You can administer your Quake server directly from the server console, but that usually isn't very convenient. Especially if you aren't anywhere near your server when you play. Much better would be to administer the server from your client as you play. Fortunately, Quake III lets you do just that with the \rcon command.

Once you are set up properly, simply type \rcon, followed by the command you wish to issue to the server. The command is executed at the server as if you had typed it directly into the console.

Setting up the server

You'll need to do a couple of things before this will work, though. By default, remote administration is disabled on any QIII server. To enable it, you must set the variable rconpassword at the server to a non-empty string. Here's an example (we'll use this password below):

\seta rconpassword "q3pw"

The \seta command sets the variable and stores the value for future restarts.

Setting up the client

On the client you are using to administer, you can do one of two things. You can type:

\rcon "q3pw" status

This sends the password with the remote command and requests the status of the server. If you plan to issue multiple commands, you can set the rconpassword on the client side the same way as you set it on the server (see above). Then, you issue a status command like this:

\rcon status

Now, you're all set to change maps, game styles, time limits, frag limits, etc.

If you want to administer a server without even connecting to it, you must set the rconaddress variable:

\seta rconaddress xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the ip address of the server. This is especially useful when you can't log on to the server for some reason (too many users, you don't have the correct map, etc.).

Issuing commands

At this point, you can issue an command you like to the server. Interesting ones are:

\rcon map "map name"

This will change the map on the server. The map must exist on the server.

\rcon kick "user name"

This kicks the specified user off the map. Use quotes to kick players with spaces in their names.

\rcon addbot "bot name" "skill level [1-5]"

Adds a bot to the game at a certain skill level. 1 =quot;I Can Win", 5 =quot;Nightmare". For instance,

\rcon addbot Major 2

puts the bot Major in at skill level 'Bring It On'. You can kick bots the same way as players, too.