Challenge Pro Mode Gameplay Changes


Introduction
This document is a listing of all the changes that have been made to the standard Q3 gameplay.

1. Physics Changes

The physics have been tweaked to give more control to the players. This allows for more complex tricks and a general gameplay with more depth. There are more tricks to learn, and even experienced players will need time to perfect them all.

Air Control
"Air control" is distinct from "air acceleration". The air acceleration has not been changed from Q3, but air control has been added. The new settings will take a few games to become comfortable with, but once you have you'll wonder how you ever lived without them.

The control can be described as this:
- Holding down just forward, backward or one of the strafe keys will give you full control of your movement, and will move in the direction you are facing.
- Experiment with the mouse while holding forward or backward....
- Holding down two buttons at the same time will result in Q3 air control (i.e. almost none), but might gain you more speed. It's a tradeoff that is recommended for long strafe-jumps.

Ground Acceleration
The ground acceleration (acceleration when you're walking or running) has been slightly increased for faster starts. The floor friction has also been increased to allow faster stops. This is to increase the overall game speed (although the maximum running speed is unchanged), and to give the player more control over his movements.

Settings in numbers:
- Ground acceleration has been increased to 15 (from 10).
- Friction has been increased to 8 (from 6).

Double-jumping
Double-jumping is a trick from Quake 2. It is performed by moving close to a ledge and jumping twice: once from the floor and once from the ledge, in a single fast movement. While this trick may not seem so useful on most of the Q3 maps, except for jumps on staircases and sudden attacks out of teleporters (jump into the teleporter and press the jump button again before you actually go though it: if timed correctly you'll perform a high double-jump on the floor on the other side) but you'd be surprised....

2. Weapon switch changes

Instant weapon switch
To increase the pace of gameplay and create spectacular weapon combinations, the weapon switch delay time (450 ms in Q3) has been removed. Amuse yourself by bouncing opponents into the air with a well-placed rocket, then switch to rail and gib them out of the sky.
If you want to create weapon switching scripts, you can use the "+vstr [down_command] [up_command]" feature provided with CPM. Here's an example:
set shaft "weapon 6; wait 2; +attack"
set unfire "-attack"
bind mouse2 +vstr shaft unfire

"Allow switch" timer
This enables you to switch to another weapon before your current weapon has reloaded. The setting is currently at 1000ms, and thus only affects the railgun (which has a reload time of 1500ms). This is not to remove the "penalty" for firing the railgun, but rather to improve the game speed. Railgun fights have traditionally been slow, drawn-out affairs: in testing we have found that this speeds them up and encourages weapon combos (you can only fire in the 1000-1500ms time period if you change to another weapon). The railgun's reload time is STILL 1500ms: if you change to another weapon at 1000ms and then back to railgun immediately, you will not be able to fire until the final 500ms has elapsed.

3. Weapon settings

Gauntlet
Gauntlet knockback has been decreased by half.

Machinegun
Machinegun now does 5 damage in ALL gametype modes. Ammo has also been reduced to 50 for all modes, and the ammo boxes only gives you 25 rounds instead of 50.

Shotgun
The number of pellets has been increased to 16 per shot (from 11), damage has been reduced to 7 (from 10) and spread has been increased to 900 (from 700). The knockback has been increased by 35%. The maximum number of shells has been decreased to 100 (from 200).

Grenade Launcher
The GL reload time has been decreased to 600 (from 800) and the maximum number of grenades has been decreased to 100.

Rocket Launcher
Rocket speed has been increased to 1000 (from 900), max ammo has been decreased to 100 and knockback has been increased by 20% (except when rocket-jumping).

Lightning Gun
Knockback has been increased 55%.

Railgun
Max ammo has been decreased to 100 and ammo boxes now only gives 5 slugs.

Plasmagun
Knockback has been decreased to 0.5 and damage has been decreased to 15 (from 20).

3. Armor system

The armor system has been changed to emphasize the need for armors and armor control. This gives the maps more weight in both duel and teamplay games.
- Armor no longer decays.
- RA protects 75%.
- YA protects 60%.
- RA gives 200 armor units (max RA).
- YA gives 100 armor units, and can be stacked up to 150 armor units (max YA).
- 120 RA can be exchanged for 150 YA if the player tries to pick up an YA.
- Shards give 2 armor units on top of any armor the player already has (no limits).

4. Respawn times

Item respawn times
Health and ammo respawns every 30 seconds (35 seconds for health and 40 seconds for ammo in Q3). Battlesuit always spawns after 120 seconds, and the other powerups are controlled by the g_quadspawn cvar (120 seconds is default, but 60 seconds is recommended on certain maps). Powerups start spawned on the map when the game starts.

Weapon respawn times are now controlled by the g_weaponstyle cvar. It has three possible settings, 0 (5 seconds), 1 (15 seconds, default for duels) and 2 (30 seconds, default for teamplay).

Megahealth respawns 20 seconds after it "runs out", which means that it wont respawn until 20 seconds after the player who grabbed it has 100 or less health. The respawn time is equal to Q3's in teamplay (35 seconds).

Client respawn delay
In Q3 there is a small delay that prevents people from respawning immediately. The setting was 1700 ms and is now completely removed.

5. Sound changes

Footsteps
The footsteps sound has been turned off by default in CPM, to increase the pace of the game as you no longer need to be afraid of running.

Hit tones
There are four different tones when you hit your opponent. These are based on how much damage you inflicted with your shot on a 1-25, 26-50, 51-75, 76+ scale. The lower the tone, the more damage have you inflicted.

6. Other settings

Backpacks
Instead of just dropping a weapon when you die, you now drop a backpack containing your current weapon and all your ammo.

Powerup changes
Quad damage now multiplies your damage by 4 instead of 3, and the battlesuit now absorbs 75% of an attack instead of 50%.

Item height
The height of the items has been increased by 30 units so you don't accidentically jump over them.

Lava and slime damage
Lava and slime now cause a steady stream of damage rather than a large hit every few seconds.