The Osirion Project - User manual

Client

Starting the client will show the loader screen. To start the game, open the client console with the ~ key and type connect. 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:

~ toggle console
V switch between track, cockpit and free view
space bar toggle mouse control on or off
left right up down arrow rotate camera in free view
keypad left right up down steer the ship left/right/up/down
keypad / * roll left/right
keypad + - increase/decrease forward thruster
T open the chat window
print screen screenshot

Mouse

If mouse control is on, you can use it to steer your vessel in track or cockpit view, or to rotate the camera in free view.

If mouse control is disabled, you can temporarily enable it again by pressing the left mouse button.

Use the scroll wheel to increase/decrease thruster.

Mouse buttons can also be configured through the bind command.

Console functions

The following commands are always available on the console:

connect connect the client to the game module
disconnect disconnect the client from the game module
list_ent list registered entities
list_func list registered functions
list_model list registered models
list_var list registered variables
quit exit the application
r_restart restart the video subsystem

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

join join the game
spectate spectate
buy purchase a new ship
who list connected players

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
r_restart

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 frames per second tris number of triangles drawn quads number of quads drawn tx network upstream traffic, in kilobytes rx network downstream traffic, in kilobyte

The fps counter will not show values above 9999.

Configuration

Variables marked with the 'A' flag will be archived, their value will be written to the configuration file on exit. The dedicated server reads its configuration from server.cfg, the client will use client.cfg. Keyboard binds will be saved to binds.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 os 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 framerate to 30 frames per second:

osiriond +set sv_framerate 30

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 in your personal folder, like screenshots, you will have to create it manually.