Old Client Guide
From PromodeWiki
This guide is intended for use by either a) first time users or b) users wanting more info about their client-side options. This FAQ is not intended as a definitive resource for all CPMA commands, nor is it intended to answer any server related questions. This list of helpful commands has been compiled from the many documents and resources available within the CPMA full download and the sites linked within. Any questions, corrections, suggestions or comments please conact me HERE.
Contents |
How to Install
- Download the newest release (linked in the upper right hand side of this page)
- Delete old cpma directories if you have any.
- Extract all files to your quake3 with 'Use Folder Names' checked
- What to do with temp CPMA files such as 'z-cpma-extras-099s1.84582425' ... If you have the newest installation of CPMA and try and join a server that is still using an older version (or vice versa), you will end up with weird files that look something like this: 'z-cpma-extras-099s1.84582425' ... these are required to play on THAT server, and do not affect the play other servers. Here is the catch, if these 'temp' files are of an older version of CPMA, they are safe to delete as you already have the newer files required for use on updated servers. However, if these 'temp' files are actually newer than your current installation, you can simply rename them ***.pk3 and replace the ones already in your cpma directory.
NOTE: Currently CPMA is still in Beta, so updates come fast and furious ... if you try and connect to a server and it does not allow you to join, ensure that you have cl_allowDownlod 1 ... if after you have auto-downloaded and you still get kicked, bring down the console (with the ~ key) and type reconnect
NOTE: Sometimes, even if you have certain maps, CPMA attempts to auto-download when it is not necessary. If this occurs, again bring down the console (with the ~ key), type cl_allowDownload 0 and type reconnect ... this usaully occurs becaue you have the maps in cpma and the server has them in baseq3 or vice versa. Typically, all maps should always be in baseq3 rather than in the mod's directory
Download and Install Map Packs
- Download all Map Packs that are listed on on the right-hand side of this page, and any other maps that are listed
- Extract Map Packs and any other maps to your baseq3 directory
- If you want to be able to use RA3 maps in CPMA, you must move them to your baseq3 directory. You do not have to copy them, as you will still be able to play the RA3 mod with the maps in your baseq3
Practicing on Your Home Machine
- Start Quake3
- Click 'MODS', choose 'Challenge Promode Arena' and hit 'LOAD'
- Alternately you can create a new Quake3 shortcut and add '+set fs_game cpma' to your exec line to bring you directly to the mod ... ie: "C:GamesQuake III Arenaquake3.exe" +set fs_game cpma
- Click 'Practice', then choose your desired 'Game Type' and click 'NEXT' and the rest is normal.
Practicing Rocket Arena 3
To enable Bots Support and offline play with RA3 maps you need to download the aas files from HERE, courtesy of RivrStyx
where?
Try these commands to help bots find their way around the maps, since there are no weapons or items for them to look for (although they move around pretty well nonetheless).
- /seta bot_saveroutingcache "1"
- Allows the BOT AI to save routes for custom maps
- /seta bot_rocketjump "1"
- I'll leave you to figure out what this does
Now what you will have to do is Load CPMA, click on practice in the main menu, change the 'Game Type' to 'Clan Arena' and choose the RA3 map you want to practice. Next, ensure that all the 'Player Slots' are set to 'OPEN' (so you can add the bots later), then click 'Fight'. Then choose the arena you want to practice on, join a team and you are ready to start adding the Bots. BUT, before you do this, make sure you do any /callvotes to change arena settings, or the vote will simply fail as the bots cannot vote ;) Now, Bot adding can be done in one of two ways, the easiest being to bring up the menu (hit ESC key) choose 'Add Bots' and go about adding them to your team and the opposition until either all open slots are filled or you have enough bots to practice. Once you go back to game, simply /ready and the fighting begins. The second way to add the bots is to bring down the console (hit ~ key) and type the following: /addbot anarki 5 red 4 (this example adds Anarki with 'Skill Level' 5, on red team in arena 4) ... obviously if you wanted to add Doom with a different 'Skill Level' to the blue team in arena 2 you would alter your entry, in this case (/addbot doom 1 blue 2) NOTE: If you are practicing 1-1, make sure you /callvote limit 0 so the round will begin immediately.
Finding Servers
- Start by having a look at the CPMA Severs text loacate at Quakeshit to find a server in your area
- Alternately, if you have irc, you can join #promode and type !servers to get the same list
NOTE: You can get to this irc channel through either EnterTheGame or QuakeNet. The channels on both servers are linked through a bot, so you can talk to people on ETG or QN using either irc network
- Also, if you use Gamespy you can download a custom tab that will show all CPMA servers from HERE
Setting Up a Config
- Create a new text document, ensuring that you 'Save As' xxx.cfg with 'All Files' selected from the drop-down list or your cfg will be saved as a txt file
- Alternately, you can simply copy your orignal autoexec.cfg and simply delete everything and rename it to what you want
- Now when you play on a CPMA server all you have to do is exec your new config to have all the extra goodies that CPMA has for the client, which i will get into next
- As with ANY config, you can bind a key to exec it when you connect to a CPMA server
ie: bind CTRL "exec cpma.cfg"
What You Can Put in Your New Config
CPMA allows for much more control client-side such as HUD styles, your colours and model AND your enemies colours and model. By default, 1=Enabled and 0=Disabled
- model "model/pm"
- Any default player model followed by /pm to enable CPMA colours
- color "1234"
- Colours for your model (rail/head/shirt/legs)
- cg_enemyModel "model/pm"
- Any default player model followed by /pm to enable CPMA colours, Setting this will force all players on the enemy team to appear to have this model
Player Options
NOTE: Your teammates will retain their models unless you specify cg_forcemodel 1, which will force all of your teammates to your current model
- cg_enemyColors "1234"
- Colours for your enemy's model (rail/head/shirt/legs)
- cg_showPlayerLean <0|1>
- Allows the disabling of viewed model leaning that was introduced in the 1.27x patches
6.2 HUD Options
6.2.1 hudstyle <0|1|2|3|4|5|6>
Seven different styles of HUD displays which you can select directly with these numbers)
NOTE: cg_hud_statusbarStyle <0|1|2|3|4|5|6> is also another way to accomplish this
6.2.2 hudnext
Cycles forward through the seven HUD styles
6.2.3 hudprev
Cycles backward through the seven HUD styles
6.2.4 cg_hud_weaponList <0|1>
Draws all weapons that you currently have on screen
6.2.5 cg_hud_weaponListFlash <0|1>
Flashes in hud when you pick up a weapon
6.2.6 cg_hud_weaponListBackground <0|1>
Draws a small background behind selected weapon
6.2.7 cg_hud_weaponListDrawAll <0|1>
Draws all weapons, and those with no ammo have a cross through it
6.2.8 cg_hud_TeamBackground <0|1>
Disables teambackground color in statusbar, teamchat
6.2.9 cg_hud_fragMessage <0|1>
Draws a message on screen when you kill opponent (who you killed, what place you are in and how many frags you have)
6.2.10 cg_hud_graphs <0|1>
Draws health, armour and ammo bars on screen
NOTE: Dependand on which cg_hud_statusbarStyle you have selected
6.2.11 cg_hud_drawWarmup <0|1>
Control display of arena settings before a game starts
6.2.12 cg_hud_drawPickup <0|1>
Draws the icon and string of the item you just picked up
6.2.13 cg_hud_crosshairTeamInfo <0|1>
Draws the health and armour of teammates in a team game
6.2.14 cg_crosshairHealth <0|1>
Clour of crosshair degrades in connection with health degradation
6.2.15 cg_hud_crosshairColor <0|1|2|3|4|5|6>
Changes the colour of the crosshair
NOTE: cg_crosshairHealth overrides this function, turn it off to use colored crosshair
6.3 Misc Options
6.3.1 cg_smoke_sg <0|1>
Removes smoke when shotgun fired
6.3.2 cg_smokeradius_rl <0|Default=64>
Size of Rocket Launcher smoke radius
6.3.3 cg_smokegrowth_rl <0|1>
Rocket Launcher Smoke
6.3.4 cg_smokeradius_gl <0|Default=32>
Size of Grenade Launcher smoke radius
6.3.5 cg_smokegrowth_gl <0|1>
Grenade Launcher Smoke
6.3.6 cg_truelightning <0-1>
0 - Default shaft feedback as seen in baseq3
1 - Pure client side rendering of shaft graphic
NOTE: Also can be a floating point number inbetween
6.3.7 cg_teamChatsOnly <0|1>
If enabled, only draws teamchat on the bottom side of the HUD instead of also on top
6.3.8 cg_nochatbeep <0|1>
Allows client to supress "beeps" heard during normal chat messages. Especially convenient when connected to spam-riddled QTV servers.
6.3.9 cg_swapSkins <0|1>
Allows you to reverse skin colors as displayed on-screen.
NOTE: Announcements, overlays, and the scoreboard will still maintain your "real" server-controlled team color.
6.3.10 cg_pmove_fixed <0|1>
Use enhanced client sampling, if the server allows it
6.3.11 cg_statscrolltime <value> (default = 0.15)
Sets, in seconds, the time it takes for the stats window to scroll out and scroll back in. Setting to 0 disables the window.
6.3.12 cg_teamRails <0|1>
Sets all of your team rails to red or blue and all of the opposing teams rails to red or blue.
6.3.13 cg_oversampleMouse <0|1>
An alternative approach to smoothing the mouse
6.3.14 cg_damageDraw <0|1>
Obscure player's vision with blood effect when they are hit
6.3.15 cg_lightningImpact <0|1>
Draw the "glowing ball" at the end of the shaft
6.3.16 cg_noAmmoChange <0|1>
Disables the ability to switch to a weapon that doesn't have any ammo. Useful for multiple-weapon binds.
6.3.17 cg_nomip <bitmask> (default = 0 - all gfx follow r_picmip)
Allows changing graphics to picmip 0 setting, regardless of current r_picmip setting. The parameter for this setting is a bitmask:
4 - Bullets
8 - Shot
16 - Grenades (and their explosions)
32 - Rockets (and their explosions)
64 - LightningGun shaft
128 - Rail trail and impact
256 - PlasmaGun bolt and impact
512 - BFG bolt and impact
7. Team Based Game Options Team-based games require a little more tweaking with your cfg
7.1 If you are having trouble with the correct colors of your teammates and enemies (ie. teammates are white and enemies are your normal cg_enemyColors) try this fix that I have found to work for me:
bind 1 "color "4444"; cg_forceColors "1"; cg_enemyColors "111"" /You're on Blue Team
bind 2 "color "1111"; cg_forceColors "1"; cg_enemyColors "444"" /You're on Red Team
As shown, this will give all teammates and enemies the approriate red and blue colored CPMA skins when you click your bind. You can obviously tweak these setting (ie. simply give players different colours so as to differentiate them) however these settings are what i would consider default
8. Callvote Options You can simply type /callvote ? in-game to get a list of all voteable options. However, the most common ones are:
NOTE: All these commands are prefaced by callvote:
8.1 arenatype <1v1/DM|DA|FFA|TDM|CTF|CA>
Changes the gametype for the current arena (can be abbreviated to just "callvote TDM" etc)
8.2 tl OR timelimit <value>
Changes the current timelimit
8.3 limit <value>
Changes the fraglimit/caplimit/roundlimit
8.4 restart
Restarts the arena
8.5 mutespecs <0|1>
Mutes spectator chat to players in the game
8.6 map <mapname>
Votes for a new map to be loaded
8.7 instagib <0|1>
Enables/disables Instagib gameplay
8.8 items +/-<item>
Enables/disables items and weapons
8.9 armordamageself <0|1>
Enables/disables your weapons damaging your own armor
8.10 armordamageteam <0|1>
Enables/disables friendly fire doing damage to armor
8.11 fallingdamage <0|1>
Enables/disables falling damage
8.12 armorsystem <0|1|2|3>
Sets armor system
0 - Standard CPM (GA:50 YA:100 RA:200)
1 - CPMA Team (GA:100 YA:150 RA:200)
2 - CPMA Duel (GA:50 YA:75 RA:100)
3 - Quake2 (GA:25 YA:50 RA:100)
9. Other Useful Commands Miscallaneous commands that you will use in CPMA
9.1 ready
Sets player's status to "ready" to start a match.
9.2 notready
Sets player's status to "not ready" to start a match.
9.3 timeout
Call a timeout
9.4 timein
Call a timein
9.5 help
List of available commands for the particular mode of play on the server (Alias: commands).
9.6 players
Lists all active players and their server ID (This ID is needed for other commands, as shown below). Additional info on client is also given.
9.7 stats [player_ID]
Shows weapon accuracy stats for a player. If no ID is given, shows stats for the current player (or if following a player, shows the stats of the player being followed).
9.8 speconly
Toggles client's involvement in the 1v1 queue. If enabled, then clients will never join a 1v1 game. They will remain spectators the entire time they are connected. Disabling "speconly" will put the client back into the position in which they went speconly ... ie. if you go to answer a dreaded telephone call you can jump back in line when you get back
9.9 +wstats
Displays current stats while playing or of the player being followed (if a spectator). In multiview, the stats of the player of the highlighted window will be displayed.
9.10 -wstats
Removes current stats
10. Demos Now that you've got everything installed, have a cfg set up and can connect to servers you'll want to become 1337!! The best way to accomplish this is to watch some of the best players in the world doing there thing. So what to do? Head on over to Challenge-TV for tons of demos. Alternately, you can simply click HERE for a direct link to CPMA demos. Once you have downloaded these demos, you will have to create a folder in your /cpma folder called, appropriately enough, /demos and dump the dm_48 files into here. Then it's simply a matter starting Quake3, changing to the CPMA mod and clicking which demo you want to see. This is one of the best ways to become a 'better' player 'faster' as you can watch all sorts of little moves that you may not have thought of trying before (ie: trick jumps, weapon combos, player movement, etc) Also, you can search Challenge-TV by 'Type' and click 'Educational' or just click HERE to see a variety of demos people have made for, what else, educational purposes :)
11. Other Useful Resources
Now that you've become accustomed to the ins-and-outs of CPMA, there are many more places to get invaluable information on this ground-breaking mod. The aforementioned Promode and Challenge-TV are just two of the places you can start. Also, you can join in the conversations regarding CPMA on the Challenge-World CPM Forums located HERE. Also, you can view the goings on of the current tournament at Face-Off entitled Clash of the Titans, featuring the best Promode players in one bracket and the the best vQ3 players in another, culminating in a final that is set to become a classic. GLHF with all your future CPMA endeavours!!