Maximum PC multiplayer RSS Feed

How To: Leave Your Mark in Left 4 Dead

Shaun Rykiss — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:00:00 -0600

In our opinion, no artistic medium offers a better opportunity to express a PC gamer’s individuality and inappropriate sense of humor like a personal decal “spray” projected on your enemy’s spawn room wall during a multiplayer match. While Valve has made it a mostly painless process to import spray images into their Source engine-based games, the difficulty still lies in creating an original image you can be proud to vandalize next to an enemies corpse. And since no game offers more opportunities to grief friends and enemies than Left 4 Dead, we’re going to show you a flawless technique for creating your own ‘writing on the wall’, pun absolutely intended.

What you need:

- Photo editing software, GIMP
Free, http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
- VTFEdit
Free, http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/index.php?p=41
- Handwriting-styled Fonts
Free, http://www.dafont.com
- WinRAR
Free Trial, http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm
- Left 4 Dead (though the guide works with any Source Engine game)
$50, http://www.l4d.com

Time: 1.5 hours

1. Set up Your Template

You’ll need image editing software such as Photoshop or Paintshop, though less expensive (and free) alternatives such as Gimp are available that offer the same tools required for this job. For user convenience this tutorial will use Gimp, though it is important to note most modern editing programs consist of similar tools, options and terminology, so don’t worry about specificity of tools. Other programs will follow the same guidelines.

After opening Gimp, select File > New, which will bring up the New Image dialog box. All sprays have a resolution of 256x256 pixels, which you should input into the Height and Width boxes (make sure the units are set to pixels). Now in the Fill Width box, make sure you set it to Transparency. This will make the background invisible, so when you use a spray in-game you will only see the graffiti, and not a white square box. After pressing OK, you are now ready to start working on your blank image!

2. Customize GIMP

Next, let’s customize the interface to make designing our spray a little easier. Select File > Dialogs > Tool Options. This opens the Tool Options dialog box, which will change in context with the tools you select. If you would prefer to dock it with your tool selections, click the area of the Tool Options menu that says Text (if the Font Tool is selected) and drag it under the tools on the main Gimp window where it says “You can drop dockable dialogs here”. Also, open the Layers dialog box through File > Dialogs > Layers, which can be docked the same way.

3. Choose Your Graffiti Style

At this point you have a few options for designing the look of your graffiti. We recommend visiting www.dafont.com or another website that provides free-to-use user made fonts. There, you can find some great styles in the Handwriting category under Script (it is important to note each artist has conditions for using their font, usually found in a Readme file bundled with the font download). Once you’ve chosen a font, download and install it. Open My Computer > Control Panel > Fonts, then drag-and-drop the font (extracted from the .rar file using WinRAR) into the Font folder to install it. Remember the font’s name so you can easily find it for the next step!

4. Start Writing

Now we can start writing. Once you’ve decided what you want your Spray to say (be snarky for extra lulz), select the Font Tool and left-click anywhere on your Canvas. In the GIMP Text Editor, type the text you want on your Spray. You can change your font and text size in the Tool Options window, as well as the color. We recommend darker colors, since they will look more like static markers on in-game wall textures. If you have multiple blocks of text you’d like to write, simply click elsewhere on the Canvas and a new Text Box will be made as a separate layer. Be sure to use a different font for more than one line of dialogue to mimic a conversation between multiple survivors!

5. Apocalypse-ify Your Text

If you are happy with your current product, move on to step six! However, if you want to really make your graffiti fit in with the game’s art style, there are a number of things you can do. Start by moving your text around the Canvas with the Move Tool, and spinning it on an angle with the Rotate Tool, or skewing it to an angle with the Shear Tool. These tools can be used by clicking and dragging your text into your desired positions, and clicking the Rotate or Shear button respectively to reflect the changes. Remember to use the Layers window to select the text you want to modify.

To add a final touch, select the Paintbrush Tool, adjust the tool settings so that the brush uses the same color as the text, and the size accordingly. Draw a few scribbles on your font text, extending some letters and underlining words to make text look unique, as if a person had written it. Play around with the other various Tools GIMP offers and have fun with it!

6. Export and Convert

Now it’s time to export your artwork into a usable game file. Click File > Save As. In the Save Image window, select where you want to save your image (we recommend making a Sprays folder either in My Pictures or in your Left 4 Dead directory), and click the Select File Type text at the bottom of the window. Scroll down and select PNG Image (extension .png), or TarGA (.tga), then name the file in the Name field at the top and click Save. When the Export File window comes up, make sure Merge Visible Layers is selected, and then click Export and Save in the Save as PNG/TarGA window.

Install VTFEdit, launch it and click File > Import. Select your PNG or TarGA image form wherever you saved it and click Open. The VTF Options window will pop up, which looks pretty imposing. For the most part you can leave it alone and simply press OK, however I would adjust a few things to be safe, which can be seen in the following screenshot. Select File > Save As, and save it where you like, which will save the image as a VTF file, the format which all Source-based Sprays are saved.

7. Import and Enjoy!

The last step is simple and painless, boot up Left 4 Dead and click Options. Select Multiplayer > Import Spray, find the VTF file you made, click Open and bind your Spray to a keyboard shortcut (T is the default key).

Congratulations, you have your own graffiti Spray to place wherever your trigger-happy hands like!

Tips:

- Edit > Undo is your best friend. Remember the hotkey Ctrl+Z!
- Save often
- Try and familiarize yourself with GIMP before starting, and customize it to your liking.

Dreaming of Massively Multiplayer Open Source

David Murphy — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:00:00 -0600

Remember Myst Online? You shouldn't. GameTap shut the servers for the fumbling MMO in the beginning of this year, leaving plenty of fans of massively multiplayer online puzzle-solving out in the cold. Until the rights were returned to Cyan Worlds, which promptly promised to resurrect the MMO under the clever acronym of MORE -- the Myst Online Resurrection Experiment. Which was all fine, until funding difficulties killed the project once again. Which has since been resurrected again (surpassing Jean Gray's record), this time as a result of Cyan Worlds turning the entire Myst Online platform over to the open source community.

Strangely, this is the first big announcement from any of the "larger" MMOs that involves open source in any fashion. When an MMO dies, it usually dies for good, regardless of how persistent the fan base is toward resurrecting the fallen title into a working project.

The curious part of Myst Online is that Cyan Worlds is going to host a server with all of Myst Online's data for its fans to use. It's quite a conciliatory gesture, especially since other dead MMOs that live on through fans and private servers usually end up having to extract engineer the materials themselves. As Ars notes, this is a great way to keep the game from dropping off the radar for good. The code release will invariably lead to a bunch of rogue servers, but even in this, Myst Online could find a larger base -- imagine a version of the game that's been customized to a completely different experience entirely? Don't discount the coding tenacity of rabid fans. Cyan Worlds certainly isn't.

We mentioned this being the only MMO that's gone the open source route. We can't think of any officially released MMOs that' have dumped their code to the community like this, but that's not to say that the gaming world is devoid of open-source MMOs:

Shown above, PlaneShift is a larger title that's attempting to push an art direction comparable to a modern-day retail MMO. The game features GM events, trading and crafting, and a separate "death realm" that you have to escape each time your character meets the reaper. All that, and it's an open-source title! This game is ready-for-download, unlike plenty of other open-source MMOs that exist more in idea than reality.

Crossfire isn't an MMO in the modern sense of the word, but it harkens back to the MUD era with its simple graphics and archetypal role-playing gameplay. The fact that it's still around in development since its creation in 1992 shows the strength of the open-source community to cling to projects. If people are still tweaking and adjusting a game like this, the sky is practically the limit for a robust title like Myst Online.

Speaking of originators, WorldForge is one of the earliest open-source MMO engines to be released with full-fledged graphics. The giant framework was primarily designed to help developers create alternatives to Ultima Online (if that helps to give away its age), although scant alternatives have actually been created since the framework's launch. You can check the full list here, which can be accessed using one of two 3D clients found here (Ember or Sear). Still, bookmark WorldForge's homepage if you like watching the efforts of a giant community working hand-over-fist to incorporate new functionality into an evolving MMO concept.

E3 2008: Left4Dead Interview. New Graphics, Weapons, and Steam Achievement Details

Norman Chan — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:00:00 -0500

Face it, pirates and ninjas are out and zombies are in. And we have no doubt that one of our most high-anticipated games of this year is Left4Dead, Valve’s post-apocalyptic survival horror shooter. Our initial playtest sent chills down our spine when we first saw it at last year’s Showdown LAN, and the game looked much more refined and polished when we played it at this year’s E3. A revamped visual style and new character designs suit the cinematic direction -- the levels looked grittier and the zombies were definitely more terrifying (if that’s even possible). We spoke with Michael Booth, the designer of Left4Dead, to find out what other changes have been made to the game since Valve bought up his development team.

Maximum PC: Tell us a little about Left4Dead, assuming we've never played it before.

Michael Booth, Designer: So the main thing with Left4Dead is, in a nut shell, it’s you and your friends surviving the zombie apocalypse. But the key thing that we’re pushing for with this game that differentiates it from any other game like this is the level of cooperation that’s required. This is really a cooperative game. With other cooperative games you may be able to play the same game together [with friends], but you kind of do your own thing. In this game you have to stay together, work together, and watch each other’s back. Because if you run off by yourself, you’re going to die.

MPC: So we just spent some time playing the game and we noticed a couple of things right off the bat: zombies running up to people, us punching them off, people getting knocked down, zombies are piling on them and then we have to punch them off and then help our teammates back up. Stuff like that -- healing other people sharing ammo.

MB: Right. At the most fundamental level, there are just too many zombies that you can’t handle them yourself right. But then beyond that we have explicit attacks like the Hunter’s pounce. If he pounces on you, you are helpless -- you’re done and will die unless a friend comes and saves you. The Smoker’s tongue is the same way. He pulls you way out of position but once he gets you he’s going to squeeze you until you die.

MPC: This is the thing that comes and grabs you from above and sucks you up into the air.

MB: Exactly. And with the Boomer you know if he hits you with his vomit then you’re tagged. All the zombies will be coming after you so your friends need to help. The Tank is another good example where if everyone stays calm and focuses fire on it you’ll probably be ok. But if the team panics and someone breaks and runs, the team spreads apart you’re in big trouble. And then of course there’s reviving people when their health reaches zero. I can guarantee you that if you don’t do those things the team is not going to make it.

MPC: So one of the things that Left4Dead does that is really kind of unique is the really dynamic difficulty system. Can you explain a little bit about that?

MB: Dynamic difficulty isn’t exactly the right term. It’s a dynamic drama pacing system so it doesn’t nerf the game to bring it down to someone’s level so much as it really makes sure that you have an exciting experience. It’ss very easy for us in this game to give you a very intense experience.

MPC: You just keep throwing zombies non stop and…

MB: Right. So what the “AI Director” is doing in that case is it’s watching for cases where the team is just getting pounded on and then it’ll ramp things down a bit, to make sure there’s a gap a pacing.
MPC: So you watch statistics like health, the number of zombies the survivors have killed, and how much ammo they have, and then make decisions?

MB: Exactly.

MPC: What are the exact variables that the Director monitors?

MB: Well I can’t give you a full set of them. But it’s things like you just mentioned. It’s things like whether you’ve been hit recently, how often have you been hit, how many zombies do you see, how many zombies are running at you, and how many zombies you’ve killed recently.

MPC: All the way down to your level of accuracy or not so much?

MB: Not so much accuracy. It checks to see when you killed that zombie if he was way out in the distance wandering and not so much a threat or if he was in your face and hitting you -- that’s a little more intense. So its metrics like that. The Director’s doing that to make sure that there’s high peaks and valleys because if they’re all valleys you quit because it’s boring and if it’s all peaks you get stressed out and you quit anyway. So we want you to have the same kind of excitement as a rollercoaster ride. And of course the Director makes sure everything is procedural so you can never predict when or where the zombies are coming from.

MPC: Cool. What’s this we hear about the game having two modes?

MB: We tried for a long time to sort of have this holistic mode that did everything. You could play as a survivor or you can play as the infected and it all just worked. But we basically found that we were reaching diminishing returns and we could serve the game better by splitting it into two modes. It’s essentially PVP and PVE. There’s pure co-op mode where we could focus on the survivor’s experience against the AI controlled infected to make sure that they have the best dramatic experience that they can have. And then we have the Versus mode which is survivors versus four player-controlled zombies and you can take over the Tank, Boomer, Hunter and Smoker. So the basic thing is that when you join Versus mode you’re signing up for a tough experience.

MPC: You know what’s coming.

MB: Yeah. If I’m going to play Versus mode I know it’s going to be rough but I also know and its going to be awesome. As opposed to if I just want to play a co-op game with my friends and kill zombies and you know you’ll be able to avoid jerks.

MPC: So it’s purely a user preference and difficulty expectations or is the Director algorithm any different?

MB: The biggest thing is user expectation so you know what you’re signing up for. At the same time we’re able to relax some of the really tough constraints like Boss Infected spawn times and things like that that were really difficult before.

MPC: When we join a Versus server and two of our friends sign up, are we playing as a group or does it keep shuffling people around? Is there some sort of mechanism to control how often I’m a zombie and how often I’m a survivor?

MB: Some of that is still in flux but we are spending a lot of effort on matchmaking so it’s really easy to find and connect with your friends. The way that we’ve been doing the Versus mode is that the four zombies win by eating the four survivors., who win by escaping. After each round, the teams just swap and either you play again on that campaign or you go to the next campaign. It’s a total revenge thing.

MPC: So its attack versus defend.

MB: Yeah.

MPC: In your playtests do you find that one side wins more frequently?

MB: That’s where it gets interesting. I’m confident that we’ve got the game mechanics reasonably well-balanced so it comes down to the skills of the players. Just like in Counter-Strike, if you have a clan playing on the T’s and a bunch of random people from the net playing on CT’s, they’re going to get owned.

MPC: What’s the kind of play time to get through a level. I know it varies wildly depending on skill levels but are we looking at something like 30 minutes or an hour? Is it more like a WoW raid or is it like a pickup game of TF2?

MB: I would say more a WoW raid. If the team knows what they’re doing they can get through a campaign in about 45 min but that varies wildly. I mean we’ve had like company-wide play tests where some people took 2.5 to 3 hours, because if the survivors all die they roll back in time to the safe house checkpoint and at the (health and ammo) state they were at too. Some people had to retry sections of the map, especially the finale, since it can take some folks a few times to get through.

But that said, we also have AI controlled survivor bots as well so you can play alone and the rest of your teammates will be controlled by the AI. The nice thing about that is friends can drop in or out at any time and be replaced by a bot (or replace one).

MPC: Will the game run on dedicated servers or will it be an Xbox style local host? What do we need to have set up to get the best experience for us and 3 to 7 of our friends?

MB: All I can say right now is we’re investigating some really cool stuff with servers and hosting. Making it easy is a primary focus. Making it clear for you to jump in and play with the optimal experience right out of the box.

MPC: Because we might not necessarily be playing a pick-up game TF2 where you can jump into any server and have fun by ourselves. We want to play with our friends and not necessarily want to pay 10 bucks or 20 bucks a month for an 8-person server.

MB: Yes definitely. You should not have to pay 8 or 10 bucks a month to play on a server to have a good experience.

MPC: We saw at the end of a mission there are rankings and you get feedback from the game. Can you talk about that and maybe a little bit about the Steam achievements?

MB: Yeah well we’re going to have a full set of achievements for both the PC and the Xbox 360. If you look at what TF2 is doing with their achievements you’ll have a pretty good idea at the kind of things we’re going to do for Left4Dead.

MPC: Any hints as to what the achievements might award?

MB: Well I will say that we are definitely going to focus more on altruistic and teamwork sort of achievements so you’d be recognized for the kinds of things we want you to be doing in the game. But there’s also going to be some other ones that are tough to do. I can guarantee you there’s going to be an achievement of starting and escaping a scenario without getting hit by an infected.

MPC: So that’s an achievement you might have to farm.

MB: It’s going to be tough, especially since we also have dynamic levels which are kind of unique for a multiplayer game. We’re figuring that out how this is going to play into the achievement system.

MB: The feedback system we originally had was this really deep system of awards and merits and all this other stuff. There was a lot of data there but through play testing we found that people just didn’t care about that data. It was kind of information overload, and more importantly, it was kind of obscuring the salient things we really wanted people to notice.

MPC: Like if you shot friend in the face 20 times.

MB: Yeah so we want to highlight the good things and we want to encourage teamplay. But, for example, instead of a friendly fire demerit the game will mention things like least damage to friends and that’ll be a ranking. So you can look at yourself and if you’re at the bottom of the list, that’s bad.

MPC: Yeah we wouldn’t want you on our team again.

MB: Right and it rotates through those rankings. It tries to pick a handful of the most interesting things that happened to show you. Like most headshots.

MPC: Kind of like at the end of a Rock Band round.

MB: Exactly. In fact, the game does rate your team with 5 stars as well. In essence what we’re trying to do is give the team valuable feedback and we try to boil it down to “you did really well,” “you did ok,” or “you should try different tactics next time.”

MPC: Where does the difficulty kind of cap out? If we sit down with our mom and grandmother then obviously it’s going come in pretty easy. What happens when I sit down with guys who are at the top of the world? Are we just going to get infinite spawn of zombies?

MB: The fundamental thing that’s going to drive that in the coop mode is the difficulty setting you choose. There is sort of a bottom difficulty, and the director can only compensate so much. But on the top end so we have Normal, which is basically the introductory experience. We have Hard which is just a good solid experience for seasoned players. There’s also Expert difficulty which is for pretty hardcore folks.

And then we have Impossible difficulty because it never fails. I remember Counter-Strike bots in particular. It didn’t matter how hard I made those bots I kept getting emails saying “dude they’re too easy.” So Impossible is the mode for bragging rights. And what basically changes between those modes is how much damage you take from the various attacks. So the mobs don’t necessarily get bigger.

MPC: How much more damage they deal as well?

MB: How much damage they deal to you fundamentally. Some of them do change, like the tank. The tank gets tougher. He can absorb more damage. But at the same time he can deal more damage. Like on Impossible he hits you once and you know you’re done.

MPC: Like in a real-world zombie scenario, when they have their arms on you that’s not going to end well.

MB: No, you know if I reached across the table and clocked you as hard as I could that would hurt a lot

MPC: Definitely. You’re much bigger than we are. We don’t want any of that.

MPC: How about the new weapons that you’re showing off today?

MB: So the biggest tweak is the pipe bomb. The pipe bomb before was very realistic, so it exploded like a real pipe bomb would. But in terms of gameplay mechanics, especially with this game, it wasn’t actually very functional. There are so many zombies that are coming at you from all directions that having one even fairly big explosion didn’t help in a lot of cases. So what we did is we McGuyvered it a bit. Now, there’s like a labeled battery strap on the bomb with a beeper and the beeper sound just drives the zombies nuts. They have to chase the sound. So you can pull out the pipe bomb and set it off and it starts beeping faster and faster and all the zombies in the area chase down the pipe bomb like a dog chasing a bone. They kick it around and after about six seconds the beeper keeps getting faster until it explodes. But of course it’s completely surrounded by zombies at that point. So it becomes very tactically interesting. You can use it to get out of trouble. Like if one guy is dead and two are incapacitated and you’re going over to heal them, there’s probably a huge hoard coming at you. But if you have a pipe bomb you can use it and throw it far away and it’ll just basically absorb that hoard and you get a “Get out of jail free” card.

MPC: Can one of the player-controlled Boss infected kick the bomb back at you to send the hoard in your direction?

MB: We’re still experimenting with exactly how the Boss infected can react to the pipe bomb.

MPC: And then the other big change we’ve seen today is the look. All of the characters have been redesigned and the game has new post-processing effects. Can you talk about that?

MB: As you know at the first of the year valve acquired Turtle Rock studios so now we’re Valve South and the biggest thing that the acquisition brought is just a ton of new resources. A lot of our game design assumptions changed. Before this time there were basically 12 of us building this game and we were leveraging as much as we realistically could using props that we had built for Counter-Strike. But now we have all this additional talent with Valve as a whole. Everyone sat back and said ‘This game is really fun. People really dig this game. Lets give this game its own look.’

What happened was a re-evaluation of our development and a whole bunch of effort going into giving the game its own unique art style. We are able to do things that we couldn’t do before like changing the low-level Source Engine assets because we had our hands full in just making the game itself. But now, we’re Valve! So now we have much more interesting shadows and flash lights and we have the vignette-style post-processing and the color correction.

MPC: So what is the “look” that you’re going for?

MB: What we’re trying to do is make you feel like you’re in a horror movie. It’s a very cinematic feeling. Something that we’ve noticed just with the game in general is that people tend to like just to watch; they like to be spectators. Because it’s kind of like watching that horror movie where you want to shout ‘No, don’t, No! don’t go in there!’ We’ve really pushed for that in the vocalization – the way survivors talk to each other. We also wanted to make it look as filmic looking as possible.

It’s a challenge because there’s this single-player narrative element and structure, but it’s also a multiplayer game that is meant to be played over and over again.

MPC: Any details about the actual story behind the zombie infection? Is that something that will be revealed through the acts?

MB: We’re trying some experimental things with the story but we’re keeping it vague right now. The idea is as you play the game more and more the kind of things the survivors say will give you little hints and tidbits of the story. So you may have played the game for a long time and then Bill says something off hand that you’ve never heard before. We have plans in the future to continue to add to this world a lot.

MPC: Will the game be moddable?

MB: That will be interesting to see how that works out. In some ways the game is really moddable in that you can make a map and you won’t have to populate it because the director does that for you. You basically generate what we call a navigation mesh and you decorate a few areas indicating where the players start, where the safe room is located, and where the finale will take place. The Director will go through and populate it all for you. And the director is there and available to be messed with but of course all it knows is how to make a zombie game so it’s not a completely malleable piece of AI that could say make My Pretty Pony or something.

MPC: My Pretty Pony would be pretty weird.

Frontlines: Fuel of War

Norman Chan — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:04:41 -0500

With the price of oil surpassing $100 a barrel, the apocalypse imagined in Frontlines: Fuel of War may not be so far away. In this vision of the future, the world’s remaining superpowers—split between two factions—clash in a winner-take-all war for Earth’s last oil reserves. Lucky for us, this makes a great backdrop for some intense multiplayer skirmishes.

On each map, teams of up to 32 players scuffle for control of capture points, which connect to create a “frontline” that divides the map between friendly and enemy territory. In order to win a match, a team must take control of the entire map by either moving the shifting frontline to the end of the level or killing enough enemy troops. While the premise is similar to Battlefield’s, the frontline concept prevents lone wolves from infiltrating enemy territory and capturing points away from the action.

In addition to selecting a weapon, players choose one of four roles, each of which comes with unique abilities that must be unlocked. An air-support player can call in air strikes, while a ground-support player can deploy mountable turrets. Our favorite role is drone technician, which gave us control of remote-controlled mini cars and helicopters to zoom around the map. These killer drones (which can self-destruct) were perfect for fishing out snipers hiding in the ruins of a fallen skyscraper and blowing up APCs filled with enemy troops.

Of the nine maps included, we favor the ones set in abandoned urban metropolises because they better accommodate infantry combat. Frontlines lets you pilot helicopters and jets too, but only one map was spacious enough for fun aerial dogfighting.
While the combat here feels solid, widespread bugs prevented us from joining servers, and glitches often crashed the game. Lack of joystick or voice-com support is unacceptable, and squad management feels like an afterthought. But if you can bear these frustrating shortcomings, Frontlines will adequately scratch your multiplayer itch until the next Battlefield game is released.

Unreal Tournament 3

Norman Chan — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:35:42 -0600

Since the last Unreal Tournament game was released four years ago, no worthy contender has managed to dethrone the now-classic shooter as the best game for online deathmatches. With the much-delayed Unreal Tournament 3, we get the uneasy feeling that Epic Games has grown a bit complacent with its multiplayer crown. The game’s brand-new graphics engine and glut of maps mask some very familiar weapons and gameplay mechanics. And while we appreciate that the developers haven’t broken from a proven design formula, we’re disappointed by the lack of innovation in this long-awaited sequel.

What truly stands out in this visceral fragfest are the gorgeous new maps and the arsenal of new vehicles. UT3 is packed with more than 40 maps split among its five modes (deathmatch, duel, CTF, vehicle CTF, and warfare), each oozing with a memorable style and design gimmick. For example, the Deimos map awed us with its zero-gravity tubes and mesmerizing space backdrop, while the Gateway map kept us on our toes by warping us to three distinct battlegrounds. Learning how to apply our acrobatic fragging skills to the new maps was an exciting challenge, which is why we also appreciate the bot-driven single-player campaign.

Sixteen new vehicles gave us fresh and faster ways to slaughter our foes. From the elevated Necris Darkwalker to the massive five-seat Leviathan battle tank, the mechanical transports here are daunting death dealers that can’t be taken out alone. We especially liked using the flying Fury vehicle to zip across maps while our teammates latched on with grapples and flew behind us.

The only new gameplay mode included is warfare, which is a mix of the CTF and onslaught modes. By including a gameplay device called the orb (which allows players to instantly capture control-point nodes), this team-based mode ensures that rounds are fast paced but balanced enough to avoid lopsided victories. Still, it’s no replacement for the omitted assault and bombing-run modes.

We’re not sure if the relatively sparse amount of new content in UT3 will be enough to convince the existing Unreal community to upgrade. Until more players make the transition, $50 is a steep price to pay for updated visuals at the cost of a vibrant community.

How To: Become a Gaming God

David Murphy — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 15:22:49 -0600

All right, newblet. You’ve eaten your dog food in Wolfenstein 3D, done your spirit quest in Prey, and even managed to set up a bomb or two in Counter-Strike. If first-person shooters were massively multiplayer role-playing games, that might qualify you to step out of the kindergarten zone. Maybe. The big leagues of head shots, m-m-m-monster kills, and first-person-shooter fragfests have no room for subpar playing performance.

Top players—including PC Gamer’s very own Norm the Intern—all seem to have an innate talent for running-and-gunning. At least, that’s the nice way to put it when you’re on the receiving end of one of their rockets. But being awesome at shooters isn’t just luck; follow our guide to becoming a better gamer, and you’ll be on top of the leader board before you can say “pwnd.”

1. Know Your Maps

The best first-person-shooter gamers spend just as much time researching as they do button-clicking. For even the twitchiest of reflexes is worthless on an unfamiliar map; you’ll be riddled by railguns from every direction as you struggle to find even the most minimal of upgrades to your starting weapon. And in games like Quake, your opponents having quad-damage plus a knowledge of common spawning points equals you minus your body parts—plus an explosion of fire and guts. What fun!

You don’t have to get served up and down the battlefield to begin your most important of research tasks. After all, most multiplayer-themed shooters come with single-player bot modes. Fire up a one-on-one, set the computer to “bunny rabbit” difficulty, and resist the urge to spawn-camp your frustrations away on such an easy opponent. You’re here to research, not eradicate.

The world's top TF2 players (conveniently found on the official Maximum PC server) memorize their maps: it turns the routes, choke-points, and strategies into a chess game... with flamethrowers.

So what are you trying to learn? Start by sauntering through the level to find the spawning points for the map’s many weapons. You’ll want to be able to get to your weapon of choice—newb-cannon rocket launcher, sniper rifle, or some other ingenious combination of death and destruction—from any position on the map (especially the spawn points).
That’s just the beginning. In theory, you’ll work your way up to creating actual routes. You’ll be able to count the seconds between each power-up or weapon spawn. And you’ll be constantly running a loop around all the major power-ups—health, armor, ammunition. Even if your game doesn’t feature these goodies, you’ll want to know all the possible chokepoints, so you can mount the best offensive with each spawn.

2. Know When to Wuss Out

If you’re playing in a professional gaming setting, this tip is undoubtedly worthless. The second your opponent spots you, consider yourself three seconds away from corpsedom. But if you’re playing an everyday match on the Interwebs, or even a match against some of your more talented friends, then you’ll need to suck it up so you don’t suck it down. Humility is an important part of the FPS experience.

What does that mean? Don’t go charging off into battle with your starting weapon, even if your most hated of opponents just ran past the spawn point. You will die. If you’re obviously outgunned in a firefight, don’t keep shooting. You will die. If you’re facing off against a sniper who just head-shot two of your buddies in the face, don’t run toward him. You will die.

When trying to trap an opponent, make sure you’re using a weapon that’s going to get the job done. You’re in for a ride on the pain train if you don’t get the one shot, one kill.

Play smart. Turn tail. Run away, and perhaps you’ll hit a teleporter and confuse your opponent. Or better yet, pull a Macaulay Culkin and set a trap—run through a doorway and immediately hug the wall on the right. Stay put, and if your opponent is stupid enough to just run straight ahead, you might be able to catch him with a quick shotgun blast to the face. Advantage: you.

3. Gear Up

It’s important to customize your hardware for the kind of gamer you are. That includes redoing your keyboard’s keybindings to best facilitate your fragging experience. It’ll add about 10 minutes to your prematch startup time, but the payoff is worth it. Swap the weapons you frequently use to buttons more accessible to your WSAD-style controls. And if you indeed rock with a gaming keyboard, then make sure you’re using its extra input keys to their fullest potential.

Some keyboards come with fancy applications and feature a number of preset hotkeys. Use them as a base to save yourself some tweaking time!

If you can pick up a fancy gaming mouse, do it—you might not see an increase in overall accuracy from higher DPIs, but you’ll likely be able to switch your sensitivity on the fly. Need a little more machine-gun spray action? Kick the mouse up to a high sensitivity and let ’er rip. Camping spawn points in Facing Worlds? Lower your sensitivity and buzz the eyebrows off your opponents. Remember, reacting to an enemy is akin to raising the white flag; you want to anticipate your opponent’s movements at all times.

How2Mini: Waiting for a Respawn?

Here are some quick tips for your next few rounds of gunplay.

300 Pick on the weak. That’s right. We said it. If you’re in a 15-player deathmatch and getting rocked by three or four people you can’t compete against, stop fighting them. Find the guys you can utterly stomp on and hunt them mercilessly. They’ll call you names and hate your very existence, but hey, you’re on the top of the kill boards. They’re just jealous.

Be a Planeteer We might be speaking to deaf ears with this one, but hear us out. In team-based shooters like Counter-Strike and Shadowrun, you need to do just that: act like a team. Fun as it may be to entertain your dreams of becoming a virtual Rambo, it just isn’t going to work. Like wolves, you need to hunt in groups—use each person’s strengths to your advantage. And get on your headset!

Dance, Monkey! Standing still and shooting never works, but neither does jumping around like a chinchilla on speed. Create a dance—a few standard strafing/jumping moves that you’re familiar with, so you can always keep your mouse targeting trained on a player while you’re moving in-game. Otherwise, you’ll spend half the gunfight trying to react to your own dodging attempts instead of your opponent’s.

Talk Like You Mean It Psychological warfare is every bit as important as good accuracy. So the next time you get that sweet head shot, feel free to let your fellow players know just how newb they are in your favorite combination of obscenities, epithets, and physical gestures. It works in every cartoon; it’ll work in your first-person shooter.

Quake Wars: Enemy Territory

Norman Chan — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 15:46:04 -0600

When we think of Quake games, we think of fast-paced deathmatches in their purest no-nonsense form. In Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, the latest iteration of the shooter franchise, that visceral run-and-gun experience still makes up the foundation of gameplay, but the integration of deep teamplay tactics and mission objectives makes this a whole new multiplayer animal. The meld of cooperative squadplay and frenzied firefighting makes for compelling matches, but both deathmatch and tactical purists may find themselves in slightly unfamiliar territory.

We fought for possession of Earth across 12 battlegrounds as both GDF and Strogg forces, each round structured in an assault and defend format. Up to 32 players fill the battlefield, contributing to the fight in one of five roles: Nothing special here—you choose between the typical assault, medic, engineer, field ops, and covert ops classes. What’s unique is the asymmetry that Quake Wars applies to the two sides. While the GDF rely on conventional bullets and ammo, the Strogg use an energy source called Stroyent that doubles as ammo and health. Strogg can also use the bodies of dead GDF soldiers as remote spawn points. With the addition of other weapon and special-ability differences, we had to adapt our tactics to accommodate the advantages of each side.

Helpful tooltips give each player sub-missions and goals unique to their classes, leading Aggressors to plant explosive charges at vault doors and Infiltrators to hack computer systems. Quake Wars’s map objectives are some of the most diverse we’ve seen in a multiplayer game. On the Slipgate map, the GDF team has to commandeer a forward control point, hack the eponymous gateway, escort a Mobile Command Post through the wormhole, and finally demolish a Strogg Nexus tower.

Awesome objectives aside, we weren’t impressed with the graphics of the “Megatextured” game, which suffered from overused browns and last-gen lighting. But once we got past the superficial deficiencies, we were in for a fresh multiplayer experience worthy of the Quake name.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Norman Chan — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 19:55:24 -0600

Just call it the anti-Crysis. If Crytek’s immersive next-gen messiah is suppose to usher in a revolutionary era of open-ended shooters, Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 4 shows us why linear missions and wholly scripted gameplay aren’t ready to be replaced yet. The shift in this series’ setting to modern day brings more high-tension gunplay and explosive ambiance than any game in recent memory. From furious firefights in Arab towns to nail-biting infiltration missions under the dark of Russian night, we were absorbed in more grandiose military heroics than any Michael Bay blockbuster. And since the game’s goal is to take you along for an unabashed joy ride, that’s actually a good thing.

The story’s requisite crisis, which is clearly torn from the scripts of TV’s 24, revolves around the threat of militant Middle Eastern and Russian radicals who’ve joined forces to dethrone the Western powers. While we weren’t searching for suitcase nukes in this near-apocalyptic scenario, the hunt for terrorist leaders and their generals is played out with familiar Jack Bauer-esque bravado and a real sense of urgency. Switching between the boots of a US Marine Corp and British SAS officer, we delivered justice from two perspectives of the fight – each with unique pacing and varied styles of play to keep the action always fresh.

From the American camp, we played as Sergeant Paul Jackson, keeping the peace in the Middle East after a recent uprising by the fundamentalist leader Al-Asad. Jackson’s missions showcased the game’s grand sense of scope and impressive attention to detail in urban sieges and large-scale strikes. In the War Pig mission for example, escorting a M1A1 Abrams tank through hostile streets was incredibly nail-biting and chaotic. As we sprinted along city streets, dodging bullets and flying debris, enemy troops fired at us from rooftops and abandoned storefronts. AI teammates slid into cover and fired blindly around corners, utilizing convincing (but scripted) tactics. We felt like we were in the middle of a real war, with dozens of dead bodies collapsed on the battlefield and cars exploding at every corner.

The British levels were equally intense, but focused on the exploits of a small SAS squad instead of a massive invasion force. These operations, mostly played at night, had our squad rescuing captured informants deep in enemy territory and running away from hunting parties and helicopters after being discovered. One of the more satisfying moments in the game came from shooting down a helicopter that had been stalking us throughout the level as we hid from its bright search beam. Our one complaint is that, like in the American missions, swarms of enemies were too easily dispatched. While enemies did hide behind cover, they didn’t have the intelligence or programming to flank us or even avoid funneling through corridors straight into harm’s way. Our suspension of disbelief also suffered from the fact that some of our British comrades were nearly invincible, since they were integral cast members of the plot

Still, Call of Duty 4 has some spectacularly memorable sequences that had us gasping out loud. Several on-the-rails “god-missions” put us in control of devastating firepower. In the infrared vision equipped gunner’s seat of an AC130 gunship, we peppered enemies with explosive shells as they ran for their lives. Another awe-inspiring aerial mission let us fire rockets at the same rooftop forces that had assaulted us in previous encounters. We also need to give special note to the game’s playable cut-scenes, which let you experience dramatic cinematics from a truly fresh and terrifying point of view.

And even if you’re not taken with the six-hour single-player campaign, the multiplayer is so addictive it should be a controlled substance. In the online arena, urban settings like the Crossfire and District maps feel like real-world war zones where you’re never safe. Here, battling against human players forced us to use gameplay mechanics like penetrable walls and exploding cars to survive skirmishes. We love the Headquarters and Search and Destroy game modes, which feel like the perfect combination of Battlefield and Counter-Strike play styles.

Team games with 32 players are delightfully frenzied, rewarding skilled players with UAV drones and Helicopter support for impressive kill streaks. Persistent statistics tracking is sure to keep us playing for months as we grind to unlock new weapons, attachments, and ranks. Each player can also customize their own class with personalized weapons and Perks – special in-game abilities like longer sprint or faster reload. We especially like the ability to drop grenades once we’ve died to get revenge on players who’ve out-dueled us.

Unpretentious and unrelenting, Call of Duty 4 is perfect for gamers who just want to experience a terrific cinematic shooter. The breathtaking spectacle may feel forced at times, but it’s a rousing thrill ride that’s definitely worth taking.