Registered users are notified of new versions of QuakeFinder.
Version 1.5: (free upgrade for registered users)
• Player and Rule information!
• Reverse DNS lookups for server addresses!
• Significantly faster in many areas (particularly opening large lists)!
• Contextual menus (in System 7.x as well - no extensions required)
• Cursor key navigation
• Timeouts (number of retries) for a server listed in the Response field
• Option-tick ticks/unticks all in Masters window
• The total number of servers in the file is now displayed in all list headers
• Removed the port restriction when adding a server manually
• Number-of-players column is now centred about the slash (/)
• Clicking again on a sorted column header will reverse the sort order
• Creating a new list now defaults to an empty non-filtered list
• X-Men and Malice filters added
Main Features
• Slick user interface
• Smooth and responsive Macintosh feel
• Powerful and intuitive live filtering and sorting to sift through the hundreds of servers
• Incredibly fast!
• Extract new servers from web pages, text files, drag & drop, and the clipboard
• Automatically connect MacQuake to a server of your choice
• Effortlessly use custom Quake add-ons
• Easily manage lists of Master web sites for finding new servers
• See who is playing on a server and what their scores are
Requirements
• Power Macintosh
• System 7.5 or later
• Internet connection
• Quake for the Macintosh (version 1.08.3 or later)
Introduction
Files
Files store the complete list of Quake servers, any custom lists, and any Master lists.
In the file window, one or more lists are shown. The Full List is always present.
Double-clicking an item will open the list showing the servers within. See Servers below for more information.
A file saved as “Default” in the same folder as QuakeFinder will be opened when QuakeFinder starts up. (An example one is included).
Lists
Lists represent views of the complete server list. The Full List is a special case that shows every server in the file. In addition you can create custom lists that are either non-filtered (a fixed favourites list) or filtered (dynamic and based on criteria). Every custom list is a subset of the Full List.
When you create a new list or choose Get Info on an existing list you are presented with a window for editing the attributes of the list. (You cannot Get Info on the Full List since it cannot be modified).
The info window for a non-filtered list looks like this:
The info window for a filtered list looks like this:
The List name: field is any name that you might want to give the list such as Favourites, Capture the Flag, or My Fast Servers, for example.
The Game: pop-up menu allows you to choose a modification to run Quake with when you join a server from this list. Modifications are add-ons often designed to enhance or change the style of game play in Quake. If the modification name is in italics, you don’t have the modification installed in your Quake directory or it is under a different name. See the Web Resources document included with QuakeFinder for where to download some of the common add-ons. The Troubleshooting section near the end of this document gives some tips if you are having difficulty getting an add-on to work.
The Non-filtered / Filtered radio buttons let you switch between list types.
With filtered lists you can assign criteria that will only show the servers that you are interested in. These are enabled via the checkboxes on the left side. A server will only be shown in the list if it satisfies all the enabled criteria.
The Response is less than criterion will only show servers whose response time is less than the given number of milliseconds. Anything less than 400ms is usually tolerable and anything less than 250ms is usually very playable. This is the way to list only the servers that are the most responsive to you.
The Server name criterion lets you list servers based on their name by matching with some given text. Note that servers aren’t required to follow any naming convention, but they often do. There are a number of options for matching the text:
The Map name criterion filters servers based on the level or map they are currently playing. There are two types of matching, by kind and by name. By kind; a simple way of filtering whether or not the map is a style of id map (one that comes with Quake). By name, matches the map name with some given text and the same options as for the Server name are allowed.
The Player capacity is from criterion will list servers where the maximum number of players allowed is within a given range. Usually the number of players allowed in a Quake game varies between 2 and 16.
The Number of players is from criterion will list servers where the number of players currently in the game is a percentage of the capacity for each server within the given range.
Servers
After opening a list a window appears showing the servers in that list.
There are five columns of information:
- server name
- number of players / maximum player capacity
- IP address
- map name
- response time / number of retries
The servers are sorted by the darkened column. You can change the sorting key by clicking in the header of another column. The sorting order can be reversed by clicking the icon at the right of the headers or by clicking on a header that is already being sorted by.
If a server has question marks (?) in any of the columns then it needs to be refreshed. By telling QuakeFinder to refresh a server, the server is sent a message requesting information. The time taken for the information to be returned is the response time. The lower the better. If a server takes too long to respond (longer than 2 seconds), it is re-tried up to two more times and if it still hasn’t responded, it is skipped and Timeout is listed in its Response field. The number of retries or timeouts (if any) is listed after the time separated by a slash (/). Timeouts may indicate data loss along the way, or may just mean the server was busy changing levels. If a server is unreachable due to network errors or no Quake server running at that address, it is skipped and Down is listed in its Response field.
Even if there are no question marks, it is a good idea to periodically refresh the servers you are interested in so that the server information is up-to-date. Response times can vary a little, so if you have narrowed it down to deciding between a few servers, refresh them a few times to get an idea which one is the fastest overall.
The ‘chasing arrows’ in the top-left of the window will spin while servers are being refreshed so that you know something is happening. Refreshes can be aborted by pressing Cmd-Period or the Escape while a server list window is front-most.
Servers can be copied from one list to another by Copy and Paste or simply dragging the selected items into the other window. Servers can also be added by dragging any text onto a list to extract the server IP addresses from it.
More detailed information about a server can be obtained with the Get Info menu command (also double-click or press return). This will present a window with three tabbedpanes labelled Players, Game, and Rules. Note that this can sometimes take a few seconds to query all the information from the server. If you query server information at the same time as refreshing a server list, it may result in higher response times for the servers due to the extra data being transferred.
The player list is similar in operation to a server list (you can change the sort columns and sorting order).
The Name can be displayed in a number of styles; see the description for the Preferences command under the Edit menu for more information. The name can be copied to the clipboard by selecting a player and choosing Copy from the Edit menu.
The number of Frags generally refers to the number of kills, but this can have different meanings with some add-ons.
The top colour bar for a player is the Shirt colour, and the bottom colour bar is the Pants (trousers) colour. On a server running team games, all members of a team have the same Pants colour so by sorting on Colour, you can list all the teams’ members together.
The Time column is the amount of time a player has been connected to the server.
Note that with regular Quake, it is not possible to get the Ping times for individual players. This is only possible with QuakeWorld and Quake 2.
The Game pane provides a nice summary of some miscellaneous information about the server. This is where you can find the DNS address and the port number (most regular Quake servers use port 26000). Choosing Copy from the Edit menu in this pane will copy the DNS address (or the IP address if none could be found) to the clipboard.
The Rules pane provides some extra information about the currently playing game that may help you make a decision. Sometimes a server will have a cmdline rule that may indicate which add-on it is running. A rule Value may be copied to the clipboard by selecting the rule and choosing Copy from the Edit menu.
Masters
Masters are web pages that have lists of servers. When someone starts up a server that they plan to leave up for a while, they email the maintainers of these Master web pages. Their server then gets added to the lists on the web pages.
With each file in QuakeFinder you can keep a list of Masters. Each item is a URL for the web page, plus a more meaningful name that you can assign to it. Masters can then be ticked to select which ones will be used by QuakeFinder to find new servers and they will be queried one after the other. Hold down the option key while clicking to tick/untick all Masters.
As with servers, ‘chasing arrows’ in the top-left of the window will spin while the Masters are being queried. If the word Error appears in the Status column for a Master, Get Info on it (or double-click or press return) to see a more descriptive error message.
Master queries can be aborted by pressing Cmd-Period or the Escape key while the Masters window is front-most.
Menus
Contextual menus are supported in MacOS 8 (and in System 7.x without requiring any extensions) in most windows for some common commands and can be activated by clicking with the Control key held down.
Apple Menu
About QuakeFinder... displays the about box for QuakeFinder with the version number and the name of the registered user. You can click on the links to email Scott Kevill (the author) or visit the web site.
Register... lets you enter your name and registration serial number to register QuakeFinder.
Order Online... opens your web browser to the to Kagi where you can quickly and easily pay for QuakeFinder with your credit card. (See the accompanying How to Register document for instructions on registering including other methods of payment).
File Menu
New creates a new untitled file.
Open... loads an existing file.
Close closes the front-most window.
Save writes to disk any changes in the current file.
Save As... saves as a new file.
Revert restores the previously saved version of a file.
Import... searches through a text file and adds all the Quake servers it can find (as IP addresses) to the current file.
Export... saves all the servers in the current file out to a text file as a list of IP addresses.
Quit shouldn’t need any explanation!
Edit Menu
With the exception of Preferences... all the commands in the Edit menu apply to items in the front-most window. Depending on which window is front-most these items would be Lists, Masters or Servers.
Undo is always disabled since there are no operations that can be undone.
Cut removes the selected items and places them in the clipboard.
Copy places a copy of the selected items in the clipboard.
Paste pastes new items from the clipboard. If a server window is front-most you can paste any text and it will be searched for valid Quake servers (as IP addresses) to be added.
Clear removes the selected items. A shortcut is to press the delete key. In a non-filtered or ‘favourites’ server list this will remove the servers from that list only. In the full list or a filtered list this will completely remove the server from the current file.
Select All selects every item in the list.
Select None deselects every item in the list.
Get Server/List/Master Info... opens a window or dialog where you can edit the attributes of the selected items. You cannot get info on the Full List since that cannot be edited.
Preferences... shows a dialog that lets you change several options:
If Warn before completely removing servers is checked QuakeFinder will confirm servers to be deleted with an alert (which can be bypassed by holding down the Option key).
The number of simultaneous server connections refers to the number of Quake servers queried at once. The higher this number the faster the server list is refreshed, but the less accurate the measured response times will be. A suitable value chosen for this usually depends on the speed of the internet connection you have. For PPP connections, the default, 10, is usually a good choice. For faster connections you may get away with higher values (the maximum is 20).
In the Use Game list, you can change which Quake application that QuakeFinder will launch. If no items are in the list then you may need to rebuild your desktop file. QuakeFinder cannot launch Quake for you if it cannot find it.
The Player Name Font selection lets you choose the style of text that player names are drawn with. Normal does a best effort using the standard Geneva font. Quake and Quake Double-Size both use the character set from within the game so all special characters are displayed accurately, the latter being more readable.
List Menu
Create New List... adds a new custom list. An info window will appear allowing you to edit the attributes of the newly created list.
View... opens the selected lists. This is the same as double-clicking or pressing return.
Master Menu
Return New Servers queries the enabled Masters for new servers. This doesn’t necessarily have to be done very often; just as often as you would want to be updated with new servers.
View Master List... shows the Masters list for the current file. Clicking in the tick column selectively enables or disables Masters.
Add Master... prompts you for a name and URL of a new Master to be added.
Open in Web Browser... takes you to the selected Master web page.
Server Menu
Refresh Selected refreshes the selected servers in the front-most window. Make sure you regularly refresh the servers you are interested in, so you always have the current information. (See Servers above for more information).
Refresh <Current List> refreshes all the servers in the front-most window.
Refresh Full List refreshes all the servers in the file, regardless of which server list window is front-most.
Join... launches Quake with the modification chosen for the current list, connecting to the currently selected server. (See Preferences... under Edit Menu above for how to change which version of Quake is launched). You must have exactly one sever selected to use this. If the command is still greyed out, QuakeFinder probably cannot find your Quake applications. Again, see Preferences... under Edit Menu above if this happens.
Add Server... prompts you to add a server manually by entering the IP or DNS address (and optionally the port number). You can also add servers by simply pasting (or drag and drop) a chunk of text that contains IP addresses. Unlike the other methods of adding servers, this command allows you to specify any port number for the server. Note that Quake servers usually have the port number 26000. Servers with port numbers of around 27500 and 27910 are usually QuakeWorld and Quake 2 respectively; neither of which are currently supported by QuakeFinder since they are not yet available for the Macintosh.
If a server info window is frontmost, the Server menu will look like this:
Refresh Server Info will refresh the player, rule, and game information for the server.
Refresh Players will refresh the player list only.
Refresh Rules will refresh the rule list only.
Refreshes can be aborted by pressing Cmd-Period or the Escape key.
Join… will connect Quake to the server as above.
Add Server… manually adds a new server as above (not related to the info window).
Planned Features
• QuakeWorld support
• Player search
• Auto-refreshes and Master queries (for example every # seconds or launches)
Troubleshooting
The Join command in QuakeFinder is greyed out...
This usually means that QuakeFinder is unable to find Quake on your hard disk. Try rebuilding the desktop file by holding down the command and option keys as the Finder starts up. See Preferences... under Edit Menu above for choosing which Quake application QuakeFinder uses.
I can join Quake servers manually from within Quake, but when I try it with QuakeFinder, they just time out...
This is a symptom of earlier versions of Quake. Make sure you have version 1.08.3 or later. Visit
This usually happens when you haven’t enabled TCP/IP in Quake. Choose Options... under the File menu, and then click the Multiplayer pane (the right-most one). Make sure the Enable TCP/IP box is checked.
Quake crashes when I try to join...
This is no fault of QuakeFinder, but here are some suggestions that have been known to help.
QUAKE® is a registered trademark of id Software, Inc. QuakeFinder is not affiliated with or endorsed by id Software. Macintosh is a registered trademark of Apple Computer, Inc.
This archive may be freely distributed as long as it is kept intact and unmodified, and is not charged for (other than reasonable download costs). QuakeFinder may not be sold or bundled with any other product without my prior permission. QuakeFinder may not be included on any CD-ROM without my prior permission.
Users are prohibited from disclosing their registered serial numbers to anyone.
Scott Kevill hereby disclaims all warranties relating to this software, whether express or implied, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Scott Kevill will not be liable for any special, incidental, consequential, indirect or similar damages due to loss of data or any other reason, even if Scott Kevill has been advised of the possibility of such damages. In no event shall Scott Kevill be liable for any damages, regardless of the form of the claim. The person using the software bears all risk as to the quality and performance of the software.
Contact Information
Email:
<scott@kagi.com>
<scott@www.curtin.edu.au>
Web sites:
QuakeFinder
<http://www.curtin.edu.au/~scott/quakefinder/>
Quiver (the intuitive Macintosh Quake level editor)
