The Coliseum

Gladiator-style arena for pit-fighting in Quake 3. Almost every weapon. Frantic, non-stop action.

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GENERAL INFORMATION

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Title: The Coliseum

Project: Quake 3 Deathmatch Map

Author: Fiend

Email: [email protected]

Website: http://dark_universe.tripod.com

Date: 5/5/2003

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PLAY INFORMATION

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Players: 3-5

Deathmatch: Yes

Tourney: Yes

CTF: No

Bot File: Yes

New Bots: No

New Textures: No

New Shaders: Yes

New Sounds: No

New Music: No

- Put f_q3dm02.pk3 in the baseq3 folder in your Quake 3 directory.

- Start Quake 3 as normal.

- It should show up in the skirmish menu under single player.

- If you're kicked back to the menu screen with an error message,

you'll have to bring down the console and type "sv_pure 0"

before you start the game. This doesn't seem to happen with this

map, but I can't guarantee that it won't, since my last map had

this problem.

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DESCRIPTION

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I first got the idea to recreate pit fighting in Quake 3

from the Odyssey expansion set for Magic:The Gathering, but

as I worked on the map I kept thinking of the movie

Gladiator. The basic idea is that the player gets items

when they spawn in, then they're released into one large

arena and have to try to stay alive while taking weapons

from their dead foes.

There are six spawn chambers, each with a door to the arena

that opens when the player spawns in. Once the door closes,

it won't open again from either side until someone else

spawns in. In case someone gets trapped in the room, there's

a skull switch on the opposite wall that will open the door.

It happens more often than you'd think.

Each spawn room has a different weapon. I tried to even the

odds by giving some rooms more armor or less ammo. I also

put a megahealth in the center of the arena. It's on a kind

of podium, so the players will have to jump a few times to

get up there. This was not in my original design, but I

thought I'd give the players a remote shot at getting health.

It looks easy to get, but with 4 or 5 players all shooting at

you, you'll often die before you get up there. In a one-on-one

game, it will probably affect the game strategy a lot more.

There is an upper area of the map where the coliseum seats

are, but there's no way to get up there. I haven't hidden

any items up there, it's really just there for aesthetics

and realism. If you want, you can go up there with "/noclip"

and check it out, but its really just a bunch of darkened

seats. Sometimes I like to sit up there and watch the bots

fight, but they occassionaly shoot up at me if I take off

no clipping.

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BUGS / PROBLEMS

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Sometimes the bots still get stuck inside the rooms because

they don't know to use the buttons. I don't think there's

any way to fix that and it really doesn't hurt the game

much.

I've rarely actually seen a bot get the megahealth.

Sometimes a bot gets up on the second step and it looks like

he's going for it, but jumps off the podium before he

actually gets it. One time I saw Klesk jump all the way up

and get it, but that was the only time.

I decided to have the players drop into the rooms through a

hole in the celing to avoid telefrags. But now, every once

in a great while, the floor bounces me back up into the air

when I spawn in. I only bounce once, and then I'm fine after

I land. I don't know why that happens.

I've been having trouble getting my maps to show up in the

skirmish menu. I swear it was working before, then it just

suddenly stopped. It could be something I did, so it might

not happen on other computers.