= Dusk - A "Zombie Mod" for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars =
Version: a7
Date: 2008-10-17
Author: Jarad Hansen aka TinMan aka Tex
email: tinman_squad at hotmail

NOTE: This is an Alpha version.
While theoretically the worst that will happen is the game crashes, I hold no responsibility if your computer explodes in a ball of incandescent fury.

= What =
A co-op 'Zombie Mod', with up to 5 GDF forced to scavenge the level for weapons and supplies in order to repair and fuel a vehicle, while the many Strogg roam at will, attempting to swarm them with melee attacks.

= Gameplay =
GDF:
Spawn only with pistols and must scavenge the level for pickups - weapons ammo, health, repair packs and fuel cells.
There is a damaged vehicle that must be fully repaired and fueled in order for the GDF reach the escape area.
The engineers repair pliers now run off a repair pool, to fill this up use a repair pack.
Still have respawns, but since they drop all their weapons/packs, spawn back from where they want to be and they are running against the clock, it's a setback they should avoid.
Limited to 5 players, one per class, except soldier which is used as a buffer for switching classes.
All classes can revive by holding Use key on downed buddy, but takes several seconds.

Strogg:
Limited to melee spikes. Strogg bots roam the level semi-randomly.
Strogg are somewhat nerfed currently damage and tools wise while GDF gameplay is being developed.
There is a radius strike on alt fire with a delay between strikes.

= How to do stuff as GDF =
To pick up 'pickups'(weapons and packs), aim at them and pressing Use ('F' key by default).
To 'use' a pack (get it's resources), press alt-fire while holding one. Or press the enter/exit key while looking at a pack on the ground.
Normal fire drops the currently held pack or hold fire to install it in the vehicle or turret.
To drop a weapon or item press '\\' ( can be rebound via controls/weapons menu ).
There are variations on limits for different classes, but in general:
Players are limited to holding two primary weapons at a time and two secondary (with the pistol you spawn with not being dropable).
Players are limited to holding two packs of any mix.
You can see the type of pickup by looking at it.

= Known bugs and Limitations =
Strogg side have been severely curtailed in this version, to the point where a human playing on that team won't be able to accomplish much individually. 

Sewer not yet supported.
On initial map start the server (including 'Play Computer') spawns approximately 150 pickups which are physics objects, so there will be a few frames of punishment CPU/bandwidth wise until they settle.

NOTE: See changelog.txt for more info.

= Using the Mod =
NOTE: This mod is for Quake Wars version 1.5, it will not work on earlier or later versions.

1. Installation: Unzip dusk-a7.zip into Quake Wars folder.

2. Loading the mod: 
Load Quake Wars and choose Dusk from the mods menu.
At the console you can run the 'gamename' command to check if the mod loaded.
Dusk must be loaded before attempting to connect to a server running Dusk.

3. Playing the mod:
Play against Computer, or start a server, or connect to a server running Dusk.

Playing computer or setting server:
Set to 30 Mins on Campaign, or on Objective mode.
A server.cfg is in documentation folder.

= Performance =
Running a bot game takes a bit of CPU power, the more bots you have the bigger the hit. The system does scale the bots thinking rate down if your system isn't handling thing well, but there is a limit. Therefore it may be necessary to drop some of your settings down a notch to get a more consistent experience. Of course if you mainly play bots anyway you would have already done this.

= Feedback =
Email me at tinman_squad at hotmail
Or on the Quake Wars community forums.

= Distribution =
Distribute as you will, just keep the zip unmodified. Sweet.

= Thanks and credits to =
GaussDecay for Linux build.
Splash Damage and id Software for the awesome game/engine.
Cody64 for his blood mod.
reyalP for wheeled vehicle handling improvements.

= Final Thoughts =
Another much later than ideal release oh dear.

Another release and Strogg players still not addressed :( I did get some prototyping done for some attacks but got sidetracked into tackling strogg bot allocation to gdf. There's a few changes from that in this release will likely need to have strike two go of it before it starts paying off.

I wanted it to be more dynamic than the static vehicle inoperable until fully repaired, whereupon you don't really have much use of it except to escape. With a static placement of the vehicle it decreased a bit of the replayability too.
In testing having the vehicle operational from start has gone ok so far. Making it too free to move kills some of the on-foot scavenging gameplay, so there's a balance there. There's also the issue that theoretically the vehicle can use unlimited resources (fuel, repair) and with the limits of resources in the maps even before finding/using them all up there's a tipping point where most of the easily found items have been found, and the time to find the rest jumps up a lot.

I did a little trial of 'last man revive' where players respawn in 'recovery position', but until I balance other aspects of the gameplay it's just going to hinder things.

Last notable feature is a baby step towards a more dynamic campaign mode, most maps now have two escape points each leading towards a different map, this means players can 'choose their own path' to a degree through the campaign. Currently first map is Area22, last map is Outskirts. No real 'end of campaign hurray you did it! yet' or actual way to fail campaign. Currently a downside is the combination of the layout, and it passing to a specific next map on gdf fail means a lot of maps will get overused. I'm still thinking on this, I may take it in a more open/interconnected layout but would need a different victory condition than just get to the final map. It would also help with the drop-in drop-out nature of public servers.

I could go on, but I've been doing a braindump of design issues anyway, so it would be better to add to that and post it to the forum.