Quake III Arena - 8 Players Online

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Bob Dobbs
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Re: Quake III Arena - 8 Players Online

Post#11 » Sat Sep 22, 2018 10:12 pm

Mechanic wrote:Nah i meant about modding q3 for 8 players


Sorry, I was answering Samo's issue with connecting to Q3.
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Re: Quake III Arena - 8 Players Online

Post#12 » Sun Sep 23, 2018 3:23 pm

Mechanic wrote:Nah i meant about modding q3 for 8 players



There are some commands inside the game's main binary that are hinting towards a possibility to turn off the 4 players limit. such as:

Code: Select all

sv_maxclients 4

Code: Select all

maxclients 4


However there are also indications that the number of allowed clients is hardcoded:

Code: Select all

client1.client2.client3.client4

This might as well be part of the splitscreen code though,
so unless somebody changes the commands above to "maxclients 8" and "sv_maxclients 8" in both game binary and the server config files accordingly, we'll never know.



Having read PCWzrd's interview with Scott Hawkins, we probably shouldn't be too optimistic:

"Two big challenges were getting the game to run at a high enough frame rate while also fitting the levels into memory for Dreamcast. Some compromises were made in terms of which levels could be supported and the number of players that we could support with online play. I would have loved to support more than four players in an online game. Bumping that number up to 8, 12, or even 16 players would have made a huge difference!! I also would have loved to get additional new maps into the game or a Dreamcast specific level editor would have been amazing as well!"

https://www.dreamcastlive.net/blogs/pos ... Sega-Swirl
Last edited by moi on Sun Sep 23, 2018 4:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Mechanic
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Re: Quake III Arena - 8 Players Online

Post#13 » Sun Sep 23, 2018 4:16 pm

interesting thx moi
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DR TEAMCAST
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Re: Quake III Arena - 8 Players Online

Post#14 » Tue Sep 25, 2018 1:51 pm

moi wrote:
Mechanic wrote:Nah i meant about modding q3 for 8 players



There are some commands inside the game's main binary that are hinting towards a possibility to turn off the 4 players limit. such as:

Code: Select all

sv_maxclients 4

Code: Select all

maxclients 4


However there are also indications that the number of allowed clients is hardcoded:

Code: Select all

client1.client2.client3.client4

This might as well be part of the splitscreen code though,
so unless somebody changes the commands above to "maxclients 8" and "sv_maxclients 8" in both game binary and the server config files accordingly, we'll never know.


wouldn't that be a fairly simple 25 minute process to test? i don't know any specifics about the Q3 binary, but it should just be a simple hex edit and changing the CFGs on disc, then recompiling the CDI?

i could maybe try to do this later tonight using SDISO, but i would have to rig up a server too unless somebody else here wants to help in that regard (but they would also need an SD reader because i'm out of CDRs)
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moi
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Re: Quake III Arena - 8 Players Online

Post#15 » Tue Sep 25, 2018 6:16 pm

DR TEAMCAST wrote:wouldn't that be a fairly simple 25 minute process to test? i don't know any specifics about the Q3 binary, but it should just be a simple hex edit and changing the CFGs on disc, then recompiling the CDI?

i could maybe try to do this later tonight using SDISO, but i would have to rig up a server too unless somebody else here wants to help in that regard (but they would also need an SD reader because i'm out of CDRs)


You'd need a custom server with the said variables reset as well as at least 5 people with modded game client and some time spent tinkering with those commands in the console.
Probably even less effort would be trying to add 4 bots to one game client instead.
The chances for success are of course very slim. But at least we'd have a clear confirmation whether those commands are doing anything at all and we might get some hints if further hacking attempts are worth trying at all.

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Mechanic
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Re: Quake III Arena - 8 Players Online

Post#16 » Tue Sep 25, 2018 7:29 pm

when your ready to test I can set up a 5 player server or 8 and see what happens
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Re: Quake III Arena - 8 Players Online

Post#17 » Tue Sep 25, 2018 10:10 pm

So edited the cdi with hexeditor. Put 8 everywhere it said sv_maxclietns 4 . Then set up 4 bots and i connected as a 5th player. PLayed a few seconds then got booted . i can almost hear the Dreamcast say
WTF !! WHAAAAA?
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Re: Quake III Arena - 8 Players Online

Post#18 » Wed Sep 26, 2018 6:05 am

Mechanic wrote:So edited the cdi with hexeditor. Put 8 everywhere it said sv_maxclietns 4 . Then set up 4 bots and i connected as a 5th player. PLayed a few seconds then got booted . i can almost hear the Dreamcast say
WTF !! WHAAAAA?



Now that sounds very interesting!

Does it let you connect to the 4 bot server the same way when you are using an unpatched client?
Did you change the "maxclients 4" variable to 8 as well?
The server might behave differently if you enable cheats and/or developer mode.

In long term if it is the "kick player" command that is disconnecting player 5, it might be worth trying to hexedit it out of the server and game binaries...

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Mechanic
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Re: Quake III Arena - 8 Players Online

Post#19 » Wed Sep 26, 2018 6:48 pm

Yes even with the unpatched client it behaves the same way. When I get booted it says server failure on client side and boots me offline to quake 3 network screen. On the server side it just shows me with 999 ping then timeout.

I will also recheck the maxclient setting and try it in developer mode
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Re: Quake III Arena - 8 Players Online

Post#20 » Wed Sep 26, 2018 8:05 pm

Interesting results Mechanic, appreciate the time you're taking to test this for us.
Online games - Quake 3 Arena, PSOv2, Worms World Party

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