Unreal protocol idea

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Zur

Zur

surrealistic mad cow
Jul 8, 2002
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Here's a stray idea that crossed my mind.

A few people have two or more games using the unreal protocol style links and the windows registry is always set to launch whatever the last Unreal series game that was installed.

Why not simply have an application that handles these links instead :p ? You could add a bit of information on what game should be launched and have the application strip the url of that information before finally launching the game.
 
Sir_Brizz

Sir_Brizz

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Staff member
Feb 3, 2000
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the problem with this idea is that the Unreal:// links are always the same for U1, UT, UT2003, and for XMP (when it comes out). It would either have to be hardcoded into the game OR it could be an application that brought up a game selector window (that was configurable) and you choose which game you want that link to open. That would be nice.
 
Zur

Zur

surrealistic mad cow
Jul 8, 2002
11,708
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Yes, and this cannot be changed and, having done a search on the web, I've realized that the unreal protocol is defined as a standard so you can't really mess around by adding parameters to the url. I think a game selection window would be the best way to go about things :) .
 
Zur

Zur

surrealistic mad cow
Jul 8, 2002
11,708
8
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Just adding little bump to this thread as I think the idea is worthwhile. Imo, such an app would be a very handy utility for anyone who's into the Unreal series.
 
Zur

Zur

surrealistic mad cow
Jul 8, 2002
11,708
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Hi El_Muerte, sorry for the bump but I wanted to get some feedback from someone who seems to be well informed on the subject.

I suspected that such a launcher exists but noone seems to have heard of such a program. I would be greatful if someone could help me locate it so I can inform other people of it's existence.
 
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PurplePants

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Sep 24, 2003
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Ummm... the problem is you click an unreal:// link and want the correct game to fire up, right? Why not have the app (that starts the game) interrogate the server at the end of that link to figure out what game needs running?
 
Sir_Brizz

Sir_Brizz

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because it would be a coding nightmare....or marvel depending on how you look at it ;)
 
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PurplePants

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Sep 24, 2003
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Depends on what language/tools you use. At a pinch you could spawn qstat and let that do the dirty work, but the hard part is only sending a UDP query and waiting for either a response or a timeout. In fact, this app would be much simpler than most similar ones since there's a specific string you're looking for and you can ignore everything else - instead of doing real parsing of the reply you just scan for 'version' and see what comes after that.
 
Zur

Zur

surrealistic mad cow
Jul 8, 2002
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Where would one find this information ? I mean is there a document somewhere that explains how the in and outs of servers :p ? Also, I wonder what version numbers Unreal 2 os going to adopt since UT2003 is considered as a 'later' version of UT.

P.S: I'd favour an initial version that assumes the user knows what type of server he's connecting to.
 
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emailer33

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May 23, 2002
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yes there is, i believe it's at unreal.epicgames.com . to query a UT server on the default 7778 would be pretty easy, that's the defualt for ut and ut2003, dunno about other games.
 
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PurplePants

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Sep 24, 2003
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Fearless said:
Where would one find this information ?
Click to expand...
Good question :)

http://unreal.epicgames.com/IpServer.htm

About half way down that ("Inside UdpServerQuery") is the relevant info, but it's just an overview of what it's about. The protocol is a Gamespy one, so used by lots of other games as well as UT.

Briefly, for your purposes, you send "\basic\" to the server query port (7778 is the default) and you get back something like: "\gamename\unreal\version\436\location\Alaska\". Any UT game will return 'unreal' and the version should tell you which one it is (albeit via some lookup table you've made to correlate engine versions to UT variations).

Qstat is a DOS app that will interrogate various servers and return info about them using the Gamespy protocol. Perusing the source of that app will turn up info about other games:

http://www.qstat.org/

The actual Gamespy protocol specification is hard to find for some reason. A quick google turned up this link:

http://www.gdconf.com/archives/2000/gamespy.doc

You might want to save that in a safe place :)
 
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Zur

Zur

surrealistic mad cow
Jul 8, 2002
11,708
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Thanks for the links Purplepants :D . Hmmm, I wish I was able to develop applications with a graphical interface. As it is, my knowledge is limited to programming in C on Suse Linux :p .
 
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