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Testing entities in Siege maps has a bit of a learning curve, since
to do it you have to set up a Siege server on your machine, as well
as a client, & not all of the steps seem to be very well explained.
Here I'll go through a Win95 system with Microsoft Dialup Networking
installed (msdun12), since that's what I had to work through, with
considerable assistance from the folks on the HexenWorld editing forum.
If you find different stuff, tell us about it.
InstallationFirst, you need to get the essential files, and install them, so if you haven't done all this, click on Shining Path's Essential Siege Files, and follow the instructions. Unfortunately, they involve playing with the registry, which some people are afraid to do, but what needs to be done is a lot safer and easier than driving a car, and anyway the registry is quite capable of trashing itself off its own bat, without any input at all from you, so think of this as the right time to learn to back it up.So you've done all that, and installed the HexenWorld client and server as well as the Siege mod, and now we come to the first problem, which is that the Siege installer sets up the server-starting command wrongly on the taskbar. It should be `hwsv +exec siege.cfg', while what the installer puts in says `-game Siege', which doesn't work (for some reason the server tries to load the wrong map). So you can fix that by first activating Start->Settings->Taskbar, then hit the Startmenu Programs tab, then the Advanced button, and now find the Hexen II|Siege folder on the taskbar, right click on the Siege server, hit the Properties button, and change the command line to specify `+exec siege.cfg' instead of `-game Siege' (some people also add `-heapsize 32000', I don't know if this makes any difference for testing). The server is just the ordinary HexenWorld server loading Siege data, there is some more information about it in the HexenWorld release notes html document that should have gotten dumped into your H2 directory when you installed the HexenWorld server.
Setting up and Connecting to the ServerNow you should be able to launch a server by double-clicking on the Siege Server line. When you do this a DOS window should appear and scroll past info about what map got loaded, what the IP number of the server is, and various other thing (mine finishes up by saying that it can't exec `server.cfg', and `needpass updated'). A sign that something has gone wrong is that various artifacts have fallen out of the map; this seems to be caused by not getting the `+exec siege.cfg' part right (one of my errors was to leave out the `.cfg'). Two useful commands to give it are `status' and `quit'. The siege.cfg file tells the server to look in the siege directory for maps and stuff, what map to load and various other stuff, so it's worth taking a look at (I'm guessing that if you put a 'server.cfg' file in your siege directory, you can override what siege.cfg says, haven't tried it but.So that's running, so now we need to connect to it. The tricky part here depends on how which TCP/IP (the networking protocol) is set up on your system. If you're using dialup networking (say, msdun12, which is what I'm using), very likely you'll be obtaining an IP # automatically when you connect to your ISP. In this case your Siege server will probably proclaim that its IP address is 0.0.0.0:26950 (that's what mine did, at any rate), and amazingly, what you then need to do when you fire up your Siege client is connect to 127.0.0.1:26950. OK so this makes no sense, don't look at me, I'm not responsible for it. At least the stuff after the colon is correctly proclaimed by the server on startup. Or your system might be specifying its own IP address (rather likely if you're using a network card), in which this will hopefully be proclaimed correctly when the server starts, and then you can just connect to that. You can look into this a bit more deeply by checking up on your TCP/IP settings. Fire up the Control Panel (Start->Settings->Control Panel) and click on the Network icon, then find your TCP/IP adapter, and click on the IP Address tab. You'll see one of two radio buttons checked, either `Obtain an IP address automatically', or `Specify an IP address'. The former case is the one where IP address you will connect to will be 127.0.0.1:26950, while in the latter case it will be whatever is specified in the IP Address window. If you're obtaining an IP Address automatically, but still not managing to connect to the server, something to try might be to push the other radio button and give yourself an Address like 1.1.1.1., restart your computer & fire everything up. The Siege server should announce 1.1.1.1:26950 as its IP Address, and connect to that. If it still doesn't work, there's something subtly odd about your networking setup, or you're making some incredibly stupid mistake (everyone does this sometimes), so ask some questions to the editing board, & keep trying. A Basic Testing MapNow you need to set up a minimal testing map. First you need Kor Skarn's Siege Guide, which gives general information about Siege maps, and lists the new Siege entities and rather considerable innovations in some of the old entities.Now we look at the minimal requirements for a functioning Siege map that you can play with entities in. In the first place, a Siege map needs to have three kinds of start spots in it, info_player_deathmatch (where people enter the map to begin with), info_player_attacker and info_player_defender, where players are respawned upon death. If the latter two don't exist, you can't even enter the map to look around (you seem to die immediately on entry, due to `blocked start spots' or something. So if you set up and enter your emerging map, you'll find that you can't use your weapon! To fix this, you need to provide attacker and defender teleports, as described in Kor Skarn's guide. Once you've passed through one of the teleports, your weapon will work, and you'll be able to interact with entities as appropriate for the role you've chosen. In a real Siege map there'd be an entry room, with teleports leading to attacker and defender barracks, but for testing it would probably be sensible to have all the stuff just sitting in one big room. You can test the architecture of a real Siege map by running it as an ordinary H2 map, but remember that to run it as a Siege map and test Siege entities, you have to set spawnflag 2 on the map's worldspawn entity! |