User blog:Deathstalker666/QuakeWikia Server

Just a useful feature list to keep everyone up to date on what the server is looking like. I originally had it sorted by mods I was and wasn't using, but found too many of them I was deviating from the intended design, or just was picking and choosing small parts of convoluted mods. Needless to say, I wished for something with a bit more organization. So here we are, a nice list just clarifying what the features of the server are.

Note that I am trying to make sure server incompatibilities have nothing to do with me. So while there are known issues, I can verify most of them were existent in the mods where I ripped the code from.

I have tried using PAK Explorer to make transferring the files a bit easier, but the problem is that detection of files has been less than reliable. It seems to pick and choose what works and doesn't work, so that it ends up failing at random points. Raw files aren't as user friendly to install or transfer over, but at least when placed in a directory we can be assured they work.

QuakeWikia Official Server Gameplay Changes

General Gameplay Changes

• MultiSkin support, can use up to 32 different skins. Heads have been included, they retain themselves on death, and they stay with the player upon switching levels. See Custom Skins for more info.
• Enhanced teamplay. Players that kill someone else on their team will also kill themselves (as well as cause them to lose a frag). Players that fire at another teammate will injure themselves. Color locks are in place to prevent players from switching pant colors mid-game, trying to change colors will immediately result in the player trying to cheat being killed and reverted back to the proper color. These can easily be turned off for Deathmatch games, meaning both modes are fully possible.

Environment Changes

• Drowning doesn't hurt Armor, but damages health directly. Not the biggest of changes, but felt it was useful just for practicality.
• Water also has air bubbles for Rockets (not really noticeable, but added to be there) and slows down the velocity of projectiles. This is only really noticeable with the Grenade Launcher, which is practical and feels like it belongs in the game.
• Anything can go through Teleporters, including projectiles. Just adds a bit more variety, experimentation, and strategy by using map mechanics to your advantage.
• Nails now can stick to walls or bounce off them. Quite interesting to use them strategically around a wall, plus it makes Nail Traps a bit more chaotic.

Monster Changes

• Backpacks explode, meaning dead Grunts and Ogres can create hazards in firefights. A bit of additional danger.
• Enemies can now remove most items from play just by picking them up. Best not to let them wander or you may find yourself short on Ammo.
• Enemies that pick up a Pentagram of Protection can use them, so be VERY careful not to have one do this.
• Crucified Zombies can be gibbed. All Monsters have solid corpses that can be hacked apart to create a gibbed head. Gibbed heads can be kicked around the world or destroyed. All useful features to just make the world that much more interactive.
• Ogres are now Shrek. A modification made by your truly with sound additions by DominusMortem. They throw an unlimited supply of onions at you, which just happen to be far more accurate than the grenades ever were.
• Added a custom obituary for Chthon since there was none included in the vanilla game.
• Added the Rotfish fix. Now most levels are able to be properly completed.

Powerup Changes

• When players die, they no longer drop Backpacks. Every bit of Ammo counts.
• Quad Damages work like Doom berserk packs. They last longer, but only amplify your Axe, making it harder to clear out areas. Useful since we generally know the Secrets and the game is too generous with Quad Damages. To remove confusion, I have renamed the Quad Damage, it is now the "Berserk Pack".
• All Armor types have been significantly nerfed. A Red Armor only has 100 points, while weaker types are even lower. Absorption rate is also based on armor values, meaning it gets worse with the armor. Should balance out more with players knowing where all the Secrets are.

Weapon Changes

• All non-rapid fire Weapons can now fail. The Shotgun and Double-Barrelled Shotgun can now jam for a few seconds; while the Rocket Launcher/Grenade Launcher will explode and kill the player. Essentially, this shouldn't kill regular play, but will punish players that like to hold down the button endlessly, such as by spamming grenades constantly around a corner.
• Most weapons have a strong kickback now. The Axe obviously does not, nor does the Thunderbolt. The Rocket Launcher has no kickback either; this is due to it giving the player too powerful Rocket Jumps.
• The Rocket Launcher fires Rottweilers. This way we can have a proper Quakewikia server where we fire barking dogs at Shrek. Wouldn't be a Quakewikia server without this feature.
• The Sniper Rifle has been added and is part of everyone's inventory, a bit of a hybrid of both found on the Wikia, primarily being based off the non-TF version. Got the Nail projectiles to properly bounce off walls, also got the Sniper Rifle to be selectable by Mousewheel. The player starts with no extra Nails, but can find some in the level to use it. Is designed to be bound to the 9th key. Works well for a bit of stealth gameplay. Also made the Quad Damage changes compatible since it is managing an entirely separate form of damage. Added a proper death message (in the rare event someone kills someone else with it). Like the Team Fortress version, the Rifle can only be fired when stationary (and has the longer waiting time of 3 seconds instead of 1.2), meaning it is a horrible idea against Fiends. Added an exception for Zombies to prevent them from being killed by it.

Known Issues

• Players are able to get stuck on Grunt heads. Teammates can help each other off them, but it would be nice to fix the issue somehow. Furthermore, it isn't much of an issue as long as you don't try to destroy Monsters while standing on top of them. Standing beside them and hitting them with the Axe doesn't cause this issue. Seems to be somehow related to the physics of the head and being a solid entity, a static head in this situation would work perfectly fine.
• There is an error message when picking up a Ring of Shadows as it tries to change your hardcoded skin. Yet to figure out how to remove the error, but it means nothing. It has something to do with GLQuake, it works fine in DOS mode.
• Players don't have solid corpses or solid heads. It seems there was attempts to fix this, but so far they just cause the game to crash. Gibs are essentially defined in the player code, but the head code has to be defined afterwards, meaning it isn't as easy to reference as a monster. If the body is solid, something has to be thrown. A non-solid head can be defined earlier, meaning the player could have a solid corpse, but not a solid head. Due to player defining all other corpses, a solid player body would result in all other heads not being solid. Due to solid heads working a lot on omissions of things needed for a solid body for the player to work, this means they are essentially incompatible unless I can find a way to get them to work better with each other. MOST mods seem to just make the body solid, not the head, but the head being solid seems like a better feature than a solid player body.
• To get MultiSkin to work, I had to specify a specific hardcoded skin for each player. I rather get the customization normally offered, but not at the expense of it resetting to skin 1 at the start of every level, since that gets annoying to the point nobody wishes to use the skin feature. Hardcoding a skin means even trying to use the binds don't work, since it is stuck on that one particular skin.
• Seems the server changes all enemy projectiles to work like Nails for some reason. Need to look into this. Adds some nice unpredictability since they can bounce off walls, but does result in some missing death messages.
• Need things to be harder, with consequences, while retaining compatibility with all maps.
• I can't make dedicated servers; doing such immediately causes the game to crash. I think this is a bug in GLQuake (if I could host in DOSBox, I would). Not the biggest of deals, since we don't generally have people wanting to play anyway.