9/27/2000 11:00 AM
Subject: WFA Newsletter Vol. IV For Sept. 27th

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Weapons Factory Arena
NewsLetter
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WFA Newsletter #4

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Quake 3 1.25 BETA
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This beta replaces 1.17 for Quake 3 Arena and breaks all modifications. Its
a mixed blessing really. It contains a lot of fixes that fans and mod makers
asked for, but its a problem for mod makers like WFA, because of the amount
of code re-work that potentially will have to happen. Todd H. from
idSoftware sums it up very well in his .plan from Sept. 25th.
http://finger.planetquake.com/qfplan.asp?userid=toddh&id=14776 We are
waiting for this to get out of beta, when ID will release the source code
changes so that WFA coders can get to work on integrating the 1.25 Q3A code
with the next official release of WFA, which is coincidentally 1.2.
(currently 1.2d in beta terms). I do not know at this time how 1.25 will
impact the inclusion of Bots in WFA or how 1.25 will impact changes to the
mod. Anyway, to sum it up, don't get 1.25 unless you want WFA to be broken.
If you already have 1.25, you can easily go back to 1.17. See the
instructions in the link above.

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WFA 1.2d Beta Popular
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Those of you that have been with WF since the early Q2 days know that there
is cause for trepidation whenever a new version of WF comes out or in this
case WFA. Most of the Q2WF new versions took flak. However, WFA and its
community-focus seem to be overcoming this unfortunate past. Nothing but
praise for 1.2d has been hitting the boards and forums and our mailboxes.
Right now the number of servers running the beta is intentionally limited to
3 or 4. I would like to thank [GQF]Static personally from our WFADev Team
for the considerable effort he has been putting into the 1.2d release. There
are lots of good things to look forward to. Grab the 1.2d download and you
can view the readme.txt in the pk3 file. Use Pakscape or Winzip to open the
pk3 and look for the release notes.

Some highlights? Taunt pak of fun radio sounds, clan specific sound
submissions (must be less than 5 seconds long, and be appropriate for pg-13
audience), clan specific graphics! Submit your clan graphic in 32x32 format.
The early guess for the use of this will be as an icon over clanmates
wearing specific tags. 1.2d also has way too many great features for me to
list here, grab it and check out the release notes.

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New OGL Admin for WFA and AimBot Hysteria
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I want to congratulate Truck from [HLM] for being assigned the post of WFA
OGL Ladder Admin. Tapper, OGL Chief Stakeholder, made the surprise
appointment after MsC sadly stepped down citing harassment from a few
individuals (most of whom don't even play WFA). The assignment of Truck to
the OGL's prestigious post was even more surprising considering the bitter
feuds on the forums that occurred between the two over the past couple of
years. Its my editorial view that Tapper thought nobody deserved the WFA
community's most difficult post more than Truck, maybe its a bit of revenge?
hehe. Feel free to get a clan of 6 players together and sign up today on the
WFA OGL ladder! http://www.ogl.org

AimBots. We have seen a lot of discussion about bots as they are called. I
would just like to re-iterate that bot users are in the vast minority of
players out there. Many players have a lot of skill. The best way to catch
someone playing with an illegal aid is to spectate them for awhile. See if
they miss. See if they have really jerky aiming habits, do they track
opponents before they are even visible? If so, you have a bot on your hands.

Quickly, /callvote kick <id> (where <id> is the playerid from the
scoreboard). Why even play as a bot? WFA is about skills earned through hard
practice and the satisfaction derived from displaying those skills. There is
not much satisfaction in playing with a bot that does the work for you.
Besides, bot abuse in WFA is not as big of a factor as you might think.
There are a lot of facets to WFA that surpass being able to aim perfectly.
The WFADev coders are already looking into some coding tricks that will
break the use of bots that are introduced into WFA.

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Box Scores from last week-
"Stronger Than All" League
http://wfa.stronger.org
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The STA league puts clans into 2 rounds on 1 assigned map each week. Games
are always Tuesday night, so no messy scheduling. This weeks box scores are
from 2Castles-wfa by ]$[Belac. The popular defensive setup was 2 gunners
guarding the hallway chokepoints, with an engineer setting up their Sentry
Gun back in the flagroom. A good offense against this popular setup was 1
borg, 1 marine, and a flag running class. Assassin, Recon, or 2nd Marine.
[]$[ over {BR} 15-6]
Unfadable(6-0) vanquished Clan Blood Runners(4-3) in a game that was a bit
closer than the score might indicate. BR's winning streak comes crashing to
halt faster than a thread started by Khyron.

[[MACHINE] over )}FA| 21-20 ]
[MACHINE], a tough, established clan had a difficult time holding off the
new kids on the block from Fallen Angels. Machine is now 5-1 and FA gets
their first loss at 2-1.

[[HLM] over [DoW] 37-2 ]
Hot Little Monkey showed Dogs of War their 2castles prowess. HLM is now 1-1
while DoW continues their skid at 1-5.

[CDI over -K^V- 17-7 ]
CDI, brand new to the League, trounced the veteran clan, Knights of Valor.
KV takes a knee at 3-4 while CDI starts off their league experience 1-0.

[[LWQ] over MMZ 18-4 ]
MMZ(0-6) continued its losing streak while LWQ improved their record to 3-4

[TF over }~{ forfiet ]
Ugh, I hate the forfeits.

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WFA Mapping Committee Progress
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The Committee meetings have been running smoothly and we have been getting
some great testing time in on beta and also released maps. The Committee is
chaired by your's truly, and hosted by the good folks at
http://www.wfamaps.com . The only request I have for the community is that
we get more more mappers involved in the testing of their maps, esp. the
beta maps. "A map is a terrible thing to waste" and many maps could make it
to official status if the mapper's listen to the panel of critics, mappers,
and players that attend the Map Committee Meetings. Meeting Minutes are all
posted up on http://www.wfamaps.com also, I really enjoyed reading the
reviews up on their site and participating in the "rate the maps" poll they
have for each map they host. Very effective stuff. We have done some
preliminary voting on the maps contained in the first version of WFA and in
the Freelance Map Packs. Many of the maps didn't make the cut though.

Don't despair...there is a fresh crop of new maps being worked on now. I am
excited about seeing classics revived like Mckinley-wfa, Acid-wfa, and
Postal-wfa, as well as new maps like Llamakings-wfa, Fallout-wfa, and
Sacrifice at Tenochitlan. (what a mouthful). My goal is to have a list of 16
or so maps by the time 1.2 is official to distribute with 1.2 final. This
will require some coordination from server admins, unless the way SV_PURE
works has been altered in our favor.

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In Conclusion...
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With the fall starting up, (way too soon here in Minnesota, all the leaves
are turning and its been in the 30's at night already!) we can expect the
legions that follow WFA to grow even more. Keep getting the word out at Lan
parties, and on your favorite messageboards and news sites. (please, don't
spam the q3f messageboards with WFA Propaganda though) WFA is now the #1
class-based mod for Q3A, and there are a lot of them. Congratulations to you
all for being a part of this gaming community. The lan parties me and my
clan host were all spawned from our passion for WF and WFA. For some pics
from our 5th and most recent party, stop by
http://www.moebiustrip.com/lantasia We had had WF friends from as far away
as New Jersey fly into Minnesota to play with us. GG BF and DD!

-Solicitor

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Copyright 2000 Weapons Factory Software

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