Warsow PC, Linux, Mac game

The Concept of Warsow

Warsow is a free standalone first person shooter game for Windows and Linux. It is based on the Qfusion 3D engine (a modification of the Quake 2 GPL engine), and aimed on the competitive scene, or the e-sports community.

Warsow is developped under the motto "by gamers for gamers" by a team coming from all kinds of gaming backgrounds. To attain the "by gamers for gamers" spirit, the community are our betatesters, both through internal testing sessions (with community members) and in the feedback on the public releases. We make decisions in close cooperation with the community. However, we do have our own general development direction, and therefor will carefully judge all suggestions and critique made by the community. This way we try to reach a balance between the general consensus on gameplay aspects in the community, and what we feel is best for Warsow's gameplay and concept in the development process.

The base gameplay is focussed around the art of movement, meaning moving, speed and tricks play a big part in the gameplay. Besides this, mapcontrol, aim, teamplay and fragging skills play their role too. For the movement we've basicly looked at four games: Quakeworld (legendary for it's speed), Quake3 CPMA, Jet Set Radio and Speedball.

Another twist in gameplay is Warsow's weapon system. Warsow has two firing modes for each weapon; by picking up a weapon, you will be equipped with the standard (weak) ammo for the weapon, but when you pick up an ammo pack, you will equip your weapon with special (strong) ammo. Weapons may have different damage or slightly different behaviour depending on what ammo you use: for instance: the weak electrobolt (Warsow’s rail) is a high speed projectile, whereas the electrobolt with strong ammo is instant hit. This way, not only control of health and armor plays a role, but getting strong ammo is a valid way to create a comeback.

Visually, we try to cater to the fast gameplay Warsow provides. To keep the focus on competitive gaming, visibility is an important aspect in Warsow. Using a celshaded, cartoon-like style on the maps, textures, and models we try to combine good visibility, suitable for competitive gameplay, with having a unique, attractive and personal style. We try to keep the graphic effects minimalistic, clear and visible.

We try to use Warsow as a platform to make e-sports, or competitive FPS gaming, available to a broad audience. With Warsow’s low system requirements, relatively small filesize and easy installation procedure, we try to make Warsow as accessible as possible for anyone to try out. In future versions we will focuss on this aspect more, and try to provide more support for players new to the FPS scene, by for example providing movement tutorials in the form of demos, and tutorial maps.