Now click Log In. In the new window that opens, enter your account ID and password. You may choose your own icon and nickname. To choose your icon, copy and paste one from the Finder or drag and drop directly (if you have MacOS 8.5). These settings may be changed later using the User Profile menu command. Then enter your real (full) name, and click Log In.

If "Incorrect account ID or password" appeared, you should check to make sure you entered your account ID and password correctly by checking that email message again. If you had already deleted the message, you can click I've forgotten my password and GameRanger will send it to you again.

Once the connection is successful, the main GameRanger window will appear. First, you may want to change your password so it is something easier to remember. This can be done by choosing Change Password... under the Edit menu.

You can send chat messages to the room by typing into the edit field at the bottom and pressing return. These messages will show as:

YourNick: What ever you typed

*** YourNick just did this.

To see more information about a player, select them in the player list, and choose Get Info... from the Chat menu. If there is a green dot at the right of a player's name, it means they are in the middle of playing a game. You can also get information about a player (whether they are logged in or not) if you know their account ID or email address by choosing Find Player... under the Chat menu.

You can send a private message to someone by either selecting them in the player list and choosing Send Message... from the Chat menu, or by just double-clicking them in the player list. A new window appears that is very similar to the main chat, but with the addition of being able to send voice messages. To send a voice message, you should have some kind of microphone plugged in (or maybe a built-in one), and make sure that your Sound Monitoring Source is set to use this microphone (Monitors and Sound control panel changes this). If this is set up correctly, you will see green bars next to the microphone icon at the bottom when sound is detected. To send a voice message, you then hold down your Hold-To-Talk key (defaults to F5 and can be changed in the Preferences), then speak your message, and then release the key. You can test what your own voice would sound like to them, by using this key in the Voice Preferences window. If you receive a private chat message, it will look like this in the main chat window:

*OtherNick* Their private message for you

Double-click on a game (or select it and choose Join from the Chat menu) to join it. If the game has a green dot next to it, then game play has already begun, and you may or may not be able to join it (depending on whether the host allowed late joiners). If there is a padlock next to it, then that game room requires you to enter a password to join.

To host a new game, choose Gather Game... from the Chat menu. Enter a short description for your game room. Then select the game you want to play from the pop-up menu. Pick a maximum number of players (this is only a maximum -- you can start the game with less). Enter an optional password if you want to restrict who can join. Then click the checkbox if you want to allow other players to join after the game has started (only some games allow this).

As the host, you have a few commands that the others joining do not. You can change the password, kick a player out of the room, or start the game.

When the host clicks Start, all the other players in the game room will be made to wait until the host game is ready for them to join. Depending on the game, this may take a little while.

After returning from the game, (depending on which game was being played) you may have to click an Abort button in the bottom-right corner of the game room window to signify that you have finished playing.

The game chat room itself is almost like a cross between the main chat room and a private message window. When you use the voice-chat in a game room, everyone hears it. As you hear a voice-chat message, a small speaker icon shows next to that player so you can tell whose voice it is.

To try this in GameRanger, click on the Servers tab in the main window (right next to the Chat tab at the top-left), and the window will change. Now on the left is a list of the games supporting dedicated servers. You can hide and show any of the games you are not interested in, using the Hide Game and Show All Games commands under the List menu. You can also re-arrange the order of these games using drag and drop. On the right is the list of servers within the currently selected game.

Initially there will not be any servers. To get the latest collection of servers for the currently selected game, choose Return New Servers from the Servers menu. After the progress window is finished, you will then see activity in the server list as these servers are refreshed. What this means is that GameRanger is sending out a query to each server to find out the current status of it. From this information, GameRanger is able to list things like the name of the server, number of players on there, maximum players, current map, etc. The time taken for the server to respond is also measured. This response time is often a good indication of how smooth a server will be for internet play -- the lower the better.

To get the latest status on one or more servers, use the Refresh or Refresh All commands under the Servers menu. It's often a good idea to refresh the servers you are interested in a few times to see how the response times vary.

For some of these games, particularly the Quake variants, there can be thousands of servers. To help manage this many servers, you can have multiple server lists within a game. These additional server lists can contain a smaller, more focused, selection of the total servers. A number of these lists are included by default, and you can view these list by twisting down the disclosure triangle for a game, and you can re-arrange their order with drag and drop. A list can consist of zero or more filters. If a list has no filters (eg. the default Favourites list), then you can manually add and remove servers for that list like bookmarks -- just drag and drop the servers from the current server list on the right to the name of another list on the left. If a list does have filters, then the list is live and generated automatically. The filters have a similar operation to the Find File or Sherlock, in the way you add and remove filters, but it differs in that you see the results immediately as you type or make changes. To see how the filters in the default lists work, select a list and choose Get List Info... under the List menu, or just create a new list.

Once you have found a server you want, choose Join from the Servers menu. When you return, depending on the game, you may have to click Done in the window that has come up.