THE LEVEL --------- Name : Islands Author : Matthew Stewart-Smith (stewarts@luna.co.uk or matthewss@btinternet.com - neither of these addresses are likely to last as I will probably be changing to Demon Internet soon) author of REFIN4, which is being put on at least 2 CDs. Editor(s) used : Quest 1.092, DOS4GW versions of qbsp + vis, Linux version of qcc, joe (for the QuakeC), GNU Emacs (for this readme file) Computer used : AMD K5-133, Cirrus Logic 5446, Sound Blaster AWE32, slightly better monitor than I had when I made REFIN4, OS/2 Warp 4, Debian GNU/Linux 1.1 (kernel 2.0.29) I do NOT use Windoze 95. Or NT. And I'm proud of it. Build time : 1 day QBSP time : about 30 seconds Vis time : about 30 seconds (? - I wasn't counting!) Light time : N/A. I didn't bother with any light sources. I think it looks OK as it is with everything at full brightness. Of course you could always add some light sources yourself. Single player : maybe for testing Cooperative : no Standard deathmatch : maybe Team deathmatch : YES!!! Description ----------- A team deathmatch arena. A large outside area containing 3 islands. On each of these islands is a base. There is also a 4th base underwater. Each base contains lots of weapons and ammo. The idea is that in a team deathmatch, each team takes possesion of a base and tries to defend it while also trying to capture other bases. The lightning gun, red armour and various powerups are found at the bottom of the water, and there is only one of each on the level. Note that I couldn't get the door on the base with the lookout tower thingy right. Press the button inside to close it, and it then takes about 10 rockets to shoot open. After that it will close permanently, and the only way into the base is to jump onto the roof from the lookout tower. This level should be really cool in a large team deathmatch with 3 teams of 5 or 4 teams of 4. If you manage to play such a game, please e-mail me and tell me what you think. Note that the game will probably have to be played over a LAN. Due to the amount of detail visible at once, this level will probably be very slow over the Internet without at least ISDN. You might want to try using Reaper Bots to increase the size of the teams if there's not enough players. Except that Reaper Bots have no concept of 'bases'. Remember that you can respawn anywhere. To make things a bit fairer, you never actually respawn inside a base, only near to one. So if you respawn near to an enemy base you might just be able to get away. There is also a version of this level included for use with the Aircraft patch. The level was designed with this in mind from the start. The aircraft version is called ISLANDSA. There is also a QuakeC patch included to make things a bit more fun on the standard version of this level. See below for details. THE QUAKEC PATCH ---------------- This patch is based on 3 others: Althome homing rockets by Chris Hilton (chris@ichat.com) Tracer by Jonathan Avraham (procedure@hotmail.com) Guided Missiles by Ken Alverson (KenA@TSO.Cin.IX.Net) The standard rockets are replaced by homing rockets. These home in on anything killable that is in front of them. When turning to face their target they curve round slowly rather than abruptly changing direction. So you still have to aim in the general direction of your foe. Pressing 7 again will switch to guided missiles. Use the standard Quake controls to fly your missile where you want it to go. Like a standard rocket it will explode on hitting a wall, player or monster and you will then switch back to your standard view. Pressing space will blow up the missile where it is. If you do it right you can even fly the missiles into enemy bases. But of course other players can blow you away while you're busy piloting a missile. Also note that guided missiles are slower and less powerful than standard ones. Tracers allow you to 'tag' other players. Press R (impulse 13) to fire one. You need 1 rocket and 1 cell to fire a tracer. If it hits a player it will stick to them and make a loud beeping sound. This allows you to hear when that player is near to you. I have modified the tracers in this patch so that when they hit a wall, they stay there for 30 seconds (without making any sound) before disappearing. Tracers have another purpose in this patch; see below. The bit of this patch that I actually made, which should be very good for team deathmatch, is the artillery missiles. These allow you to place a launcher and launch powerful missiles remotely from there. Tracers are used to tag your intended target. To place a launcher, press D (impulse 15). You need a lot of ammo to do this. The launcher will be 'facing' in the same direction you are when you drop it, and this is the direction the missiles will be fired in. The launcher will disappear after 3 minutes. A reccomended location for the launcher is the roof of your base, aimed slightly upwards. Press F (impulse 25) to fire a missile. This requires 10 rockets. Only launchers placed by you will be used. The missile will home in on any tracers that you have placed, or otherwise will just fly in a straight line. The homing code is based on the Althome code, but artillery missiles turn much faster and will search all 360^2 square degrees for their target. The explosion is 5 times more powerful than a standard rocket (radius 600). Also note that the missile will explode in proximity (200 units) of its target even if it doesn't hit it. These missiles accelerate over time so they are less accurate over longer distances. The intended use of these missiles is so that you can fire a tracer at an enemy base and... Sorry about the rubbish sprite used for the launcher, but when it comes to editing models I don't know where to start. If you can reccomend a good model editor (NOT for Win95/NT) please e-mail me. And feel free to submit models, level patches and sounds in UU-encoded form. But if they are larger than about 100K please ask first. If you want to send level patches send them as diff patches if possible. I hope you like both this patch and the level. E-mail me and tell me what you think, including suggestions for improvements. You can make your own levels and patches based on this, but please (a) give me credit in the README file or whatever (b) tell me where I can get a copy! Matthew Stewart-Smith (a.k.a NiMBUS) matthewss@btinternet.com stewarts@luna.co.uk