How to Start a Prboom Multi Player Game in Linux

This is how to start a PrBoom Multi-Player Game in Linux from the terminal inside of the GUI. This tutorial is for playing over a local area network (LAN) with up to 4 players. Make sure you do it from the terminal from inside the GUI. If...

Table of Contents

On computer 1
Computer 2

Method 1 of 2:

On computer 1

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Open a terminal window within the GUI.
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Navigate to the directory that stores your PrBoom files.
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Make sure you have the prboom-game-server file in the directory. If not you cannot host a multi-player game.
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Enter the following text into the command line.
1. prboom-game-server
2. Press Enter.
  1. It will say that it is "listening on port 5030, waiting for 2 players. Join (channel 0) as player 0."
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Leave the current terminal window open.
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Open another terminal window within the GUI.
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Within the new terminal, navigate to the directory that stores your PrBoom Files.
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Enter the following text into the command line.
1. prboom -net localhost
2. Press Enter.
  1. PrBoom will start running but stop at the line D_CheckNetGame: waiting for server to signal game start. The other terminal will start displaying "[r ]" over and over again. That is normal as it is listening to the port and printing the results. It basically means that it found one client on the network. That client is you.
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Note: localhost is usually configured as your loopback on your NIC. It uses the 127.0.0.1 IP address.

Method 2 of 2:

Computer 2

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Type the following command.
1. ifconfig
2. Press enter.
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Look for your ip address on the network. It will look something like the following: inet addr: 192.168.1.1 if you are logged into a home network. The address might vary depending on what router you have.
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On computer 2 type the following text. The xxxs in the text below represent your ip address.
1. prboom -net xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
2. Press enter.
  1. The terminal running the prboom-game-server on computer 1 should be displaying something like this. "[pp ]" over and over again. That means that both computers are communicating with each other. PrBoom should load up and run now and startup. Your friend should be right next to you in the game.
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Have Fun.

Jessica Tanner

Update 04 March 2020

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