Thu 6:19 PM
Subject: WFA Newsletter Vol. V for Oct. 19th

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Weapons Factory Arena
NewsLetter
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WFA Newsletter #5

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Quake 3 1.25Y BETA
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The latest beta of Q3 still has no source code for us to look at and merge
with our code. With no date in sight, we have decided to push ahead and
release WFA 2.0 this weekend. Stay with Q3a 1.17 for the time being. Don't
patch to 1.25 or any other version of Q3 until WFA and your other favorite
mods have had time to integrate the 1.25 source into their mod. The release
of the source will herald a lot of changes for mods. So be patient, get it
after WFA has been patched to work with it.

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WFA 2.0 Herculean Release: Saturday Evening
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Hang out in #WFA on irc.enterthegame.com Saturday night (US timezones) and
terrorize the WFA 1.1 pubs, maybe hang out in #streetball and get in on some
"playground style" WFA while you wait for the "Second Coming" of WFA 2.0!!!
Thats right, WFA 2.0 is coming out with a bunch of WFA gaming goodness.

I mentioned just some of the cool features of WFA 2.0 in my last newsletter,
but those new subscribers (um, tell your friends to get a subscription we
are 500+ and growin!) may want to know a few tidbits. There are sprayable
"spraypaint" logos, 150+ new taunt sounds, the ability to ignore a player
that spams said taunt sounds <WHEW!>, and a whole mess of other neat
features. The recon and assassin both get a new toy, the camera. When you
see the camera icon in the top right corner of your hud, anyone on the team
can stop and use the camera by using the /cameraview command. Its a very
neat feature and I think its unique to WFA! Woot, go WFA! The classes in WFA
2.0 are all a lot more deadly. WFA just got a whole lot more intense with
the inclusion of these tweaks to the classes. You will have to play them to
figure them all out.

The engineer got a new weapon, its to replace the old dartgun, its called
the "ionfuser" and it gives friendlies back armor when you shoot them, and
it pierces enemy armor to deliver damage directly to their health at 20 a
hit. There is new bot protection in WFA 2.0, make sure you do not hit the
+button6 key that you may have bound for the recon's thrust when you are not
spawned in-game as a recon. This breaks the most popular bot out there, so
its a good step towards making WFA pubs bot-free.

Most importantly, many new maps are being added, and we were very critical
and thoroughly tested all new map submissions, and also took time to
reevaluate all the official Maps in WFA. Many were found lacking and have
been cut. The 16 maps (8 new official maps!) that are released with WFA 2.0
are very high quality maps, much better than the first generation maps (some
of which have been retired, thankfully). So, it will be necessary to upgrade
to 2.0 as soon as possible. Don't worry, its been through rigorous testing
and 8 beta versions. I want to thank the WFA Mapping Committee and all the
beta testers that have made WFA 2.0 the best it can be. To get a sneak peek
of the new maps, visit http://www.wfamaps.com Don't get the maps now...get
them with WFA 2.0 on Saturday!

There are tons of new graphics tweaks, like turret 'nades that are team
colored, a new less laggy hyperblaster effect. The HUD is still 100%
customizable in WFA, and there are tons of other choices you can make, like
turning off smoke trails on rockets(set cg_showrockettrail 0) to turning off
mega chaingun trails (set cg_showmegatrail 0).

Many changes have been made based on feedback from the WFA community. WFA is
the #1 class-based mod for Q3a each night in terms of players and was the #1
ranked mod for Q3a in a Gamecenter q3 mod ranking article. With WFA 2.0, we
look forward to welcoming more newbies into the mod, as well as die-hard Q2
WF players upgrading to Q3a. Feel free to stop by #wfa and #wfamaps on
irc.enterthegame.com if you have questions. If you see someone clueless
playing the game, don't haze them. Take a moment to explain 2-3 things about
playing the game, recommend they visit the configurator pages on the
website. Don't be a dick...

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Anatomy of the Map Selection Process for WFA 2.0
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WFA has 16 official maps now. The official maps were determined by a WFA Map
committee....for those that don't know what I am talking about, read on...

We started this up as an all-inclusive volunteer committee to start with.
Anyone that had a passion for maps, attended regularly, contributed to
helping get maps revised, reviewed, improved, was included as a core member.
The meetings have all been public, and everyone is invited to attend them
and spectate and if they contribute, even participate. Each week we test out
maps in beta form and offer feedback on how that map can improve to become
official. When mappers are "done" with their map, they become released maps
and then we hold a vote on if they are official. We held some votes along
the way, and these could be viewed as "preliminary" votes. Last night was a
well published deadline for all maps to be considered as Official. Official
means its distributed with the core download of WFA, and its on the 16 map
default list. We limit to 16 for size of the download mostly, and also
because that is what the map menu supports right now. I can see this growing
in a future release...

Maybe even having a "large server map list" and a "small server map list" or
something. ... anyway. We tested the maps with 18 players on them at times
and sometimes with as few as 5 on 5. But hopefully our mappers will start
including size guidelines in their map readme files that are accurate.

In recent weeks, the committee's core participants decided to limit the
eligible voters to 8 people. Selected people were people that showed up
every week, contributed a lot to the mapping community, and people that are
experts in mapping. This is to provide consistency and promote more
stringent standards. The vote last night was private because we had about
30+ maps to go through and comments form the gallery would just extend
that... So, this week, we spent about 10 hours as a committee testing maps
so that we could make an informed decision about all of the maps that we
would be voting upon. New versions of Classic Cancer and Halfes-wfa (to name
a few) came in just as we were starting voting, but most of us hadn't known
or been made aware of these new versions, so we had to vote based on what we
knew of old versions.

Tuesday night was the final testing night, and we tried out a new version of
Cancer1-wfa on a 2.0 server, and the map is much more like cancer from q2 wf
than anything you have seen. You have to be hauling ass strafe jumping
across mid to make the balcony jump, its quite hard to do, but the feel is
much more like the q2 WF version. The looks also played a role in most
voter's minds. This map won easily and classic cancer was narrowly voted
down. We voted on all maps based on looks, playability, appeal, originality
in terms of "do we have maps like this in the pak already?" It took a 2/3
majority for a map to win, so we were quite tough on map selections as
opposed to the past.

The maps we selected have all been thoroughly tested, and I am confident
that they will appeal to a wide audience. Sure, there are some maps that
will doubtless not fit you, but others will like them...

Remember: Official is an honorary title foremost, its benefit is that the
map will be distributed to everyone that downloads wfa 2.0. Default server
.ini files will reflect the new list of 16 maps distributed with WFA 2.0 The
official maps will come and go with each new release of WFA... One of the
things that makes WFA great is the strong freelance map prescence. People
that play this mod like new maps, and you don't get bored like in other
mods. This hurts us a bit, but its more of a strength. How does it hurt? the
casual WFA player tries to join a server and doesn't have that map...they
don't know or care enough to download some new freelance map pack...lost a
player there.. :( But, its more of a benefit to the community to keep it
interesting to the die hard fans that are scouring the WFA news for new
maps. The Freelance map packs will be distributed by WFAMAPS.COM from here
on out. The bandwidth will have to come from fileplanet and other sources,
not just PLANETICE.NET.

We will continue to meet every week (maybe not on Sundays at 5pm CST) to
test new maps as they come out. We will rate them, make sure they get
packaged up into map packs of 3 to 5 maps, advertised, etc. etc. So that
server admins can make informed choices about what maps they put in the
rotation of their servers. Be it a 25 player server or a 14 player server.

Look for new re-designed freelance map packs to come out along with WFA 2.0
on Saturday. If you have any questions or comments on a map you really like,
visit WFAMAPS.COM for the meeting minutes and screenshots and ratings of
individual maps. *Don't bother downloading the maps before then!!!* it can
only cause you problems if you download any of the maps before Saturday. I
may even recommend that you *backup your WFA* folder and add back freelance
maps to your new 2.0 install...

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WFA 2.0 Server Admins Resources Rock
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I have always wondered why we don't have more WFA server admins out there,
and I am pretty sure its because the mod in the past has not been the most
"newb friendly" mod to setup if you are a server admin. This has all
changed. There are some GREAT resources online now for server admins to
visit, Pro-level or Rookie level admin, you should visit these pages! The
links will be included with WFA 2.0 in the very competently written server
setup guides that will be included in the package. In a nutshell, these HTML
pages walk you through all the relevant server settings using drop down list
boxes to pick the values, and textboxes you fill out. Then you hit "submit"
and it spits out a wfa-server.cfg and a wfa-server.ini for you. Its THAT
EASY. (omg, I sound like an infomercial pitchman nown). I stop now. Be sure
to find these links enclosed in WFA 2.0.

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WFA 2.0 FTP Mirrors
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Contact anthrax@captured.com if you want to volunteer to host WFA 2.0 files
on your FTP server on Saturday. The upside to this is that you will be one
of the first to get the mod on Saturday if you volunteer us a fast
connection! So far, we think WFA 2.0 will be around 60mb or more, so please
plan accordingly.

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In Conclusion...
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In a few weeks, there is going to be a very cool program coming from
=SLJ=Ares, {wf}Shadowspawn, and {wdr}SgtSack that will set you up with the
coolest, most effective, and easily the most powerful class configs you have
ever dreamed of seeing. (maybe more powerful than you even want!!!) The best
thing about this new and improved configurator program, is that you can run
it locally, and setup and tweak your configs simply if you are a newbie, or
if you are a veteran, you can unlock some very powerful config features.
There is a ton to this "Mega Config" and lets just hope that they can get it
done soon after WFA 2.0 comes out!

-Solicitor
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Copyright 2000 Weapons Factory Software

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