Hot Mods 27/02: Quake III Arena
You could ask, “Why bother making Quake II Arena?”, and it’d be a valid question for id Software. The first two games were groundbreaking enough to warrant more sequels, but that’s not what the third game provided. Quite timely too as Quake Live goes into beta this week.
This was, at the time, a bizarre diversion for the series to take. First person shooters were the new arcade game, and while the internet was great for email and bulletin boards, it wasn’t a network geared up for some kind of online, massively multiplayer game.
Quake III Arena did away with the single player campaign, which elevated its use to only the most extravagant and tech savvy player – not the kind of elite club we could join with our top of the range 28.8KB modems. And to achieve this strange concept of multiplayer only action, the rest of the game was almost stripped bare to cope with the weight of interaction (quite literally when id made the source available for free in 2005, minus all its textures).
Of course, I don’t need to go back through this statement and detail exactly how prophetic Quake III Arena turned out to be. That id Software made such a bold and misunderstood move practically on the dawn of the new millennium is the reason this game is still fully functional today, 10-years on, and modders love it so much.
Let’s find out why.
Orange Smoothie Productions
http://www.orangesmoothie.org/about.html
The Orange Smoothie mod is a damn difficult concept to really pin down. Yes, it’s a mod, but this is (probably about the only) mod that’s actually transcended the source game.
That’s not to say it’s become a standalone game, as we’ve seen a few time before. Rather, Orange Smoothie has become a modding tradition, that’s applied by the mod team – the esoterically titled Orange Smoothie Productions – as new, usually id Software-made, games and engines appear.
It could probably be best summarised as a tournament control system, which is why it’s been so perfectly suited to Quake III Arena, since this turned out to be a defining moment in online tournament gaming. Orange Smoothie provides a host of advanced… no, advanced suggests complexity. Rather, Orange Smoothie brings Quake III Arena closer to the concept of tournament play that we understand in real life sports – essentially simplifying while expanding the online play concept.
It delivers referees, casual rules, statistics and other sporting essentials. The intuitive interface allows players to create the game they want to play, using the game mechanics they came to love in the original Quake III Arena.
To coin an increasingly cheeseball contemporary buzz word, Orange Smoothie provides the means for Quake III Arena 2.0.{PAGE TITLE=Hot Mods Quake III Arena Page 2}
Rocket Arena 3
http://rocketarena.planetquake.gamespy.com/
So if we’re talking about Orange Smoothie, we’ve got to talk about Rocket Arena 3 as well. It beggars belief that a single source game can play host to two such massively expansive mods, but Rocket Arena 3 boasts many of the same achievements and long, celebrated and diverse life that Orange Smoothie does.
A cynic could label Rocket Arena 3 as just another deathmatch mode, but the refinement of its design is the real key to its success. Most deathmatch modes revolve around resource domination – at least, that’s the way they inevitably play out once the big boys start to play – so no matter how quick on the gun a lone newcomer might be, without the numerous team members with an exhaustive knowledge of every resource location, they don’t stand much of a chance.
Rocket Arena 3 levels that playing field, and we’re not just talking about levelling it with missiles (although it does that, too). All players begin the game with exactly the same equipment, and all additional gear, weaponry and resources are removed from the playing field. The players are scattered randomly about the arena at the beginning of the game, and once you’re dead, you’re dead. You can still spectate, but your trigger pulling is done until the next match.
This means all the action is focused entirely on the battle, and it’s over only when one player is left standing. It sounds over simplistic, but to be honest, that’s the brilliance of Rocket Arena 3.{PAGE TITLE=Hot Mods Quake III Arena Page 3}
Smokin’ Guns
There are certain game concepts that seem obvious when you already know about them, but Smokin’ Guns was quite a huge deviation from the norm when this Quake III Arena total conversion was released. Naturally, this made it immensely popular, and we can see why.
It’s a real test of the imagination to break away from the inherently futuristic nature of a game like Quake III Arena, but Smokin’ Guns takes us to what’s actually a far more prolific guns ‘n’ brawn era – the Wild West.
The idea is to create a semi-realistic version of the Old West, with guns carefully modelled after the original irons, with historically correct damage, reload times and rate of fire. Naturally it also brought us the lawless, frontier towns we so love to fantasise about, and the characters and antics that comes with them.
Game modes include deathmatch and team deathmatch, though they take on wonderfully historical connotations being set in the Wild West. There’s also the delicious Bank Robbery mode and even a duelling system, allowing you to test your reflexes against the best and the worst this virtual Western has to offer.{PAGE TITLE=Hot Mods Quake III Arena Page 4}
DeFRaG
http://cggdev.org/taxonomy/term/1
How about a first person shooter with the violence removed? Sound boring? In DeFRaG’s case, it really isn’t!
It does make it damn hard to pin a genre to this weird, yet thoroughly intoxicating mod, though. To begin with, it’s worth pointing out that a great many home brew programmers have made considerable note of Quake III Arena’s rather unusual physics engine. Although it’s kept under quite tight restrains in the source game, once set free by a capable coder, your character’s movements can really launch things into orbit.
And this is where DeFRaG begins. No, it doesn’t begin in orbit – it begins with bizarre movement physics, clever clogs. The levels are strangely designed, tubular affairs, with seemingly impossible distances between the platforms and features. But the mod requires you to learn about these new movement techniques and possibilities, and once you manage to bend your mind around them, it’s an outstanding experience.
Rather than fight it out, this is more of a dexterity competition. You could reasonably think of it as Mirror’s Edge on steroids (though it came out a long time before Mirror’s Edge, of course).
I know what you’re thinking: speedruns, right? Well, sort of, yeah. But what we generally understand about speedruns really don’t compare to the amazing trick jumping and impossible stunts of DeFRaG.
If you fancy testing yourself out in an entirely different kind of racer, there’s no better extreme than DeFRaG for Quake III Arena. Hold on to yer lunch.{PAGE TITLE=Hot Mods Quake III Arena Page 5}
One To Watch: Anti-Gravity
http://www.freewebs.com/antigravitymod/
We’ve already spoken about Quake III Arena’s unique and malleable physics engine, as well as its latent multiplayer and huge map capabilities, but Anti-Gravity is the one to really bring them all together.
In the near future, and anti-gravity technology is invented that allows the wearer to essentially alter the direction of the magnetic pull around them. So, run up a wall, and the wall becomes the floor. What’s interesting is that it doesn’t alter the fact that you have weight, mass and inertia – it just changes the direction in which those forces affect you.
On top of this fascinating gameplay mechanic, Anti-Gravity boasts a wonderful, cell-shaded, line drawn aesthetic. The game becomes part anime, part 3d environment, which looks incredibly striking and no doubt frees up system resources to really make the mod leap off the screen.
There’s still some deliberation as to whether Anti-Gravity will include vehicles, and we can only hope it will considering the spectacular designs we’ve seen in the screen captures. But the mod recently moved from using the Unreal Tournament 2004 engine (check out our previous Hot Mod for more UT2K games) to Quake II Arena, so it seems the team are still contemplating which features will work out best.
But we’re completely sold on the strength of the visuals and that one unique gameplay mechanic alone, and will definitely be keeping a close eye on Anti-Gravity.
