Re: mvdsv, a QuakeWorld server (ITP: #862954)

On Mon, 06 Jun 2022 at 18:54:17 +0200, Lee Garrett wrote:
> mvdsv is a Quakeworld server, and will be the first one packaged in
> Debian.

It's entirely possible that some of our Quake servers are Quakeworld
rather than NetQuake servers already: I hadn't really intended to
distinguish between protocol variants in any systematic way when I set up
the mini-policy. If mvdsv can accept (and maybe ignore) the parameters
"-dedicated", "-basedir DIR" and optionally "-hipnotic" or "-rogue",
and run some sort of server for some sort of Quake-ish client, then it's
a perfectly acceptable quake-engine-server alternative: I didn't intend
quake-engine-server to imply that the server is fully compatible with
the original Quake netcode, only that it's a server for the Quake game
(as opposed to, I don't know, Nexuiz or something).

quakespasm and darkplaces use different directories (~/.quakespasm and
~/.darkplaces respectively) so it already matters which one you're using.
I think whether it uses NetQuake protocol or Quakeworld protocol or some
other incompatible protocol on its listening port is another reasonable
axis of variation between quake-engine-server implementations, and I
suspect quakespasm and darkplaces-server are already incompatible in
this way.

I think this is what we have at the moment:

* quakespasm (no dedicated server executable, but the client can be run
  as a dedicated server)
  - apparently supports NetQuake (-protocol 15), FitzQuake (-protocol 666)
    and RMQ (-protocol 999) protocols, if that's any help...

* darkplaces (has a dedicated server)
  - appears to support protocol 15 (NetQuake), 28 (QuakeWorld) and a whole
    pile of Darkplaces-specific protocol numbers, but not FitzQuake or RMQ
    that I can see (and I don't know which one is the default)

* ezquake (client only?)

> Once it's in unstable I intend to make changes to game-data-packager to
> produce a quakeworld-server package that ships a systemd unit, similar
> to how it's done for quake-server.

I think making it easier to choose an engine per instance of the instanced
systemd unit is probably a better solution than separating Quakeworld
from everything else, even if you think it's going to be common to run
both NetQuake and Quakeworld servers on the same machine.

    smcv