Intro

What does the portal do for Quake? What IS the portal?

The Portal lets you throw up maps and/or any ThreeWave supported gametypes so people can walk through teleporters and vote for their favourite games.

Okay, but how does that work in the game?

More specifically, everyone spawns in a small chamber. Around them is a number of portals (between 8 and 64 depending on the map). Each one has a graphic of a map on it.

Once the first player jumps through, a timer starts counting down. The player ends up in a 'minigame', which is a goofy interpretation of the rules of Quake in a small room. This should be chaotic.

When that timer runs out, if the gametype voting is to happen, everyone is spawned into the backend of the space station where they vote for their favourite mode of play.

Then the map ends as quickly as possible and the real map comes up in it's place.

Quickstart

I just installed ThreeWave CTF and I want to run a quick and dirty portal server for a LAN, how do I get up and running real fast?

ThreeWave CTF ships with two premade portal configs. Do your normal server config parameters, but append +exec portal.cfg for the CTF portal or +exec dm-portal.cfg to your string.

I want to rip out the ability to vote for a specific gametype, but I like map voting. What do I change in the config file?

Set p_gameTypeVote to 0 in the aforementioned config. Then set p_defaultGametype to your preferred game. The list of supported types is as follows:

• 0 - Free For All
• 1 - Tournament (one on one)
• 3 - Team Deathmatch
• 4 - ThreeWave CTF
• 9 - CaptureStrike
• 10- Classic CTF

Using the portal for more than Capturing Flags

I've heard that the ThreeWave portal is good for more than just choosing CTF games. What is the extent of it's massive powers?

Cough. Well, you can throw any map you want in for voting on the portal. As soon as you change a single console variable and type map_restart on the server, everyone on the server will see the new graphic.

Make sure everyone on the server is likely to have the map! If they don't, they will get disconnected (or auto download) if it gets voted in.

The same thing applies for gametypes. You can mix and match the possible gametypes that you can vote for.

I want to run a portal server with custom maps. How do I do this?

Relatively simple. When you would normally type 'map <mapname>' on the server to load a map, you would add it to your portal config file in a different fashion. There are 64 portal variables named p_portalMap01 through p_portalMap64. Each one represents a portal, and you can change one of them to the name of your new map (sans '.bsp').

Note that if the particular portal that you're playing on has less than 64 portals, some of the p_portalMap console variables will be irrelevant to your players.

For example, adding q3tourney6 to the 12th portal would be done like this:

p_portalMap12 "q3tourney6"

Okay, that's maps, but how do I change the gametypes?

There are five gametype portals. The console variables that apply to them (see above) are p_gtPortal01 through p_gtPortal05. Set these to -1 to disable each one, or to one of the gametype values above. For example:

seta p_gtPortal01 "-1" // Disabled
seta p_gtPortal02 "4"  // CTF
seta p_gtPortal03 "9"  // CaptureStrike
seta p_gtPortal04 "10" // Classic CTF 
seta p_gtPortal05 "-1" // Disabled

Removing Maps

I have somewhat negative feelings towards a map. How do I remove one from being votable?

In the true nature of democracy, you can pre-emptively deny the winning of a map. The best way of doing this is to throw a big 'X' over the map so people know it was there, and they can't vote now. You can do that by adding to a comma separated list known as p_disablePortalList. Say you wanted to disable p_portalMap three, fifty and twelve:

p_disablePortalList "03,50,12"

How come some halls are blocked in the 64 portal map?

If no portals in a hallway are activated with a p_portalMap## console variable, the hallway is blocked to save the time of those who would wander in.

Customizing the Portal Experience Further

I noticed there is a random portal. How does it work and how can I remove/add it?

The random portal ships enabled. Every user who goes through it will vote for a random map that is enabled on the server at that time. Every user will also be voting for the SAME random map.

Use the console variable p_randomPortal to enable or disable the random portal.

How do I change how long a minigame plays for?

p_voteSeconds is the number of seconds. This defaults to sixty.

How do I disable the portal altogether?

Use p_enablePortal 0, and you can have your map rotation back.

Callvoting and other means of getting around

Does the portal have to come back after every map?

Right now, the portal comes back after every map for another vote. We are looking into additional methods for possible future releases.

I want to callvote a map, but I can't. How do I callvote a map?

You callvote a map by turning the portal off with p_enablePortal 0. Or else, you can callvote portal from the menu to go back to the portal immediately.

I'm at the server console. How do I bring the server back to the portal?

Type vstr GotoPortal, and it will load. This is similar to typing vstr nextmap when the portal isn't loaded and you have a map rotation like a normal server.

 
< Back   -   Forth >