The Osirion Project - User manual

Client

Starting the client will show the loader screen and open the client console. The console will stay open until you are connected to a game. Once connected you can close and open it again with the ESC key.

Type connect and press Enter. You will join the game as spectator, type join in the console to join the game. Type spectate to spectate again. Type disconnect to return to the loader screen.

The client is capable of acting as a networked server. You can enable the private server by setting sv_private 1 before you connect. This wil allow remote players to connect to your client.

To connect to a dedicated server, type connect address, where adress is the hostname or IP address of the remote server.

In-game, you can aquire a ship with the buy command.

Keyboard

Keyboard controls can be configured with the bind command. A key can be bound to an action or a console command. An action always starts with a plus or minus sign.

To bind the keypad left key to the turn left action:

bind kpleft +left

To bind the P key to the screenshot command:

bind p screenshot

You can use the list_binds command to get a list of currently bound keys. Use the list_keys command to get a list of all available key names.

The default configuration:

ESC or ` toggle console
v next camera view
shift+v previous camera view
left right up down rotate camera in free view
keypad left right direction
keypad up down pitch
keypad + - increase/decrease forward thruster
space bar toggle mouse control on or off
tab kinetic impulse drive control
a d strafe left/right
q / e roll left/right
w s afterburner/reverse
n select next target
shift+n select previous target
ctrl+n deselect current target
t chat window
print screen screenshot

Mouse

If you have choosen Track or cockpit view and mouse control is actived, you can use it to steer your vessel. In Free view mode, the mouse will rotate the camera. If mouse control it is deactived, you can temporarily activate it by pressing the left mouse button.

Use the scroll wheel to increase/decrease thruster.

Mouse buttons can also be configured through the bind command.

Joystick

Joystick support is only preliminary and disabled by default. A list of detected joysticks will apear in the startup messages. To use a joystick set the input_joystick variable to the desired joystick number:

input_joystick 1

The axes are hardcoded and can not be configured. Axis 0 controls pitch, axis 1 controls direction, axis 2 control roll. There is no way to callibrate the joystick, you will have to use an external joystick calibration program.

Up to 16 joystick buttons will be reckognized. They can be configured by assigning a command or action to keys joy0 through joy15. For example, to configure the first button to activate or deactivate the kinetic impulse drive:

bind joy0 impulse

Console functions

The following commands are always available on the console:

connectconnect the client to the game module
disconnectdisconnect the client from the game module
list_entlist registered entities
list_funclist registered functions
list_modellist registered models
list_varlist registered variables
quitexit the application
r_restartrestart the video subsystem

The following commands are available when you are connected to a game:

joinjoin the game
spectatespectate
buypurchase a new ship
jumpactive the hyperspace jump drive
impulseactive the kinetic impulse drive
wholist connected players

This list is far from complete. The list_func function will print all available functions with a short description.

Configuration variables

A lot of settings can be changed through configuration variables. The list_var function will print all available variables with a short discription. To change the value of a variable, type its name followed by the new value.

e.g.: to disable rendering of the sky:

r_sky 0

to enable it again:

r_sky 1

To change the video resolution, set the r_width and r_height variables and execute r_restart. e.g.: to set the video mode to 1024x768 type:

r_width 1024
r_height 768
r_restart

To switch to fullscreen mode, set the r_fullscreen variable to 1:

r_fullscreen 1

You can set your name and player color through the cl_color and cl_name variables. Note that your ship's colour won't change until you buy a new one.

cl_name SpaceCowboy
cl_color 1.0 1.0 0.0
connect

Statistics

To activate statistics, set the draw_stats variable to 1:

draw_stats 1

This will draw the following statistics on the right side of the screen:

fps	average framerate, frames per second
tris	number of triangles
quads	number of quads
net	average network traffic, bytes per second

The framerate is capped at around 1000 frames per second.

Configuration files

Variables marked with the 'A' flag will be archived. Their values will be loaded from and saved to the configuration files. The dedicated server reads its configuration from server.cfg, the client will use client.cfg. Keyboard binds will be saved to binds.cfg. Game settings will be saved to game.cfg.

On UNIX systems you can find these files in the directory ~/.osirion/base.

If you delete these files, the default configuration will be restored.

Dedicated server

By default, the dedicated server will accept incoming connections on UDP port 8042. The server console is available if ncurses support was enabled at compile time.

If you have trouble connecting, try editing the server configuration file server.cfg and change the net_server variable to the server's actual IP address. The default listening port can be altered by changing the net_port variable.

Command line

Both the client and the dedicated server can parse command line options. Any console command can be added to the command line with + sign.

To start a client and connect to a remote server:

osirion +connect remote.server.org

To start a client and create a new network game:

osirion +set sv_private 1 +connect +join

To start a dedicated server and set the server name to My Osirion Server:

osiriond +set sv_name My Osirion Server

Note: setting variables from the command line can result in weird values being written to client.cfg and server.cfg. If you run into problems, check those files or delete them.

Note for windows32 users

On windows32, the game uses the home subdirectory as your personal directory. For example, the client.ini can be found as home\base\client.ini.

There is also a problem that prevents the game from creating directories. If you need any subdirectories like screenshots in your personal folder, you will have to create it manually.