- Welcome to Quakability : Bot Arena
!
-
- This html-bundle is intended to help you install the
modification and will also give you information about its features. Be sure
to click around for info and screenshots, as well as news on the team's
latest projects ...
-
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- So, what is this mod about ?
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- Quakability : Bot Arena is the newest, most
complete and greatly enhanced version of my mod Quakability.
- To put it simply, Quakability : Bot Arena
offers you not only new game rules, playable against human players on LAN,
but also a fantastic Quake3/UT-like arena mode against bots through 15
excellent arenas.
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- What are the main rules ? They are pretty easy, yet
very effective : during a deathmatch, a player who frags someone is
automatically respawned elsewhere in the level with a maximum health that
has become 100 - (his/her frags * 2). In other words, the more players frag
each other, the more their maximum health decreases. Furthermore, as the
game goes on and their maximum health goes down, players lose access to certain
weapons, armors and power-ups. The winner is the one who, with a maximum
health of 2, has been able to frag someone else. Simple, ugh ? ...
- ... simple but thrilling. Deathmatch games indeed
become more and more exciting as a game goes on. Starting as a rather
"normal" deathmatch game, a Quakability game quickly becomes a
real challenge to every good player. It's easy to frag someone else with
full health and a good weapon, but what about with a reduced health and a
bad weapon, ugh ? It's time for good players to show what they're up to.
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- So far, so good, but that's not all. Of course you
can play against your friends, but another important aspect of this mod is
its single-player side. The rules of the Bot Arena game are pretty
straightforward : you have to battle against and eventually beat bots at
Quakability games and as you do so, you go from one arena to the next,
finding on your way tougher and tougher opponents and this until you meet
Ability, the master bot. Beating him will make you the Quakability master,
but, before that, 14 arenas and hours of deathmatches await you ... Believe
me, it's not going to be easy ...
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- The "classic Quakability"
mode (multi-player only)
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- Once you start a multiplayer game, you'll
be greeted with a menu divided in four parts : Classic Quakability, Weaponability,
Quakability Bot and Quakability : Bot Arena. These are the
four game modes you will have to choose from. Let's start with Classic
Quakability ...
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- Classic Quakability is simply a re-work of
my previous version of Quakability. Unlike this previous version, it offers
a lot of different options that will enable you to personalize the game
you're going to play. As you will see, the general rules (max.health = 100 -
(self.frags*2)) are still there, but you'll be able to tweak some paramaters
to spice things up ... Let scan through the various options :
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- Atomic / Bomb option : This lets you
play either the atomic rule, the bomb rule, both rule or none. The atomic
rule means that once a player dies, a huge explosion takes place, killing
players nearby. This option is of course only interesting when playing with
more than two players. The bomb rule means that each player's health
gradually decreases as he/she is playing. This option makes the game a lot
more exiting, since not only do players have to frag others, but they also
have to do that as quickly as possible. You can thus choose to play both
rules or just one of them, or none.
- Player speed menu : This lets you
choose between normal, double and excessive speed for players. Quite
frankly, I think you should go for normal or double, because excessive
doesn't work that well. I'll try to fix that for a later version of the mod.
- Power-up menu : This lets you
customize some rules around the use of power-ups during the game. You can
choose to make power-ups available or not. You can also choose between the
Quad World rule or the Quakability rule. In the Quad World rule, the quad
lasts a very long time. In the Quakability rule, the use of power-ups is
linked to your maximum health : after a while, you can't use them anymore.
- Respawn menu : This lets you chose
between slow,normal and quick respawn for health and weapons. I'd advise
quick respawn if you're looking for a quick-paced game.
- Health menu : This lets you choose
to make health boxes available or not to players. Choosing not to will also
speed up the game a lot.
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- The "Weaponability"
mode (multi-player only)
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- Weaponability is a variation of Classic
Quakability. In this mode, only the rule linked with maximum health has been
kept and a new paramater has been added : players will fight with one weapon
only. Each player should play with the same weapon if they want to keep the
game balanced. Most of this mode's options are the same as those described
above, except the first two :
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- Weaponability
menu : Of course, you'll have to choose the weapon you're going to use.
Lightningability, Rocketability, Grenadability, Nailgunability,
Shotgunability and Axability are pretty self-explainatory, I guess. The last
choice is Instagibility and gives players a very powerful weapon, of the
kind you find in UT in the instagib mode : one shoot, one kill.
- Map type menu : You'll get to choose
between the regular map mode and the arena map mode. Regular map means that
you'll only be able to grap the weapon you have chosen. This of course means
that, in a level, some strategic places (those were the weapon you chose is
located) will be very important. In the arena mode, on the other hand, all
weapons will be equivalent to the one you have chosen. So if you choose for
example Rocketability, you'll be able to grap a shotgun and have a
rocket-launcher instead.
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- The "Quakability Bot"
mode (single-player only)
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- This mode enables you to play any map of
your choice with bots. Basically, all Quakability Bot games are
Weaponability games. In my mod bots can't play Classic Quakability ... well,
they could but I found this mode a bit unfair to bots, and this for one main
reasons : while players can go through an entire level and get a weapon of
their choice, this is way more difficult with bots, whose navigation is
sometimes a bit ackward. I thus decided that my bots will play only
Weaponability, which makes for fairer games against human opponents.
- Once you choose this mode, you'll thus be
greeted with the Weaponability menu. The weapon you'll choose will thus be
both your only weapon and the bot's. All weapons are the same as in
Weaponability multiplayer, but one has been added : the railgun, which, as
far as the effects are concerned, is pretty close to the instagib weapon.
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- Notice that there are several impulses you
can use during this game mode :
- impulse 105 : choose which bot you wish to
respawn (if you don't use this, the game will choose a random bot)
- impulse 101 : respawn a bot
- impulse 104 : turn the atomic / bomb rules
on or off within the bot game you're playing
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- The "Quakability : Bot Arena"
mode (single-player only)
-
- This of course is my favourite mode. It
offers players a single-player, quake3-like tournament mode against bots
following the quakability rules and, to be more precise, the weaponability
rules.
- In this mode, you'll be automatically
forwarded to arenas and the computer will decide itself which weaponability
rules you will be using and against which bot you will be fighting. You
can't respawn bots in this mode. Notice also that all items and power-ups
have been taken away.
- Each time you start a new map in this mode,
you'll see on the screen the name of the map, its code, the rules you'll be
using and the bots you'll be fighting against. Don't forget the code (write
it down if you can), because it will enable you to virtually
"save" your game. Indeed, once you passed the first arena, these
codes will enable you skip the arenas you on which already won. So, you can
drop a game, come back several days later and start from where you were. To
do that, all you'll need to do is start a multi-player game, wait to get in
and simply type "impulse code", where the code is the number next
to the arena's name. You'll then be directly sent to the last arena you've
played.
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- Some impulses ...
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- N = impulse 105 : chooses which bot you
wish to respawn (if you don't use this, the game will choose a random bot)
- B = impulse 101 :
spawns a bot
- A = impulse 104 : turns the atomic /
bomb rules on or off within the bot game you're playing
- C = impulse 15 : turns chase camera
on/off
- H = impulse 112 : help
- M = impulse 116 : chooses a sound track
for the arena you're playing on
- P = impulse 118 : stops the music
- W = impulse 114 :
tells you which arena you're playing. Important if you forgot to write down
the code ...
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- impulse 123 : changes some
paramaters in the bot's navigation. This was used in the early development
of the mod and you shouldn't use it.
- D = impulse 119 : turns the routine tree
on/off. This is used only for testing purposes. It tells you which routine
the bot is using as he plays
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- impulse 160 : turns hardcore mode
on. Right now, this is used only for the last arena against Ability. It
makes you lose one frag when you drop into the pool, which normally doesn't
happen. It makes beating ability even harder. I intend to use this impulse
for the bonus-update.
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- What to
expect next ?
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- The version you're playing is the first
public version of Quakability : Bot Arena. That means that it hasn't been
played by many people and, as such, it might not be quite
"finished" yet.
- My goal was to do the following things :
after I get some feed-back, I'll be able to spot some stuff to correct,
maybe bugs to fix and other things of the sort. I'll also work on some new
features and will release, probably around July/August 2000 what I call the fix-bonus
patch, which will thus consist in fixes but also some bonuses such
as :
- - more hard-coded tournaments, based on the
regular death-match maps as well as new maps.
- - some new weapons
- - some new game rules gravitating around
the main Quakability rules
- - much more complex speech system for bots
- - cooperative mode
- - ... and more !