Since release 5.4.0, Liquid War includes network support, that's to say that people can play over a LAN (Local Area Network). However, due to limitations in Liquid War's legacy code, and also because of the lack of time I have, it might be a little tricky to set up a network game at first. So please read this section carefully.
You should keep in mind that:
You'll basically need 2 computers connected on the same LAN. We'll call them computer A and B. You might be able to play over the Internet too, but the game can be harder to set up and - which is worse - very slow.
You'll also need to know the IP address of computer A. Type "ipconfig" under Windows or "ifconfig" as root under Linux to get this information if you don't have it.
Liquid War uses a very traditionnal client/server approach. Basically, the server gets informations from all the clients and then dispatches the collected information to everybody.
So you'll need to start a server on computer A by running "liquidwar-server" on Linux or "lwwinsrv.exe" on windows. This is a console application, ie it does not set up any graphic mode.
Here's a small example of a server start on Linux:
$ liquidwar-server How many teams will connect to this server?
At this point you must enter a number between 2 and 6, and then press "ENTER". In this example we will answer 4. The server really needs to know how many teams will be in the game: when enough teams are connected, the game starts. It's possible to skip this question by typing "liquidwar-server -4" instead of a plain "liquidwar-server".
Listening on port 8035... Waiting for 4 teams...
Now the server is ready to accept clients. By default it listens to clients on port 8035. As of release 5.4.0, it's not possible to change this setting, but 5.4.1 should certainly allow it 8-)
Start the client on computer A normally by typing "liquidwar" on Linux or double-click "lwwin.exe" on Windows.
Go to the "Teams" menu and select 2 teams, red and blue for instance. If you don't know how to do this, then try and play Liquid War on a single computer first.
Now come back to the main menu, and a "Net Game" button should be available. Click it. Now you should be able to:
Since the server is also running on the same machine (A), you can leave the default IP address as is (127.0.0.1). Change the nickname to "A".
Now you are ready to start the second client on computer B. Like with computer A, you'll have to:
But this time you'll also need to change the server address, since the client is not running on the same computer than the server.
At this point, you are almost ready to play. Simply click on "Start game" on computer A and then on computer B. The server console should display the following:
Waiting for 4 teams... Connection from 127.0.0.1:3098 Accepted "A" Waiting for 2 teams... Connection from 192.168.1.2:3101 Accepted "B" Talking to "A" Talking to "B" Start "A" Start "B"
And the game should start on both computers A and B.
Once the game is over, you can start another network game on the clients without touching the server, because the server automatically restarts and waits for players to connect.
To restart the server - if you want to change its settings for instance, just go to the console where it's running and press CTRL-C.
You can pass options to the server using the command line. The following parameters are accepted:
The "-netlog" option works for the client too. Otherwise, all the options can be set from the "Net Game" menu.
Note that when you play a network game, the settings such as those found in the "Rules" menu must be the same on every computer. However, Liquid War does this automatically. But a consequence is that after a network game, your settings might have changed if you were not on the machine from which the settings have been taken and then dispatched to every player.
Network support in 5.4.0 is still experimental in many ways, so you might get weird behaviors. Basically, if you have a problem, just do the following: