December 27, 2008

HUNT mod on OA


A wish for cooperative gametypes was stated on oa-forums so I remembered good old HUNT for Q3A.
This mod offers two new gametypes that bring coop experience and serious weapon changes. You shouldn't play this alone as it gets way harder then. One gametype is named Save The Universe which is played in normal FFA/TDM/CTF maps that come with Open Arena. The mission is collecting a certain amount of artifacts that are symbolized by the quad powerup.
The second coop gametype is called Escape From Hell and takes place in long, randomized maps where the goal is simply reaching the exit.
Of course both types of play are not easy as players are not alone in the maps and monsters of various sizes and skills try to stop them. That's where cooperative play comes in. There is a certain amount of lives players share for every map and respawn is only possible if at there is at least one player alive and there are enough lives left.

The mod runs out of the box except the default monster models which are set to Quake 3 player models (klesk, tankjr) and have to be changed. This can be done by HUNT options menu or via console. A small config could do this for you. This config is included in a small additional xoa_textures.pk3 file I created to solve a texture missing problem as one of the randomized maps that comes with HUNT uses Q3A textures.
A playable mod with all required files is downloaded when you connect to the running HUNT server if you enable automatic downloading on your client. If you connect a second time sometimes you get disconnected quickly without entering the game. This happens when connecting from standard Open Arena and can be fixed by launching the mod first (via mod menu) and making sure the right monster models are set (eg. '/exec autoexec.cfg' if you already have xoa_textures.pk3 in your HUNT folder) and then connect to the server.
To have a little coop challenge this server creates a HIGHSCORE of each map played. So the fastest missions and the highest scores appear in these tables. I'm curious who will appear there over time. :)

7 comments:

Ryan said...

Could you run your hunt server again? I can't seem to get the mod to work myself, and would very much like to play.

Thanks!

cosmo said...

Hi Ryan,

due personal changes I might have some trouble keeping the server online after February. I will see what I can do to host it further. If I fail I'm going to post a detailed guide how to get it going on Open Arena.
Glad you like it. We should have more 'Escape From Hell' maps.

Anonymous said...

Hello,

Nice trick for Hunt !
I was wondering if something similar could work for OA regarding the Invasion mod ?

BR,
/olivier

cosmo said...

Hi Olivier,

it's worth a try. I didn't know about Invasion. If the choice of models is not hard coded into the game logics like it is in HUNT it should work. Maybe I can get it working. The game code has been released under GPL so it is even possible to convert it for Open Arena. Depends on how many people want to get Invasion for OA. It takes quiet a lot more people to enjoy a good game compared to HUNT where 'aliens' are AI-controlled.

Anonymous said...

Hi,

Invasion mod is already (almost completly) working as it is now (2.8b), AI included.

The annoying bit is that aliens models are not mapped correctly.
2 out of 4 (xeno and trooper) are provided with the mod as pk3 files, but the rest are (I think) relying on real Q3 models (klesk for instance). All marines are also relying on Q3, but that's not really a problem (visually speaking).

That's why I was wondering if your "seta monstermodel" replacement trick could work with invasion as well ?

There are also some textures issues, but I guess they will be resolved with 0.9 version of OA (?)

Br,
/Olivier

cosmo said...

Well this set monstermodel is hunt specific but I'll check Invasion and will post a blog entry about this. Thank you Olivier.

Anonymous said...

Hi Cosmo,

Looking forward to your post then :)

Br,
/Olivier