Red Rover
For updated versions and additional information, please see http://www.planetquake.com/infinity


Contents

Playing/Objectives
Observer Mode
Power-ups and Power-downs
Using Powerups and Binding Keys
Red Rover Advantages/Disadvantages
Last Blue Not It Advantages/Disadvantages
BFG and Super Shotgun
Console commands
Configuring the Server
Credits


Playing/Objectives

Here's how it works...
One guy is IT, they are known as the Red Rover (RED). His job is to kill everyone who is not IT (BLUE). When the non-ITs are killed, they join his team (RED) and must help track down and kill all remaining non-ITs (BLUE). <EvilGrin>

Now, the IT guy has to kill everyone as quickly as possible, because then he'll get more points (How many points per kill, and how fast the points decrease, based on time limits, are server configurable).

When there is only one (1) person left non-IT (BLUE), a bounty will be placed on him (also server
configurable) to give the other players a chance to pick up some bonus points (They only score one
point per kill, normally). When the last non-IT (BLUE) is dead, he becomes the new Red Rover (RED), and everything starts over.

More information (e.g.: powerups) about Red Rover specifics are detailed below.

Starting a Red Rover game

When you get connected to a server, and are all ready to play, you will first see a menu in front of you, it tells you the MOTD (Message of the Day), who is currently it, and to either choose to go into Observer Mode, or to Play (located at the bottom of the menu). To choose to go into observer mode, simply hit the Enter key, otherwise, if you want to play, use the right square bracket "]" key which brings the option to Play and then hit Enter.

While you are in observer mode, and you decide you want to play, push the ~ button, which brings down the command prompt, and type: menu then hit the ENTER key. This will bring back the menu you were greeted with when you connected, and now hit the right square bracket "]" key to move to Play and hit Enter.

Observer Mode

While in observer mode, you simply float in through the playing field, completely invisible to the players playing RR. Just use your normal controls to navigate through the map.

Power-Ups and Power-Downs

Red Rover has power-ups AND power-downs included in it. They can be identified as by the spinning RR's inside the game. Getting these will give you one of several advantages (or disadvantages) that you normally would not have. Anyone can get Power-ups, but only one (1) at a time, including the Red Rover, and any of the other players.

Power Ups are as follows:

Super Jump- Makes you jump a lot higher and further! ( about 3-4 times as much ). Pressing, then holding the button, makes you jump higher and fall much slower, letting go, lets you fall fast, or not jump as high.

Flubber Grenades- Makes the grenades that you throw and shoot out of your Grenade Launcher fly straight forward (or any angle you are aiming towards), and bounce of walls, without arching. Guys around corners better pay attention!

Sticky Grenades- Makes grenades stick to walls, floors, and ceilings, without bouncing at all. Good for attacking from under, or using as you are trying to run away from a Rocket Launcher carrying Red Rover.

Bouncy Rockets- Now these rockets are used to bounce off walls, ceilings, and floors, and using them like you have only used the grenades before.

Blast Damage Decrease- When a blast from a Rocket Launcher or a grenade would normally hurt you badly, or even kill you, you now only take 1/4 the normal damage.

Three Way Firing- When you fire now you fire 3 shots forward, instead of one. This now takes away two things of ammo instead of one, but hey, you can cause mass destruction now!

Backwards Firing- When you fire, one goes forward, and one goes backwards. It still costs 2 things of ammo though.

Unlimited Ammo- Now you don't have to worry about running out of you favorite weapon, just fire like a maniac. You know you want to!

More Health- Gives you a little more energy, and it doesn't slowly count down.

Haste Power-up- Gives you the ability to fire at about twice the normal rate of speed! Now you are the quickest gun in the west (or east etc etc)!

Resist Power-up- Receive less damage every time you are hit. Now you can withstand twice the amount of bullets.

Strength Power-up- This gives you a little steroid type boost, to where you can take a lot more energy per shot than normally. Now that blaster isn't so wimpy, is it?

Grappling Hook- This is your standard, run of the mill, Grappling Hook. Use it using the power up command (best if you bind a key to use power-ups. E.g.: from the console "bind q "+powerup" ) push and hold down the button to shoot the hook. If you hold it, you will be brought to what ever the hook ran into. If you let go, you will be set free and your grapple is free to use once again.

Decoy Power-up- This will set a transparent version of you in the playing field, it looks like you from far away, but as you get closer you can tell it is not a player. The decoy can be blown up, and can only be used if it has had enough time to charge up. Use it once, and if you want to use it again, you might have to wait a few seconds, while it warms up.

Fast Escape- Now, when the situation gets too tough to handle, and you want out, just push your power-up button, and you'll be sent to a respawn point, without losing your current weapons, and stuff. You have to wait for the Fast Escape to recharge in between uses, but that is the small price you have to pay for a teleportation device (better "fled" than dead!).

Power Downs are as follows:

Blast Damage Vulnerability- You are now twice as vulnerable to blasts from Rocket Blasts and Grenade blast. Most likely, if a blast occurs next to you, kiss yourself good bye.

Twice Ammo Usage- something is wrong with your gun, every time you shoot, it takes away two (2) pieces of ammo for every one (1) shot.

Less Health- now you only get about half of your normal energy, better hope you can find a Huge Health pack or something.

Less Damage- now every attack you do takes away a lot less damage to your enemy than normal.

Using Powerups and Binding Keys

In many of these mods you will be required to bind keys to various game commands that were not included in the original Quake II. To bind a key to a command you will need to do the following:

  1. Run the mod that you wish to play.
  2. Press the tilde ( ~ ) key to pull down the Quake II console.
  3. At the console type, bind (key that you want to use) "(action for that key)"
    Example: Binding "J" key to Jump (if typed into the console) would be:   bind j "+moveup"
                   Binding "Space Bar" to Jump (if typed into the console would be:  bind space "+moveup"

To use a power-up, or the tracker, I suggest binding a couple of keys.

Red Rover Advantages/Disadvantages

Becoming the Red Rover means that you had to stay alive the longest of the other BLUE players, and now you are expected to go after the BLUE players and try and score points. Being the Red Rover, you shine up bright red, so all the other BLUE players can see you coming. The BLUE characters you kill, will be turned RED, also, but will *not* have the glowing appearance that the Red Rover gets. Besides that, you also start out with everyone against you! But, there are benefits to being the Red Rover: You get more points for how fast you can kill the BLUE players; you start out with more health (200 is the default); and you also get the Tracker.

The Tracker is an item that the Red Rover gets to use to easily find where his next prey is. We realize not all Quakers run around and shoot like crazy ( they don't!?), some like to camp ( where are they?) and hide. So, the tracker can be used to find wherever a BLUE player is located. It shoots a yellow bubble out that travels in the direction that a BLUE player is at. It will not follow them as they move, but it will help you find where their general direction is at Really nice for finding that Last Not-It guy! You can launch more than one at a time, also.

To us the tracker, to make is easier, bind a key like this:

    bind <any key> tracker
Where <any key> is any key you choose to use.

Check the binding keys section of this documentation above.

If you are having trouble killing other players, be aware that you have a time limit to kill someone, or the server will select someone else to be it ( that would be embarrassing ). So, either hurry up and kill someone, or lose your opportunity to be IT. Sorry. :(

Last Blue Not It Advantages/Disadvantages

Being the last not it is the best time to really bring up your score. Every kill is worth about double now, so if you kill a RED player it is worth 2 points, and if you kill the Red Rover it is worth 3 points. So, not exactly double, but almost. The thing is, though, you will have everyone else looking for your ass, and probably trying to blow it up (scumbags).

BFG and Super Shotgun

The BFG has been changed from a cheap weapon, to a little more fair weapon.. it fires 5 rockets now, instead of the BFG Blast. The Super Shotgun has also been given a little bit more power.

Console commands

Useful player commands:

whoisit        -- Tells you who the IT guy is.
players        -- List of players, and who is it.
kill        -- Stuck somewhere? Try typing kill.
giveitup        -- If you are RED Rover, you can bail out by typing giveitup.

The following are mostly for assuring that everything is working correctly:

whoisleft    -- Tells you how many players are NOT it.
modstats    -- Tells you the number of clients, and numbers on each team.
soundtest    -- Play a sound. Really useful; not.

The ability to disable the power-ups on the server is available, and can be done by disabling them like you do with dmflags.

Configuring the Server

The following variables can be set by the server:

scorebase    - Points IT guy gets if he makes a kill in 0 seconds (!!).
scoremult    - This sets the decrease speed. Closer to one is slower, closer to zero is faster.
        Should be somewhere between 0.8 and 0.99, usually.
Scorelast    - Score for surviving to be last.
scorelastkill    - Bounty for killing last guy.

Server commands

There are some handy server commands you can use to keep the game moving, or restart
the game when the game logic is messed up ;). Only the server owner has access to these.

sv restart    -- Restarts the game and randomly selects a new IT. Handy for games that
        have screwed up or slowed down.
sv picknewit    -- Randomly picks a new IT player.
sv kill <name>    -- Re-Spawn the given player (He might be stuck somewhere, or something).
sv tag <name>    -- Add the given player to the IT team.
sv test        -- Interesting question.
sv soundtest    -- Plays a sound, just to make sure that's possible.

Credits

Created and Produced by:                 Level Infinity LLC
                        http://www.planetquake.com/infinity

Original Concept and Idea:        Jim "Ironman" Semkiw

Programmer:                     Dobes "Mrs Butts" Vandermeer

Coordinator:                     Nick "Zarzoo" Parde

Skins created by:                     Chris "shatter" Holden
                Shattered Art:    http://www.planetquake.com/shattered

Maps created by:                     Mikael "Myrddin" Wahlberg
                        Cho-Yan "Tempest" Wong
                        Matt "MattCake" Harris

Sounds, Announcer, and SFX              Simon "SimonMIDI" Castles

New Q2 menu art created by:             Matt "MattCake" Harris

Opening Cinema and Demo by:             Mikael "Myrddin" Wahlberg

Installer/Setup Program by:             Matt "MattCake" Harris

Misc Artwork:                     Cho-Yan "Tempest" Wong
                        Nick "Zarzoo" Parde
                        Mikael "Myrddin" Wahlberg
                        Chris "shatter" Holden
                        Crista "CDWarrior" Forest

Beta Testers:                     Bill "Shoma" Lovan
                        Dick "Rungnir" Svendsen
                        Neil "Rimmer" Munday

Special thanks go to Chris Holden for his beautiful skins, and all of his help from the beginning. Make sure you check out Shattered Art (http://www.planetquake.com/shattered) and his awesome gallery of skins. We would also like to thank Planet Quake (http://www.planetquake.com) for hosting us, and all the help they have given us.

If you are interested in having Level Infinity create a game for you, add-on or whatever, we will be working on one (1) more FREE mod for Quake 2, In Cold Blood (our single player add-on/mission pack) and after we will only be doing commercial work. So, if you have something for us, we will only take commercial projects. Thank You.