Why a Wiki? Why the dedicated servers of these stone age games? And what exactly is a “mobile infantry” supposed to be? Here are some answers to these questions.

It is a valid question, why one might need yet another games page on the internet. Well, for one thing, this Wiki is not just intended as a basis of the games database. It also contains a lot of stuff of a more private nature. It helps me organize my stuff and data. But it is also intended to help with issues on LAN parties or when playing via internet. The games database must be seen in the historical context (see below). Some pages have download links for files and games, that are freely available. But all this might not help a player a whole lot without the information on how to get that stuff running and what is possible with it.

Especially older games have a tendency of causing problems right from the beginning, which often can be avoided. For instance, if a game requires Gameranger or its installer won't run on an x64 system anymore it is useful to know that right from the start and hopefully also, how to cope with that. The wiki is an ideal way of sharing the experiences and solutions with others. This might help to keep problem solving time small when having the next gaming session.

In principle, everything started with a LAN at a friends place, which was very poorly prepared. OK, there were a few LAN cards, a switch and a few LAN cables. But in principle not more than that, not a clue at all. The fact that you found yourself in the network and the games were running was a great success. But there were more LANs with more and more regular participants. But there were the same organizational problems every time. First of all the question, where did the games come from? Passing CDs around isn't the best way and Windows shares are often unreliable. Not to mention the question of how to make sure that game XY really runs on your computer or how to have the possibility to try it at least once before at home. Otherwise you will get there totally unprepared. Which often ended up stopped exactly when you finally began understanding the game.

So, at some point, the wish arose that the games might be agreed upon in advance before you got started. So you could get them and play or test them. Where do you get them from? Sure, there's a lot being distributed via LAN, but online was another question. We weren't there yet. On the contrary, the first LANs were still completely offline. At some point we bought a LAN hard disk to gather the games so that you have them at least there, instead of asking each time who has the game lying around. Well, that turned out to be more of a data grave, because the problem was still that the disk was always with someone else, so you still couldn't access the data on demand.

At the same time, the desire for a working counter-strike Dedicated arose. In principle, one was provided on LAN first by Rich. But as Rich' old machine was a bit too unstable, I decided to do it myself properly. We also had DHCP since that time. So we were router independent, so to speak. At that time everything was running on a defective laptop, where the keyboard was broken but the rest was fine. From then on making the games accessible was only one step away, but only for privately known people who actually came to our LANs. The naming of the mobile Infanterie (mobile infantery) originates from this time. In the style of the troopers from Starship Troopers concerning gaming and in combination with the mobile computer it was the mobile infantry.

The question of how to install game XY correctly was not always so easy to answer without having done it at least once. So there was also an Apache that served the website where you could look up these things. In the meantime, some additional game servers have been added, the computer is no longer a laptop, but a small media PC and is still at my home. Meanwhile it is a dedicated computer with 50 Mbit/sec. Upload, hosting quite a few services for my personal use, but also on the internet.

Once you begin collecting information about games you will face the fact, that a lot of it can only be properly understood, once you look beyond the actual games. That means, starting to look into the neighboring topics, such as game theoretical aspects, terminology, technology but also economy, industry and culture around games. That's why there's also an attempt to make certain things easier accessible for interested gamers, such as, how to properly play Capture the Flag or why certain games are not distributed any more or why you have to do Port Forwarding.

The only problem now was the limited cooperation. Some things were reported and then updated or corrected on the HP. But essentially that was always the task of the admin (me), who actually wrote the HTML pages (yes, manually!). That's not so restricted anymore. Now someone else can sit down and add or correct information. And the Wiki makes editing a lot less painful. The handling is easier and providing multiple languages is also no big deal. Currently, I'm mainly focused on English and German articles, and still most of it is from personal experience. If you are interested in contributing, see For New Authors first.

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