Urban Terror

Urban Terror

Urban Terror 4.X
Developer(s) Frozen Sand, LLC / Silicon Ice Development
Designer(s) Asche, Barbatos, Biddle, BladeKiller, Decoy, Fenix, Frankie V, gsigms, H0i, Kalish, Nounou, NuLL, p5yc0runn3r, r00t, RabidCow, Raedwulf, Skaz, Timbeaux, TTimo & TwentySeven
Engine ioquake3
Platform(s) MS-DOS, AmigaOS 4, Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X
Release date(s)

September 1999 (Quake 3 MOD)

5 October 2016 (4.3.1)
Genre(s) First-person shooter
Mode(s) Multiplayer

Urban Terror, commonly abbreviated as UrT, is a freeware multi-player first person shooter game developed by FrozenSand. Originally a total conversion of id Software's Quake III Arena, FrozenSand released Urban Terror as a free standalone game in 2007 utilizing ioquake3 as an engine.[1] Although the ioquake3 project uses id Software's id Tech 3 engine under GPL license, Urban Terror's assets and code are closed source.

Urban Terror was nominated to the 2007 Mod DB's Mod of the Year Award.[2]

History

Urban Terror started out in 1998 as a planned mappack for Quake III Arena, in which real world environments would be featured. It expanded from this idea to a full total conversion featuring realistic weapons and gameplay similar to Action Quake 2.[3] Silicon Ice Development was formed in spring 2000 and was made of several international developers, many whom were familiar with modifying Quake III Engine games; hence progress was made quickly. When its first version, beta 1.0, was released at QuakeCon 2000, Urban Terror was the realism mod with the most features and graphics completed. Beta 1.0 gained popularity quickly, and many third party maps became available. The development team was expanded, and beta 1.27 was released in late 2000.

Beta 2.0 was released in June 2001,[4] and was a major leap forward in terms of production quality. New textures, models, weapons, sounds, and maps brought the mod up to par with many contemporary commercial games of the time. The next major release occurred in August 2001, at QuakeCon 2001, of beta 2.3, which introduced several new maps.[4] The last release for the beta 2 series occurred in January 2003, with beta 2.6a being primarily a weapons balancing patch.[4]

August 2003 saw the release of beta 3.0,[5] a major graphical revision of Urban Terror. Over the next 11 months, seven more updates were released, culminating in beta 3.7 in July 2004.[5] Work on Urban Terror for Quake III Arena slowed down, as Silicon Ice Development was working on a release for Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, titled Urban Terror MX featuring new vehicles and gameplay. During this period, Silicon Ice Development changed its name to FrozenSand. Urban Terror MX never reached alpha stage, and the project was canceled in 2006.

With the release of the ID Tech 3 engine source code, Urban Terror could legally be released as a standalone game. Urban Terror beta 4.0 was released in April 2007[6] using the ioquake3 project engine. Urban Terror is now a standalone game. Beta 4.0 ushered in another graphical overhaul, several new maps, and numerous tweaks and bug fixes.[7] The popularity of Urban Terror surged as Quake III Arena was no longer required in order to play. Urban Terror beta 4.1 was released in December 2007, with 4.1.1 being released in January 2011.[8]

On 25 December 2010 the Urban Terror HD Alpha 0.1 test was publicly released, featuring a new engine, new weapons, maps and characters.[9]

Urban Terror 4.2 beta was released on 4 August 2012.

The main server for www.urbanterror.info was hacked in mid-April 2014 (game version 4.2.018), which required taking the site offline for repair, and resulting in a gameplay outage that continued through late April 2014.

Urban Terror 4.3 was released on 30 September 2016, with 4.3.1 quickly following on 5 October.

Gameplay

Urban Terror is billed by FrozenSand as a "Hollywood tactical shooter."[1] It blends elements from games such as Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament and Counter-Strike. The realism in the mod is introduced through a number of changes:

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 realistic and can include weather effects such as rain or snow. Weather effects can also be controlled by game variables via administrator privileges.

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 (circle jumping) which allowed players to move through the environment incredibly quickly and includes moves 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 slide, rapidly, in a crouched position, maintaining speed. These abilities have spawned a sub-community of players who focus on specially designed "jump maps" of which the goal is to reach the end of a series of difficult courses.

Numerous game modes are featured, including classic FPS modes such as Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag. Also included are Team Survivor, Free-for-All (deathmatch), Bomb & Defuse, Capture & Hold, and Follow the Leader. Urban Terror 4.2 has brought two additional game types: Last Man Standing, Freeze Tag, Gun Game, and Jump Mode (a special mode for the aforementioned jump maps).[10] Urban Terror 4.3 introduced Gun Game and Instagib mode, the latter of which features a new sniper rifle that makes messy one-hit kills.

Weapons and equipment

Players have one primary, one secondary, one side arm, and one grenade slot, in addition to three general equipment slots.

Players must select at least one pistol, and one primary weapon. They are also automatically equipped with a Ka-bar knife, always by default. Secondary weapons may also be equipped as primary weapons, allowing the player to pick up other primary weapons from killed players.

Of the remaining five slots (secondary weapon, grenades, general equipment) only three may be filled at spawn-time. Also Equipment may be picked up from dead players to fill unused slots later on during the game.

The player may select to carry either two hand grenades or two smoke grenades. The player can also select one of three secondary weapons. Finally, the three general equipment slots may be filled with any of several items such as kevlar armor and weapon attachments.

Damage and stamina

Damage registration in Urban Terror is done by dividing the player target into four discrete areas: head, torso, arms, and legs. The effects on the torso and head can be reduced by game items such as the kevlar vest and the kevlar helmet, respectively. 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 partially restore health. The bandaging process is much faster if the player that is bandaging is equipped with a medkit item, which is used for healing other players to nearly full health. A player carrying the medkit can also be healed back to nearly full health by other players, but the healing acceleration is not available in this case.

A stamina system is also present, and is depleted by jumping and sprinting. The amount of stamina is related to the amount of health a player has. Equipping or picking up a kevlar vest decreases stamina considerably. Stamina is recharged fastest when a player is motionless and crouched, but will recharge slowly even during normal movement.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Urban Terror: News Retrieved 2009-09-16
  2. ↑ "2007 Mod of the Year Awards: Top 100". Mod DB. Retrieved 2008-01-13.
  3. ↑ Caryn "Hellchick" Law. "Urban Terror!". GameSpy. Retrieved 2008-07-14.
  4. 1 2 3 Silicon Ice Development Urban Terror 2.x ReadMe, readme
  5. 1 2 Silicon Ice Development Urban Terror 3.x ReadMe, readme
  6. ↑ Urban Terror: News Retrieved 2009-09-16
  7. ↑ Silicon Ice Development Urban Terror 4.x ReadMe, readme
  8. ↑ Urban Terror: News Retrieved 2013-05-09
  9. ↑ Urban Terror HD Alpha 0.1 Retrieved 2010-12-25
  10. ↑ Urban Terror mod for Quake III Arena - Mod DB Retrieved 2009-09-16
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