the TCP/IP option in quake is grayed out for multiplayer.

in dosbox, quake has the TCP/IP option in multiplayer grayed out. how do i fix this?

Why are you trying to play Quake online with DOSBox? Just use nQuake. 

does nQuake look EXACTLY like the original?

sooo... not exactly i'm assuming. i read that you could customize the graphics. is this true? also, can you post a link?

http://nquake.com/

actually, i'm using Qtracker for winquake. speaking of which, are there any servers for vanilla quake online?

https://www.quakeservers.net/quakeworld/

If you mean non-QuakeWorld though, you might be out of luck.

On 11/28/2018 at 4:55 PM, memes4lyfe said:

in dosbox, quake has the TCP/IP option in multiplayer grayed out. how do i fix this?

That option only works if you start it from under Windows 95 using Q95.BAT (or: qlaunch quakeudp.dll quake.exe -mpath). In pure DOS you'd need to have the Beame & Whiteside TCP/IP stack loaded.

QuakeSpasm looks ok to me even though it's GL only, just disable all texture filtering from console. It has proper support for overbrights in lightmaps and fullbright colors in the palette unlike original GLQuake and some OpenGL-based ports. The only thing missing is the original underwater screen effect. VKQuake (Vulkan-based) has it but obviously requires a Vulkan capable graphics card and last time I tried it had some annoyances compared to QuakeSpasm (weapon viewmodel is always drawn too low, no way to fix it I could find).

I really prefer QuakeSpasm with colored lightmaps + liquid surface transparency to plain software Quake nowadays even though for a long time I didn't like GLQuake at all because of the missing overbright support.

On 11/28/2018 at 9:55 AM, memes4lyfe said:

in dosbox, quake has the TCP/IP option in multiplayer grayed out. how do i fix this?

If you want it to become ungreyed you'd need to use one of the forked versions of DOSBox that supports NE2000 emulation, and then install Win95/98 onto an emulated hard disk image. If you're dedicated enough you can certainly do this but it's going to be a fair amount of work.

However I suspect what you're really asking is "how do I play multiplayer Quake in DOSBox?". Look into DOSBox's IPX networking options, set up a tunneled IPX connection and then use the IPX option inside Quake.

I really like this port because it looks a lot like the original. Has a modified winquake version for the real software looks.

http://quakeone.com/markv/

Should have working multiplayer as well but I haven't tried it myself.

You need to fix Dosbox's config to enable multiplayer. It is a pain though, just use the source port (Lower the resolution) and you'll be fine.

It isn't really much of a pain to get Quake's IPX or serial multiplayer working in DOSBox, though. :P And on the other hand, TCP/IP is not even possible to enable with just editing the config file or entering commands.

Really, plain old WinQuake and some of the NetQuake ports are much more annoying to get to work in multiplayer mode than DOS Quake's IPX networking in DOSBox. They need ports open or forwarded on all client computers and not just the server, and they also select random port numbers for this. If even one of the players has a connection with ISP controlled NAT or firewalling they can't configure you have to resort to using VPNs.

QuakeWorld and ports based on QW code are much better about this but unfortunately QW does not support coop mode and not all people like the changes that were made to optimize bandwidth usage for dialup.