Urban Terror is a
total conversion mod for
Quake III Arena developed by
Silicon Ice Development (SID). It is a realism mod similar to
Counter-Strike,
Action Quake, and many others. The "realism" comes in several forms including weapons, hit detection, and
stamina.
Hit detection is accomplished by a unique system called ARIES (Anatomical Ray Intersection and Extrapolated Severity) that takes in a lot of variables to determine the location of the damage and the amount of damage. The damage is also localized. 21 total damage areas on every model. Meaning you get hit in the leg, you drag the injured leg! You can bleed to death if you
don't take care of that wound with a bandage. In team play you can heal each other. Also armor works more like real armor then quake armor.
The stamina system allows limited sprinting and limited strafe jumping. When you run out of stamina you huff and puff, and slow down. An enemy can hear that breathing if they didn't already hear you running or jumping.
You get a pretty wide selection of weapons and gear. You can arm yourself in a variety of ways to match your style of play, map, opponent, whatever. As long as they fit in one of these combinations: 2 weapons, a sidearm,
grenades and 1 item; 2 weapons, a sidearm, 2 items; 1 weapon, a sidearm, 3 items; 1 weapon, a sidearm, a grenade, 2 items.
The Weapons:
The Gear:
Urban Terror also provides a number of game types:
- Free For All (FFA)
- Pretty simple, kill 'em all. Your goal is to kill more people then anybody else. Spawns are random. A round is one map.
- Team Deathmatch (TDM)
- Take FFA and divide the players into teams. Your goal is to help your team get more kills then the other team. Adds some team organization and interaction to FFA. A round is one map.
- Team Survivor (TS or Survivor)
- Eliminate the other team. When you die you don't spawn till the next round. Each team (usually) spawns together. Requires increased teamwork. Addictively fun and a great way to learn the game because you can 'haunt' other players while you are waiting for the next round.
Surviving the round is a sense of accomplishment itself especially if you take out the last enemy. A round is over when all the members of one team die or time expires (a draw). A map will usually involve many rounds. The
team with the most round wins wins the map.
- Follow The Leader
- Similar to TS, but with more goals. The server picks a member on each team to be the "Team Leader" (marked with a red or blue helmet). The team leader's mission is to touch the enemy's flag before the opposing team leader touches his (3 points). As a non-leader you goal is to keep your
leader alive and kill the other leader. If you kill all of the other team with your team leader alive your team gets 2 points, if you kill all of the other team, but your team leader is dead your team gets 1 point. A round ends when a flag is touched by the other team's leader, or when all
of the members of a team are dead. If killed you will not respawn until the next round.
- Capture and Hold
- Flags are positioned around the map. Your teams goal is to capture flags (change it to your team's color by touching it) and hold them as long as you can. Your team earns a point for each minute a flag is 'held' by your team. If killed you respawn randomly after a brief delay.
- Capture The Flag (CTF)
- You don't know what this is? Each team has a flag, your team's goals are to protect your flag from the enemy and to run over grab the enemy's flag and return with it. A team is awarded a point (usually called a "cap" for capture) when you capture the enemy flag. As of Beta 2.4 the team scoring remains the same but individual scoring changed. If you capture the enemy flag you personally get 15 points and everyone on your team gets 10 bonus points. If you frag an enemy with your team's flag or near your team's flag area you get a bonus point on top of the frag point. If you touch your team's flag to return it to its original spot you get a bonus point. And finally you are also supposed to get a bonus point if you frag an enemy that has recently injured your team's flag carrier.)
This is an extremely well done mod (Beta 2.3 at the time of writing,
and updated with a few 2.4/2.5 updates) with a professional looking
UI. It is rather easy to figure out special binds and weapon settings with the drop down menus. Most of the default maps are very well done, there are some pretty nice third party maps too.
The sounds and graphics are impressive. The attention to detail is appreciated. You can actually see that somebody is wearing a
kevlar vest or
night vision goggles or carrying an LR-300, or whatever. The community is fairly large, it is a popular mod and seems to be growing. Always plenty of severs around with people playing.
If you play Quake III Arena and haven't checked out this mod it is worth the download just to see the hit detection system in action. It is wicked to shoot somebody and watch their body react and the after effect.
There is so much more I could say about this mod, but why don't you just head to its web page, www.urbanterror.net, and find out more for yourself.
I'm a member of clan [e]nigma and can be found on ProGamePlaer's irc network in #enigma as [e]Xamot. I am now involved in testing release canidates of this mod.