Installation
Getting the best out of this mod
Troubleshooting
Installation
Installation of our mod is pretty easy provided you follow these steps carefully :
1 - As you can see, all the files you have extracted are now in different folders. If it's not the case, then unzip all the zip files again and be sure to respect folders.
2 - You'll see that there are a bunch of MP3 files into the directory called "misc", itself a directory of "sound", itself a directory of the mod. Before working with them, you'll need to agree to the following terms :
By working with these files, you agree to use the mp3's
only for the purpose of playing Quakability : Bot Arena and nothing else.
Once you decompile these mp3's, you agree to erase them and to use
the resulting wav files only for the purpose of playing
Quakability : Bot Arena and nothing else.
You will NOT distribute either the mp3's or the wav files in ANY
form other than together with all the other files accompanying it. You will NOT
listen to them outside the game, make CD's out of it or distribute them on the net.
4 - Once you agree to the terms above, you may go to point 5
5 - Erm ... sorry, but I had to do that ... Now you'll need to decompile the resulting mp3's into wav's. Since I'm not sure you guys all own a mp3->wav converter, I've bundle one with the mod. I found it on the net and, as I could understand, it is completely freeware. It will take a minute or so to decompile them all. Once it's done, you can erase all the MP3's.
6 - Ok, now you're almost done. All you need to do is create a bat-file inside your Quake directory that should look like :
glquake.exe -game quakability -listen 16 -allowoverflow (if you're using GLQuake)
winquake.exe -game quakability -listen 16 -allowoverflow (if you're using Winquake)
tQER_GLQUAKE.exe -game quakability -listen 16 -allowoverflow (if you're using Topaz's Engine)
pQER_glquake_6.exe - game quakability -listen 16 -allowoverflow (if you're using the Phoenix Engine)
... etc ...
Notice that I had problems running the mod on regular quake.exe. If you can't run GLQuake on your machine, I advise you to go and get Winquake to run the mod.
Getting the best out of this mod
Quakability : Bot Arena, when you look at it, isn't a very complicated mod. However, it sometimes tends to be slightly memory-hungry. The fact that the music is pre-cached, for example, might slow down your computer when you're going to one map to the next. Don't worry about it, this is completely normal.
I should of course advise everyone to use GLQuake or any GLQuake-based engine when running it. While WinQuake is alright, it doesn't look half as good as on GLQuake. You should also try Topaz'engine and the Phoenix engine. While version 6 of the Phoenix engine is kind of slow, version 5 runs alright. Later version will probably run alright, too.
Troubleshooting
-"Hey, the introduction looks completely screwed up on my computer !"
- You're probably using WinQuake. I've noticed some problems, mainly with colors, with that version of the quake executable. Sorry, but I haven't found any way to solve that. You'll have to forget about the introduction or move to GLQuake, if you can ...
-"The game crashes as I try to put more bots in the game"
- You probably forgot to use the "-listen 16" extension when writing to bat file. If it's not the case, then you might be trying to add more than 16 bots, which you can't do. Be sure also to wait a little bit before spawning bot just after you entered a game. I've noticed that when you spawn bots right then, you might get more bots that you wanted. Oh yes, another thing : do no spawn the same bot twice, I think it makes the game crash, too.
-"It takes ages for a level to load !"
-As I was saying earlier, this is due to the fact that all the music is pre-cached each time a level is loaded. I guess the length of the pre-caching time will depend on your computer. If it is really getting too long, you might want to turn all wav files beginning with "arena" into blank wav files. You won't be able to listen to music :-(, but it will greatly decrease the loading time.
-"I don't even have the time to appear and I'm already dead !"
- Bots react very fast ;-). This situation will probably happen quite often if you're playing against a lot of bots in a game mode such instagibability or if you're simply nearing the end of the game. Some of the better bots have very quick responses, which explain they can see you and shoot you as soon as you respawn. Sometimes you might have the feeling that nobody actually shot you, but you have to remember that fraggers respawn, too. Hey, that's life ...
-"Two (or more bots) seem to be glued together ..."
- I've tried to reduce the apperance of this bug to the max, but it still appears sometimes. This is due, I believe, to the use of the ducking routine. Because this routine is so cool, I didn't want to take it away, so I left it and tried to limit its uses in order to avoid this bug. If you come across this bug, just shoot the bots until you kill one of them.
-"How come I seem to be the target of all the bots ?"
- Bots do try to shoot each other, but it is true that human players is their privileged target. They also tend to chase anything that shot them first. So it means that, if you come and start shooting several bots, they'll try to shoot you and will take care of each other later. I guess it's a bit unfair at times, but it also makes the game a bit harder, which is good. :-)
-"Sometimes the speech system of bots looks a bit weird ..."
- Erm ... yeah, I know ... I think that 90% of the sentences appear alright, but then it si true that, sometimes, messages appear without the name of the bot. I'll try to correct that for the next update of the mod.