Odamex - Doomshack's Coop Rotation Server

I'm on an Odamex kick lately. I'm not sure if very many people know this, but Odamex is a surprisingly useful and powerful Doom multiplayer source port. It's very lightweight and economical, which is great for Doomer Boards, considering many of us are from different parts of the world. It also has some unique capabilities that most Doom source ports don't have. One part that is particularly awesome to me, is that Odamex has the ability to change what IWADs and PWADs it has loaded at any given time without exiting out of the game or disconnecting from the server. This means that multiplayer servers can host many different wads at once, and change to certain maps and wads without anyone getting disconnected or having to leave.

-- Odamex Cooperative Rotation Server --

Doomkid has taken full advantage of Odamex's wad loading capabilities with one of his Doomshack servers. The Doomshack Coop Rotation Server has been up for years and is available 24/7. This is one Odamex Server that is hosting many different classic Doom megawads and short episodes. Players can easily join this server and play cooperative doom on whatever wad they want (provided it is currently loaded in the maplist) just by connecting to the server and typing a few console commands. Instructions below:



Open up Odamex and type the server's IP address into the console. Once Odamex is open, you may type connect 45.33.41.203:16459 and press enter to connect to the server. Alternatively, you can also use a Doom server browser such as Doom Explorer to browse the server list to find the server yourself. The server title is "[Doomshack.org] Cooperative - PWAD Rotation"

If you don't have the wad that is currently loaded on the server, Odamex will proceed to download the wad from the server. A percent progress will display on the console. Although this works as intended, it's often slower than just downloading the wad through your web browser, so it's recommended that you point Odamex to your wad directory* instead of having to download the new wad every time you load a server that wants to play a different wad.



Once connected to the server, you can view the maps and wads loaded on the server's map list. In order to see what maps are available for vote, use the maplist command. Once entered, the maplist will print with an id # for each map. You will then be able to use the id # for the map to call a vote.



For example, If you wanted to play Alien Vendetta from the very beginning, scroll through the printed map list in the console using the pgup and pgdn keys. Once you find AV.WAD MAP01, there will be a number before it. Let's say it is 258. You may then type callvote map 258 to pull up a vote for Alien Vendetta. (If you're the only player on the server, this will load it instantaneously) If you don't feel like browsing the whole list for the id #'s, you can also vote for maps using the wad filename and map numbers. For instance, if maps 1-16 from MUTINY.WAD are on the server, you could use the command callvote map mutiny map02 to pull up a vote for Mutiny map02.

This is a pretty awesome system that makes loading up Cooperative Doom games real fast and easy. If you join, players browsing the servers through a Doom server browser may see you playing and join in. You may also use this thread to schedule any coop games you'd like to get going if you're looking to play with a friend. It's super fast and easy, and I'd highly recommend everyone to try it.


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(*) Setting Wad Directories in Odamex

The quickest and easiest way to get Odamex running is to have all the necessary wads loosely piled up in your Odamex folder. This isn't a very 'neat' way of handling things, as you'll likely have many duplicates of the same files floating around your computer. A much cleaner way to do it is to simply tell Odamex what specific folders to look in to find your wads.

Start by opening up the folder that you have Odamex installed in. Inside the folder should be a .cfg file called odamex.cfg. Open this using Notepad. Somewhere about 3/4ths of the way towards the bottom of the text is a line:

// Allow custom WAD directories to be specified
set "waddirs"

The syntax is a little weird, but this is how it works. If your wads are stored in the filename path "C:\DOOM\WADS\" then you will enter it as seen below. Enter a space after set "waddirs" and input the folder filepath. Remove the "C:" portion of the filename path, and use two backslashes between every folder in the path. At the very end of the path, add a third backslash and a semicolon. Then surround the entire entry in quotation marks.

// Allow custom WAD directories to be specified
set "waddirs" "\\DOOM\\WADS\\\;"

If you have multiple wad folders, such as "C:\DOOM\WADS\" and "C:\DOOM\GZDOOM\WADS\" then enter it as follows. The second folder is entered after the semicolon of the first folder, with no spaces in between. Both folders are surrounded in one set of quotation marks.

// Allow custom WAD directories to be specified
set "waddirs" "\\DOOM\\WADS\\\;\\DOOM\\GZDOOM\\WADS\\\;"