{"id":291,"date":"2023-09-06T12:53:21","date_gmt":"2023-09-06T11:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/?p=291"},"modified":"2023-09-07T10:07:55","modified_gmt":"2023-09-07T09:07:55","slug":"team-arena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/team-arena\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: Quake III &#8211; Team Arena"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_80 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-grey ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<div class=\"ez-toc-title-container\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<span class=\"ez-toc-title-toggle\"><a href=\"#\" class=\"ez-toc-pull-right ez-toc-btn ez-toc-btn-xs ez-toc-btn-default ez-toc-toggle\" aria-label=\"Toggle Table of Content\"><span class=\"ez-toc-js-icon-con\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/team-arena\/#New_game_types\" >New game types<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/team-arena\/#Team_DeathMatch_CTF_Overload_Harvester_%E2%80%93_new_maps\" >Team DeathMatch, CTF, Overload, Harvester &#8211; new maps<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/team-arena\/#DeathMatch_%E2%80%93_new_maps\" >DeathMatch &#8211; new maps<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<div style=\"background-color:#FFF4E8; border:1px solid #C60; padding:1%; color:#C00\"><i>The article below was originally published some time ago and now remains online as an informational resource and archive.<\/i><\/div>\n<hr \/>\n<p>First off&#8230;.. this mission pack is hardware future-proofed &#8211; at least for the next 6 months anyway..! To get these new maps and bots to run smoothly (a minimum 50FPS in the &#8216;big bits&#8217; of the maps) you&#8217;re going need one hell of a system spec! We&#8217;re talking 32MB graphics card &#8211; min, absolute minimum of 128MB system ram, and a minimum PIII or AMD &#8211; K7 800\/850.<\/p>\n<p>TA does run on lower spec machine, after all the minimum <i><b>id<\/b><\/i> suggest is a PII or K6-3 300\/350, 16MB graphics, 64MB system ram, BUT, and this is a big &#8216;but&#8217;, the performance won&#8217;t be too good and you won&#8217;t be too happy!<\/p>\n<p>Team Arena has one or too problems you need to be aware of <i><b>before<\/b><\/i> you install it. You need to clear out your &#8216;baseq3&#8217; folder of anything that <i><b>isn&#8217;t from the original installation of Quake III Arena<\/b><\/i>, that means removing all those custom skins, maps, models, mods, etc. (just move them to another folder as they can be moved back once TA is installed &#8211; be aware that even doing this can cause problems, it&#8217;s best to install the custom files from the original file archive [.zip file]). For some reason they cause problems with the installation of Team Arena, when the game is run the main interface graphics don&#8217;t appear which makes trying to navigate the game difficult and annoying. If you still get problems you&#8217;re going to need a install Q3A and TA from scratch. If you have a big hard drive, do a 2nd install to another directory, install Q3A then Team Arena into the new directory.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><b>Note :<\/b> before you do, copy your &#8216;<b>q3config.cfg<\/b>&#8216; and &#8216;<b>games.log<\/b>&#8216; files; you won&#8217;t need to configure the game again or loose those &#8216;saved&#8217; games (these are stored in the &#8216;q3config&#8217; file)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Once you manage to get TA installed you can copy back your &#8216;q3config.cfg&#8217; file, this will save you having to reconfigure the game to your liking (you will still have to do a little fine tuning).<\/p>\n<p>The boys at <i><b>id<\/b><\/i> have done TA so you can access both the new TA and Q3A game levels from the same interface, very clever stuff! You&#8217;re old skins, maps etc. can also be accessed here but you may find they don&#8217;t work properly, skins and models for instance sometimes show up in game with Sarge&#8217;s head (which can be quite funny to look at..!). You have to choose one of the new (see below) characters to play TA map levels.<\/p>\n<p>The new models are more detailed then the original Q3A&#8217;s, or at least seem to be, as a friend remarked &#8216;..they&#8217;ll be making her tit&#8217;s wobble next&#8230;&#8217; There are two &#8216;generic&#8217; bodies &#8211; male and female, and several heads to fit, sounds weird but it makes sense when you think about it!.<\/p>\n<p>This is why you need a powerful system, get a few of these bots running around and well&#8230; you won&#8217;t be using the term &#8216;lag&#8217; with endearment..!<\/p>\n<p>The maps are huge, massive some of them, (the 3rd World War will be fought in the virtual battle ground inside one of these games &#8211; yes they really are that big!), when you play you could easily imagine 20, 30, even 40 odd players running about, that&#8217;s if you&#8217;re system could hack it..!<\/p>\n<p>There is a little &#8216;bug&#8217; in game. When you first start your match, as &#8216;Team Red&#8217; say, you may find a &#8216;blue&#8217; player running with your team, for some reason that player is assigned to your team. This usually corrects itself once the &#8216;warm-up&#8217; period has finished. If it doesn&#8217;t you have to &#8216;kick&#8217; the player (&#8216;CallVote&#8217;) and then &#8216;add&#8217; them again, this should sort it out.<\/p>\n<p>Some &#8216;new&#8217; weapons have been added, the &#8216;NailGun&#8217;, &#8216;Proximity Mine&#8217; and the &#8216;Vulcan&#8217; chain gun (my personal favourite!), very nice!. The NailGun is deadly at close quarters but is slow to reload, the &#8216;proximitY mine&#8217; shoots &#8216;sticky mines&#8217;, these stick to surfaces, including other players (as I&#8217;m constantly finding out!). The mines are detonated either by a player passing by (in close &#8216;proximity&#8217;) or by the timed &#8216;fuse&#8217; which delays their explosion. The Vulcan, is a very nice machine gun (gas powered by the sound of it &#8211; this means it&#8217;s very fast!), you have to fire it in short bursts or you&#8217;ll use your 200 rounds up way to quickly.<\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"New_game_types\"><\/span>New game types<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p>Team Arena introduces some new game types; Overload, Harvester and One Flag CTF.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b><i>One Flag CTF<\/i><\/b> &#8211; A white flag is placed in the centre of the arena, the goal is to pick it up and take it to your <b><i>enemy&#8217;s<\/i><\/b> base.<\/li>\n<li><b><i>Overload<\/i><\/b> &#8211; The flags are replaced with a Skull at each team&#8217;s base, the objective is to destroy the enemy&#8217;s skull by firing everything you have at it. It turns red the more damage it receives before it blows up and your team gets the &#8216;Flag&#8217; (point).<\/li>\n<li><b><i>Harvester<\/i><\/b> &#8211; No flags. A receptacle is placed in the centre of the arena. The objective is to frag your opponents which makes a coloured crystal skull appear at this receptacle (blue for a &#8216;Blue&#8217; player, red for a &#8216;Red&#8217; player), you have to pick up your enemy&#8217;s skull and take it to their base to score the point.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As already mentioned, the new maps are big! The one that&#8217;s provided for the TA Demo (if you managed the 128MB download..!) is one of the smaller ones, no joke! Most of them are CTF maps but there are a couple of new &#8216;DeathMatch&#8217; maps which form the basis for some of the CTF maps (basically &#8211; the map is duplicated and turned to create the opposing teams base).<\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Team_DeathMatch_CTF_Overload_Harvester_%E2%80%93_new_maps\"><\/span>Team DeathMatch, CTF, Overload, Harvester &#8211; new maps<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>OverDose &#8211; <i>new<\/i><\/li>\n<li>Distant Screams &#8211; <i>new<\/i><\/li>\n<li>Final Strike &#8211; <i>new<\/i><\/li>\n<li>Beyond Reality &#8211; <i>new<\/i><\/li>\n<li>Base Siege &#8211; <i>new<\/i><\/li>\n<li>Fallout Bunker &#8211; <i>new<\/i><\/li>\n<li>Inner Sanctums &#8211; <i>new<\/i><\/li>\n<li>Scornforge &#8211; <i>new<\/i><\/li>\n<li>TeamWerkz &#8211; <i>new<\/i><\/li>\n<li>Vortex Portal &#8211; <i>new<\/i><\/li>\n<li>The Capture Chamber &#8211; <i>new<\/i><\/li>\n<li>Assassin&#8217;s Roost &#8211; <i>new<\/i><\/li>\n<li>Duelling Keeps &#8211; rework of Q3A map<\/li>\n<li>More Trouble &#8211; rework of Q3A map<\/li>\n<li>Stronghold Return &#8211; rework of Q3A map<\/li>\n<li>Chaos in Space &#8211; rework of Q3A map<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"DeathMatch_%E2%80%93_new_maps\"><\/span>DeathMatch &#8211; new maps<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>The House of Decay &#8211; <i>new<\/i><\/li>\n<li>Death Factory &#8211; <i>new<\/i><\/li>\n<li>Temple of Pain &#8211; <i>new<\/i><\/li>\n<li>Evil Playground &#8211; <i>new<\/i><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As well as the Team Arena models, there are also two new &#8216;DeathMatch&#8217; models, &#8216;Fritzkrige&#8217; and &#8216;Pi&#8217;. The detailing is similar to the new TeamArena bots, unfortunately they can only be used in the new maps though, you can&#8217;t use them in the Q3A.<\/p>\n<p>Another interesting feature is the way TA now uses &#8216;favourites&#8217;. You can enter an IP address, say one that a friend gave you &#8216;off-line&#8217;. You don&#8217;t need to go to the server, play the game <i>then<\/i> add if to your favs&#8217; like Q3A, TA will refresh your list the next time you go online. Very useful. TA has an new in game menu and player &#8216;status bar&#8217;, it&#8217;s take a bit of getting used to at first but everything and more is there, map changing, bots, system etc. etc.<\/p>\n<p>Over all what <b><i>id<\/i><\/b> have done is pretty good and it&#8217;s well worth the cost to get the mission pack. One thing though &#8211; to really enjoy the new stuff you do need a decent spec&#8217;d system, <i><b>at least<\/b><\/i> a PII-III \/ AMD-K6 II <i> <b>450<\/b><\/i> with a 16MB 3D graphics card and an absolute minimum 64MB system ram. I tested TA with a K6-II 350 based machine (160MB system ram, 16MB S3 Savage 4 chipset based graphics card &#8211; not very good for Q3 game engine) but performance was just too stuttery to make the game enjoyable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,174],"tags":[42,115,128,138],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-reviews","tag-articles","tag-game-review","tag-quake-iii","tag-team-arena"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":296,"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions\/296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}