Well, in Quake 2 if you press a bound key it will perform a preset task. e.g. you may bind a key to say, "Hi all!!" to the other players, or to select a certain weapon.
There are TWO methods of binding keys for Quake 2; from the console, or from a config file.
If you want to bind a key through the console, you type: bind x "****" (where **** is the command to be bound)
This is a simple way of binding keys, but very useful for in-game binding.
An example of a simple keybind would be: bind q "say Incoming Quad !!!" If you press the "q" key you will broadcast to all players that a Quadded player is incoming. It's as easy as that :)
A config file is an MS-DOS text file which contains pre-written keybinds and settings.
If you have a lot of keys to bind, and they change from game to game, you may get bored with typing them into the console each time, not to mention the lost game time :)
Therefore you can preset them in a text file, which you can change from game to game and mod to mod.
This is a very useful and versatile tool, and has many advantages over console binding, (we'll go into this later).
The easiest way is using Notepad in Windows. You simply type in each keybind and setting on a separate line, and save it as a plain text document.
One thing you MUST NOT DO, is to edit config.cfg This is written by Quake2 and alterations to this can lead to big problems!!!!
Once you have written your file you want to use it, right? If you name it autoexec.cfg it will automatically be recognised by Quake2 and executed on joining a server or starting a game.
It must be put in the relevant directory on your hard drive, though. If it is your Deathmatch/Single Player config, put it in c:\quake2\baseq2\ If it is your CTF config file, put it in c:\quake2\ctf\ If it is your LMCTF config file, put it in c:\quake2\lmctf\ etc. I think you get the jist :)
You don't have to call it autoexec.cfg, in fact you can call it anything, e.g. kill.me But you will need to execute it yourself by typing at the console: exec kill.me (Again it must be in the relevant directory on your HDD).
Now why would you wanna do that? - you may need specific config files, e.g. for a name change
or a certain CTF map, or your autoexec.cfg may be too large (see below) it therefore becomes necessary to execute a separate config file.
Here is a basic config file with a few commands in it. Just in case you've never seen one before.
bind a "+moveleft"
bind t "messagemode"
bind c "+movedown"
bind d "+moveright"
bind r "say_team RETURNING to BASE!"
bind j "wave 1"
bind k "say Thanks"
bind q "use quad damage"
bind m "messagemode2"
bind y "say_team Roger That!"
bind s "+back"
bind n "say_team NEGATIVE"
bind u "wave 4"
bind v "say_team Going Shopping for ammo - BRB"
bind w "+forward"
set name "[KiL]WitchDoC"
set skin "cyborg/k2borg"
bind i "say_team *** INCOMING ENEMY ATTACK ***;play_team incoming"
If you look at the last line you'll see a slight difference; there are two commands on the one line. It is possible to
have two or more commmands bound to one key. You simply need to separate each command on the line with a semi-colon ";"
In this line (from an LMCTF config) you will tell your team that an attack is incoming with your text message AND your radio
message.
It is variable, but Quake2 seems to be unable to exec a file larger than 7 or 8Kb
If your autoexec.cfg file becomes larger than this, you need to split it into multiple config files and exec them separately. There are two ways to do this:
Say you wish to execute 3 config files: autoexec.cfg, extra1.cfg and extra2.cfg One way is to put the command exec extra1.cfg as the last command in autoexec.cfg AND put exec extra2.cfg as the
last command in extra1.cfg The other way is to make an alias like this, where pressing x will cycle through each config file in turn:
//Config exec alias bind x config0
alias config0 "exec extra1.cfg;bind x config1"
alias config1 "exec extra2.cfg;bind x config0"
