NOTABLE CHANGES IN QUAKE III AND TEAM ARENA - (1.29f BETA)

NEW id CREATED PRO MAPS - One of our newer employees, Fred Nilsson, is an avid fan tournament style game play, and is very interested in the professional gaming community. Via feedback from professional Quake 3 players, Fred has made some modifications to some of the more popular maps that shipped with Quake 3 including “The Camp Grounds”, “Lost World”, “The Proving Grounds”, and “Vertical Vengeance” You can play them in the single player game by advancing to tier 7, or run them on your server by using the map names “PRO-Q3DM6”, “PRO-Q3DM13”, “PRO-Q3TOURNEY2” and, “PRO-Q3TOURNEY4”. These are a lot of fun! Give them a try!

NEW NETWORK CODE - There is a new compression system built into the network code of the latest point release. Essentially, this reduces the bandwidth usage of Quake 3 and Team Arena by a ratio of 5:1 over previous versions of the game. Modem players, as well as everyone else, should experience a significant improvement in internet game play because of this.

AUTO UPDATE SYSTEM - Within this release is an Auto Update system that can be used to at any time to check for and download updates to Quake 3 and Team Arena. When you install the point release a file will be created in your Quake III Arena directory and in the Start Menu called, “Check For Quake III Arena Updates”. Running this file will check our servers for updates and notify you if there is a newer version or inform you that your files are up to date. The auto updater will create a directory on your C: where downloaded updates will be stored. It is important that you DO NOT delete this directory. If you plan to uninstall Quake III, make sure to uninstall all of the point releases as well.

NEW RAIL, ROCKET LAUNCHER, PLASMA GUN, and LIGHTNING GUN EFFECTS - There have been several new weapon effects that we’ve managed to sneak into this release. We’ve turned them off in the game by default, but you can enable them from the console by pressing the ~ key and typing the following commands:

\cg_oldRail 0 (enables the new rail effect)
\cg_oldRocket 0 (enables the new rocket effect)
\cg_oldPlasma 0 (enables the new plasma effect)
\cg_trueLightning 0.5 (enables the new lightning gun effect)

In addition, the colors of the new rail effect can be changed with the cvars \color1 and \color2 with values of 1 through 8. (ex. \color1 1 or \color2 5). The new Rail gun effect was donated from the Alliance mod team http://www.planetquake.com/alliance/ The new Lightning gun effect was donated from the CPMA mod team http://www.promode.org/

NEW CHEATING COUNTER MEASURES - There has been quite a bit of new code added to make it much more difficult to cheat and hack the game. We’d tell you more, but that would be defeating the purpose… Rest assured that it will be harder to cheat than ever before.

NEW PROTOCOL CHANGE - The changes made to improve network code and prevent cheating will make this and future version of Quake 3 and Team Arena incompatible with older versions. This will affect older versions of demos as well. We wish it were possible to maintain game compatibility through each release, however major code changes limit our ability to do so.

QUAKE III ARENA AND TEAM ARENA EDITING CHANGES

TEAM SELECTION - When a player starts a game with map or devmap the team logos displayed will be the last two teams used in the single player game. The console cvars g_blueteam and g_redteam commands will allow server admins to change the teams being played on dedicated servers.

Q3:TA TEAM CREATION - It is now possible to create original Team Arena teams with new team logos, body models, head models, voices and skins. Previously the code had been designed to limit the game to use of two body models (James & Janet). With this point release, hobbyists who know their way around the skills of model-making, animating, and skinning can make new team content for Team Arena. The “how-to” details for the creation of new teams are extensive and will be documented in a separate publication. These new teams will be available for use in single player, and multiplayer games.

INCREASED VERSATILITY FOR USER-CREATED TEAM SKINS IN Q3A AND Q3:TA - When a user-created skin for a model is accompanied by a set of similarly named matching team color skins, the game will now use those instead of the model’s default team skin. For things to work right you have to have the following in the pak file for a blue team skin for and example skin for the Crash model name Hellion:

Hellion_blue.tga models\players\crash\
Hellion_blue_f.tga models\players\crash\
Hellion_blue_t.tga models\players\crash\
Head_Hellion_blue.skin models\players\crash\
Icon_Hellion_blue.tga models\players\crash\
Lower_Hellion_blue.skin models\players\crash\
Upper_Hellion_blue.skin models\players\crash\
Head_blue.skin models\players\crash\Hellion\

Note that the head_hellion_blue.skin file must be in the crash directory and the head_blue.skin must be in the crash/Hellion directory for the model to work properly. A model configured in this manner will be back-compatible with earlier versions of Q3A.

The search process for model skins has been refined for core Q3A and Q3:TA. Details will be in the Team Creation document to follow. Essentially, the game will look deeper into model directories when looking for model head selections.

NEW MODEL ANIMATION COMMANDS -
Fixedlegs : put in the animation .cfg this command freezes the programmatic rotation of the legs.
Fixedtorso : put in the animation .cfg this command freezes the programmatic rotation of the torso.

MAPMAKING CHANGES - ENTITIES CAN BE SET TO APPEAR (OR NOT) BASED ON GAME VERSION. Map makers now have the option to make their maps use different entity sets if a game is being played in original Quake III Arena or in Quake III: Team Arena. By adding one of the following key/value epairs, the mapper can create conditional tests that look for what code is being used or NOT being used to run the game.
KEY: "notq3a" (i.e.; Not Quake III Arena)
VALUE: "1" or "0" The default value is zero for an unmarked entity. If this value is set to 1, the marked entity will not appear if the game is played with "vanilla" (unmodified) Quake III Arena game code. Example: A Chaingun from Q3:TA could be marked with this epair. It would show up in Q3:TA game, but not in a Q3A game.
KEY: "notta" (i.e.; Not Quake III: Team Arena)
VALUE: "1" or "0" The default value is zero for an unmarked entity. If this value is set to 1, the marked entity will not appear if the game is played with the Team Arena expansion set and its game types.
Should you want an entity to NOT appear in either game type (Q3A or Q3TA), you would set BOTH keys to 1. In this case, it would work with any other game mod which supports that entity
If botplay is desired, these epairs should not be used on entities, such as func_statics, that significantly change the flow of the game map.