QuestNet Server allows you to host your own online multiplayer adventure games.
As well as this page, you should also read Making Multiplayer Games For QuestNet Server and QuestNet Logins.
QuestNet Server is available in three editions, each supporting a maximum number of users who can connect at any one time. The Lite edition comes free with Quest, and is limited to three users. In addition, only one copy of the Lite edition may be run at any one time. This limitation does not apply to the other editions.
QuestNet Server Home Edition is included free with Quest Pro.
| Edition | Users | Price | Order |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lite | 3 |
included with Quest |
|
| Home | 30 |
free with Quest Pro |
|
| Pro | 1000 | $99.95 | Order |
Prices are in US Dollars and are subject to change. Please see the website for full up-to-date ordering information.
QuestNet Server allows several players to connect to your computer and play an adventure game of your choosing all together. The adventure game may be created by you, or you may have downloaded it from somewhere else, and the game could take any form, just as a single-player Quest game can.
Programming a QuestNet game is very similar to programming a Quest game. For information on programming your own QuestNet game, see Making Multiplayer Games For QuestNet Server. To start with, you should try the QuestNet server with the supplied ARENA.ASL file, which is a very basic demonstration of QuestNet's features.
To set up a game as a multi-player game, start QuestNet Server. Click "Load a game" and find the game you want to run on the server, and then click the "Go" button.
The main window will now load, and, depending on how the game is written, you may see a welcome message, or no message at all.
The first thing you should do is to test the game on your own system. Start Quest and select the Network tab. Use the host name localhost or 127.0.0.1 to connect to your own system. Make sure the port numbers are the same - it's advisable to leave the port set to 10001, although you may want to change this if you want to run multiple QuestNet Servers on the same machine. You do not need to be connected to the internet if you are just testing a game on your own system.
You should now be able to connect to yourself to test the QuestNet game, which should behave in a similar way to a Quest game.
If you want to test multiple users at once, simply start up another copy of Quest and connect to localhost again.
As users connect, disconnect and type commands, you should be able to monitor what is taking place on the QuestNet window. You can view player information and disconnect any player from here by selecting them from the list and clicking "Info" or "Disconnect" accordingly.
Telnet is the standard way for players to connect to MUDs etc, and it is supported with QuestNet via the included Telnet Adaptor, ADAPTOR.EXE. This allows pretty much anybody with an internet connection to play games on a QuestNet Server, although there are a number of limitations due to the nature of Telnet - there are no friendly menus or text formatting for example.
The Telnet Adaptor is basically a Telnet proxy which accepts connections via Telnet and passes them on to QuestNet server. It filters the output from QuestNet Server so players will only see text that's meant for them (and not formatting codes etc.), and it buffers text entered until players press the Enter key, which allows commands to be entered through Telnet.
By default it listens on the default Telnet port 23, and you can just run it and leave it there, with QuestNet running on its usual port. You can set the adaptor up and leave it, even if you shut down QuestNet a lot, because the adaptor will make a fresh connection for each user. This also means you can start up the adaptor before or after starting QuestNet - whenever you like. If you want to, you can run several copies of the adaptor at once on several Telnet ports, all connected to the same or different QuestNet ports.
Known issues with the Telnet Adaptor:
When you're ready for real users to connect to you, all you need to give them is your IP address (and the port number, if you've changed it from the default 10001). To find out your IP address, make sure you're connected to the internet. Then:
If you have a dialup connection, and with many broadband connections, your IP address will change (either every time you connect, or every few days). Rather than find out your IP address each time, you can get yourself a static DNS name from several places. This will let you give out an address, such as "yourname.dyndns.org", instead of your IP address. A piece of software on your machine can then regularly update this address so that it always resolves to your current IP address.
Here are a few websites where you can sign up for a static DNS name:
Quest can accept qnet:// URLs. These can appear on webpages, and when clicked, Quest will load (if installed of course!) and, after prompting for the player's name, will connect to the server. This provides a really simple way for you to give out the address of your server. The URLs allow you to specify the host name, and, optionally, a port (if not the default 10001). They take the following syntax:
qnet://Host Name[:Port]
For example:
qnet://yourname.dyndns.org qnet://myserver.no-ip.com:10005
You can put these links into webpages in the usual way. For example, here is some HTML code that will connect you to the QuestNet Server running on localhost (i.e. your machine, if you have QuestNet Server running):
<a href="qnet://localhost">Connect to QuestNet Server on localhost</a>
And this is what it looks like - try it!
Connect to QuestNet Server on localhost
If you have your QuestNet server online often, please send an email to alex@axeuk.com if you want to be added to a list of regularly available QuestNet servers. If you are regularly running one game on the server, or have a web page with information on what games you run on the server, please send those details also.