Quess -- quake.zone browser build Repacked for browser play from: http://www.quaketerminus.com/mods/quess13.zip http://www.quaketerminus.com/mods/quess134.zip Only runtime files are included in the game package; the original documentation is reproduced below. All rights remain with the original authors. Runs on LibreQuake (../../librequake/NOTICES.txt) and FTEQW (GPL-2.0, ../../licenses/gpl-2.0.txt). ===== quess13.zip/Readme.txt ===== ----------------------------- v1.3 Q . U . E . S . S ------------------- The Battle Lines Have Changed ----------------------------- INTRODUCTION Chess. Little more needs to be said about what is possibly the greatest board game of all time. A design simple enough to be enjoyed by all ages, yet with so much depth that one could never fully understand it's limitless boundaries. Unchanged for centuries... until now. QUAKE CHESS With Quake Rally taking so long, and still quite some work to be done on it, attention was perhaps wandering and so "Quess" become our one-week diversion. The game IS chess - there are no extra rules and no major omissions. The presentation, however, is strictly unique (unless you happen to remember the old 'Battle Chess', although that wasn't the inspiration) resulting in a totally unique experience within the game that is chess. The appeal for Quess over, for example, Quake or CTF, is that lag isn't quite the major barrier that it once was. After a little play, even 6000ms lag becomes basically transparent as you focus your attention to the game at hand. INSTALLATION Using WinZip or Pkunzip, unzip the contents of the Quess archive into a directory named "quess" (without the quotes) under your Quake directory (eg. c:\quake\quess). QUICK START Everyone wants to check it out before reading through docs or working out the intricacies of multiplayer setup - obviously the game won't be much fun on your own, but to start it in one player: quake -game quess +teamplay 0 There are 3 Quess maps included, these are QUESS1, QUESS2, and QUESS3. "+teamplay 0" places Quess into single PC mode, where 2 players alternate turns on the one PC. INSTRUCTIONS Quess is quite intuitive, but there are a few rules and controls worth learning. Controls: Normal Quake controls are used for looking around. Shift - move forward RMB/Return - move backward LMB/Space - select a piece or move it (select again to deselect) C - toggle Camera between flying and walking M - notify other player of "Check-Mate" P - Pass turn (must use when in Check-Mate) H - Help (err, I forgot the keys..) W - toggle mouse in window mode (WinQuake only) Rules/Gameflow: The game starts with one player being randomly chosen to start. A move is made by pointing your pointer at the BASE of the piece you wish to move - it will highlight red if it is a valid piece - and click the LMB. The piece will glow. Next, direct your pointer to the square you wish to move to - again, all valid positions will highlight in red - and click the LMB. At this point your piece will wander over to his new base, and if there is an enemy waiting there he will promptly slice and dice him into a servable meal. A move is thus completed. Standard chess rules like a pawn becoming a queen if reaching the far side of the board is covered, as is "castling". To "castle", there must be a clear path between the king and the rook (or castle as it is sometimes called). If neither of these peices have been moved the king can be moved to the position next to the rook. The rook then is transported to the other side of the king. Experiment with this in single player mode (see above) to if you are unfamiliar with this move. Detection of "check" is performed automatically by the computer. In the case of a "check", only the player in check is notified allowing the possibility that the attacker wasn't aware. You are also not permitted to make a move that will put you in check. However, if you fail to move your king to a safe position (which may be unavoidable in a "check-mate" situation) you will most probably suffer the consequences. (it's been a while since we really got into the chess rules so we hope these are accurate) Pieces: For those who are having trouble remembering what pieces are what, here's a rundown: pawn = (small) knight rook (castle) = ogre (fat dude with chainsaw) knight = demon (ugly hunch-backed critter) bishop = hell knight (big guy with sword) queen = shambler (the poor king!) king = zombie (old bastard with the crown) Protect your king. That is your only duty. MULTIPLAYER Quess supports a maximum of two players (which wouldn't have come as much of a surprise to the clever readers) and there are two ways the game can be played: with one player as a -listen server, or with a separate -dedicated server running the game. Listen: You can run your own server avoiding the need to find a free dedicated one somewhere with the following line: winquake -game quess -listen 2 +map There are 3 Quess maps included in this release. These are QUESS1, QUESS2 and QUESS3. Winquake is used in the example since it's the easiest and allows you to run the game quite fast in a window. The player running the server in this fashion will always have a 0ms ping. Another player can then connect with: winquake -game quess +connect We suggest that the more experienced internet user runs the server, and tells the other player their IP number before playing. If we get enough mail from people having problems finding out their IP number we may post a more detailed guide on the web page on finding out your IP number. The second players ping will vary considerably, ranging from around 50ms on a good LAN to >6000ms (6 seconds) over large internet connections. 6 seconds of lag is about the limit of playability for Quess although it does take some getting used to. Dedicated: This option is used by those wishing to run servers for other people to use. The benefit here is that the lag for both players is generally more balanced. winquake -game quess -dedicated 2 +map We don't expect too many servers will be set up running Quess, however, since running your own -listen server is so easy. SERVER COMMANDS All variables in the game must be set on the server side (person running the -listen or -dedicated option). The following attributes can be modified using console variables in the game: TIMELIMIT x This limits each turn to x seconds. If x is greater than 25, a warning message will be shown at the 15 second mark. The maximum value for this is 255. COOP 3 This enables a special set of color changeable skins. Each monster will have some sort of clothing that will change color with their owner's pant color. Use the multiplayer menu to change your pant colors. At this stage that is the only variable. Should we feel the need, a future version will most definately include more customizable settings. THE QUESS NETWORK Since Quess can handle much larger pings than regular Quake (+variants) this hugely expands the possibilities of who to play. On the down side, due to the limit of just 2 players, you can't randomly choose a server to join and expect to find someone there waiting. With that in mind, we'll be setting up a list of email addresses, IRC nicks and ICQ numbers of people interested in games of Quess allowing people to setup games with relative ease. We'll also supply lists of all servers running dedicated servers. The Quess URL is: http://www.frag.com/quakerally/quess If you would like to be added to the list, send am email to Ridah or Sumaleth at the addresses listed below with the address for the form of contact you wish to have listed (email, IRC nick, ICQ number etc) along with a rough guess at your chess skill level. CREDITS Quess is a product of the Impact Developement Team: Ridah - concept/coding - ridah@frag.com Sumaleth - skins/mdls/docs - sumaleth@starfury.apana.org.au B-Money - skins - bmoney@merlin.net.au Drizzt - maps - mcleod@westworld.com Impact Team web resources: Impact Team: http://impact.frag.com/ (coming soon) Quess Homepage: http://www.frag.com/quakerally/quess QuakeRally Homepage: http://www.frag.com/quakerally Thanks to DaKiller at frag.com for hosting our pages. And ZyFly for his assistance. COPYRIGHTS All work presented in Quess is copyright of the respected authors. "Quess" is copyright of Impact Team. "Quake" is copyight of id Software. No part of this package may be sold for profit or used in products other than Quess. Quess is not to be distributed on any physical medium without the expressed consent of the Impact Team. No animals were fondled in the creation of Quess. "PC Format" shall be excluded from all copyright restrictions for one month starting April 17th 1997. --END-- ===== quess134.zip/QUESS134.TXT ===== Quess v1.34 ]-----------[ Just unzip it to your Quess directory and away you go. You have to first have downloaded to main Quess files themselves (http://impact.frag.com/quess). Whats new: - Checkmate code totally bugfree - I really mean it this time ;) Small error when you had "discovered mate". A rare situation, and not a fatal bug, but annoying. - Camera view markers - Press M to save your current viewpoint to a "marker", then simply press the number key (as if to change weapons) associated with that marker, and boom, instant teleport there. Very handy. - Status bar: Time remaining in the turn is now shown where the armor display normally is, and instead of ammo it shows you how many "points" you've acquired. (Also in the frag list, goes by standard chess scoring) Anyone care to do a graphic for me to replace the sbar with? :) - ASCII board display: Press F1 to display the board in text at the console, as viewed from your team. Helpful if you can't see those pawns hiding behind the shambler ;) Note, at 320x200 resolution this -will- exceed the size of the console. Use the PageUp key to see the rest. - Pawn Promotion - instead of instantly becoming a Queen you now select which piece to promote a pawn to (when it reaches the enemy home rank). Press the Del key to cycle possible pieces and click the mouse to promote your pawn. But no matter what you cycle to, if you don't make your mind up in 30 seconds, it auto-promotes to a Queen. (There are actually lamers out there who would wait forever just to claim a "draw" if the situation was looking bad for them, so I had to put it in ;) - Move notation & saving - if you add the -condebug parameter in Quake, it will save the output of the game to QCONSOLE.LOG in your Quess directory. Now that moves are displayed on the console as well, I've packed in a simple batch file that uses the DOS "find" command to filter all the moves out of the .LOG, allowing you to save your sterling games in a small text file instead of a massive demo or the plain console log cluttered with conversation and output. Works for servers, clients, -and- spectators. example: Launch Quess with winquake -game quess -listen 3 -condebug And then when the game is done, run movelist in your Quess dir, and it will go through the console log and magically your game will appear in semi-standard chess notation into QUESS.LST. If you're so inclined you can put a filename to dump the list to instead of QUESS.LST. (movelist mygame.lst) - Chances are -really- good in the older versions that promoted pawns acted very weird in the alternate monster set. If you ever saw a Vore think it was a dog, that's why :) Well, its fixed now. - Ogres and Shamblers no longer reserve their lightning and grenades for extreme long range...occasionally they'll now use them no matter what the range. Changed by popular demand :) - The alternate monster set grunt just sucked. Dunno if it was a Quake error or what, but sometimes he wouldnt be able to do any damage, or just take forever to kill anything. Well, no more. He's got new weapons now... you do NOT want to piss off this bishop :) - Oh, and corpses don't just disappear anymore when they hit the board. Check out my new method of removing them...sweet little thing I swiped from Dungeon Keeper ;) As before, if you have any trouble with it email ME, not Ridah. I'm Ralgha (jmhows1@mik.uky.edu). Don't bother the rest of the IMPACT team, either, they're all busy getting QuakeRally to *seriously* rock :) -Geo/Ralgha