Quake Voting Booth or Qvote is a modification for Quake made by Kevin Bowen (Lunatik). In a LAN environment, such as with a small group of friends, it is relatively easy to agree upon the settings used on a server. On the internet however, where there may be 15 random people, it becomes a lot harder and also cannot be easily changed by players on a dedicated server.
This modification allows the players to democratically vote on how they wish the server to be set up, specifically in regards to the "noexit" and "teamplay" values (the author promised more in a later version). This is done through the use of custom Console Commands. Ties are resolved by keeping the settings at the current values. A majority is defined by the number of players on a server; the vote must surpass more than half of the current players on the server to pass.
The server's default values are defined by the modification, meaning they are set in the .QC file by the server administrator. By default, these are "noexit 1" and "teamplay 0".
Teamplay, as defined by this modification, is just to turn friendly-fire on or off. This modification does not enforce colors in any way, meaning players will need to manually change colors as needed. The author states that players wishing for team games with friendly-fire off should set "teamplay" to 0 and just get the players to change their colors. Also note that this modification does not work with any enhanced teamplay modifications that add additional "teamplay" numbers.
A message is shown every time the player dies to hint them to using "votehelp" for information on voting, since the author felt it would be unfair for players to be unaware of this functionality (and felt they might miss it when connecting to the server), but also didn't want to bombard the player with all the commands.
Included with this modification is Kevin Bowen's earlier mod, Blood!, since he did not feel like editing it out.
Console Commands
votestats- Shows a list with the number of current votes for each value. This is needed as the game does not notify the players of votes in any other way. Also called by impulse 12.voteexit- Votes for "noexit" to be set to 0, allowing players to exit the level at will. Also called by impulse 13.votenoexit- Votes for "noexit" to be set to 1, preventing players from ending levels early. Also called by impulse 14.voteteams- Votes for "teamplay" to be set to 1, preventing friendly fire. Also called by impulse 16.votenoteams- Votes for "teamplay" to be set to 0, thereby allowing a free-for-all between all players. Also called by impulse 17.votehelp- Provides a summary of all newly added Console Commands. Also called by impulse 18.
Version History
v2.7 - August 25, 1996
- All Console Commands have been made lowercase. Previously each word would be capitalized, such as "VoteStats".
- The algorithm no longer relies upon player names, but on player entities, meaning players with the same name shouldn't cause problems. It appeared that older versions of the code didn't work at all in regards to player names upon reading the code, though Bowen didn't get any information about this.
v2.6 - August 14, 1996
- "VoteStats" now automatically appears upon entering a server. Previously a player could only see it by using "VoteStats" or impulse 12/15.
- Removed impulse 15 since it was a duplicate of impulse 12.
- Players no longer automatically vote upon connecting to a server, since this was causing problems with the values constantly switching back and forth. The default values are now used to solve a tie or if not enough votes were registered. Majority now means everyone on the server, not just those who voted, which in turn means automatically voting was not needed.
- Added "VoteHelp" command. A hint to use this command appears on death instead of calling "VoteStats". This got rid of a large info dump that led to a negative response on servers.
v2.2 - August 5, 1996
- Official release