Urban Terror

Urban Terror
Urban Terror logo
Developer(s)	Silicon Ice Development/Frozen Sand, LLC
Engine	id Tech 3
Platform(s)	Macintosh, PC (Linux/Windows)
Release	August 5, 2000 (Beta 1.0)
Genre(s)	First-person shooter
Mode(s)	Multiplayer

Urban Terror, commonly abbreviated as UrT or UT is a total conversion mod of id Software's first-person shooter Quake III Arena by Silicon Ice Development (now known as FrozenSand). It introduces many elements of the tactical shooter genre—team-driven gaming in more realistic environments.

The game itself is free of charge, but FrozenSand retains the rights; unauthorised modification and selling is not allowed. Since Urban Terror 4.0, the game is normally played with the ioUrbanTerror engine, which is a rebranding of the ioquake3 engine distributed under GNU General Public License. Since the mod is currently closed source (with Q3's SDK licence), the game remains officially a mod that requires Quake III Arena.

The mod was nominated to the 2007 Mod DB's Mod of the Year Award.

History

Originally in 1998 the mod started out as a planned mappack for Quake III Arena, in which real world environments should be featured. It expanded from this idea to a full total conversion featuring realistic weapons and gameplay similar to Action Quake 2. The international team named Silicon Ice Development formed itself in spring 2000 and was made of several developers with different backgrounds in the mod scene. Many were familiar with modifying Quake-Engine games, hence progress was made quickly. When its first version Beta 1 was released at the QuakeCon August 2000, it was the realism mod with the most features and graphics completed. Beta 1 quickly became popular and many third party maps became available. The development team expanded and added several community mappers to its staff. End of 2000 the last Beta 1 series release 1.27 was finished.

The development team had grown in size to about 20–30 members and worked on the next version of the game Beta 2. The quality of the work done for this version had been a major jump from the previous versions. The visuals, effects and feature richness was on par and in some areas above similar commercial games at the time of Beta 2 release at June 2001. Due to this success several of the team members have started careers in the computer games industry. Beta 2.3 featured a mappack by community mappers again and was released at QuakeCon 2001, one year after the original first beta. This version was one of the most played in the history of Urban Terror, only recently topped with the now freely available version 4 series. During the Beta 2 series the development team changed frequently in size, as members joined and left. Especially the leaving of both former lead coders and several other members, had slowed down development a lot. Subsequently, it took long compared to the previous release timespans until the team stabilized and Beta 2 series was finished in January 2003 with version 2.6a.

Beta3 was supposed to be another major step in the game's development. A "Cold War" theme and mission-based gameplay were to be added. However not all ideas have found its way into the game, which came out at QuakeCon 2003. The series ended with 3.7 released in summer 2004. During its development the team announced that it would port the game to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, which was available for free and could be modded from 2004 on. As the original Silicon Ice Development team had close ties with Splash Damage, both coming from the mod development scene, this announcement excited many in the community. However it became rather infamous, as the port never came, and the developers had informed the community relatively lately about their change in plans. During this time the team also renamed themselves to Frozen Sand, an allusion to their former name, and founded a company. This team, albeit being shrunk to a few members, had been stable in its formation since the end of Beta 2 series, and wanted to take Urban Terror to a commercial level. However as the game's content was made of some 40 members during the complete development time, all the content would have needed to be replaced. The team invested time into their own "all-new" version called UT:MX, which had vehicle physics and was based on the work done for the RTCW:ET port. The development on this project ceased however.

Finally with the availability of Quake3 as open-source engine Version 4 was released in spring 2007. Among many polishing done to the game and replacing any textures used from the original Quake III Arena game, community maps were added and this version was finally available for free as both stand-alone and Quake3 mod. The Frozen Sand team is still working on enhancing the game, the current version 4.1 was released end of 2007 and has become the most popular version in the game's long history.

Gameplay

Urban Terror is focused on blending realism with the fast-paced action and movements of first person shooter such as Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament and Warsow. The realism in the mod is introduced through a number of changes:

• The weapons available are from real-life.
• The weapons have recoil.
• The weapons are less accurate when fired while moving (called movement penalty).
• The weapons require reloading after a magazine has been expended. Reloading before a magazine is expended will result in the loss of the remaining rounds in the magazine.
• The player can pull himself up at ledges to prevent a fatal fall.

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 more realistic too and can include weather effects such as rain or snow. But this can be controlled by game variables the server admin can set.

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 which allows players to move through the screen incredibly quickly and includes feats 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 move rapidly in a crouched position. These abilities have spawned a sub-community of players, much like in the DeFRaG sub-community for Quake III Arena, who focus on unique jumps, on jump maps, to maximize efficient movement. Jump maps are focused around using techniques such as: Bunny hopping, Strafe-jumping, Wall jump, ledge grabs and power sliding. Urban Terror also features numerous popular game modes for first person shooter games such as team deathmatch and capture the flag.

Weapons and equipment

Players automatically spawn with a Ka-bar knife, a pistol and a primary weapon as the bare minimum. A secondary weapon can also be chosen. Finally, grenades can also be carried. Both grenades and secondary weapons take up item slots. If both are chosen, only one item slot remains. If only one is chosen, two item slots are available. If a player chooses to carry only the bare minimum, there are three item slots available. Weapons picked up after spawning do not affect the number of items that can be carried. Similarly, holding three items does not prevent one from picking up a secondary weapon or grenades from a dead player. The weapon models are all right-handed. For effect the ejection port was modeled and animated on the left side of the weapons. There are no left-handed models in Urban Terror.

Damage and stamina

Damage registration in Urban Terror is done by dividing the player target into 4 discrete areas: head, torso, arms and legs. The effects on the target areas can be reduced by game items such as the kevlar vest and the kevlar helmet. In addition to the damage system, wounds require bandaging, and wounds sustained in the legs slow the player down considerably until they are bandaged. When a wound is not bandaged, the player will eventually slowly die from bleeding to death. Players can also bandage each other to restore other players health partially. The bandaging proceed much faster if the player that is bandaging is equipped with a medkit and will be capable of healing others back to almost full health. The hit registration system featured in Urban Terror since 4.0 is called Aries2.

A stamina system is also present, and is depleted by activities such as sprinting or jumping and even crouching. The amount of stamina is related to the amount of health a player has. Equipping or picking up a kevlar vest affect stamina drain much more drastically.

Game modes

Urban Terror features several game modes, though Team Survivor, Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag are the most popular. Available game modes are:

• Free for All (FFA, DM)
• Team Deathmatch (TDM)
• Team Survivor (TS)
• Capture the Flag (CTF)
• Capture and Hold (CAH, C&H)
• Follow the Leader (FTL)
• Bomb Mode (BM)

Two new game types are slated for the 4.2 release. A jump game mode, being designed to make jump maps more appealing for players, is in developement. The Last Man Standing game type is also planned to return to Urban Terror in 4.2 and is described as being a Free for All without respawn until the round ends.

Anti-cheating technologies

Originally, the Urban Terror used the PunkBuster anti-cheating technology built in Quake III Arena. As PunkBuster does not support modified versions of Quake III Arena engine, the stand-alone version of Urban Terror 4.0 used BattlEye; however, the support was terminated on August 4, 2007. The development team is currently looking for other options on anti-cheating technology. Due to a lack of anti-cheat being present, it is currently left to admins and players to determine whether a client is using a cheat such as an Aimbot or Wallhack.

Despite the best efforts of admins, most (if not all) servers are rife with players running cheats. It is much more the norm than the exception. This has essentially ruined the game for the average player.

UAA

July 2007 saw the Founding of the UrbanTerror Admins Alliance(UAA). A collection of server admins from around the globe, sharing their banlist - and providing a home for people to upload demos of cheaters. The demos are viewed by the participating server admins, and bans are then moved to the list. They provide no anti-cheat yet, but coding is underway on various projects to help admins deal with the ever-changing cheats that abound in the gaming communities.

Community

Leagues

Several competitive gaming leagues for Urban Terror exist and their activity has been more intensive since the 4.0 release which allowed more players to participate. Notable among them are Urban-Zone CTF League, Clanbase OpenCup, eChain TDM League, Team Terror Tournaments and Stronger Than All league[1]. These leagues have stricter rules than most public servers in order to emphasize fair play and a positive experience for those involved.

As of Sunday January 20th 2008, the Urban Terror NationsCup XI hosted by Clanbase had started. The following nations were competing: Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, UK and USA.

The NationsCup was ultimately won by The Netherlands team by beating the USA team in the finals with 4–0. Poland ended 3rd by beating France with 4–2.

References

[409]

External links

• Urban Terror official website
• Frozen Sand LLC