How did people browse through multiplayer servers in the early 90s?

[Anonymous No.8688135]

[Anonymous No.8688146]

They didn't. You typed in your friend's phone number.

[Anonymous No.8688153]

[Anonymous No.8688185]

>>8688135
With a GUI.

[Anonymous No.8688338]

>>8688135
Dwango.

[Anonymous No.8688343]

Did someone say Dwango?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpajTaDPlUI

[Anonymous No.8688358]

>>8688338

[Anonymous No.8688398]

>>8688135
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_(software)

[Anonymous No.8688403]

Spent a lot of time tying up the phone line with my friend in high school.

[Anonymous No.8688438]

>>8688358
based

[Anonymous No.8688893]

>>8688403
I always liked this one better than Doom. I discovered the shareware in 1994 and my mother ordered the game for me when it became available in early 1995. I played this a lot with and against my father and my brother. My father set up a network in our house around 1993, with proper cabling from basement to roof and everything. We had 4 machines connected in the house by early '95. Mine, my brother's and father's and a file server. We later played games like C&C Tiberian Dawn and Duke Nukem 3D. Over the year another 3 machines, my mother's PC, a mail server and a web server came into the network. Also the change away from IPX to TCP/IP in maybe 1998-ish.
Nice memories. I moved out in 2002. My dad died in 2012. The house was demolished in 2018.

Thank you for reading my blog

[Anonymous No.8688906]

>>8688135
I envy everyone who lived through those years. I never had internet until 2005 and by then Doom was practically dead. Nowadays it's all mods, complex doom invasion and MegaMan nigger shit.

[Anonymous No.8689552]

>>8688893
it must have been uncomfortably warm in that room with everything running

[Anonymous No.8689570]

>>8688893
That sounds so awesome. My dad hated me playing doom and knew nothing about pcs and worked outside. You were living my dream back then dude. Fuck.

[Anonymous No.8689629]

>>8688135

partially off topic, but in 1996 quake (pre quakeworld days) server in Brazil were pretty much a mouth to mouth advertising.

discovering a new server was almost discovering a new community, because those often didnt knew about the existence of the other, and many were very reserved anyway.

most games pre quake era mostly didnt had a dedicated server or matchmaking model, so you had to "set up" a private match among people you set to play with, and play only with them. (as in, nobody else can join before or after, in a rudimentary p2p model)

the closest thing (as some already pointed) is that doing matchmaking paid services were a thing back then, paid service and all. (See dwango for doom, ten for duke3d, etcetera)

the main developer into "doing a game with matchmaking built-in and free of charge" was blizzard, creating the network known as battle.net.

it was a very big deal back then, you could just "install starcraft and play", hassle free, without recurring fees and over the internet.

[Anonymous No.8689816]

>>8688135
With the game's stock netplay options, you'd use something like a LAN, TCP/IP, etc, and there were no standing servers you could just drop into, someone has to be the host and others have to be hosted. However, this would fairly quickly change.

Services such as "Dial-up Wide-Area Network Game Operation" (DWANGO) became basically official products with the launch of Heretic and Doom 2 (the former giving you a free timed demo as a sample). DWANGO would let anyone who wanted to to sign on to host a server of their own, provided they made an investment in requisite hardware, and then that server would be open to anyone who wanted to connect to it. Generally you would connect to servers in your area for best performance, but you could seek out other places if you felt there weren't enough people near you playing.

DWANGO had neat stuff like official levels made for this kind of multiplayer, some which were really good and remain liked by deathmatchers today (even if the crowd is much smaller in this day and age).

>>8688403
ANON, I NEED TO MAKE A PHONECALL!

[Anonymous No.8689820]

>>8688906
By 2006 I was roaming around the still very lively ZDaemon. Haven't looked at that place in maybe, a decade, maybe more, but I guess go give it a look sometime, might still be people there.
It can't run any Brutal Doom or Complex Doom stuff, so there'll be none of those servers.

[Anonymous No.8689821]

>>8688146
fpbp
By the mid-90s you had some fledgling gaming networks and in the late 90s there was battle.net, but before that it was all manual/ad hoc.

[Anonymous No.8689841]

Gamespy

[Anonymous No.8690107]

I remember jerking off with so many other people in those days. We would all describe how much piss we were generating and someone would be the designated shitter who had to give us all the brown mess we wanted. Came so hard I accidently clogged up my pentiums. Everyone was so worried when I suddenly disconnected as I shit my load. Took me a whole year to replace that cum soaked machine. By then you had battle.net and it just wasn't the same thrill. Like going from ham radio to cellular service. Too impersonal.

[Anonymous No.8691147]

Playing Doom over LAN while drunk was fucking amazing..

[Anonymous No.8691449]

>>8688135
I used to dial into a multi user BBS and direct message ever user that was online to see if they wanted to play a DOOM 2 death match. Sometimes one would reply and so "Ok, sounds cool. How do I do that?" and I'd tell him how to set it up and he'd call my modem or I'd call his modem and we'd deathmatch 1 on 1. If I played with someone, I'd communicate with them on the BBS to play more games. Later, I found out about this system these guys setup where they had 4 player DOOM via modem, I forget how I found out when they were playing but I'd dial into them and play from time to time.

[Anonymous No.8691963]

>>8688153

>daddy was a Novell engineer
>both my cousins were visiting from Cali
>dad knows this so he brings home 3 clunky desktops from his office
>sets up shitty home network
>tells me, my two cousins, and random friend to come inside
>see duke nukem screen on all 4 computers
>played death match and co-op for like 4 hours
>still remember how shocked I was seeing a red, blue, yellow, and green duke nukem Sprite at the same time

Love you and miss you dad d:'^)

[Anonymous No.8691969]

Same here anon >>8691963

Wish I saw your post before I posted mine >>8688893

90s home networks were comfy, glad your family got to experience it as well

[Anonymous No.8691979]

>>8690107

I see /vr/ is slowly becoming /v/

[Anonymous No.8692019]

>>8689816
>ANON, I NEED TO MAKE A PHONECALL!
During the 90s my parents ended up getting a 2nd phone line literally just because of that.

[Anonymous No.8692709]

>>8692019
Same. Helped avoid a lot of arguments and broken downloads back in the days before resuming downloads was a thing.
RIP to all the great dads mentioned in this thread. They're LAN partying with Terry Davis now.

[Anonymous No.8692957]

Posting old online multiplayer gameplay videos, please feel free to share more if you know of any.

https://youtu.be/EbtqM0yXEWQ
https://youtu.be/cTYLEqBwIPw
https://youtu.be/VbSMHtIO2eE
https://youtu.be/hIdukIfmjFM
https://youtu.be/it7PIARzQyo
https://youtu.be/IUgwf6eSYE0
https://youtu.be/gLU41-v16uw
https://youtu.be/-P3JGxBNUyM
https://youtu.be/-wgpXbywOr8
https://youtu.be/m47fDoFjNh0
https://youtu.be/plERxflYsxM
https://youtu.be/fIrTwZjxcQ8

[Anonymous No.8693924]

>>8688135
You used an external program to get a list of servers and what map/mode they were running, then you got the server's IP and manually typed it in while inside the game.

Most people just found a server or two that they liked (that ran the maps/game modes they liked , had other players that they got along with, and were near enough to them that the ping was relatively low) and stuck with them. This meant that people had to actually behave themselves since acting like a shithead would get you banned from the server.

It was the complete opposite of the modern matchmaking system where everyone is a colossal cunt because you'll never see any of those players again so who gives a shit if they don't like how you are acting

[Anonymous No.8694172]

>>8692957
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb_CJrj0TrY
I remember playing on i4games when it still had playerbase.

[Anonymous No.8694186]

>>8688893
cool blog, how do I subscribe?

[Anonymous No.8694293]

>>8693924
It really was a much more civilized time for online multiplayer. We need to Retvrn To Dwango

[Anonymous No.8694405]

>>8694293
I've never heard of Dwango. I *just* missed the cutoff for it, since my first multiplayer and serious time investment game was Diablo 1, which obviously had b.net. I remember seeing the multiplayer options and little me getting confused as to what IPX, TCP/IP, Direct Internet Connection meant. I was told to use Direct Internet Connection to play with people in the house, so I did.

Everything being P2P sucks for the reasons said here >>8693924. At least I still have Tribes 2, with the 20-30ish other people who still play it.

[Anonymous No.8694428]

>>8694172
Damn. Has anyone on /vr/ ever hosted a game night? That sounds like fun.

[Anonymous No.8694494]

>>8688893
RIP 10 years to your old man.


What did your dad/you do for a living? Something software related?

[Anonymous No.8694593]

>>8694405
>least I still have Tribes 2, with the 20-30ish other people who still play it.

Go on...

[Anonymous No.8695090]

>>8694428
/doom/ hosts some weekly Doom multiplayer, and occasionally some guys there host multiplayer for something else.

[Anonymous No.8695326]

>>8694593
https://tribesnext.com/
The main site. Has the server list, account creation, game/patch install, etc.

https://www.playt2.com/
This is the site for Discord PUB. The (essentially) only active server, so be nice!
Scroll down to the DOWNLOADS section. The immediate link in the INSTALL section for Tribes 2 Config points to the wrong URL. I'll tell the admin later when he's around and I'm not going to sleep.
>All-In-One Tribes 2 Config
Was made for new people. I've never used it, since it didn't exist, but I assume it's a good option.

If you want to do it manually, just go in order.
>Vanilla Tribes 2 GSI
>TribesNext Patch
>Mappacks
>TourneyNetClient Ver.2

Scripts
>All-In-One Script Pack
Has WAY more than what you need, but you don't need to use all of them.
http://www.chaingunned.org/sling/
Search for scripts if you know which script you want.

Personally, I don't use too many. I'm the oddball, I don't even use the voicepack. Most settings are adjusted in game from the bottom-left menu after logging in, settings->scripts. Some are adjsted in match like Interpolate. Use whatever you want, but at least use these:
>support
Required for scripts.
>cleanDSO
General cleanup to make the scripts run nice.
>Interpolate
Updates player positions accurately, rather than assuming you're on dialup and making player motions smooth but inaccurate. Uses MAGICAL NUMBERS which no one knows how it actually works (I've asked. Numerous times. No one knows what the numbers mean.)
Pick one. Try it. I'm using the first set.
5 25 0 0
4 20 0 0
3 15 0 0
4 7 1 0.2
3 15 1 0.2
>uberFoV
Adjust FOV.
>uberGotFlag
Tells you when you have the flag. You'll forget. Even with it I forget.

[Anonymous No.8695331]

>>8695326
Server: Discord PUB
There's 10 people on right now playing LAKRabbit at 2am EST. Personally, I'm going to sleep immediately after this post, which has already taken over an hour and a half.

I'd highly recommend forcing the Tribes 2 executable to use only 1 CPU core in advance, unless you love the sound of static randomly screeching into your headphones whenever you use the jetpack. I used ImageCFG on Windows 7x64. If I did it again, I'd probably use the BAT file option since I already use one to launch both AutoHotKey and T2 at the same time, so I can use my mouse side buttons; 4 and 5, in game.
https://tribesnext.com/forum/discussion/473/x/p1

Just remember to have fun! It's only game.
I assume the thread will exist for a while, so I'll check in if you have more questions.

[Anonymous No.8695338]

>>8695326
Fuck yeah, thanks for the info dude. I'll hit that shit up

[Anonymous No.8695538]

>>8695338
People tend to be on in the evenings and nights, EST. Look for activity then.