vb pointed this server out to me last week:

QW: 150.101.153.18:27507

It runs Quake Mission Pack #2. It is also laggy as hell for me because the server is in Australia and I am in the US.

Just trying the server .. after the map/model/sound downloads complete ... makes one marvel at the possibilities.

Of course, a server running single player maps without custom models, only the map would download. 

seems like installing a map and typing "map blah" isn't much harder than finding a server and typing "connect blah." Voting for maps can't be any easier than typing "map blah," either. Oh, and if you're that much of a noob, you probably don't have a QW client installed, either.

However, ignoring the "noob-friendly" angle for a second, the idea of having some permanent COOP servers with a bunch of custom SPQ maps on them is pretty cool. 

I dare hope people who still play quake are smart enough to quickly find out online how to load maps...

Having sp maps on servers might help them getting played by more dm oriented people who aren't really interested in sp maps to start with though, which can't be a bad thing. 

this notion sounds like user-friendliness was synonymous with dummy-compability.
copying maps to the right destination and running them isn't that hard - besides it works similar in almost all fps games, there are heaps of faqs and it's even explained in most text files coming along with the maps. if people are to lazy to read (or do a simple google search), they can't be helped anyway.
and if people find typing "map x" too exhausting, they are free to use some launcher program, like http://paul.fov120.com/qlp.html .

some coop severs running custom maps would be great, indeed. (though i must admit i haven't checked yet if there are). one problem might be that most modern maps do not really support coop, at least not in an appropriate way, i believe. 

You could have a small service running on your computer that handled a new protocol, (like http, it could be qglp (Quake Game Launch Protocol) or something.) that would contain information about what mod a map is for (id1, rogue, zer etc), the map name, a server the map can be downloaded from, maybe a little string of what it requires from the engine (skybox support, .lit support, etc) and so on.

Websites would then use these urls to let users launch a map just by clicking on a link. The service would check if the user already has the map, if not it would download it from the server into the correct maps directory and wait for user confirmation to launch the game (would suck if the game suddenly started by itself while you were out on the loo or something).

Example:
qglp://id1/hdn/skybox+lit/ republika.pl/quake_1/hdn.zip
Launches Ankh's map in a engine that supports skyboxes and .LIT.

Of course a lot of details would have to be figured out, like how it would handle using different progs, and where to get the mod resources, and also what to do with commercial resources (rogue, hipnotic).
Several conventions would have to be agreed upon, and I know the Quake community is pure shit with agreeing upon conventions.

An interesting idea though... 

> user-friendliness was synonymous with dummy-
> compability

This isn't so much of an issue of superiority. It is more an issue of exposure and accessibility.

1. Most people ARE lazy.
2. Most multiplayer types scoff at singleplayer ... "Single player? *laff* What's that?"

I did do a lot of homework in that first post, there are ..

#1 exactly 3 coop servers in the whole world according to quakeservers.net
#2 The RQ mod mentioned in the first post can run standard coop and it deals with insufficient spawn points by spawning the player somewhere else, so not having multiple spawn points on a map isn't an issue with that mod.

And, as any custom dm mapper will attest to, Quakeworld map download makes playing new maps very easy.

The typical server costs about $4 per player per month last time I checked.

Oldest rule of thumb in Quake:

"You can get a player to connect to a server, but you can't get them to download a map."

There are about 200 idle Quakeworld servers at any given point in time because they are mostly run the same thing.

> there are heaps of faqs and it's even
> explained in most text files coming along
> with the maps

Half the players out there are too lazy to even register for FilePlanet. In fact, I've seen many a mapper bitch that a map is hosted by FilePlanet and they don't want to register.

In all fairness, if there are mappers that are "too lazy to register for FilePlanet" it is a little unkind to have a higher standard for non-mappers. 

Steam already uses this for launching games:
You can click a link like
steam://purchase/220
which will open steam and ask you to purchase Half-Life 2.

I think it's something like
steam://launch/220
to launch games. 

I won't be posting in thread again. I did some research and wanted to present the information and about 96% of what it takes is in that first post.

I don't want you guys to feel like an external influence is trying to get you to do something.

I like your work a great deal. Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves.

[ /me exits the building ] 

I don't think it has as much to do with being lazy, but rather not wanting to sign up. 

though i don't really get what you meant by some mappers being too lazy to register at fileplanet.
(anyhow, fileplanet isn't a valid source for quake1 stuff anymore)

the autodownload in qw is a neat thing, indeed, but what sucks about it is that text (and additional) files are missing from the maps then.
this would also be the case with coop servers.

in this respect, czg's idea is very good. it somewhat reminded of the mpq3 (or whatever it was called) plugin that was listing a lot of information about q3 servers, such as map, settings and players, and could also join the game with only one mouse click. of course, it didn't have any advanced download/string features. 

One small catch is that the QW protocol limits the number of edicts or something (?) but the result is that larger maps such as czg07 won't load in QW without a modified progs.

Baker, were you suggesting that Rune Quake has coop ability? If it's actively maintained, does that mean the maintainers would be willing to add support for huge maps?