Rune Central

This project had many different participants providing help and assistance. xCTF was coded by Bam, with assistance in various forms from Steve, Yellow No. 5, Zop, Sputnikutah, Slot Zero, Hydro, MindzfieldX and, of course, Crash of Clan of Rum. And Jackhole for agreeing to have GameStatus.Net scan a CTF server.

(Server rankings for this server are available at GameStatus.Net)
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This server supports:

4 Runes - Strength, Resistance, Regen and Haste
VOTE-EXIT and Map Selection by typing Map Name (E1M1, for example)
+HOOK (including Trinicom/CRCTF compatible hook impulses)
+SATTACK6
COMMANDS <--- in game help
OBSERVER (observer mode, but no rider system at this time)
Rune Quake and IHOC compatible binds

... and has many other familiar features.

Bam did an outstanding job coding xCTF. xCTF is based on ThreeWave source code, and Bam had to do quite a bit of work on the source to shape it in to this form.

What makes this server different

You can run this with merely shareware Quake. Anyone with internet access can go to http://freequake.quakeone.com and use 3 simple "click and install" EZ Installers (under 10 MB total size) and be using ProQuake or JoeQuake and be playing on this server.

In otherwords, anyone with internet access can download shareware Quake and play there in minutes, registered Quake not required.

The plan is to offer a gateway to allow new players to experience modern Quake and increase the size of the Quake player universe. If this works as hoped, some of these players will want to play on other servers and buy registered Quake.

Something we discovered while play testing early on was that having a hook on E1M7 was really bad for play. Additionally, we noticed that since E1M7 small, that you could rocket spam each other's base.

Bam did the following:

1. Made E1M7 the sole hook-free map.
2. Added the Chthon pictured about to prevent rocket spam from flag to flag.

I have to say that these changes turned out better than anyone had anticipated. E1M7 is incredibly fun to play.

Three additional notes on E1M7:

1. If you are extremely skilled, there is a lightning gun we added up in the top section of the map. It requires either a Strength-Rune rocket jump or a Quad rocket jump to retrieve. It also requires more rocket jumping skill than I have, but Bam has done it several times.

2. Mindzfield has a trick where rocket jumps over the Chthon to quickly capture the gold flag. We've played a couple of 1 on 1's on that map and it makes me laugh everytime when he manages to score while I'm respawning. Needless to say, I doubt that he could pull off that trick very often during a 4 on 4 or even a 2 on 2 because game play is so intense on that map.

3. You can use the Chthon as a bridge if you do it right.

Altering player bindings is evil! I use ENTER to talk! Not switch weapons

Head down in shame. Other than that, great shareware capability idea! I go there regularly

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Huh? To my knowledge xCTF does not alter your key bindings.

I'm not sure about the other keys but ENTER is replaced with a weapon rotation command

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That would be my fault. I didn't think anyone really used enter. I bound the enter key to impulse 10 because impulse 10 is used in the menu and thought it would be easy to press enter. I will remove the binding of enter.

Bam

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BAM!!

In your face Yeller, I inspired r00k to add +mlook in Qrack and Bam to remove the ENTER bind.

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A man walks into a bar with a tortoise on his head. He asks for some cheese. The bartender says "but this is a bar", so the man says "that's OK, the tortoise is paying".

[*cough*]help command, +speed, ..[*/cough*]

I'll expand on this and provide some examples:

1. I think the implementation of m_look [0/1] is better than +mlook/-mlook, but removing +mlook/-mlook is bad because it confuses players who have used Quake a long time.

2. The "Help" in Quake is useless for sure. But that graphic is replaceable by mods. Some single player mods replace the help graphic with useful information, like what impulses do what or what keys do what, etc.

3. +speed/-speed ... same as #1. Most of the Quake players are not as Quake knowledgeable as the average participant in this forum. If a less knowledgeable player tries to do what they always do and it doesn't work, it confuses them. (I think this was added back in or fixed in 1.53 or 1.54)

4. -setrefreshrate. One thing that is nice thing about JoeQuake is that it is very FuhQuake-like. If you want to do something in JoeQuake, you can usually try whatever you are used to doing in FuhQuake and have it work. It is my understanding that FuhQuake and several other Quakes (Fitz, EZ, maybe Tremor and DP) use vid_refreshrate.

5. In my opinion, fov_speed should default to the setting similar to normal Quake. If you are using a zoom or sniper script, it is very awkward to have a delay when you are expecting an instantaneous switch.

These are just some things I've noticed.

I myself have learned about these things. I was fortunate that Yellow No. 5 had a big discussion with me about being "conservative" with things for Quake.

If it were not for this, I would have had the JoeQuake installer do a lot of very wrong things. I wanted to change the default.cfg initially and make changes to quake.rc and he talked me out of it.

Unfortunately, I still made a mistake or maybe 2. For example, at the time I made the JoeQuake installer, the included config.cfg sets cl_bob to 0. Ranger thought JoeQuake didn't support weapons bobbing as a result.

When I revisit the JoeQuake installer, I think I'll either have a prompt asking the user for consent for any non-default changes or at least make a clear notification of anything different than the original.

Within the first few minutes of using QRack, I noticed my zoom script didn't work the way it worked in other Quakes and I didn't know why.

It's like Bam sending a key binding for "Enter" in xCTF. You think it doesn't make a difference and then one day someone says "Hey!".

I guess from reading some old posts on another forum, there are a lot of old skoolers that don't like DarkPlaces because some small physics changes and things they can't find out how to turn off.

For me at least, Quake has served as an interesting learning tool the last few months in being conservative about changes.

(This was a longer post than I intended, but I try to be thorough. I like the features added to QRack.)

i like jumping around and playing on the chthon

I like to leap for the cell box, miss and die a horrible death

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Do I smell a RuneCTF? (more than just 4).

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Craving for Fragging? Visit: MSM Servers Status

can i plug my little server here? quake.intertex.net:26000 ? its ctf style ;P

oh, ok so the flags are mutant scrags and there a runes but, oh and armor drops on death if there is some that remains... and.well i mean maybe ya okay so powerups drop too on death oh ya so if u want u can toss runes
fine but if u reall nned so ya all runequake binds work too sheez your so demanding :O

Sputnikah's server has some nice features, like you can see your teammate's name and their health and armor. I know there are other features, but that's the one that I most remember.

FVF has that too and more you can check monster health, player's class etc

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CTF is entertaining. Bring back Super CTF and I'll be forever in your debt.

:O someone asked me to do that a few years back... but i hadnt played it enough as you know to work on it.