but whats the easiest way of playing deathmatch Q1 online?

I always look at, er, Quakeworld, or whatever, and cant see where the action actually is...

I get a bit sick of the UT2004 demo !

(It is a good demo, but I fancy Quake for a change) 

Years and years ago, it was Quakeworld launching from a copy of GameSpy/QuakeSpy. Not sure what the kids are using these days though. 

If you are in the USA you will have to play NetQuake I guess.
If you are european (or with a decent connection to eu) it's QuakeWorld. There are some ffa servers that always have players (xs4all and that russian one). http://www.quakeworld.nu

http://www.quakeservers.net 

Get a copy of a Quakeworld client you like (or at least can tolerate). Zquake is or at least was the Quakeworld equivalent of FitzQuake, but I'm not sure if it is still being maintained. FuhQuake is tolerable once you disable almost all of the bullshit "improved" effects and such.

Anything else is probably to be avoided (be careful of stuff like ezquake and nquake which are supposed to make it easier/better to play QW online... they come with so many spectacularly shit new effects, textures, models, etc etc that it really just isn't Quake anymore (and no, it's not better :))

Once you've got it configured, go to quakeservers.net, and in the menu on the left, go to QUAKEWORLD page and select "with players". You'll get a list sorted by country of all the active servers (with players).

Copy the address/ip, go back to your Quakeworld client and type "connect whatever" where whatever is the server name/ip. 

Well, I checked the Zquake page and it seems it's still going strong. I haven't tried the latest versions, but I can hope and assume this is still a solid choice. Go here:

http://zquake.frag.ru/eng/news/index.shtml

The list of features for this version includes this:

- NQ progs.dat is supported. The two Quake mission packs, Scourge of Armagon and Dissolution of Eternity, work right out of the box. So does Omicron Bot, the famous NetQuake bot that can play on any map and learn while playing.

Struth! 

Well that was fun!! Er, I did manage to connect to one "Game" on dm6, with one other dude, but I seemed to not understand what was going on. I had 000 000 for health and armor, couldnt take any damage, there were gold keys everywhere (!?) and the other guy was running around not really doing anything...

...also zquakegl.exe and zq-client-gl.exe say "unable to find glide2x.dll" when I try to open them, so I was having the "classic" visual style with zquake.exe (which I dont mind)

But anyway, thanks for pointing me in the right direction! I'll hopfully have better luck later! :-P 

...it only works when I disable internet security (!!), and then when internet security comes on again it leaves a tab on my task bar which cannot be raised... 

delete opengl32.dll that comes with zglquake (i presume) to get rid of the glide error. 

ezQuake is a good client for QW. The 'improved' effects aren't enabled by default. At least if you only download the client, not the entire nquake pack.

You have to type "ready" in the console to start a match on duel servers. 

I must have downloaded the full package then. (I did want to see it since people were talking up how great it was).

Bollocks I say. 

my mate was working on that for PS2 when I was at Rebellion. Rebellion was trying to get the contract and actually, what he was doing looked REALLY similar. That's cool though, I hope they are taking it in the same direction he was trying to. The no hud thing sounds great. 

Getting rid of modern effects in fuhquake: Run it with -no24bit in the command line.

QW is best when you are playing somebody of your skill level. It's fun when both suck and it's fun when both rock (except when people camp).
It's not fun to play against someone that is 1000 times better than you (a very regular experience in QW if you go to a random server).
I can't stress it enough. Don't stop QW if you keep only getting minus frags, but seek a fun opponent with whom you can play. It's great that way.

So play friends.

Best way to learn QW is to play duels. Most servers use ktpro or ktx qwprogs. These make it easy to use the servers for regular players, no admin rights required.

Type ready to start the map and dm2 to change to dm2, timedown to reduce match time limit, dmm3 to set dm mode where weapons stay etc. Usually the server has an alias called 1on1 to set 1on1 game defaults. So just type 1on1, then dm2, then ready to get a duel game going on .
Then play 2on2s in dmm3 and finally 4on4 dmm1 (weapons don't stay).

Nowadays there are newbie friendly organizations in place, like #qwnewbie on quakenet and stuff on quakeworld.nu or linked from there. If I remember right. There are lots of cool services.

You can also spectate (you can use qwtv too) a few games or watch a few demos to just gape in awe at the god-like moves the stars pull off at times. Riker, Fix or Paradoks just to mention some names. I don't know who's the hottest name nowadays. 

since QW is such a fast game, after the first few games I'd suggest spending some time on the mouse settings and configuration. I use -dinput on the client cmdline. I also use a Hz hack in windows to up the mouse refresh rate. And have a CRT running at about 85 Hz (set on client's command line again). I don't know about modern LCD:s, they're probably fine, might require settings though. There are some other variables too but I don't remember them offhand (don't use m_filter tho).

Once you have it all clear and smooth, other games feel like total crap, so this is a double edged sword. 

Gimme a gun and I'll shoot stuff.
I just like deathmatch! I also like playing against people who just kill me because it makes me better (and bald)

I'll have to have a proper look into it, but at the moment I know nothing, so I'll probably take a while to find something which I'm comfortable with... 

that what ive installed. it sems ok, I went on some FFA server in Europe, cant remember which one. er... there was one map with IKBase textures in it... that one was OK, but got killed loads on DM6, and my ping was 135 :-| 

is there a bug which makes the refreshrate needing to be changed form 60 every time you load (I want 75)?

I cant seem to save it. 

It works for me at home now (it's always on 75 for me) but I vaguely recall having to mess around a bit to get it to force the setting on every time.

I don't think it will simply remember the higher value and re-enable it next time (this is possibly intended, so you don't get stuck with an invalid/bad refresh rate?)

Setting it via the command line, adding it to your .cfg files or a combination of both is probably required. I'll check when I get home to see if I can remember how to do it. :) 

that'd be great. It seems ot stay in the config.cfg file till the next load when it gets overwritten back to 60 at startup. 

Put all of your video settings in autoexec.cfg followed by vid_restart, and that should set you straight. Like this (though take out or change any commands you don't want, of course):

vid_vsync "1"
vid_fullscreen "1"
vid_bpp "32"
vid_width "1280"
vid_height "1024"
vid_refreshrate "75"
vid_vsync "1"
vid_restart

The downside of this is that I think it makes the game take a little bit longer to start (since it's doing the vid_restart after it's loaded) but it's not a major drama.

Also, I just noticed I have the same command in there twice... good work me. 

Serious Sam - That was pretty fast wasnt it. I have that game, and I think its fun to play! Its also pretty surreal. Let down a bit by level design and general stupidness, its not a very intellectual game, but it certainly has fun fast paced gameplay. I love the way that you know whats coming, you can hear your enemies coming, you know they're coming from all directions...
...designed to make the player panic, I think! 

use refreshlock:

http://www.pagehosting.co.uk/rl/ 

Serious Sam is a great game all in all, but it wouldn�t have hurt if they gave it some kind of fun physics, and if the rocketlauncher had at least a little splash damage... 

Was let down by only having ten or so enemies. Otherwise a great game. 

Did have well-designed, fun enemies, though. The screaming suicide guys, the big bull/rhino thing, the fiend rippoffs, etc. Many of them required using a different tactic for each enemy type. 

...why not pop over to quakeone.com, they have a lot of info for peeps just joining the online fun.