Some common terms

Below is a short list of terms that are commonly used in the reviews on ..::LvL. If you would like a different term explained just ask. Also if you wish to improve or expand on the description of a term feel free to send in you contribution. Full credit will be given to you.


1on1, 2on2, etc.	Two players having a game on a map is often referred to as a 1on1. A 2on2 game would be two teams of 2 players each playing as one team against the other. See also Tourney.

Brush	Levels are made from a collection of 3 dimensional shapes in their rawest form. Each one of these shapes is called a brush. Curves within Quake3Arena are called Patches and are treated differently to a brush at all stages of development as well as by the Quake3 render engine.

CTF	A team based game where the objective is to Capture the other teams flag and return it to your base. Your flag is required to be home at the same time to make the capture successful. CTF stands for Capture The Flag. The first online game version was a mod for Quake, made by the ThreeWave team way back in 1996. CTF fans of any game engine have Zoid and the ThreeWave team to thank.

DM	A chaotic game where anything goes. Its where everyone is out to get you and you do your best to get everyone. DM stands for DeathMatch and is often called a FFA or Free For All.

Duel	Exactly the same as Tourney, so check that term out below :]

FFA	A chaotic game where anything goes. Its where everyone is out to get you and you do your best to get everyone. FFA stands for Free For All and is often called a DM or DeathMatch game.

Framey	A term often used to describe a level that causes a low frames per second count. The cause is often related to high r_speeds. Can also be due to high memory usage on the video card or from the CPU requiring an above normal amount of processing. If you wish to check out your FPS at any time during a game type \cg_drawFPS 1 at the console. See also Laggy.

HOM (Hall of Mirrors)	A term used to describe the visual effect generated by a compile or texture error where you see a repeating, strobing image. You can see this effect in action at the bottom of some skies where the ground texture is not being drawn (some RA3 maps). Another location is on the portals under vertex lighting (try q3dm7).

Laggy	If a level causes the CPU to do an above average amount of processing then the frame rate may drop and the player movement will feel a little sluggish and non-responsive. This can be described as laggy. An online game may also be described as laggy when the connection to the game server is dropping packets. You can see your packet loss with the in-game netgraph, the yellow lines represent the dropped packets. You can find out where the packets are being dropped by using the command line tool tracert (on any Windows OS). Open up a dos-box window and type tracert XXX.XX.XXX.XXX just replace the X's with the ip number or the game servers full name. A * is a ICMP packet that that never made it. The lower the numbers the better. Quake3Arena uses the UDP protocol so this method can only be used as a guide and may vary from within the game.

OSP	A lot of the online game server run the Orange Smoothie Productions mod. This is a server side only mod that gives players and server admins a lot features. Server side only means you do not need to download anything to enjoy the benfits of the mod. If you do download the mod however you will notice a few enhanced features. Below is a short description taken from the readme.txt OSP Tourney DM is designed to facilitate competitive, yet flexible, match play. This mod simply makes it easier and more convenient for players and admins alike to ehance the Quake3 experience. There have absolutely been NO changes to the core gameplay or its dynamics -- its all default Quake3 in this regard. Check out the OSP web site for more information and the latest build: http://www.OrangeSmoothie.org

r_speeds	One of the most used terms. r_speeds are a series of numbers generated by the quake 3 engine that describe what is currently being processed by the render engine. They can be used as a guide to how well a level will perform on different set-ups. To see the r_speeds read out for a level you we need to load a map with \devmap mapname then type \r_speeds 1 (r_speeds 0 will disable the display)

Shader	All of the special effects textures in Q3A levels are based on shader scripts. These are a small series of commands that inform the Q3A render engine to perform some special function on a particular texture. A .shader takes the place of a texture and can be a combination of textures, alpha channels and blend functions. For more information about the syntax of the scripts check out the Shader Manual.

Tiling	An image which repeats to fill a surface without apparent seams or overlaps. A tile can be repeated in a one dimensional row for borders or vertically and horizontally to cover a surface. The majority of textures in games are tiled, it really cuts down on the file size and video memory if most of your textures are small tiles repeated.

Tourney	A Tourney game is often a more serious match between 2 players. The term is derived from the word tournament. Its where a player can show off just how good their skills and map knowledge are. Tourney games are not restricted to 2 players but more than 1 player per side is really a team game.

Zebraing	If a face from two brushes are on the same plane the texturing can double up and appear to flicker when you move. This is commonly called zebraing. Not all video cards and set-ups will show zebraing but for the ones that do zebraing stands out like a sore thumb. Zebraing in the flesh - a screen shot of what zebaring looks like.