The Devoblog

April 13, 2008, 19:57:54

The latest SVN revision brought a big change in Odamex: Spectator mode. Of course, spectator mode isn't a new thing in multiplayer Doom ports. But for Odamex, this is a great step closer to being the ultimate open-source cross-platform multiplayer Doom port of your dreams.

Of course it doesn't work right yet. There are still a few tweaks and nuances that are being worked out. (more about it here) Like Manc's previous news post, this revision (567) is a crucial update for those running development versions of Odamex.

Few key pointers with the spectator:
- Clients can use the "spectate" and "join" commands to... well... spectate and join. Pressing the use key while spectating also let's you join.

- Servers have two new cvars, "globalspectatorchat" and "maxactiveplayers". When globalspectatorchat is disabled, spectators can only chat with each other. Perfect for those tournament matches. Maxplayers now counts for both spectators and players. Maxactiveplayers only counts players in-game. (Example: "maxplayers 16" and "maxactiveplayers 8" can trigger 8-man ffa with a total of 8 leftover spectators)

Complete spectator support will be available in v0.4, whenever that's done.

Also keep in mind that THIS WILL NOT WORK WITH 0.3!

April 13, 2008, 20:40:55

I think it's also fair to note that any of the above could change before the next stable release.  0.4 aims to (finally) unify and solidify many of our own protocols, properties and methods.

April 13, 2008, 21:24:39

I like making long cvars =P

April 14, 2008, 14:10:38

Oops... I kind of... crashed the server playing around with it. :(

April 14, 2008, 14:15:45

If you crashed a server that is supposed to be compatible with spectator please post your findings to the relevant bug in the tracker

April 14, 2008, 15:14:16

done, bug 410