Quake Server Browser News & Reviews, by Monty Gonzales — Your Quake Server Browser Resource!

“February 6, 1998 — Yeah, like I’m still here. I work late, from like noon till when I’m done with my work, which can stretch until past midnight. It sucks, but the pay is decent. Anyhow, there’s not a whole lot new going on. With the point release of Quake II coming up, chances are there won’t be anything new with GameSpy, or any server browser for that matter, until the new changes too Quake II are out. Which is good for me, since it gives me time to do the “real life” thing, before the point release. I’m going to bed… night…

January 7, 1998 — Yeah I’m still here. My Xmas was good, and New Years was… ehh.. nevermind. But I finally got around to updating just about ALL of the Server Browsers. I also added a new one that just came out called Q2find. GameSpy, Qview, Qtracker, and PingTool have ALL been updated adding their new support for Quake II. I’ve spent all this past weekend trying them out, writing the reviews, and connecting to Q2 servers. I probably could have finished this off sooner if I kept playing Q2 DM for about an hour each time I tested the browsers “connect” function. (grin)

While I was checking up on all the server browsers, I decided to login to Mplayer to see what they had for Quake II. After several minutes updating my software, I found an option to connect to a lobby with rooms that are linked to servers that AREN’T ran by Mplayer. These are regular servers found on the net! When you make your OWN chat room on this, you get what looks like (gasp!) a server browser (See image). It must be pulling a server list off of one of the master servers. It takes about 5 mins for it to query all the servers, but it updates on the fly so you can choose a server before the update is complete. Then your room opens up on Mplayer. On the main screen is a player list, and server info list. It will list players who got on that server by other means. You can also hit the PING button to refresh your current ping (See image). However, I found the pings on this to be about 100ms less than it is in the actual game.

I played a couple games.. for about 2 hours. I haven’t gotten around to trying out it’s Quake2 stuff, or whatever else it has. But they have recently re-did their entire QUAKE section at Mplayer. And from the looks of it, this IS “FREE” to use their server browser thingie.

December 4, 1997 — John Carmack wrote on monday in his .plan, the day Q2 went gold, that there will probably be some networking incompadibilities with the point relase (upgrade) to Quake II that will be relased soon after the game is avalibe in the stores next week. This will put a cramp into the development for server browsers. Though, with out a source list of servers, I can’t see how anyone can start support for Quake II, until Xian sets up the Quake II master server. Plus, it would seem pointless for Xian to set up the master server, and then take it down for re-programing for the changed networking code when they do the first point relase. So I’m hoping that all of the changes that will be made, will be done by the time the Q2 master server goes online, and avoid incompadibilites once server browsers start supporting the game.

Which is fine by me, since I’ll be to busy playing the single player missions, and won’t be all that intrested in multiplayer games for at least a couple weeks. Plus most people will likely get Quake II for Xmas, so that should be plenty of time for us to finnish Quake II server browsing support by the time the masses start plaing Quake II multiplayer.