Premium Pak 19 review

The QLPP19 has been released a few weeks ago and everybody has been able to give it a taste. The gist of it are the 3 new CTF maps, all coming from Dan Scancode Gold. We’ll get into those maps in a bit. Important for the freebies is that Domination and Attack&Defend now have “public premium” servers running, which should result in more players for these modes.

The 3 CTF arena’s will remain premium for the first months and after that they will be mixed into the standard mappool on occasion. The 3 maps are Future Crossings, Gospel Crossings and Railyard which should ring some bells for people who have been playing nothing but Quake since the holidays in ’99.

Future Crossings is a decent sized map, bit on the smaller side. Most of the action will occur around the unavoidable center area. This center area is where the MH and Quad sit on top of each other. Each base has 3 entrances from here, 2 of which are easily accessible to any player. 1 corridor will lead to the bottom of the enemy base with view on the flag. The top route will lead to a mezzanine with view over the base and gives you a few more options from that point on. The 3rd entrance is a bit more tricky. Most people will see it as an exit mostly, but it’s possible to jump from the bridge in the center area to the YA, and if I can do it, so can you! For those who still struggle to get up there, a RJ will suffice to cover the gap. All your favorite weapons are available (no, not the chaingun), but the strategically placed RG will cause grief to many.

Gospel Crossings is a map that I didn’t have the chance of playing yet. I did a quick run-through and tried to get a feel of the map. As with all new maps I felt totally lost when I first started, but this map somehow felt more oppressive. A lot of narrow corridors and pillars to get lost in as a FC, and as opposed to Future Crossings, there is not really a central choke point to catch runners. You will however be fighting on the top level to get that Quad. The lower area in base seems a bit more tricky to reside in as the FC, because of the narrow bridge over the death pit, but it’s also where the MH is sitting so you’re forced to occasionally drop down there. Up top is the flag room. There’s a few health bubbles here as well as an easily accessible RA and on the opposite side a YA, though you’ll have to extend out of the base just a little bit for that one, yet still fairly accessible. This map has most of the weapons available, although it is missing the PG.

The last map in this Premium Pak is Railyard. I can sum this up with 1 word and it’s not even surprising: rails. Just look at the screenshot below. So instead of talking about the obvious, let’s take a look at the railgun itself. First introduced in the Quake series in Quake 2, the railgun hasn’t left the scene since. It was inspired by the railgun from Eraser. Smaller changes were made with each new iteration of Quake, such as a different looking model, the look of the trail (which can easily be modified in terms of colour and style). But more importantly, in its classic configuration (Q2, Q3 and Q4) the RG does 100 damage, but in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Quake Live, the latest of the Quakes, the damage has been reduced to 80. Yep, Quake Wars did it first. And while it does 80 damage per hit in Quake Live, it only does ~53 damage per second if you manage to hit all rails while keeping your finger on the trigger. 1 last interesting fact that I’ve recently learned on ESR (and I hoped I wasn’t trolled): the railgun will only go through about 4 targets. After that it does zero damage, so that 5th guy from the opposing team who had 1 health left  just got really lucky.

The rest of the changelog can be found below or at the Quake Live news section. Take a look at some of the little changes and bugfixes. Most importantly the “direct hit = splash damage” bug from projectile weapons got fixed and a whole bunch of stuff got rearranged in Delirium.

QUAKE LIVE Premium Pak 19 is now online. This update features three new Premium arenas.

Premium Arenas Added

• Future Crossings:

Making its way to QUAKE LIVE from Quake 3 Arena, Future Crossings makes its debut from author Dan “Scancode” Gold. As the name implies, Future Crossings takes place in a futuristic space base. The flag sits alone in the middle of the base on the mid-level, surrounded by both higher and lower ground, making for unpredictable escape routes. Teams will fight for the Quad Damage in the middle, with armor serving as a sniper roost for people wishing to ply their Railgun skills. Future Crossings is now available for play in all flag-based gametypes and Race.

• Gospel Crossings:

Gospel Crossings is a Capture the Flag arena that takes the fight to multiple levels of a gothic cathedral. Created by Dan “Scancode” Gold, Gospel Crossings is another classic CTF arena returning to QUAKE LIVE. Defenders will find a multitude of ways in and out that they have to defend, especially the jumppad leading from the bottom level behind the flag. A Quad Damage is up for grabs in the middle, but a fog pit is the only thing waiting to greet players. Gospel Crossings is available in all flag-based gametypes, Domination, and Race.

• Railyard:

Railyard has been rebuilt from the ground up, new exclusively for QUAKE LIVE. Formerly known as Silly Railings by Dan “Scancode” Gold, Railyard is a small Capture the Flag arena where all the action takes place in one room. Stacks of crates are available for cover, with jumppads behind them for popping up and railing. Nothing but some abandoned railroad tracks separates the two teams. Railyard is available in all flag-based gametypes, Race, and definitely excels for small One Flag CTF matches.

Premium Game Modes

We are now hosting public premium servers for the Domination and Attack & Defend game modes, making these game modes readily available to our Premium players.

Game Changes

• Direct hits from projectile weapons will no longer be sometimes incorrectly detected as 0 distance splash damage hits.
• Fixed a force model bug with Orbb that would cause him to not scale properly.
• Fixed a crash that occurred when attempting to play the optional training skill test.
• Improved tracking of g_startingHealthBonus and g_weaponRespawnTime when callvoting between rulesets.
• Added timeout/pause support to RACE.
• Fixed “in in” typo in the race finish message.
• Death POI icons now scale according to cg_drawFriendMaxWidth and cg_drawFriendMinWidth.
• Network cvar changes:
  – ‘rate’ now defaults to ‘25000’ and is a latched cvar, requiring a game restart before a new value can take effect.
  – ‘cl_maxpackets’ now defaults to ‘125’ and is a latched cvar, requiring a game restart before a new value can take effect.

• Arena Changes
• Updated Delirium – Added 3 x 25 hp – Added 2 extra spawns for duel, and another 2 more for TDM/FFA – Added elevator to lower YA area – Fixed LG->RA teleporter not working in TDM – Replaced stairs with elevators at RA and MH areas – Opened up lower RA area – 2-way teleporter at RA changed to 1-way – Lower YA teleporter now exits at upper MH – New teleporter in mid which exits at the old YA teleporter exit – Some areas re-made for a cleaner / different look – Weapon clip added to bumpy ground to increase effectiveness of rocket splash damage – Lots of small tweaks to make the map faster and more fluid
• Updated Eye to Eye – Increased spawncount to prevent server crashes in large team games.
• Updated Repent – Fixed shader file that was breaking Repent’s item decals.
• Updated Terminatria – Multiple texture and clipping fixes – Performance improved – Duel mode made smaller, with item layout changes to suit