In the beginning.....

there was Quake, which made CTF, which then made the hook. The hook started out as an object that was treated like another weapon, yet it did very little damage. So people set out to make a better hook, now known as an offhand hook, This hook would be used in so many ways, and in so many modifications, the difference between the old style hook and the new style hook allowed players to fight, shoot, and fly thru the air at the same time, without having to use a weapon slot, for the lack of a better placement, making it possible for players to fire weapons, switch weapons, and still be able to use this grapple as a movement device.

The old hook....

was fine for slow playing, but then there was the new hook, and we said cool. In the days to come the hook was made to be a very good friend of Quake 2 Expert players, and even Quake 1 Expert, and this was good. We moved faster and faster, grabbing flags from bases and returning to our own until the scores were done scoring. Then came Quake 3, and the hook would not fly, Not like the hook from Quake 2 could fly, absent of lag and jaggedness from network play, UNTIL now. This was good, and the expert players all gathered in the arena once again, clamoring and banging the hooks against the walls, evading other opponents missiles and fire, driving forward to capture another flag.

Quake 3 New Expert.....

was is being released from the doors of my dev machine. The Mod is a derivative of many works, countless hours of coding, and made to be played. I used the word derivative because this is essentially a sister/brother Mod of "Q3 Battlebots" currently being developed. Battlebots goal is for intense bot gaming, while making the game better and better.

Expert players have been screaming out for a mod similar to old Quake 2's Expert CTF mod. With a little time in passing, new information has been made available to programmers out there like "Unlagged" , Hypothermia's "UIE", Z-CAM, and a lot of other bug fixes as well as the release of the 1.32 developer source code, which made it possible to make something really good for just multiplayer online gaming.

Now, what New Expert is about ......

The game server code has been stripped of all bot code which was originally placed in the source. This leaned out the game.vm/dll quite a bit. Next thing we did here was find a lot of the old code that needed to be fixed, and fixed it. Next we optimized the movement code. Then we added Unlagged, which in return made a game that should do quite well on internet gaming. The concept of Expert gaming sits in this mod quite well.  Hand Grenades, Free Gear, Ammo Restore, and most of the old school toys that were in the Expert Quake 2 mod have shown up to a degree in this mod.

Also, some extra side pieces have been added to the mod, like knockback weapons. What this means is firing weapons can cause a certain amount of reversed movement, or pushback on a player while they are firing weapons. This puts a little more stuff into the game, which has been seemingly missing for a while. Another intriguing feature is alternate bounce weapons that take on smart bouncing. What this means is when a weapon is fired, the projectiles on certain weapons may bounce. If the bounce occurs close enough to a player they may feel a bit of damage from the impending bounce. Some weapons fire bounces once, others bounce twice while others bounce more then that. The limit or top end is around 4 bounces . Rockets bounce, yet you can still do a rocket jump with them, at the cost of the damage of course.

These 2 factors sort of "Balance" each other out, which is a goal the Expert CTF has tried to accomplish, being Balanced weapons, items armor, or what may have you. The User Interface or UI of the game has been modified to support most configuration settings possible, making the mod very configurable, and well worth hitting a server for a game or 2.

The best way to see more about the Mod is try it out. There's a lot to offer, the same as Battlebots client side multi-skinning for team games, voice, and radio paks, an enhance ingame UI and a full blown Skirmish menu capable of quite a lot. The mod has Punkbuster support.

Here's a quote form a beta-tester of the mod.

Faust wrote:

"I must say that The Quake III New Expert CTF is all that the Quake II version was, and a lot more. Filled to the gills with plenty of options, the way the game moves and feels, is just perfect. I played it and was like wow this is fragtastic!! The grapple is quick and accurate, and you can adjust the rates of speed etc. There is also a realism effect to the weapons, when you fire the lightning gun and, the shotgun there is a kickback. You can come up with some interesting ways not only to kill your opponent with the weapon but also avoid him at the same time. The vivid color to the way the mod handles itself is so smooth. Many have tried. And finally the wait is over. If you liked Quake II Xpert, then this is what you have been looking for…I dare ya to just try it, got balls, get fragged NEW EXPERT CTF it begins here."