4
Steel Soldiers Channel
Open GameSpy, log in, and click on the tab at the top-left
that has the GameSpy icon. Go to the navigation bar on the
left and look under the click triangle named "Games".
This is a list of supported games that GameSpy found installed
on your computer. The Steel Soldiers icon should be there:
click on it. This takes you to the Steel Soldiers Channel.
This is where people meet to play Steel Soldiers online.
The bottom-right frame shows the players currently in the
channel. The bottom left frame is an IRC-style chat that
you can talk to other players with. The top frame shows
a list of staging areas.
5 Staging Areas
A staging area is not the same as a game that is being played.
People join a staging area to organize a game. You join
a staging area by clicking it's name, then clicking the
"Join Game" icon that highlights above. If there
are no staging areas listed, you may start one by hitting
the "Create Game" icon. The number of players
allowed in a staging area is not the same as the number
of players that will play the game. You can only be in one
staging area at a time. So if you're not allowed to join
or create a staging area, make sure you're not still in
an old one.
In the staging area, information tags appear for each player
who joins. On your tag, to the left of your name is a dot
that is either red or green. It's starts red to indicate
that you are not ready to start the game. If you click the
"Ready" button on the top-left of the window,
the dot changes to green, which lets the other players know
that you're ready. You can tell if other players are ready
by whether the dot by their name is green. The host should
only launch the game (by clicking the "Launch Game"
icon in the top-left) when all the players in the staging
area are set to ready.
6
In-Game Multiplayer Setup
When the host player launches the game, all the players
who are set to ready have Steel Soldiers launched automatically
for them. If you have made more than one player in Steel
Soldiers, you get to choose which you will use for the game.
Then you are taken to the Main Menu, where you should click
Multiplayer. "Waiting" appears above while you
try to connect to the host. When you connect, you will be
in the multiplayer setup menu, the same one you used to
set up a skirmish game back in step 2.
The main difference is that instead of CPU oppenents you
will see the names of players appear as they join in. The
host is the only one with the power to change the setup
of the game. However, you can talk to each other with the
small IRC-style chat window at the bottom of the menu. You
must hit the "Ok" button at the bottom left to
indicate you're ready to start the game. The host can only
start the game (by hitting his Ok button) when all the other
players have already hit their Ok buttons!
7
The Game
When the host hits Ok, all the players start loading the
map to start playing it. Once all players have loaded the
map, the game begins. It is essentially the same as a single-player
or skirmish game except that you have human opponents. One
important difference though is that the Mission Objectives
Tab, in the top-left information window has changed to a
chat window. This allows you to talk to the other players
during the game. To talk, hit enter and a window appears
on the bottom left. Click in the top empty portion of this
window to place the cursor there and type something in.
Notice the colored player icons below. You can click on
them to ghost them, which stops your message from going
to that particular player. So, if you want to talk to only
the people on your team, ghost the enemy players. To know
which color is used by which player, simply point to a player
number/color for a brief moment, and a small tip box will
show up with his name.
How
to Play Z:SS online - Part 3>>
