alien-arena for Debian ------------------------------------- ALIEN ARENA 1. Introduction 2. System Requirements 3. Basic Commands 4. Completing Levels 5. Connecting to a server 6. The CodeRED ACE Bot 1. INTRODUCTION ALIEN ARENA is a standalone 3D first person online deathmatch shooter crafted from the original source code of Quake II and Quake III, released by id Software under the GPL license. With features including 32 bit graphics, new particle engine and effects, light blooms, reflective water, hi resolution textures and skins, hi poly models, stain maps, ALIEN ARENA pushes the envelope of graphical beauty rivaling today's top games. The game features 37 levels, which can be played online against other players, or against the built in CodeRED bots. Alien Arena offers CTF, AOA(All Out Assault) mode, in which players can climb into vehicles to do battle, Deathball, and Team Core Assault. Simply go into the multiplayer menu to start a server, change the game rules, and choose a map to play on. You can also select from five different mutators(instagib, rocket arena, excessive, low grav, regen, and vampire) to further customize your game experience. 2. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS 1 ghz 256 mb RAM 500 mb hard disk space 3D Accelerator 3. BASIC COMMANDS ALIEN ARENA works very much like Quake 2/3, with a few notable exceptions. The player will have the following weapons: 1. Blaster 2. Alien Disruptor 3. Chain Pistol 4. Flame Thrower 5. Rocket Launcher 6. Alien Smart Gun 7. Disruptor 8. Alien Vaporizer Weapons now also have alternate firing modes. In you controls menu, select your secondary fire key and this will allow you to use these modes. There are new powerups such as haste and sproing, in addition to the venerable quad damage and invulerabilty. The player will also have a flashlight, which is always present, and very useful. The key activates and de-activates the flashlight, or you can bind whatever key you wish to "flashlight" which will turn it on and off. It would be advisable for you to change video settings for however you wish to view the game, and what gives you reasonable performance. In Linux, you may have to type "vid_restart" at the console in order for them to take effect, depending on your system and version of X you are running. The game's default settings are at a mid range setting, so try tweaking them or adding/removing effects depending on your framerate. If you wish to see your framerate, you can type "set cl_drawfps 1" at the console(brought down using the ` key). A complete listing of codes that can be used in the console can be found at . Most of the codes described at this webpage will work for Alien Arena. ALIEN ARENA also allows for colored names just as Quake 3, using the ^ character followed by a number to set the color. 4. COMPLETING LEVELS In Alien Arena you can play a single player tournament where your goal will to be to reach the fraglimit before a bot does. If you fail, you will be forced to repeat the level until you do. These rules can be changed in the menu system. You can also play people online, where your goal is to reach the fraglimit before your opponents, or by scoring the most frags before the time limit is up. In CTF mode, you'll be on a team, and trying to capture the enemy's flag and return it to your own flag's location. The team reaching the capture limit first, wins. In Deathball, the goal is to score as many points as possible, either by killing your opponents, or by finding the ball and shooting it into the goal(worth 10 frags). When a player is inside of the deathball, he is defensless. In Team Core Assault, your goal is to disable your enemy teams power nodes, then destroy the central spider node. You can only do damage to the spider node when all other power nodes are disabled. 5. CONNECTING TO A SERVER You can either select "join server" from the "multiplayer" menu and select a server in the list, or you can use the CodeRED Galaxy server browser(windows only). In the in-game browser, servers are listed in order of ping, with lowest ping at the top of the list. 6. THE CODERED ACE BOT Bots are a built in feature of ALIEN ARENA. Several bots are already configured for multiplayer games, and in Alien Arena, each level has a specific bot file for what bots are to be played in each level. To add a bot, type <"sv addbot name model/ski">, and to remove a bot type <"sv removebot nae">. You can also add bots in the menu, in the deathmatch/bots flags area. In your Deathmatch options, you can configure other options such as chatting, node saving, and aiming. These bots are fully configurable using the Botconfigurator program. You can change their skill levels, accuracy, weapon favoring, awareness, and chat strings. Skill level 0 bots are quite easy to beat. Skill level 1 bots are a little tougher, and do more dodging and are more accurate. Skill level 2 bots do more advanced dodging, rocket jumping, and are even more accurate. Level 3 bots are extremely skilled, and will strafe, and strafe jump around the level. They will also taunt you after killing you. If in Alien Arena, you play the single player tournament against the bots, selecting "easy" will make all bots skill level 0. Selecting "normal" will leave them at whatever level they are configured. Selecting "hard" will make them all move up 1 skill level.