Wirehead Studios

Hello,
First of all, outstanding mod! Really great job.
Tho there are things that could bring more people in it, and actually make it more q3 casual player-friendly.
At the moment q3 at all is no as popular as it was back then at like 2003 or so, and at the moment the MOST popular gametypes are ffa and clanarena.
There is a standart ffa in this mod, but clanarena is not.. why ? this GREAT mod could be possibly one of the BEST places to compete in clanarena. But not only gametype that is needed, please also make a votable promode physics option.

To sum up:

Requests:
-add clanarena gametype (no selfdamage and no teamdamage, 2 teams, if player dies - he stays dead till one of teams will kill all of the other team players)
-add votable promode physics for each generation (no need to change any 'speed' tweaks that you already made, just make it possible to aircontrol via this votable option, so that each class can do that but just in its own way)
-add startrespawn command (used in clanarena)

This all + this mod's 'generations' = ultrafun and supercool

With this implemented, i am ready to host a couple of servers of this gametype and actually bring teams from osp clanarena in here, so that cups will be possible. Also i do host clanarena cups in osp clanarena (last one 2 monts ago gathered ~20 clans) and that wont be a problem to find players.

That wont change style of that mod in any way, those features will just make it possible to play in abit altered way, but under same generations coolness.

Thanks for dropping in, and for the feedback.  Clan Arena is something we do plan to implement.  We already have a "fully loaded" dmflag, but not the elimination part of play.  It will get its own game mode at some point prior to 1.0's release.

Promode physics is a no go.  CPMA is its own mod entirely, and its focus is completely different from ours.  Even if we wanted to implement their physics, we do not have access to Arqon's code.  Furthermore, CPMA has completely rewritten Quake 3's movement code in such a way that it is no longer compatible with the code we're using.  It's just not possible to do.  What we are doing is reworking the physics to remove the framerate-dependent behavior.  Fourier has been of great assistance in this area, and further thanks must go to Haste as well for his original work to remove the framerate dependency.  In our development version you can play at 60FPS or 160FPS and get the same movement physics regardless.  The primary goal is to provide the optimum physics for each Generation according to the original game they came from without having to sacrifice visual quality for framerate.  If you could do it in Q1, we want to be able to do it with Slipgate.  Same for Quake 2.  We want you to be able to do it at 640x480 or 1280x1024 or whatever resolution you like best.  Physics for Doom and Wolf are another matter since Doom's speed was absurdly fast and the physics in Doom do not translate properly to Quake's vector math, and our Earth Soldiers class is a complete reinterpretation of Wolf, but the same framerate dependency fix has been implemented there as well.  It could be possible to make air control modifiable via server cvars, but that's something I would have to go over with the rest of the dev team.

The "-startrespawn" command I am not familiar with, as I am only used to Clan Arena as it relates to Rocket Arena, which I have not played in some time.  What exactly does this command do?

Promode existed long before cpma, there is promode even in osp 1.31. And im not asking for whole 'promode' thing, all i mean by 'promode' is its aircontrol feature- that is used in osp clanarena to move at 1000-2000 speeds. Recorded myself warming up in q3 osp clanarena /w promode physics abit, just to give the idea of why we would like to have 'aircontrol' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKr_OkkYinU . Notice how much we do use weapons and turns in hard-to-move-places to gain and then preserve speed. Speed is the key to clanarena, the 'why' so many players play it - lots of adrenaline, tricks, air frags on big speeds etc.
You dont actually need any "code" from Arqon- you already implemented aircontrol in slipgaters generation, and that 'aircontrol' is what i ask - so one could VOTE for 'aircontroll for all generations';  Ofc that is different from 'original' generations idea to strictly copy physics of each game be it doom or quake2, but cmon - there was no clanarena in that games too, so why not give it a try, it wont change the fact that this mod is cool, and wont force anyone to play on 'altered' gamestyle with 'aircontrol for all generations', because that is for players (votable option) to decide.
Im just tellin that i have already clans from my cup who just love the variety of classes/weapons and general gamestyle (different jump heights, speeds etc), its just sad we cant aircontrol - which gave us an ability to 'fly' in clanarena. Those teams are ready to play if i host such a cups here.


What about startrespawn thing, ill try to explain.
In clanarena you pick up a team, so does your enemy; lets say you did so and round is about to start.
With 'startrespawn' thingy switched to 1, after countdown for round to start - players will respawn somewhere randomly on the map and start from that positions.
With 'startrespawn' disabled after the countdown till start of the round - players wont be respawned somewhere, they will remain on where they were during warmup, and if they were moving during warmup - they wont loose any speed, i.e nothing happens.
Also recorded a little video where you can see 'startrespawn 1' in action http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOaVMXvB2Kc . Notice that players 'respawn' in random locations after each round start - this is it.


Ofc be it startrespawn 1 or 0, after every new round start players should have 100Hp/200Armor and all weapons with amount of ammo which administrator of server set.

Also clanarena gametype has no weapons or items on map, just pure 'move and kill' gametype.

OK, I get a better idea of what you mean by promode now.  I was confusing it with CPMA being the acronym for "Challenge promode Arena".  If it just involves Q1-style air control, that's something that a cvar might be able to handle.  I'll have to discuss it with the team and look at how the physics would work for other classes.

So disabling startrespawn is just making you start where you are when the warmup timer finishes counting down?  That makes sense.  Normally it does a map_restart when finishing the warmup timer, which makes sense for FFA but not Clan Arena.

This is something we can investigate once we get to our game mode part of development.  It will be a while before we get to working on game modes, but I'll certainly keep all this in mind.  :doom_thumb:

To my memory, "Clan arena" (which is just team survivor) did exist in q2, and I think q1.  Rocket Arena started in q1 and I'm pretty sure that's where clan arena was born for the quake series.  I guess maybe you meant it wasn't available in the stock game...

I'm of the mindset that if it can be done, and someone is willing to do it, there's no harm in making it, so long as it's togglable therefore not forcing people to have it if they don't want it.  That's if Phoenix decides to add it for you.

Thanks for the nod, Phoenix.  I do still have to provide you the source for q3au at some point.  Starting in the second half of this month, I should finally have more time to do things.

I give credit where credit is due, my friend.  As for time, no worries there.  My to-do list still has plenty on it and I'm not the fastest at getting things done of late.  :smirk:

Clan Arena was called "Pickups" in Rocket Arena for Quake 2.  I'm not sure what it was called in Q1, but it's the same concept.  As for options, I do like expanding flexibility in game play.  If  I had to be known by a single phrase it would be  "we can always cvar it".  I'm always open to suggestions in improving Gen so long as we don't stray away from the original purpose of the mod, and new gameplay modes and options (such as air control) are things I like to be fairly open towards... so long as they don't give me too much of a headache to implement.  :D

Well, not quite
If startrespawn cvar is disabled i.e 0 , then after countdown (5..4..3..2..1..start of new round) you dont "respawn" anywhere, you just keep moving.

That's what I thought you meant.  :slippy_thumb:

With full health and starting weapons, with everything that was flying around cleared out?
Or does it just start counting kills then?

In Rocket Arena, you could not attack during the warmup period.  You could move around and position but until you heard the announcer say "FIGHT!" your weapons were safetied.

In mine I had a variable allowing you to blow each other to hell, shoot at each other without doing damage, or the standard no shoot until the countdown ends (there were plenty of early shots on that stupid "FIGHT!" in RA3).  It's been a while.