Quake How-To

8.8 Glossary

• ALSA   

  Advanced Linux Sound Architecture.

• API   

  Application Program Interface. The computer libraries which are used when programming, and link the game to the hardware.

• Bot   

  A computer generated player with artificial intelligence (cough), in a multiplayer game. Used to play multiplayer when no-one's around or not connected to a network.

• Client   

  This word is used in two subtly different ways. In single player, the Quake game is known as a client, with different clients using their own graphics libraries (for example, the GL client "quake.glx" or the X11 client "quake.x11"). The usage is similar in multiplayer games, but also means the per-user program which connects to a single "server" program which lets all the players exist in the same world.

• FPS   

  First Person Shooter. A shooting game viewed from the "first person" perspective.

• Mod   

  Modification to the original Quake game varying from a complete game overhaul (total conversion) to simple map/model reworks. Quake was designed to allow for ease of platform portability with it's own computer language "Quake C" giving mappers control over most every aspect of their Quake world.

• Noob   

  Newbie. Someone new to a computer related topic.

• Patch   

  A software patch (or diff) is a single file used to alter a source code tree before compilation. It is often used to fix bugs or add new features that the original author didn't include.

  Usage of the GNU patch utility is of the form patch [--dry-run] -pNUM <FILE where NUM is the number (usually 0 or 1) of directories to strip from the patch file. This number is not obvious except to unix gurus, but using the "--dry-run" option will let you test run patch so you can find the correct NUM. ...Using the wrong number will make patch output all sorts of cryptic messages which can be terminated with a control-C character.

  Of course you could always type man patch and learn for yourself how to use this powerful unix command. ;-/

• SDL   

  Simple DirectMedia Layer cross platform hardware API widely used in Linux games.

• Server   

  A program central to multiplayer games to which every player connects.

• Tarball   

  An archive file such as somefile.tar created by the "tar" program. It is often compressed using the programs "gzip" or "bzip2", in which case it will normally end in the letters .gz or .bz2. The extension .tar.gz is often shortened to .tgz.

* License

* Quake How-To Index