9/13/2000 6:28 PM
Subject: WFA Newsletter Vol. III for Sept. 13th

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Weapons Factory Arena
NewsLetter
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WFA Newsletter #3

-WFA Makes it into Print, Again!-
Once again WFA is in the foreground of the Q3 Mod scene. The October issue
of PC Gamer (which just arrived at my door last night) has almost an entire
column dedicated to WFA. There is a screenshot I took months ago of the
Assassin in the article! I am famous now, please stop the fan mail now. Wow,
its a thrill to be associated with such a widely regarded q3 Mod. PC Gamer
also has WFA on the CD-ROM again and this is distributed to 300,000+
worldwide.

-WFA 1.2 Client Beta Debuts Today!-
Update by WFADev Coder, Static:
-- This will require a <1mb download. And you will need to rename the 1.2
pk3 file to something unusable like .pk4 to play on servers running 1.1.
-- Added +/- Commands to assist in making configs.
-- Added IonFuser for the Engineer. This weapon is an armor piercing weapon
against enemies and repairs the armor of his teammates.
-- Separated the Hyperblaster, IonFuser, and Railgun trails to fix some
graphical errors. The new Hyperblaster is MUCH less laggy.
-- Made marine turrets display their team color in the jets.
-- Added a new server variable: g_wf_warmup. This value represents the
number of seconds that players are locked in to their spawn rooms. Default
is 60 seconds.
-- Added a new ref command: ref_matchlimits [on/off]. This turns on MATCH
limits for the server and is active until turned back off. In order for this
to work, the server operator MUST have a MATCHLIMITS line defined in his
wfa-server.ini. It should look EXACTLY like the class limits line, but named
MATCHLIMITS instead. And it should contain the class limits that the server
op wants to be used in official matches.
For Example:
CLASSLIMITS,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,END
MATCHLIMITS,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,END
-- Fixed a bug whereby the Nurse could ressurect dead players (*grin*)
-- Fixed a bug whereby the timer and Game-end did not take the warmup period
in to account. Games should now end properly and ignore the warmup time. 20
minutes = 20
full minutes of gameplay.
-- Increased the effectiveness of the nurse's drugs significantly and
increased their duration to 20 seconds.
-- Radius Healing for the nurse has been doubled. (Health points received
per update)
-- Fixed all beam weapons (railgun, hyperblaster, ionfuser, turret grenade)
so that their beams are now team-colored and ignore the custom color
settings from individual players. May be necessary for cg_railtrailtime to
be set in order to see Rail Trails. Try /seta cg_railtrailtime 1000
-- Added new beam shaders for the hyperblaster, turretgrenade, railgun, and
ionfuser. Players should now be able to tell what is firing at them based on
the appearance of the trail.
-- Added new # commands for messaging.
#A will substitute for your numerical Armor Value.
#H will substitute for your numerical Health Value.
#S will display any statuses on your player.
The Statuses shown by #S are:
On Fire, Plagued, Cloaked, Disguised, Legshot, kamikaze, Frozen, Have Flag,
Drugs Active, and Sentrygun Active.
Commands effected by this are say, say_team, wfplay, wfteamplay, wforadio,
and wfdradio.
-- Added teamed sentry code. The stands of the sentry guns now show which
team they are on.
-- Arsonists now have Red Armor.
-- Being set on fire now hurts a bit (25%, not 50%) more.
-- The Freezegun now has an alt-fire mode that acts like a very short lived
(3 seconds) freeze mine.
-- Added a Once-per-second timer to the cloak and disguise command. You may
now use those commands only once per second. This is not a balance issue, it
is a server performance issue.
-- Added the wfteamplay, wforadio, and wfdradio text to the "teamchat"
window.
-- Added new client cvar, /cg_radioSettings.
If cg_radioSettings = 0, NO WAVs will be played at all by wfplay,
wfteamplay, or the o/dradios.
If cg_radioSettings = 1, NO WAVs will be played at all by wfplay. All team
radio sounds will be played as normal.
If cg_radioSettings = 2 (Default), ALL WAVs will be played.
-- Added new client cvar, /cg_execMapConfigs.
If cg_execMapConfigs = 0, nothing will happen.
If cg_execMapConfigs = 1, WFA will automatically attempt to execute a config
called <mapname>.cfg at the start of each new map. For example, if you were
playing on the map q3ctf1, q3ctf1.cfg would be executed at map start.
-- Added CS style radio notification. When someone on your team plays a
radio message an icon briefly appears over their head letting you know who
sent the radio sound.
-- Fixed a lag-bug related to standing on the sentrygun.
-- Changed the ramp physics to be less "sticky." Jumping up ramps is
significantly faster. The fix does make players appear to "bounce" a little
more, but I think you guys can deal with that. :)
-- Fire should now go out "instantly" when the player touches water.
-- Alarm sounds both at the alarm itself and at the alarm's owner's
locations so you can hear your alarm going off no matter where you are.
-- Added Cameras to the Recon and Assassin's arsenal. Anyone on your team
can use any camera that was placed by a teammate. Use /Camera [on/off] to
place a camera and /cameraview to toggle through the available cameras.
-- Changed the nurse skin to make it a little more team colored.
-- The Engineer is now able to see the health and armor of his teammates in
the same fashion as the nurse so as to better be able to judge who needs
armor repair.
-- Damage of almost all non-autoaim weapons has been increased between
5-15%. Weapons like sentries, turrets, and mines are not effected.

So as you can see, there is a lot here to test, including new features.
Server admins need to make sure they define a MATCHLIMITS line in their
configs... bad things will happen if a REF tries to turn them on and they
are not defined. I need players to test the camera VERY thoroughly... I
tried to cover a lot of possible exploits that might be possible because of
the camera code but I'm SURE I missed some... so please try to exploit it :)
Many from the community have been submitting "taunt" sounds for the WFA 1.2
sound file pak. There are going to be around 150 sound files. Clans were
recently encouraged to submit 1 wav file, which must be under 5 seconds
long, as well as submit an image for inclusion in the WFA pack files...read
on:
All clans are invited to participate in this... you are invited to create
ONE clan specific sound, and ONE clan specific image. Here are the rules:
Sound: The sound must be in the same sound format as the radio waves in the
radio pack. If you don't know how to see those, ask around, someone will
tell you. The sound MUST be under 5 seconds long, and must be "radio" legal
in terms of swearing. If you send me a clip of filth I'm going to delete it
and not even tell you I rejected it.
Image: This image may be used in a number of ways... Definately as a "spray
paint" type feature like in Halflife but also possibly as a clan identifier
in clan matches (instead of the yellow arrow maybe) and maybe some other
things I haven't firmed up yet... this image must be SMALL! limited to 32x32
pixels... if you don't know how to make an image like that its probably best
to ask someone else to do it. You ***MAY*** make a shader for it if you know
how. If you do make a shader, it may not have multiple image files
associated with it unless they are already found in the standard quake 3
pak0.pk3. Do not ask me for help with this ;) I don't have time to give tech
support to all the folks who are going to want to partake ;) Try asking in
#wfa and #wfamaps <Ducks the mapper's fury>

-Competition Galore-
The WFA clan scene is heating up. There are a lot of good reasons to join a
team of WFA players, or "Clan" as they are called. (not to be confused with
"Klan") The best reason to join a clan is the leagues and ladders you can
become a part of. The OGL (http://www.ogl.org) and the STA league.(
http://wfa.stronger.org/) I recently got to compete in a game on the new map
Zarcdoz, which is really a q3 conversion of the classic WF for Q2 map,
Zardoz, which is really a conversion of the classic TF map, "The Rock"..
WHEW, lots of conversions.... Anyway, the match was great. Very intense. The
other team had a great defense, 1 gunner at the front door, a gunner at the
side hallway entrance and an engineer in the Flagroom. Each gunner had their
laser in place across the entry-way, making it a tricky grapple or crouch
situation. Made worse if you consider the gunner shooting at you or the
magnotron grenade pulling you across that laser. After getting soundly
crushed on the first round, we!
went into the second round with their Defense in mind (and deployed on our
side of the map!) and launched some specific offenses that countered their
deployments. With me as borg, 2 marines and some good coordination, we were
able to make a much better showing in the second round and even went to
sudden death mode tying the game, but the cumulative cap count left my team
losing 4-10. Another project that several people have been involved in,
including myself, is the WFREF Page. This is a place for Clans or new Clans
to come and get a server reserved for their WFA Matches. Stop by the new
site (work in progress) http://www.planetice.net/wfref

-WFA Maps Committee Reviewing Maps-
There has been a lot of support from the community for going through the 30
or so WFA maps that exist and establishing which ones are good enough to be
stamped "Official". I came up with the idea to have a map review committee
about 3 months ago, but lack of dedicated, passionate individuals hampered
my efforts. Flash forward to a couple of weeks ago. I was in #wfamaps
discussing some of the latest beta maps with the staff of www.wfamaps.com
and mentioned that I wanted to organize the first meeting to go through and
cut the maps from the WFA Official distribution that just aren't up to WFA
quality. The response of support was overwhelming, so we had the first
meeting 2 weeks ago and reviewed around 20 maps from the "official" 1.0
release up to freelance map pack #1 and #2. Of these maps, 9 or 10 were
selected as high quality enough to be "official". The WFA map committee is
comprised of Map Designers, Critics, WFA Dev team members, and outstanding
community leaders. Our missio!
n is to establish the base map collection, and then playtest and evaluate
all new maps that come out. Only those maps that pass the testing process
will be voted into the official WFA distribution channels. In the form of
pak file updates and such. The Map Committee minutes are hosted on
http://www.wfamaps.com and you can see how the discussions go. If you are
interested in participating in the process or want to help us playtest maps,
watch the website for details on when the next meeting is. You can also now
view which maps have been deemed "official" on the site. Expect the WFADEV
team to phase out old maps and start distributing new maps as early as the
b1.2 release. The trial period and "beta" nature that was inherent in the
WFA map quality is over now. Its time to really buckle down and get the best
WFA maps we can for the future. If you are interested in making WFA maps,
check out the FAQ on making WFA maps and keep in mind its a difficult labor.
All the best mappers tell me to expect to throw away your first few maps.

-WFA Does Not Support Bots, Yet-
The WFADev team is awaiting some Id software fixes that will be released
with Q3 1.18 that will cure some serious problems with getting bots to play
Q3 Mods.

Thats it for this update. Get out there and test 1.2!

Solicitor
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Copyright 2000 Weapons Factory Software

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