Manual/Weapons/Appendix

This is an appendix of useful notes about weapons. They are in this distinct page to save space in main Manual/Weapons page.

These notes include hints that may help you fine-tuning the game to suit your needs, or to troubleshoot a few problems you may encounter, or to discover some interesting mod.

Related third-party mods/notes of them

• When playing mods designed for Q3 (except Team Arena itself), you will probably not find anything in the place where the three "missionpack weapons" (nailgun, proximity mines launcher, chaingun) would spawn in baseoa, because standard Q3A gamecode (the base for Q3 mods) did not contain them. Same applies to their ammo boxes. Mappers should take this in account, to be sure there are enough weapons available also when playing with old mods.
• Some mods (like CorkScrew or Alternate Fire) may include a different kind of offhand grapple, which does not appear in the weapon bar. This kind of mod-specific "quick" hook must be "binded" to a particular key, and you do not need to select grapple before using it. These mods allow faster hook use than OA standard grapple, but they require you to use an extra button.
  • IMPORTANT: in a few mods, standard Q3/OA offhand grapple behavior may be broken in some way (due to the fact it was not an official Q3 feature, mod authors may have not tested it was correctly working in their mod). Although very few maps around include this item to pick-up, in case you experience some problem with it (e.g. being unable to detach from the wall), you should know the trick to remove it from the map, avoiding any problem with it: please read Disabling and replacing items page.
• Some mods allow to customize weapon switch speed (while instant weapon switch option has been added since OA 0.8.8 in baseoa). To further balance the railgun against other weapons, a few mods even tweaked it to make it cause less damage.
• While in the base game each weapon has got an unique fire mode, a few mods change this, such as:
  • Alternate Fire adds a secondary fire to each of the original weapons.
  • Rune Quake 3 also adds additional fire modes, together with other changes.

A few mods which focus around specific weapons:

• For lovers or Railgun, we can mention CorkScrew: a good Instant gib mod.
• For lovers of Rocket Launcher, Bazooka Quake 3 mod features many different versions of it.
• Rocker VS Rail and Unlagged Rocket Rail are two mods focused on these two powerful weapons.
• BFG10K Arena: a mod which features the BFG from Quake II instead of the one from Quake 3, with a very different behavior.

Related console commands

• g_elimination 0/1: All items are removed from the map and the starting weapons and ammo are set by the server admin.
• Each weapon is identified by a number: the command /weapon <number> directly selects the corresponding weapon, and you can bind such command to a key by using the command console or from the SETUP -> CONTROLS -> SHOOT menu. See also Manual/Controls.
  • The three "missionpack weapons" (nailgun, prox mines launcher, chaingun) currently do not have specific keys binded by default, so you may wish to set choose them.
• OpenArena itself added a "dmflags" value to allow instant weapon switch (still after weapon reload time!) with OpenArena 0.8.8.
• Cg_truelightning <number.dec between 0.0 and 1.0> variable controls how you will see your LG beam on the screen, while playing without latency compensation (OpenArena supports Latency Compensation technology for instant-hit weapons -"Unlag Hitscan"-). Default value is 0.0. With 0, it is drawn following the responses from the server (the actual machine that "counts" for determining the hit, without latency compensation), but due to the latency, this causes the ray to follow your view "slowly"; with 1, it is drawn directly in front of your crosshair as a straight beam. Fractional values between 0.0 and 1.0 are allowed (client anticipates server responses more or less). You may want to do some tests to find the mid-way values (e.g. 0.9, 0.75, 0.5, 0.01, etc) that you feel better with. However, while playing with latency compensation active instead, you have to do not worry of this LG tuning: beam will always be shown straight and you will hit your opponent if he's in your crosshair.
• You can show or hide the outer "spiral" of all RG beams with cg_oldrail <0 or 1> variable: with 1, external "spiral" trace is omitted from railgun beam (default value is 0).
• Cg_oldplasma <0 or 1> affect how plasma shots are drawn: with 0, plasma balls leave additional particle effects behind them (nice at view, but nothing impressive and they could distract from gameplay). Default value is 1.
• \elimination_grapple: 1 enables and 0 disables grapple in Elimination, CTF Elimination and Last Man Standing modes. Default value is 0.
• \bot_grapple: if set to 1, it allows bots to use grapple (if the .aas file has been previously compiled with "-grapplereach" option). Default value is 0.
• The time for the reoccuring of weapon pickups depends on g_weaponRespawn variable (default is 5 seconds) except for Team Deathmatch where g_weaponTeamRespawn (default is 30 seconds) is used instead. This can be overriden by map creators, who can customize respawning time after each item has been picked up, for each single item (about ammo boxes, by default they respawn after 40 seconds).

Other related bits

• The default, input buttons for Previous/Next weapon rotation are set to [ and ] keys (other than to the mouse wheel). All of these can be configured in game's menu.
• About "hitscan" weapons, the actual moment that "counts" for determining a successful hit or not may depend from the Point of View of the server -if lag compenation feature is turned OFF- or from the Point of View of the client that shoots -if lag compensation feature is turned ON-.
• Usually the Machinegun can't be found spawning in the map, but just its ammo boxes.
• In the original Q3 game, offhand grapple was not placed in any "stock" map, and its model, although working (map creators may place it anyway), was not properly skinned (appears grey). So the hook may be considered an unfinished or cut off Q3 feature, and id Software didn't fix the bugs in bots A.I. with it. OpenArena has got a skinned grapple model, but has not completed bot support that id Software left unfinised, at least for the moment: by default, bots simply not use it (grapple itself can be considered an official OA feature, but bots using grapple not).
  • Bots would use offhand grapple ONLY IF the map .aas (bot navigation file, created with BSPC program, usually executed by map author) has been previously compiled with "-grapplereach" option AND the server (the player, if playing locally) has got "bot_grapple" variable set to 1.
    • Bots would probably not use it to stay attached (camp) to high walls/ceiling like humans may do, but they may use it as shortcut to reach some higher floors. BOTS Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) with the grapple is limited and BUGGY: it is unclear whether they try to get it; they may miss the edge they are aiming at and continuing firing the grapple some more times without correcting its trajectory; more importantly, if bot grapple support is enabled but the bot character has not collected the grapple, he would get stuck, standing still and pointlessly firing with normal weapons aiming the wall where he would have fired the grapple if he had it. In other words: currently, bots do not properly support the grapple. Maybe in the future someone may fix those bugs in BOTS behavior, but for the moment, enabling bot_grapple variable is advisable for testing purposes only.
• Mappers can change the quantity of ammo included with any weapon or ammo box pick-up, by setting the count property for each entity, though this is considered a bad practice if going for playability over everything else.
• Mappers should place enough "standard" weapons to allow the map to be playable also in old mods that do not support Missionpack weapons. A smart solution could be to use the "team" key to make a missionpack weapon spawn alternately to a standard weapon: in that case, while using old mods, players will be able to pickup the standard weapon each time.

Trivia

• In the earlier Q3A versions, Railgun maximum range was much longer. It has been lowered by iD Software for their Team Arena expansion pack, and they later ported this change to the main game, with some PointRelease patches. OpenArena, created from the GPLv2 Q3A 1.32b source code, inherited this updated version of the Railgun. Strangely, we don't find reference to this change in these PRs changelogs: if you have a good link about this topic, please add it here.
• BFG weapons appeared in various games from Doom series (with their BFG9000) and Quake series (with Quake II's BFG10K and Quake IV's Dark Matter Gun) franchises. The name stands for Big Fucking Gun or Big Freaking Gun, though in the Doom movie, it was officially named Bio Force Gun.

See also

• Manual
• Manual/Weapons
• Troubleshooting