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In order to start Ca3DE, simply double-click on the Ca3DE.exe
executable file.
This file is in the Ca3D-Engine
folder that was created during installation.
(The Options Dialog is not yet implemented on Linux. Ca3DE will skip it and apply the default options. You can select other worlds either from the command line, or via the in-game console (see section Command Console).)
After starting, the Options Dialog appears as shown in the figure.
This dialog allows you to set up Ca3DE in various ways (detailed below).
For your convenience, I preconfigured the dialog settings so that you can, almost always,
leave them as they are and simply press the OK
button.
For a more sophisticated setup, please read the rest of this section.
It explains the dialog details in greater depth.
The upper part of the dialog asks you to choose which role Ca3DE should play in the network (i.e. your LAN or the Internet). I call this role the Ca3DE run-mode. There are three choices:
This part lets you configure Ca3DE in its role as a Ca3DE-client. Depending on your choice of run-mode, not all fields will be available here.
This part lets you configure Ca3DE in its role as a Ca3DE-server. Depending on your choice of run-mode, not all fields will be available here.
In order to control the player and operate the game, you can use the keys as shown in the table below. The demonstrated layout reflects both keyboard-only player control layout and the popular mouse+keyboard player control layout. The keyboard layout will be made user configurable in future releases.
Action | Key | Alternative |
---|---|---|
Move forward | (Arrow up) | W |
Move back | (Arrow down) | S |
Turn left | ← (Arrow left) | (Mouse left) |
Turn right | → (Arrow right) | (Mouse right) |
Strafe left | A | , |
Strafe right | D | . |
Jump | SPACE | |
Walk | R_SHIFT | L_SHIFT |
Run (even faster) | R_CTRL | |
Look up | PAGE UP | (Mouse up) |
Look down | PAGE DOWN | (Mouse down) |
Look banked CW | HOME | |
Look banked CCW | INSERT | |
Look straight ahead | END | |
Talk / Chat | T | |
Toggle Console | ^ | |
Screen-shot | F5 | |
Quit program | ESC |
Keyboard layout for player control and game operations.
In order to activate or deactivate the console, press the accent grave key.
This key is labeled ^
on German keyboard layouts.
When the console is active, all keyboard input goes to the console command line and the mouse input is ignored. That means that you cannot control the player while the console is active. The US keyboard layout applies independently from other settings in the operating system.
There are several defined console commands and variables, but I will only give two examples here:
help
prints out a short console help text, which should be sufficient if you really want to try out the other commands (such as changing the video mode or render style).
rc passwd ca3d rc cl <filename>
rc
is the short form for “remote console”.
It means that the rest of the line is not processed by the local client, but rather sent to the remote server console.
cl
is the short form for “change level”.
Therefore, the first line introduces you as the super-user at the server.
The second line instructs it to initiate a level (world) change.
For quick tests, however, it is much easier to leave the game with the ESC
key and
then to choose a new world from the world list in the options dialog.
Pressing the ^
key deactivates the console and brings you back to the game.