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 ...
So, what is this mod about ?
The "Classic Quakability" mode (multi-player only)
The "Weaponability" mode (multi-player only)
The "Quakability Bot" mode (single-player only)
The "Quakability Arena" mode (single player only)
Some impulses
What to expect next
So, what is this mod about ?
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.
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.
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 ...
The "classic Quakability" mode (multi-player only)
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 ...
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 :
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.
The "Weaponability" mode (multi-player only)
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 :
W eaponability 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.
The "Quakability Bot" mode (single-player only)
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.
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
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.
Some impulses ...
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 ...
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
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.
What to expect next ?
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 !