Q4W 0.1 Beta1 review

The Q4W Mod project came in our minds a few days after the release of Quake 4

License: Freeware File size: 0K Developer: Q4W Dev Team

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The Q4W Mod project came in our minds a few days after the release of Quake 4. Out of the box, the whole gameplay wasn't very exciting for a part of the french Q3 community. After some chatting, we found out that we were many looking for the same kind of game and also ready to spend some time to tweak it in that way.

Q4W stands for Quake 4 World, an obvious reference to QuakeWorld. So, what is it ? A return in the past to make Q4 feels like QW ? Yes and no, as we want to bring back some features of QW, but not only :

Q3 and Q4 have also great features we still want to find.

The whole idea is to have a game really fast, where movements can make the decision in a fight, and not only aiming. Where controlling a specific zone is really important, with precious items. A game where base weapons are not almost equals to the bigger ones. A game offering best of both world weapons, without making one too much powerful in a defensive situation.

We offer anticipation weapons and hitscan weapons, and they hurt a lot. They'll hurt you bad. It's about domination, it's not really newbie friendly, because spawnfrags are back. Our goal is to offer to the Quake Community a different kind of game, tricks, base on speed, fun and what we think a better gameplay.

Controlling the game is really important, a situation can turnover very quickly. No minimum time for respawn and a maximum of 2", respawn at 110/0 with only a MG with not much ammunitions... you'll learn how to win the hard way.

The weapons

In simple words, you have a new Rocket Launcher firing at a greater rate (.75), with faster rockets (1100), doing more damage (110). You also have a Lightning Gun doing a great amount of damage on short range fight, way more than Q3 and Q4, but a bit less than QW (250 damage/s) and you still have the RailGun. But its reload time is slower (1.8") and you have less slugs (5), so camping with it is shorten.

Oh yes, the hitbox is smaller. Other weapons are a bit changed also, ShotGun reloads slower, Grenade Launcher is basically the same but doing more damage (110) and the base weapon is no more a big threat (5 damage per bullet).

The armors

With so much powerful weapons, you need to gain a good protection if you want to live long. There again, one armor type is clearly the choice : Red Armor. It gives you 200 armor points and will protects you by 80%. Oh, did I mention that armor points do not tickdown ? Then you have the Yellow Armor, giving 100 armor points, and protecting less than the RA. And at the bottom, the Green Armor, a new one for Q4, giving 50 armor points and again less protection.

So the whole armor system is new, not only because of the value of the armors and their protection level, but also because you are stick to the type of armor you have, and if you can always pick a better armor, if you need to take a weaker one, you'll have to have less than 25% left of your armor type value (for example, if you pick a RA, you will need to have less than 50 armor points left to grab a YA).

Read me clearly : an armor sets you to its value, it's not an add. If you have 75 armor points, taking a YA (supposing you can) will set you at 100 armor points. Shards are still there, and they inherit your armor type when you grab them. The maximum armor you can have is 200. Of course, to take an armor you need to have less than its value, as well as the correct rights (explained above).

Of course, RA spawns less often than YA and GA. On team games if you lose RA control, I recommend to check for the Quad. It respawns sooner (every 90") and deserve its name : four times the damage.

The beauty of movements

You move faster in Q4W than in vQ4. Not only your speed has been increased, but also all the movements that make Quake what it is are there : straffe-jump of course, circle-jump, ramp-jump, slide-jump but we bring back also bunny-hop and multiple-jump (double-jump is the most famous). Air control is greater also, so you can make very nice moves and being a bit less an easy target while in the air. That's a lot of work on the physics of the game, but it's worth the effort.

On a fun side, we also offer the ability to run over the water at a certain speed, with some restriction in movements, and that could really be an upside for differents type of game (CTF and Defrag seem the more obvious).

To increase again the speed of the game, and make movements less predictable, we make the teleporters able to keep your speed and direction's vector through them : so, yes, you can Rocket Jump through teleporters ! And they contribute to increase your speed, making a little push on you.

The more you are, the more fun you have

Aren't you tired of fighting one on one ? Or team A versus Team B ? Why should we stick to 2 teams ? Q4W bring the ability to play at up to 8 different teams on the same game ! What about a TDM game with three teams ? How about a 2v2v2v2 game, heh ? It's up to you.

Standard look and feel

Of course, brightskins are in standard (white, pink, blue, red, yellow, orange, green and purple), HUD is new with a weapons control bar to know at any time what weapon you have in stock, and how many ammunitions left in it. Simple items are also provided, fov is unlocked, admin and team control is provided, game statistics, timer works in the same way than Q3, overtime has been corrected, etc, etc.