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QView 5.0 *BETA* QVReadme.txt 13 December 1997 Visit the QView homepage at: http://wasatchfault.com/qview.htm Visit Xonanan Industries at: http://www.xoanan.com **************************************** *** Information for New QView Users *** **************************************** If you've never used QView before, here's the fastest way to get QView to show active Quake servers: 1) Choose 'Options | General Settings'. 2) Enter your Quake (or Quake II, etc.) directory and close the dialog. 3) Select the icon in the tree called 'Quake Server Group'. 3) Choose 'Refresh | Rebuild Group's Server List', or choose the fifth button from the right (the icon has three computers with a blue arrow on top of them). Voila! You should now see QView pinging both Quake and QuakeWorld servers. If you want only Quake servers or only QuakeWorld servers, you can modify your group's properties. Read on for more information. **************************************** *** New features/fixes for QView 5.0 *** **************************************** Added Quake II support. Changed the icons in the tree and list view. They are now all smaller and take up less room. Simplified some of the menus. ****************************************** *** QHost features/fixes for QView 4.5 *** ****************************************** QHost can't currently work with Quake II. Id Software has indicated to me they want to help me make it work, but so far not much is happening. If you use QHost and feel it's important to you to see it work with Quake II, you can email bear@idsoftware.com to let them know. The system diagnostics tab in the QHost dialog was showing the memory perecentage incorrectly. Fixed the auto-refresh seconds control on the game server console tab so you can always enter the number of seconds, even if auto-refresh isn't checked. QView Overview -------------- QView is a Win32 application that displays real-time statistics of Quake servers and the players playing on those servers. QView is multi-threaded and features auto-refresh of servers and/or groups of servers. QView can read IP addresses from any HTML page (given a URL) and will search the found addresses for Quake servers. You can also add servers manually to a group of servers or get QuakeWorld servers from a master QuakeWorld server. QView can also exclude players when refreshing server statistics in order to speed up the searching speed. Using the auto server refresh option, you can watch a deatchmatch in progress. QView will even show you the playersÆ colors and rank them according to frags, names, addresses, and time connected. The server list can be ordered by name, ping time, current players, address, and any server rule. Installation ------------ 1. Unzip QView.zip (contains QView.exe and qvreadme.txt). 2. Unzip QView_rt.zip (contains the runtime dll's). 3. Copy the .dllÆs to your windows\system (or winnt\system32) directory. If you have a newer version of any of the dll's, keep the version you already have. 4. Put QView where ever you plan to run it from. 5. Launch QView. QView Server Groups ------------------- QView uses the .qvw extension for QView files. Each QView file contains one or more Server Groups. Each group contains a list of server sources which QView uses to build the list of current IP addresses for a group. To see how this works, launch QView. If you've never run QView before, you will see a single, empty QView Server Group on the left side of the display. In order to add IP addresses to the group, you can either insert Quake servers using the menus, or you can rebuild a group's server list. When you rebuild the server list for a group, the rebuild uses a list of server sources to try and fill the group with known IP addresses. Rebuild sources include: * IP addresses and/or DNS names you manually enter * A URL that has IP addresses on it (always assumed to be normal Quake servers and not QuakeWorld servers) * A QuakeWorld master server By default, an empty QView group has a single IP address (a Wasatch Fault server), Stomped's server list (a URL), and id's master QuakeWorld server. Rebuilding Groups' Server Lists ------------------------------- To modify the way a group rebuilds its server list, choose File | Properties while hilighting a group. The Group properties dialog should now appear. In this dialog you can change the name of the current Quake Server Group. You can also edit the Quake and Quake- World server sources. These can be either IP addresses, URL's, or master QuakeWorld servers. When you choose Refresh | Rebuild Group's Server List, QView will add any IP addresses in the servers sources to the group's server list. QView will also attempt to grab the .html pages listed and parse them for Quake server IP addresses. These addresses are also added to the server list. You won't need to rebuild a Quake Server Group very often. Once you build a group you will usually want to refresh groups instead. Refreshing Groups ----------------- The group's server list are the servers that appear in the main tree view in QView underneath a group. When you refresh a Quake Server Group, QView will try to communicate with the Quake server on each IP address in the group's server list. A lightning bolt by a server indicates communication between QView and the remote Quake server is pending. Refreshing vs. Rebuilding ------------------------- Refreshing servers differs from rebuilding server lists in that rebuilding server lists uses the Group rebuild sources to gather the list of servers. This can potentially take a long time (especially if you use URL's to find Quake servers) because it may involve grabbing web pages or talking to a QuakeWorld master server, depending on how you have your Group server sources setup. Refreshing a Group uses the Current Quake servers already found by a rebuild or entered by the user to check on the current status of the Current Quake servers. Auto Server/Group Refresh ------------------------- To watch a deathmatch in progress, select a Quake server in either the tree view on the left or the list view on the right. Then choose Refresh | Refresh Server. The server will update over and over again until you choose Refresh | Manual Refresh. You can change the frequency of Server/Group auto refreshes by choosing View | General Options. Launching Quake --------------- Before launching Quake via QView, you will need to tell QView where your copy of Quake is. Choose View | General Options, and then choose the Launch Quake tabbed dialog. In the Quake Directory, enter the path to your copy of Quake. The command line must have at least the following: For Quake --------- q95.bat --or-- winquake For QuakeWorld -------------- qwcl Setting up Multiple Command Line Options ------------------------------------------ QView allows for multiple command lines for both Quake and QuakeWorld (like having one for ctf, one for normal, etc.). Here's how to set them: Choose 'Options | General QView Settings...'. On the Command Lines tab you will see a listbox with a list of command lines. If you've never run the newer QView, you will only see one command line. To add another, choose 'New' and type in your command line. You can reorder the command lines by selecting a command line and pressing 'Up' or 'Down'. To see your QuakeWorld command lines, change from 'Quake' mode to 'QuakeWorld' mode by chosing the appropriate button. If you want, modify the default comamnd line to suit your taste. However, QView should work fine with the default command line. Launching Quake with one of the Multiple Command Lines ------------------------------------------------------ When you launch Quake, QView will use the *first* command as seen in the list of command lines. To use one of the other command lines you entered: Right click on a server in the tree or list view. In the popup menu you will see 'Launch Quake' and 'Other Command Lines'. Just select one of the other command lines and you're on your way. Other Options ------------- From the General Options dialog you can also set whether you want to include players and/or server rules when refreshing servers. Both options slow down the refresh process, because more packets must be sent to each Quake server. You can also mark which server rules you're interested in. QView will only use the rules you select for the server list columns. Player Profiles --------------- Player profiles control what your player looks like when you launch Quake. You can set the player name, colors, skin (QuakeWorld only), and choose a .cfg file to execute when you launch Quake. You can also use the dialog to set special parameters for QuakeWorld. The listbox at the bottom has several default values used for QuakeWorld. You can add others if you want. If you don't want to use player profiles, you can disable them by choosing Options | Use Player Profiles. Command Execution Order ----------------------- When you launch Quake, it's important to realize the order in which your commands will be executed by Quake. The order is: * QView starts Quake with the command line and any given parameters. These parameters include: --Any parameters you included when you entered the command line in the options dialog. --The '-game' command, if you set up a 'game' parameter in the server property page for the given server. * QView.cfg is executed via the command line, which contains --Any player profile information (if you're using player profiles), including the player .cfg file (if any). This information includes the name, colors, and skin. --Finally, if you set up 'post connect commands' for the server in the server property page, these commands are executed. Toolbars -------- Most menu functions can also be accessed through the toolbars. For those who like the Windows 95 interface, you can right-click for additional access to QView menu items. Double clicking on an item in the list view on the right will cause a refresh to occur. QHost Integration ----------------- QView is the front-end to QHost. QHost resides on a remote Windows 95 or Windows NT machine and allows a QView user to manage the Quake server. With the QHost integration in QView, you can stop/start a remote Quake server, send commands to the Quake server, or look at the current Quake server console. You can even kick obnoxious players from your Quake server with a press of a toolbar button or a right-click on the offending player. QHost is password protected to prevent unauthorized users from disturbing the Quake server settings. For more information about QHost, download QHost.zip and read QHReadme.txt. Check it Out ------------ Play with the options in QView and, if you have time, let me know what you think. Comments and/or suggestions can be sent to: sotteson@xoanan.com I will entertain any requests to improve QView and QHost. About QView ----------- QView is donationware and was written using Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0 by Steve Otteson. If you've got money burning a hole in your pocket and you think QView is the neatest thing since sliced spam, feel free to send me a small donation of $5-$10. You can mail your check or money order to: Xoanan Industries 644 N. 880 W. Pleasant Grove, UT 84062 Make checks payable to Xoanan Industries. Visit the QView homepage at: http://wasatchfault.com/qview.htm Visit Xonanan Industries at: http://www.xoanan.com Revision History ---------------- QView 5.0 --------- Added Quake II support. Changed the icons in the tree and list view. They are now all smaller and take up less room. Simplified some of the menus. QView 4.5: QHost related features/fixes --------------------------------------- QHost can't currently work with Quake II. Id Software has indicated to me they want to help me make it work, but so far not much is happening. If you use QHost and feel it's important to you to see it work with Quake II, you can email bear@idsoftware.com to let them know. The system diagnostics tab in the QHost dialog was showing the memory perecentage incorrectly. Fixed the auto-refresh seconds control on the game server console tab so you can always enter the number of seconds, even if auto-refresh isn't checked. QView 4.2 --------- Added multiple ping threads. The more ping threads, the quicker QView can refresh a server list. However, more threads can also make the pings less accurate. The default is 3 threads and the maximum is 10. This number is set on the 'General Settings | Server Settings' dialog. Added a top-most item in the tree called 'All Servers'. If you select this item, you will see all servers from all groups sorted in the right-pane. Drag/drop/copy/paste now works. You can drag/drop/paste within QView, or to a different instance of QView. Got rid of the address column (left-most column) in the right- pane. Added connect time to QuakeWorld player's columns, and got rid of userid. Added ability to enter servers as DNS names (like 'quake1.wasatchfault.com') instead of only IP addresses. Added option to launch servers with a double-click. This can be disabled in the 'General Settings | Preferences' dialog. Streamlined Quake server properties page. Also added DNS name lookup on Quake server properties page. Made it so QView won't change server names to 'No Response' if the QView already know's the server's name and Quake doesn't respond. Made QView able to stop refreshing more quickly when 'Stop' is pressed. Remade the bitmaps for groups. Fixed bug where you couldn't launch Quake with any command- line but the default in the right-pane. Fixed bug where right-pane incorrectly painted its background if the default window color wasn't white. Fixed weird repaint when QView is first launched so QView doesn't appear to be 'see-through'. Fixed bug where all servers of all groups were added to the right-pane when QView was first launched. Completely redid the Group properties dialog (formerly 'Group Rebuild Options' dialog). Hopefully the new way is easier to understand for new QView users. Added neato scrolling credits to the About Box. Added 'Properties' and 'New' buttons to the toolbar. Added percent done progress bar in lower right-hand corner of main console. Simplified the filters dialog, along with the entire General Settings tabbed dialog. Made toggling addresses in the main QView work much faster. Also, if you want to sort by addresses you can turn on addresses and click the name column. Added another status window at the bottom of QView that tells you how many servers are in a group, along with how many total servers there are in all groups (depending on what you have selected). Got rid of filter GPFs. "+exec QView.cfg" is no longer needed in the command-lines. In the group property sheet, you can control whether QView refreshes the group's server list when the group is first opened. Added shirt/pants numbers to the player icons in the player view. Moved the master server dialog into the general settings. Added a 'Game' column in the right-hand pane when viewing lists of servers. *** QHost Related Fixes (for server admins only) ------------------------------------------------ Added auto-refresh to Quake server console window. Streamlined server start/stop dialog. Got rid of ability to set the process priority for the Quake server (one person requested this, but I don't think many people are using it, and it's dangerous anyway). Made all QHost dialogs fit in 640x480. The trade-off is that the Quake server console window holds less text. Console text is now run through the Quake text converter so you won't see any 'fun name' characters in the console. Now using smaller font in console window so more characters will fit across the screen. QView now displays whether a server was stopped by a user, by QHost (like if the server was scheduled to go down), or if the server terminated abnormally. (Choose 'Current Status...' from the 'Quake Servers' tab of the QHost dialog.) QHost will attempt to restart a server if the server terminates for a reason unknown to QHost (like a GPF or if someone types 'quit' at the server console). QHost will only try to restart servers that successfully ran for at least 30 seconds. This avoids repeatedly restarting servers that are always failing for one reason or another. QView 4.1a ---------- Fixed the bug where QView was GPFing if a QuakeWorld server would send incorrectly formatted information. Fixed the bug where you couldn't do a Properties on a server in the right pane. Simplified the toolbar (again). Enabled the 'Manage via QHost' button on all servers. If QView hasn't already discovered QHost on your server, QView will check for QHost and then prompt you for logon information. Added a button to toggle filter usage. QView 4.1 ---------- Fixed bug where you couldn't launch Quake when selecting anything in the right-pane. QView 4.1 has full QuakeWorld 1.5 support. QView no longer supports the original QuakeWorld. Added player profiles. You can set up multiple player profiles with different names, colors, skins, etc. You can also choose to execute a .cfg file for each profile. If you want you can disable player profiles which means Quake falls back to your .cfg files. Added custom server information. This means for each server in a QView group you can set up the -game parameter (useful for CTF servers), along with passwords (for private QuakeWorld servers). Added CPU detection for Pentium(R) II processors. I'm still waiting for input from QView users as to whether the CPU detection works for Cyrix/AMD processors. Massaged some of the menus (again). Player properties now works for both QW and normal Quake players. Made the QHost server console dialog more patient in waiting for console packets. Also, got rid of the bug which filled the console with garbage if all the packets weren't received. Made it so you can turn off IP addresses in the main tree view. Got rid of all the stop buttons but one. So now you can stop complaining, Monty! :) QView 4.02 ---------- Fixed group rebuild to remember single QW servers entered manually by the user. Fixed user page on QHost dialog to allow more than 2 ports per QHost user account. Limit is now 10 per user (can still be all ports instead of a list of 10 or less ports). QHost server dialog now inserts all ports correctly into the QView tree, including QuakeWorld servers. When a server is found to have the QHost agent, all servers with the same address change color to reflect the QHost agent status. Also, if you log on to a QHost server, QView recognizes that you are also logged on to all other servers with the same IP address. Fixed CPU code that wasn't working for 486 machines. When a QHost user launches the QHost dialog while selecting a port that he/she does not have rights to, QView launches the QHost dialog using a port for which the user does have rights. This avoids initial 'Access denied' messages when the QHost dialog is first launched. QView 4.01 ---------- Fixed bug where QView would sometimes GPF when the user chose File | New. Fixed bug where QView would use the wrong server if you were trying to launch Quake using a selected item in the right pane. Fixed bug where QView would write the wrong information into QView.cfg for QuakeWorld. QuakeWorld does not understand the command 'port ####' like Quake does. QuakeWorld expects 'connect #.#.#.#:###' for ports other than 27500. QView 4.0 --------- QView now has full QuakeWorld support. See the new section entitled "QuakeWorld Support". Multiple command lines are now supported. For example, you may have one command line like 'winquake -game ctf' and another with 'winquake -game spamhead'. Multiple command lines are supported for both Quake and QuakeWorld. For more information, see the "QuakeWorld Support" section. Fixed the group rebuild bug where sometimes some IP addresses were not parsed correctly out of URLs. Added CPU goodies in the About Box. I tried my best for Cyrix and AMD processors, but since I don't have access to any, I was unable to test for them. Let me know if you find any problems with the new About Box. Also, I have not tested the about box with overclocked CPUs, so I can't promise that works either. Moved the menus around to be more intuitive (thanks Larry!). Added ability to kick players by name or number as selected by the user. QView used to always kick by name, but with names with a carriage return, this always fails. However, kicking by number in Quake is a little risky, because the Quake server reassigns players' numbers at will. In QuakeWorld it's *always* safe to kick by number, since you're really kicking by userid. Added server property page. This is most useful for QuakeWorld servers as you can see all the custom fields the server administrator has added to the server. There is also a button on this dialog to launch your web browser when there is a field selected with a URL. Added player property page (QuakeWorld only). This allows you to browse a player's skins, fields, etc. QView 3.0 --------- Note: Again, most changes apply to Quake server admins. QView does not yet have client support for Quakeworld, but it should be coming soon. Scheduling is *finally* functional! You can have Quake servers that start when QHost starts and/or schedule them to be started and/or stopped at a given time. I had to make QHost wait a few seconds before launching the servers when QHost first starts, so be patient. It should take about 30 seconds between the time QHost starts and when QHost launches the auto-startable servers (if any). ***** IMPORTANT FOR QHOST ADMINS: READ THIS ENTIRE PARAGRAPH!!! ****** Changed QHost and QView to allow launching other exe's (e.g. qwsrv.exe). The change now forces the admin to type the exe name on the command line before the other parameters. So, where as before you could enter a command line like '+noexit +teamplay 2', now you will have to enter 'winded +noexit +teamplay2' or 'qwsrv +noexit' etc. This change also means you will have to run QHostCon and change the path that points to your winded.exe to just point to your quake directory (e.g. change c:\quake\winded.exe to c:\quake). Added server information and diagnostics to QView/QHost. QHost reports CPU and memory usage, along with OS version information. To get the CPU usage to work in Win95, the QHost machine must be running System Monitor. QView 2.2 --------- Note: Changes for 2.2 only apply to those using QHost. If you're not a Quake server admin, you probably don't need to upgrade to QView 2.2. Fixed a major hole in QHost security. Upgrade to QHost 1.2 if you're using QHost 1.1 or 1.0. I mainly needed to get out a version that fixed the security problem before my vaction for the rest of the week. I'll be back December 1. Majorly overhauled the main admin dialog. Check it out to see what I mean. You can set the scheduling options on the main QHost dialog, and you can even send the options to QHost, but QHost doesn't yet do anything with these settings. I ran out of time to get the scheduling functionality into QHost before my vacation. QView 2.1 --------- Added server filters in the General Options dialog. Added QHost support for multiple Quake server ports on the same server. QView also now reports (via QHost) the last time each QHost Quake server was started/stopped and by whom. Made it possible to cancel out of a long group rebuild (like when a URL is not responding or is slow). The servers in a group are saved (and reloaded) in the same order they last appeared in the tree. After inserting a server, the server is highlighted as the current server. Made the QHost console a fixed-width font so characters are lined up like on a real DOS prompt. Made the maximum number of server retries and the communication timeout configurable. Made prompting for deleting groups, servers, and kicking players configurable. Made auto-loading the last used .qvw file an option. QView 2.0 would sometimes kick the wrong player if a server hadn't been refreshed for a while. QView no longer kicks by number, so this shouldn't be a problem anymore. QView kicks by names, and this seems to work even for player names with multi-colored characters. QView 2.0 --------- QHost integration, including logging on/logging off from a remote QHost agent, starting/stopping a Quake server, viewing the remote Quake console, sending commands to the remote Quake console, and removing players from the remote Quake server. QHost Quake server console was made to act like the real Quake console, except with added doskey-like functionality (use the arrow keys to get to a previous command, or type part of a command and press F8 to cycle through previous commands that what you've currently entered). QHost toolbar added. Right-clicking is now enabled. Attempted to make the whole Rebuild vs. Refresh thing more clear. Changed the Group Attributes dialog to facilitate this. Also made it so when a server is inserted into the tree, the IP address is added to the Group rebuild sources. Toolbar postions are remembered when launching QView. QView will automatically open the .qvw file used when QView last ran. Double-clicking an item in the list view on the right will force a refresh. Changing the name of a group is immediately reflected in the tree view. You can also edit the group name directly on the tree view, like in the Windows Explorer. Fixed some crashing problems related to opening a different .qvw file during a refresh of the current group. Also fixed crash related to deleting servers that were waiting to be refreshed. Completely remade this readme file. QView 1.1 --------- Gave ability to refresh every so many seconds. This number is controlled from the Options dialog. Set to 0 if you want QView to refresh as fast as possible. Added ability to delete groups, made deleting servers easier. Added ability to watch servers on any IP port. QView doesn't display these ports by default. Added buttons for inserting groups and servers and for deleting the current item. Made QView launchable from a .qvw file in the Win95 Explorer. (.qvw is the QView file type). This also means you can make a shortcut on your desktop to a .qvw of your favorite servers. To register .qvw with Windows, choose Help | Register the .qvw type with Windows. QView 1.02 ---------- Made retrieving player information much faster. Prevent same server from being added more than once to a single server group. Fixed bug where search strings were not being saved. QView 1.01 ---------- Better stopping of servers/groups being refreshed. QView now can search for servers and/or players by name. QView now retrieves rules for servers if so desired. Any right pane view in QView can be sorted by any column. Window sizes and column sizes are restored upon launching QView. Description bars added above left and right views (can be disabled). General efficiency improved.