Urban Terror

History

Urban Terror started out in 1998 as a planned mappack for Quake III Arena, in which real world environments would be featured. It expanded from this idea to a full total conversion featuring realistic weapons and gameplay similar to Action Quake 2. Silicon Ice Development was formed in spring 2000 and was made of several international developers, many whom were familiar with modifying Quake III Engine games; hence progress was made quickly. When its first version, beta 1.0, was released at QuakeCon 2000, Urban Terror was the realism mod with the most features and graphics completed. Beta 1.0 gained popularity quickly, and many third party maps became available. The development team was expanded, and beta 1.27 was released in late 2000.

Beta 2.0 was released in June 2001, and was a major leap forward in terms of production quality. New textures, models, weapons, sounds, and maps brought the mod up to par with many contemporary commercial games of the time. The next major release occurred in August 2001, at QuakeCon 2001, of beta 2.3, which introduced several new maps. The last release for the beta 2 series occurred in January 2003, with beta 2.6a being primarily a weapons balancing patch.

Gameplay

Urban Terror is billed by FrozenSand as a "Hollywood tactical shooter." It blends elements from games such as Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament and Counter-Strike. The realism in the mod is introduced through a number of changes:

The number of weapons and other gear that can be carried is limited. Damage is also more realistic than in Quake III Arena, based on dividing the player target into discrete areas. Depending on the map being played, external environments are realistic and can include weather effects such as rain or snow. Weather effects can also be controlled by game variables via administrator privileges.

Urban Terror allows players to perform superhuman feats. Damage is a key example; while damage taken depends on the part of the body which is hit, one can keep going after receiving numerous hits. Further breaking from reality, Urban Terror also retains the movement speeds from Quake III Arena (circle jumping) which allowed players to move through the environment incredibly quickly and includes moves such as wall jumping and power sliding. Wall jumping allows players to literally jump off of walls and helps the player to gain more height, distance and speed. Power sliding lets the player slide, rapidly, in a crouched position, maintaining speed. These abilities have spawned a sub-community of players who focus on specially designed "jump maps" of which the goal is to reach the end of a series of difficult courses.

Numerous game modes are featured, including classic FPS modes such as Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag. Also included are Team Survivor, Free-for-All (deathmatch), Bomb & Defuse, Capture & Hold, and Follow the Leader. Urban Terror 4.2 has brought two additional game types: Last Man Standing, Freeze Tag, Gun Game, and Jump Mode (a special mode for the aforementioned jump maps). Urban Terror 4.3 introduced Gun Game and Instagib mode, the latter of which features a new sniper rifle that makes messy one-hit kills.

Weapons and equipment

Players have one primary, one secondary, one side arm, and one grenade slot, in addition to three general equipment slots.

Players must select at least one pistol, and one primary weapon. They are also automatically equipped with a Ka-bar knife, always by default. Secondary weapons may also be equipped as primary weapons, allowing the player to pick up other primary weapons from killed players.

Of the remaining five slots (secondary weapon, grenades, general equipment) only three may be filled at spawn-time. Also Equipment may be picked up from dead players to fill unused slots later on during the game.

The player may select to carry either two hand grenades or two smoke grenades. The player can also select one of six secondary weapons. Finally, the three general equipment slots may be filled with any of several items such as kevlar armor and weapon attachments.