ET Linux: A Newbie's Guide to XQF

(patchouli) #1

Searching the forums for “xqf” returns zero hits. Whoops. I figure if it’s bad to speak of such things, the admins will take this down.

Hi.

If you want an alternative way of joining games or finding your friends, have a look here. Your Windows-based counterparts have a lot of utilities for this kind of thing; linux has but a few. qstat + XQF is one.

XQF is X11 Quake Front-End, well, as a frontend for qstat running on X. :slight_smile: This guide assumes you meet all the prerequisites. Most distros will by default.

Right to it, then?

  1. What is XQF? This should explain it.
    http://www.linuxgames.com/xqf/features.html#screenshots

As a normal user, do the following: (You do not need to be root.)

  1. download qstat source
    http://www.qstat.org/qstatdl.html

  2. extract and compile
    tar zxvf qstat25c.tar.gz && cd qstat25c && make

  3. download XQF source
    http://www.linuxgames.com/xqf/download.html

  4. extract and compile
    tar zxvf xqf-0.9.12.tar.gz && cd xqf-0.9.12 && ./configure && make

Do ONE of these:

6a) put the two executables in your personal bin dir, which should be in your path already
cp ~/xqf-0.9.12/src/xqf ~/bin && cp ~/qstat25c/qstat ~/bin

7a) make a desktop icon or panel launcher*, or menu entry for ~/bin/xqf
(probably have to enter it longhand: ie. /home/patchouli/bin/xqf)

OR

6b) make a directory to hold the stuff and copy the two executables there
mkdir ~/games/xqf && cp ~/xqf-0.9.12/src/xqf ~/games/xqf && cp ~/qstat25c/qstat ~/games/xqf

open up your favorite text editor and add these two lines:

[ul] #!/bin/sh
export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/games/xqf && $HOME/games/xqf &[/ul]

save this as ~/games/xqf/startxqf and make it executable
chmod u+x ~/games/xqf/startxqf

7b) make a desktop icon or panel launcher*, or menu entry for ~/games/xqf/startxqf
(probably have to enter it longhand: ie. /home/patchouli/games/xqf/startxqf)

  • The .xpm icon is in the base directory, ie. /home/patchouli/games/enemy-territory/ET.xpm

Configuring is pretty basic:

  1. Launch XQF. Choose Preferences, Games, and highlight Enemy Territory

    for Command Line, the location of the et symlink. (or the et.x86 executable)
    ie. /home/patchouli/et

    for Working Directory, the ET base directory location.
    ie. /home/patchouli/games/enemy-territory

    on the Options tab, make sure Master Protocol is set to 82.

8.1) (optional) clean up all that sidebar clutter
Choose the Appearance tab and check Show Only Configured Games

That’s it.

At this point you can delete the extracted source trees and/or the .gz’s

Using it is also pretty basic:

  1. Highlight “id” under Enemy Territory on the Source pane, and click Update.
    (patience - on a given day it’s 500-1500 servers)

  2. Make your first server filter. Click Server Filters, Configure. I’m sure you’re familiar with these kinds of options.

In case your intuitiveness has been killed by my boring instructions, the player filter colors can be used like:

Red = hate that guy / warring clan / impossible
Green = like that guy / clanmate / cupcake
Blue = know that guy / server admin / referee

And they can be combined: you can have a filter that looks for clanners from >QWERTY< on public servers running campaign mode railgun having some open slots and a low ping.

Have fun.

In your home directory there will be a .qf directory, where XQF keeps it’s datafiles. Also of paticular interest is the PreLaunch shell script. (read the XQF docs)

(weasel) #2

Or if you use debian, you can replace steps 1-6 with ‘apt-get install xqf’.

(HellToupee) #3

gota luv apt-get jus too bad debian isnt as fast as my mandrake, theres rpms for redhat/mandrake users out there for qstat and xqfmuch easyer.

(patchouli) #4

apt-get installs have to be done as root, and I don’t know where their sources.list is pointing or who compliled it. RPM installs also require root.

I’d feel wrong suggesting such blind faith for a silly little piece of code for Quake gaming.

HellToupee: not that this is general help forum but you can run apt on top of RPM distros; check out http://apt4rpm.sourceforge.net

(HellToupee) #5

ive got apt-get for rpm distro, it works but mandrakes urpmi is every bit as good as apt-get for rpm + it has a set of gui tools for urpmi. Apt-get is great in debian owing to the huge amount of packages and userbase.

(wouter) #6

As for the apt-getting: it doesn’t work for the stable tree as it doesn’t show ET yet in the game list. It might have to be a versioning thing then. I’ll deinstall and try the unstable tree or testing.

/edit:
This works perfectly, lemme quickly tell how.
For the newbies in debian:
cd /etc/apt
vi sources.list (or any editor)
edit the lines there that say stable and replace that with testing
apt-get update
apt-get install xqf

And you’re done with the latest version WITH et in it :wink:

Remember to edit sources.list back to stable and run apt-get update after that!!!

(g00se) #7

Wow…Thanks patchouli! :banana:

I always wondered if there was an app out there for this on the Linux platform…and well…now I know. :drink:

(HellToupee) #8

nar nar what u really want is to keep using unstable/sid :slight_smile:

(wouter) #9

It rox… a lot!! Yet has still one or two things that can be better:
Server filter --> should be “bindable” on a particular game, as in “Only apply to <list of games>”
Buddy list --> in a window so you immediately see who’s online

But the rest: really nice ! Especially the buddy filter where you would just put a tag in and it will look for all players with that tag… no endless people adding :slight_smile:

(g00se) #10

I went ahead and intalled it this evening…so I thought I would post a screenie. Thanks again for the detailed instructions. : )

(Spooksta) #11

Just got Ubuntu working and ET works find from its built in server brouser on my clans ip but when i try to join through QXF i get missmatch between client error from ET server.
Any ideas please.
btw Does the same on anyserver but ok through ET brouser

(jaybird) #12

<3 yum.