PRO SLITHER

Pure Client User Guide

Welcome to the world of Pro Slither, a multiplayer first-person shooter tournament game. Pro Slither, or Pro is a very raw system that can be adjusted and scripted by the client, so that he or she can customize thier ideal fighting environment.

Pro is a system that takes place mainly in a text console within the game. You can adjust everything inside that console, or in the configuration files that come with the game. You can create your own configuration files and script your own system, but more on that later.

The Pure Pro Client

This document is for the raw Pro Client. You might have downloaded a script such as the VDD or SP, where things have been prepared for you, but the pure Client program is very simple and has no instrumentation (HUD). This means it will work - but it will look very bland indeed! The pure client is 'naked' and thus it is up to you to clothe it.

Installation

There is no installation, you simply unzip the client to a folder and it should all be there.

Start Configuration

Once unzipped, the first thing you'll want to do is alter the screen resolution of the client. In the root folder is a file called start.conf. This is the first config file called when the game starts up. From this file you can call other files and prepare anything.

The start.conf file is the only file on the root directory to keep it away from all the others, which will go in /conf or wherever you decide to put them.

If start.conf doesn't exist, then you have to create it. You can put any commands inside this file. If it does exist, and these commands exist, then you might want to read about them anyway, or change them as we talk about them. Let's start with screen resolution:

/MODEX 800

/MODEY 600

You can specify your own screen dimensions here. If you are using widescreen then you might want to put a widescreen resolution in such as 1440x900. If you want to achieve a higher framerate on a slower computer, you might want to try a lower resolution such as 640x480. The choice is yours - it should support whatever your card supports.

Nextly you can sepcify your color bits and depth bits. These are openGL features, play around with them however you wish. Defaults should work fine, but you might want to change them.

/COLOR_BITS 32

/DEPTH_BITS 16

Now we change the picmap. The picmap is the detail of the textures loaded. Every time you put the picmap up, you will lose resolution on the textures and they will get more blurry and pixelated. The frame rate however can rapidly increase if you do this. The default value is 1, for full detail.

/PICMAP 1

Set the game to fullscreen - don't risk windowed mode, your mouse might go funny (or it might be fine). There might be special windowed mode clients compiled later. If you are using a windowed-mode client, then go ahead and turn off fullscreen. For now, I'll say set fullscreen to 1.

/FULL_SCREEN 1

The texture ratio is how big the textures are drawn. It can dramatically affect the framerate by putting the ratio higher (making the textures bigger) and it can look pretty cool too. If you have the texture ratio very low, the world might look a bit too tiled, and the framerate might lag. Try setting to 4 (the lowest is 1).

/TEXTURE_RATIO 4

Now that we have all this out the way, let's enter our name. Put whatever name you wish here, no spaces, try to keep it short (like an IRC nickname). The server will probably determine the maximum length (20 chars or so usually).

/NAME JohnSmith69

Test The Client

Pro will only run in windows, and windows can be really gay. Now that you've written/edited start.conf in the root folder, and saved it, it's time you tested the excecutable itself. Once you get this to work, you're pretty much safe.

Run the client program. If it works, you should come up with the console or a game. Pressing escape will toggle the console on and off, and F10 or '/quit' will exit the game. I always assign F10 to quit in all my games.

If it works, fine, but if it doesn't, let's troubleshoot it.

WINSOCK NOT REGISTERED

This is the most common bug which happens mainly on Vista, because Vista is a piece of S*!*. This means that Vista needs dependencies, which my friend has luckily discovered on the internet. You must install them from here:

http://www.ascentive.com/support/new/libraryfiles.exe

I've never had to install them since I use windows XP and 98se.

Try it, see if it works. Hopefully it will.

REQUESTED VIDEO MODE NOT SUPPORTED

This means you chose a resolution that your computer can't handle. Make sure you got the MODEX and MODEY typed correctly in the right order, alter the start.conf and try again. It could also be your depth bits and color bits. Try changing them around, 32 or 16.

Running The Client

So now your client is running, you should be able to type stuff at the console, and toggle it on and off. You should also be able to walk around or at least move the mouse and look around. If you can, then this is good. This means pro will probably be OK on your computer, lol!

Now that you're inside the client, it has generated a default config for you. You can now capture this config by saving it:

/WRITECONFIG main

This will save the config as '/conf/main.conf'. You can load this config at any time (probably not while in a match), by typing "/LOADCONFIG main", but it will not be called by default. If you want to call MAIN on startup, then exit the game and edit start.conf. Add this line:

/add_remote START conf/main.conf

This means that whenever you run Pro, it will automatically load MAIN straight after the START.

Doing it this method does however cause a few potential problems that you should be aware of:

If you wish to change your screen resolution, then you will have to change it in conf/main.conf, because it will over-ride the start.conf one. There are many ways around this, and you can structure your whole system in different ways. Other clients like VDD will have different methods, btu this is the raw method. This applies to all the other commands too - any command in MAIN will over-ride any command in START.

The good news is, you can edit everything in-game now without opening text documents and just type "/WRITECONFIG main" everytime you want to save changes. If you have another friend who plays Pro and he likes to use different settings, simply "/WRITECONFIG friend" and make his own friend config. He can then load that config whenever he plays.

The Console

Everything inside config documents can be typed in the console. The console is your friend, learn it well! There are many commands, and you can tab through them to find them when you begin typing them (like in linux). You can also up-arrow your previously typed command.

There are NUMBER variables that you can change, and WORD variables. If you type the command without a value after, it will display the value. If you put a value after, it will set it. For example:

$ /NAME

Your name is set to Steve.

$ /NAME Mike

You have set NAME to 'Mike.'

As well as variables, there are commands. Let's look at some important commands:

/QUIT

This will exit the game. Or you can just press F10, lol!

/INITGL

This will refresh the openGL window. This is needed for when you change certain variables such as shading, textures, ratios, picmap, etc. If you load another config that has such changes, you will need to /INITGL also in order to see all the changes.

/VERSION

This displays the client version. Not really important, but very important for beta testing.

Controls

You will probably want to change your controls now. Although there may be control programs created for ease of use, this is the pure pro client, so changing controls must be done in the console/config.

/BUTTON_CONSOLE Default is ESCAPE - the big console toggle key

/BUTTON_SMALLCONSOLE The ` twiddle key usually (but never seems to work by default). This is your small console or CHAT key.

/BUTTON_FORWARD Walk forward

/BUTTON_BACK Walk back

/BUTTON_LEFT Strafe left

/BUTTON_RIGHT Strafe right

/BUTTON_JUMP Jump

/BUTTON_SCORES See the scores - default key is TAB

/BUTTON_FIRE Fire the gun

/BUTTON_ROCKET Change to rocket launcher

/BUTTON_FAN Change to fan cannon

/BUTTON_PLASMA Change to plasma/fork gun

/BUTTON_SHOTGUN Change to shotgun

/BUTTON_RIFLE Change to rifle

/BUTTON_MACHINEGUN Change to machinegun

/BUTTON_GRENADE Change to grenade launcher/throw grenade

/BUTTON_RAIL Change to rail gun

/BUTTON_SPECIAL Change to special gun (probably not used)

/BUTTON_NOGUN Change to no gun (you'd be a fool!)

/BUTTON_NEXT Advanced stuff for later

/BUTTON_PREV Advanced stuff for later

/BUTTON_CLUTCH Advanced stuff for later

The advanced stuff for later are clutches and gears, probably used for guns and doing special tricks like slow rockets etc.

To change the key you will want to type for example

/BUTTON_CONSOLE ESCAPE

/BUTTON_FORWARD W

And so on. The possible buttons are:

A-Z

0-9

CONTROL, SPACE, RETURN, TAB, SHIFT, BACK, DELETE, HOME, END

INSERT, PAGEUP, PAGEDOWN, UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT

ADD, SUBTRACT, MULTIPLY, ESCAPE, CANCEL, MOUSE1, MOUSE2, MOUSE3

CLEAR, CAPSLOCK, SNAPSHOT, HELP, NUMLOCK

PAD0, PAD1 ... PAD9

DOT, DIVIDE

F1, F2 ... F16

SEPERATOR

Alternatively, if you can't find the key you're looking for (such as the annoying twiddle (`)) you can manually specify the key number, and look up which key you need, or use special programs to find them out:

KEY1

KEY142

KEY233 etc

There are of course many many other tweaks and adjustments. One that might be important to you is this one:

/INVERT_MOUSE 1

This will invert your mouse, which I like, but most people don't like it. By default I think it's non-inverted, so you're okay.

Once you have the controls how you like, type "/WRITECONFIG main" (or whatever file you like) to save it.