QuakeWiki
May 5, 2020

Console

Posted on May 5th, 2020 | Last modified on February 5th, 2023

Note: This is an archived site, part of the PlanetQuake archives.
As of January 1, 1999 this web site is officially closed and there will be no more updates.

Welcome to The Console. This is the place where you can find reference material which identifies all the console commands and command line parameters for Quake and Quake 2 -based games. The information here should prove useful to anybody who wishes to learn more about how the console works and what you can do with it. If you do not find what you are looking for at this site, please visit the Links section for a list of links to other console related sites.

Sections

Console Commands

This section contains documentations on console commands and command line parameters for Quake and Quake 2 -based games. These documents classify and group, provide syntax information, give descriptions, include user notes, and show examples for each and every console command, console variable, and command line parameter.

Console Scripts

In this section you will be able to find information about console scripts which show off the true power of the console. These scripts are a collection of settings, bindings, and aliases which configure keyboard and mouse for the games. If you want to improve your game play and increase your game scores then you need to try some of these scripts.

Console Tutorials

This section contains tutorials on how to use the console to write aliases and scripts. This would be the place to look if you are planning on learning how the console works, how aliases function, and how scripts are created.

History of the Site

The first person involved in this site is Zach “Xach” Beane who started this site in the Summer of 1996. It was a great site but after a long and prosperous reign it fell into disarray and was hardly every updated anymore. Then David “Wino” Miller became interested in all things console related and asked Xach about taking over the site. After a little while Wino took over the site in the Fall of 1996. Soon after in the spring of 1997 the site once again lost popularity and was no longer being updated in a timely manner. Around that time I became interested in Quake and how the console worked in that game so I approached Wino about the site. For a while I was asking Wino if I could help him with the site but Wino assured me that he had things under control, even though the site hasn’t seen an update in over 3-months. As I was still very interested in games and writing scripts on the Quake console I was still interested in seeing more content on the site, but it looked like Wino was no longer interested himself and no longer updated the site. I continued to ask Wino if I could help him with the site. After a few weeks of this Wino finally broke down and allowed me to help him. He saw how fired-up I was about the web site and about the games that he just decided to give me the whole web site. In the Summer of 1997 the site was handed down to me and now it was my turn to run it. This is how it all started.

The site was hosted by Frag.com but after some negotiations on October 28, 1998 I decided to move my site to PlanetQuake which was the best Quake web site out there. After that the site saw a great boom in content. I wrote many more console commands documents, console tutorials, aliases and scripts. I became active in all things console related and I kept updating the site every time there was a change in one of the games. My works became very popular and known throughout the community. On January 21, 1998 my site moved to the Fahrenheit 176 site on PlanetQuake and we tried to merge our content. Nuitari who was the webmaster of the F176 site collaborated with me on the production of the Quake 2 Console Commands document. After many months of quarrels and continuous verbal fights over the design of the site we decided to split our sites on June 15, 1998 due to irreconcilable differences between the two of us. After that I came back to my old address which is the current address. Even though we finished the Quake 2 Console Commands document together, I decided to revert to my own earlier version of that document and finish it on my own and to and release my own version of it.

Shortly after that, in July or 1998 I took on my last project. I decided to write the Quake Console Commands document even thought it was almost 2 years too late after Quake’s release. I have been meaning to write this document for quite some time before but I could never find the will nor the time to do it. I finished the document on July 23, 1998. After I finished it, I took a long look at my work and I realized that this was the best console related document that I have ever written. It was the most detailed and the most descriptive document out of all the others. This was my last project which I had planned for this web site.

After that I took a long break away from the site because I was getting fed up with the constant emails of people having questions and problems with their games. On September 30, 1998 I returned from my so called long break. I became friends with Indian18 who also runs a console related web site called The Bind. Indian18 was a cool guy and we talked about console stuff a lot. However we decided to learn from our mistakes so we decided never to merge our sites. Some time after RealLife(TM) kicked in and we lost contact with each other.

In late 1998 the whole gaming scene started slowing down and I only updated the site once in a while. Most of the time I only updated the site when a new version of one of the games came out and the documents needed to be updated with the new changes. My own RealLife(TM) started to kick in at that time also. I stopped playing games because I felt bored and annoyed by them. I was drifting away from the community.

On November 6, 1998 I released all of my works under the Free Software Foundation’s GNU General Public License Version 2. I felt that I needed to support the free software movement so I decided to license my works under the free software license. This would allow anybody to modify and improve my works in the future.

In December of 1998 I knew that my work on this web site is coming to an end. All of the games were in their final versions and no new releases were on the horizon. I decided that I am going to close this site down and make no more updates to it. However, I learned from my previous mistakes so I gave myself a month of time to decide if I really want to close the web site down. I didn’t want to jump to any rash conclusions.

On January 1, 1999 I decided that my work is finished and that it is time for me to move on. I closed the site.

Well, it is now May 2000 and I am writing up another little update to the history of this site. It has been almost a year and a half from the date that I closed the web site but I came back for one more update. I have stopped playing video games all together a few months ago and I think that I am losing interest in the whole computer gaming thing. I haven’t touched Quake or Quake 2 in well over a year and I’m not even remotely interested in the recently released Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament. It looks like my time playing computer games is coming to an end and I am quite happy about that since I’ve found out that I have a lot more time in my life to do other things.

Also, I was informed by nobody other than Daniel “Prog” Rinehart himself that there was a problem with my web site and that none of the console documents would display properly in his browser. After implementing a quick fix to this problem a few weeks ago I have returned to implement a real solution to the problem. I have removed support for Cascading Style Sheets from all the pages and documents on my web site in order to promote better compatibility and accessibility of the information on this web site for the future by removing all stylistic, coloring, and formatting markup which was previously provided by CSS. I feel that CSS, while being very good for seperating logical from stylistic markup, is not mature enough in it’s implementation by Netscape and Internet Explorer as to guarantee it’s compatibility for the future. This is why I chose not to move CSS from an external file into the HTML documents themselves but to remove CSS all together.

Previously the documents on this web site were released under the Free Software Foundation’s GNU General Public License Version 2 which was primarily intended for software. Due to the recent availability of the Free Software Foundation’s GNU Free Documentation License Version 1.1 I am updating the licensing information for all the documents to be released under this new license. This new license was designed with a focus on licensing reference materials and documentation which is exactly what this web site provides. This license also includes new and better licensing options which should help future authors.

Because of these changes I am updating all the pages on this web site including the documents and I am also re-releasing all the new versions of all the documents in compressed archive format. I have updated my email address for all the documents on the site to point to my unified and permanent email address which will be guaranteed to be operational for a long time to come just in case somebody needs to or wants to get in touch with me years from now. I’ve also changed the format of my email address from the standard URL format to my own anti-spam proprietary format in order to defeat the automated gathering of my email address for unsolicited advertisement mailing lists which have been getting increasing annoying over time. Along with those changes I have made a few tweaks and changes to the HTML markup in the documents and to the content on the site including a few paragraphs on this page which could have used better wording. I have also removed the News, Email, and Old News sections of this web site as they are no longer necessary since this web site will no longer be updated. I have also made a major change to the Files section by removing the need to go through the download page and instead I’ve linked directly to the files in order to avoid any future problems with the script and redirect based download functionality which provided the files previously. These changes should simplify the web site and allow easier and more reliable access to the content for the future.

Anyway, I am finished with this last update to the site. This is the end. Good bye.

Credits

Below are the people who deserve credit because they were involved in one way or another in this site or were responsible in providing me with help or inspired me interest.

About The Author

As you probably know now by looking at the main site, I am JakFrost. That is J-A-K, not J-A-C-K, it is an intentional misspelling. Also my nick is a one word, not two. In case some people don’t know who the original Jack Frost is then I’ll tell you. He is the guy from childhood stories who paints frost on windows during winter. I always use my nick on the Internet and never my real name. I like the anonymity part of the Internet and I think it’s awesome. One more thing, to this date I do not know of anybody else on the Internet known as JakFrost, although I know plenty of Jack Frosts. Now you understand for the intentional misspelling of my nick.

I personally got started in doing configuration scripts when I had Quake and found the Console Commands list on Stomped.com written by Daniel “Prog” Rinehart. His work was quite good and I learned about each and every console command that existed. Later on I found the “console” directory on Walnut Creek CD-ROM site. I started checking out some of the scripts there when I found James “bOi” Ariz scripts. I though that the idea of all these different functions in scripts was pretty cool so I decided to make plan on making my own. I must have checked about 60-different scripts, most of which were just plain config.cfg files with different bindings to learn about scripts and aliases and such. I finally had a plan for my scripts and decided to make them. Later on I was so impressed with the Console Commands List that I contacted Daniel about making one for the QuakeWorld client and server.

Finally, I decided to broaden my horizons by posting all my information and knowledge on this site. I hope that many other people will read my site and will finally begin to get a scope of the power of the console.

Contacting The Author

As of January 1, 1999 this site is officially closed and there will be no more updates. I have lost interest in computer games so I no longer play any games. Please do not send me game related questions or problems as I will no longer be able to answer them. However, I will keep my email address open for as long as possible in case somebody needs to reach me in regards to issues other than game support questions. You can contact me at jakfrost(at)planetquake(dot)com in case you need to reach me.