Screenshot

Monster Browser 0.8a Windows installer (Released April 21 2012)

Zip version, for a portable install

- New: Support for World of Padman 1.6, plus updated settings.
- New: Support Smokin' Guns extended color codes for player and server names.
- New: The "Add..." dialog now accepts host names.
- Change: Updated Smokin' Guns master server to master.smokin-guns.org.
- Change: Use master.ioquake3.org as the default master server.
- Change: The progress bar is only filled once when querying servers in multiple batches.
- Fix: A couple of crashes fixed.

In addition to the changes mentioned here, there are usually some bugfixes.  See CHANGELOG.TXT for details.

Project page, with source code

Basic Usage

Select a game from the drop down box on the right, where it says "Smokin' Guns" the first time you run the program.  If the game or mod you want is not listed, just type its gamename there and press <Enter>.  If it doesn't use Id's Quake 3 master server, you need to create a custom config for it, see 'Customizing the Game List' below.

To update the server list, press the 'Refresh all' button.  This happens automatically at startup, or the first time each session you switch to a game.  You can press 'Check for new' to synchronize the list of servers that Monster Browser queries with the master server.  It's probably a good idea to use 'Check for new' once a day or so.

The filters and column sorting should be pretty straight forward to use.  You can leave the filters on while doing a refresh, all the servers will be queried anyway.

To join a server, double click on it, or select it and press <Enter>.  If the server requires a password, a password dialog will pop up.  To change the password, or add an optional password for servers with private slots, select 'Set password...' in the right-click menu.

Customizing the Game List

By clicking on the 'Games configuration' button in the settings, you can edit the list displayed in the combo box.  The format of this file is explained in the file itself.  The first game listed will be used as the default.  If you want the program to always start with the topmost game, select 'Default game' in the settings.  Otherwise it will start with the last selected game.

Adding Extra Servers

If you want to query a server that isn't registered with the master server, you can click on 'Add...' to add it to the list. Normally, any servers not registered on the master will be removed from Monster Browser's list the next time you check for new servers. If you don't want this to happen, make sure 'Never remove this server automatically' is checked. The server will still be removed automatically if it times out too many times.

If you have more than a couple of servers to add, it's easier to add them directly to a file called '<gamename>.extra' in the Monster Browser directory.  The format is just one IP address per line, with or without a port number.  For instance, when refreshing a list or checking for new servers for the cpma mod, Monster Browser checks for existence of a file called 'cpma.extra', and adds any servers listed in it to the list of servers to query.

Remote Console

The remote console (rcon) lets you send commands to a game server.  It's an advanced feature primarily useful for server administrators.  To open a remote console window, select a server and press F9, or use the context menu.  The up and down arrow keys access the command history, while page up and page down scroll the output window.  Pressing Esc closes the window.

Portable Monster Browser

If you create an (empty or not) file called 'portable.txt' in the directory where Monster Browser is installed, Monster Browser will save all its files in that directory.  Useful for USB stick installs, or if you want multiple independent installations.  Versions prior to 0.7 worked this way by default.

Keyboard shortcuts

F4     - Check for new servers
F5     - Refresh list
F9     - Open remote console
Enter  - Join server
Ctrl+R - Refresh selected server(s)
Ctrl+C - Copy the addresses of selected server(s) to the clipboard
Del    - Remove selected server(s)
Esc    - Abort action