, it supports a custom Clan 9 skin; visit the skin info page for more information & instructions on how to see the skin in action on the Mothership. Note that we are still using the "Telefrag" module, because its telefrag protection is better than that in the vanilla 1.06 quake C code. The "Lightning" module is modified to reduce underwater discharge damage even further (20*cells, cap of 290), and to protect people on dry land from discharges (courtesy of code from the Gunslingers' CTF+ package). Auto-weapon-switching (when touching ammo, a weapon, or a backpack) is more restrictive to lessen the chances of it causing you to inadvertently kill yourself.

While you're in observer mode on the port 26000 server, you can use the chasecam console command to lock yourself in behind some other player, with your view following them around. Once you're in chasecam mode, jumping will switch you between players. Or, you can use the autochase command to toggle in and out of autochase mode (which does automatic player switching). If the view is too jerky, try the smooth command, which may or may not help. Finally, the observer command will get you back into normal observer mode, where (as usual) you can jump to get back in the game. These commands behave exactly like the same commands in the old ClanRing code, if you're familiar with that. (And there's a good reason for that: it's the same camera code.) Note that since we would generally rather have people playing on our server than watching, we only allow one user at a time to be in chasecam/autochase mode.

Finally, the console command rank displays player scores by this formula:

   your_rank = your_kills - your_accidents;
   if ((your_deaths + your_accidents) > 0) {
      your_rank = your_rank / (your_deaths + your_accidents);
   }

FYI, the command line for our server invocation is

winquake -game c9server -dedicated 9 -noipx +hostname "C9 Mothership" +noexit 1 +pausable 0 +fraglimit 30 +timelimit 40 +map dm3 +sys_ticrate 0.07 +sv_aim 1

Note that sv_aim has been set to 1 to disable vertical auto-aiming; we encourage other Quake server administrators to yield to our alien omniscience and do the same, since vertical auto-aiming has no place outside of the single-player game (and maybe not even there). Setting sys_ticrate is also often overlooked; the Earthlings who maintain the Quake site at The Pages Online have taken an initial look at the effects of sys_ticrate, for any other server admins who might be interested in this.

We manage all of our Quake servers with the assistance of QView and QHost, and we highly recommend these programs to other server admins, especially those dealing with multiple servers.


[ recent changes | info and policies | configuration | DIY ]

Do-it-yourself

Our DIY explanation, on how to run a Quake server like the Mothership, is currently in a little bit of disarray. However, we still have a lot of good info laying around, if you want it. You can get our server code from the QSmack server code packages; it's the first one on the list. You can also reference the DIY section of the old Experimental Pits page, since we used to run a server there that was very similar to the Mothership.