Name : Mass Destruction Format of Quake-C: progs.dat, QuakeC source. Author : Matthew Stewart-Smith (matthewss@btinternet.com) Other patches by me : NiMBUS gun (nimbus.zip) Levels by me : Refinery 4 (refin4.zip) (mydm1.zip) Editor(s) used : Joe for Linux, a different version of Joe for OS/2, MS-DOS Edit Utilities used : iD's QCC for Unix running under Linux, FastQCC for DOS, and FastQCC under Linux when I noticed that it had source code included. Description ----------- This patch brings exactly what its name says to Quake, particularly deathmatch. Note that it will probably not work very well with 2 players. The more players, the better. Following is a list of features with descriptions: Random items (by Charlie Turano [Trent], cturano@ix.netcom.com) : In deathmatch, items respawn in random places! This should make things a bit fairer. You can't guard the big weapon because you don't know where it will be next! Note that I have had weird QuakeC "program errors" while using this on some levels. Not very many levels though. More cells : Because the weapons in this patch depend heavily on cells, the thunderbolt takes 10 rather than 30 seconds to respawn (in a random place; see above), and when collecting either this or cell packs you get twice the number of cells you would normally. You can also carry up to 200 cells. NiMBUS gun : (press '8' to toggle NiMBUS/thunderbolt) Requires 75 cells to fire just once, and worth every one of them. In single-player, this will easily clear a room of monsters and leave the gibs showering down. In deathmatch, fire it in the general direction of a player and (s)he will gib instantly, as will any other players nearby. Enables the pentagram of protection for 1 second while firing so you don't get toasted too. And try it with quad damage... ;-) Homing rockets (by Chris Hilton, chris@ichat.com) : (press 7 to toggle normal/homing rockets) I made these turn a bit (50%) more sharply and stopped them increasing their speed over time (which previously decreased their accuracy over long distances), but otherwise they are unchanged. I also found the HomeFindTarget() routine immensely useful in at least 3 other situations where it was necessary to find a target. Vulcan cannon : (press '5' to toggle super nailgun/vulcan) I have no idea quite how realistic or not this is, but it's a great addition to your arsenal, particularly in deathmatch. Fires shells which explode on impact. Uses 5 nails per shot. Quad damage makes it an ultimate gibber. Double-power shotguns : Both single- and double-barrelled shotguns are twice as powerful. Their effect is similar to in Doom, i.e. you can kill a player with 100% health and no armour with a single blast from the DB. Lightning turret : (impulse 20 or 'U' to toggle) Automatically fires lightning at anything killable within a 400-unit (don't know exactly what Quake's distance units are meant to be) radius. Oh, yes! :-> Uses ammo twice as fast as the thunderbolt, and half of the power. You need to have the thunderbolt to use it but it doesn't have to be selected as your current weapon. BTW, it works underwater. Shield : (impulse 21 or 'S' to toggle) A deflector shield that absorbs damage and takes it away from your cells instead of your health. You don't need the thunderbolt or anything, it will work as long as you have cells. Also stops you moving when you are hit. Your cells still disappear rather rapidly though, so don't stand still while you're being shot! This shield won't make you anywhere near invincible, although it can buy valuable time to allow you to run away. If you run out of cells while the shield is active, it will still be considered to be 'switched on' and will activate as soon as you pick up some more cells. Note that you emit light (a la quad damage or pentagram) with the shield active, so you might want to switch it off in the dark so as not to attract attention to yourself. Backpack mines (by Robert Parratt, a friend who does not have an e-mail address currently) : (impulse 22 or 'M' to lay a mine) Deadly mines that look like backpacks and so are likely to be picked up :->. Place them near a dead body to make them look less suspicious. They make a very satisfying clicking sound half a second before exploding very violently (other players nearby will also be killed). The timing is perfect... just long enough to shout "shit!" but never long enough to run away. You need 10 rockets to place a mine. Each player is only allowed to place 2 at once, otherwise things get out of hand. A player's mines explode when (s)he dies. They will also explode anyway after 5 minutes. Chainsaw (by Peter Wickis a.k.a Shinote, pwickis@bu.edu) : (replaces axe) Allows you to chop your opponents into meaty bits, just like the good old Doom chainsaw. This is implemented in a rather tacky way, and isn't as good as Peter's original patch (except for the sounds), e.g. it doesn't animate, but it works just as well. GREAT with quad damage. Mega-armour : When armour is spawned (or respawned) there is a random chance that it will be mega-armour. This is much more effective at stopping you losing health than normal armour, and you get 255 points of it. Mega-armour is coloured light blue-grey. Different protection suits : When you pick up what looks like a biosuit, there is now a random chance that it will be any one of four things: Biosuit - just the bog-standard biosuit that protects you against water and slime. Heavy biosuit - also protects you against lava. Make sure there is a way out of the lava though! Grounding suit - provides complete protection against electric weapons, i.e. the thunderbolt and lightning turret. Absorbs the energy and uses it to charge your own supply! :-> Will quickly waste the ammo of someone who has the turret active. Armoured suit - gives you 512% of armour that will prevent you from losing any health when you are hit. Allows you to survive a backpack mine and have 40% health left (starting at 100%). Note that the status bar reading will start at 0, then it will go down from 255 to 0 twice. So don't be alarmed when you see 0 in the armour section of the status bar after picking up this suit. N.B. I could find no levels with a biosuit and lava on them, so there is a random chance that armour will be a suit instead when it is spawned or when it respawns. Laser Sight (by Scott Ramsay, sramsay@smart.net) : (impulse 45 or 'L' to toggle) You've probably seen this one before. That laser sight that turns blue when over something killable. Very useful in deathmatch. But also bear in mind that your laser sight can be seen by other players and will warn them of your presence. HUD : (impulse 23 or 'H' to toggle) When the laser sight is aimed on something killable (i.e. when it's blue), this will give you information about your target (health, armour, weapons, powerups). This is constantly updated as long as you have the laser sight on a target. The information will look something like this: JRandomLuser hlth:59 armr:150 yel Shells:57 Nails:168 Rockets:12 Cells:42 Weapons: 1 2 3 7 (3) Stuff: Inv. Gr.Suit Quad This means that the laser sight is targeted on a player called JRandomLuser. He has 59% health, and 150% armour, yellow type. The next line is self-explanatory. The next line indicates that this player has weapons 1 (chainsaw), 2 (shotgun), 3 (DB shotgun) and 7 (rocket launcher), and has weapon 3 selected. Also, he has invulnerability, a grounding suit and quad damage, so you should probably leg it very fast. Autofire : (impulse 24 or 'F' to toggle) This will automatically fire your currently selected weapon when the laser sight acquires a target. GREAT with the shotguns. Doesn't seem to work with the nailguns, I have no idea why. Also always fires twice, and I have no idea why this happens either. N.B. this is not very intelligent and will fire the rocket launcher at close range if you let it! Known bugs ---------- * Gib sound sometimes doesn't play when using shotguns at close range. * I have seen all my weapons disappear when picking up... was it a suit or a backpack? I can't remember... * On some levels (including D2MAP07, WARZONE and WATERPIT), Quake gives you a "runaway loop error" (after playing for a few minutes). This is something to do with the random items and I have not yet tried to fix it. Just play a different level. The levels mentioned above are all small 'arena' type levels... this might be just a coincidence or it might be that these types of levels are more susceptible to this bug. * Laser sight entity sometimes stays hovering in the air above a dead player. -- This patch should make large deathmatches much more fun! Please e-mail me and tell me what you think of this patch, and feel free to suggest possible improvements. Enjoy! Matthew Stewart-Smith (a.k.a. NiMBUS) matthewss@btinternet.com