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 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 |
| space bar | toggle mouse control on or off |
| arrow left right up down | 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 |
| tab | kinetic impulse drive control |
| a d | strafe left/right |
| w s | afterburner/reverse |
| n | Select next target |
| shift+n | Select previous target |
| t | Open the chat window |
| print screen | screenshot |
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 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
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 |
| jump | active the hyperspace jump drive |
| impulse | active the kinetic impulse drive |
| who | list connected players |
This list is far from complete. The list_func function will print all available functions with a short description.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.