Version 3.0 Release Date and Map Pack info news

Welcome to Quake III Are-... Oh, wait! Wrong intro.

Hello Arena Warriors, today is the day that Version 3.0 release date is finally announced! Even though i didn't manage to finish all of my intentions with it due to lack of ideas, but still, i have been holding this for too long, so let's get an overview of what is about to come in this version:

One of the major points that Version 3.0 will bring into the fray is the weapons rebalance, some of them have slighty changed, some others heavily, here are the highlights:

• All weapons now have that little clicking sound from Quake III when they are out of ammo if you try to fire them and they will not autoswitch to any other gun, YOU are the only one who will switch them now.
• All weapons WILL require the Ultimate Charge in order to fire them and the charge WILL be consumed after it was successfully fired, turning Infinite Ammo in the gameplay flags or using Megan's Ability will not change this behavior.
• Backpacks will always give the double amount of ammo found in the common ammo pickups for their respective guns.
• The Weapon Ultimate Charge Pool now have a small counter in the HUD and it requires 50 kills instead of 30 to fully charge.
• Lightning Gun will go back to its roots, now it does have a limited range of 1024 map units.

There's alot more changes to the weapons, they will be all listed in the Changelog.

The other major point that Version 3.0 will bring is the addition of more abilities in Characters that hadn't any previously.

• Lucy can deploy a Sentry Turret that search for any target around it within 1280 map units.
• Sarge fires a missile that whenever it explodes nearby monsters, that explosion will be recast recursively between monsters until there are no monsters nearby each other.
• Hunter can make an electrical field around her that draws her immune to projectile damage and damages all monsters within the field.
• PI is now the fastest knife thrower you will ever see! She throws lots, but LOTS of knifes where she's looking at for 10 seconds.
• Orbb has aimbot for 20 seconds
• Mynx became scout-role character like Slash and Anarki are, she can bring up a circular barrier around her that blocks all projectiles outside, enemies inside can't shoot to outside as well.

• Bitterman throws 7 energy discs in from of him that pierces all non-boss monsters and deals massive damage on explosion.
• Changed Bones Skeleton Warriors' behavior to keep more offensive towards enemies instead of trying to stick to allies.
• Tyzen got a complete model rework to get rid of all issues in his textures and mesh influences, he's also a little taller and wider as this new model was made based on his initial size when he was firstly introduced into the mod.

Vehicles was also meant to be third major point of Version 3.0, however i decided to leave the great updates in this category for later versions, but hey!... Cyclops already got its rework completely:

The GEV Hovertank will remain the same thing as it is now, but soon it will change as well with the addition of new vehicles, the Walker from Quake 4 and Desecrator Tank from Quake Wars.

Alongside the huge changes in weapons, of course the Power-Ups will change too, they have been readjusted in order to not let the players stay overpowered for too long:

• Quad Damage now lasts 30 seconds as it is in the Quakes and it also takes 4 minutes to respawn in coop matches.
• Regeneration now regens 15 points of health below 100HP and 5 points above 100HP per second as it is in Quake 3 and also regens 10 Armor Points per second up to maximum stack.
• Hazard Protection now lasts 40 seconds instead of 60, everyone keeps thinking this powerup is a simple replacement to the Radiation Suit but in fact, it not only nullfies environmental damage but also reduces incoming projectile damage by 50% and melee damage by 70%, so this was a necessary change to not let the Tank-role characters (and Vehicles) gets too resistant to incoming damage whenever they are facing too many enemies alone.

The code department of the mod is always constantly improving in each version, but with 3.0 things went further:

• All enemies projectiles got complete rework on trails and other effects (this feature is already in effect for the Zandronum version of 2.9.5 if you wanna check the difference)
• The Gore System has been completely rewritten to have less performance impact but still retaining the look it always had and now with a bonus! It does have configurable time of how long the giblets and blood pools will stay.
• Certain explosions got better sprites to fit their effects better, like Razor's major bomb explosion which previously looked like a huge explosion of pizza.
• YOU ALL CAN NOW STOP PESTERING ME TO ADD A CORPSES STAY OPTION, YOU CAN JUST CONFIGURE THAT THING IN THIS VERSION.

The slowest section of mod, i still need to gather some more ideas for maps and such for the main campaign, but as i have told before, i started from the Tutorial map which is currently what i am working on, though it is very slow on progress since original ideas for rooms and details in the style of Quake III is not an easy task, however here's the thing:

• Baerhon's Lair Part 1 and Part 2 has been removed from the map pack already.
• Monoliths of Agora currently replaces Baerhon's Lair Part 1, this map features a different style of gameplay which is an hybrid between MOBA and Tower Defense, in case you get a map like a MOBA one, but it plays like a Tower Defense map and when i mean Tower Defense, it is LITERALLY some TOWERS to defend:

• Training Grounds is where i stopped at, this map didn't progress much further until i finish pending tasks like adding abilities to remaining characters without them, as well adding all monsters that i want to add yet.

Currently, this is something i want to show to say that the Map Pack is not entirely forgotten or halted, it is the only thing that will not be released either until i finish the Tutorial and at least one more map to fill the gap of Baerhon's Lair Part 2.

Another section in slow development, the enemies are still mostly the same as before but of course i will not let this new huge update go alone without at least some new baddies to fight:

• Added Summoner, she currently shares the spawn point with Arch Vile, she can summon a horde of enemies in a blink of an eye, her role is to slow down players with her argent wave attack:

• Added Harvester, he also shares spawn point with Arch Vile, his role is steal the player resources: Ammo, Powerups, Inventory Items, Weapon Ultimate Charges and Ability Charges in case.

The last thing to talk about is Add-ons. In the past 3 years, towards the end of each one, i used to release a Music Add-on that works not only for Hunter's Moon, but for most mods in overall since they are simple music replacement packs, however for this year i got something new, with the recent evolution of GZDoom rendering capabilities, the mod will feature an add-on to improve its graphical quality, the PBR add-on:

This add-on will add that lack of shading the models had previously by reintegrating their normal and specular maps back again, of course this is valid only for model textures that had this natively, in case all models that came from games that have support to this, Doom 3, Quake 4, DOOM 2016, etc... respectively. This affects mostly the monsters in case, but also applies to Vehicles, the Doomslayer character, the new Tyzen model as well the already reworked Tamer of The Dark model, with any changes in monsters or characters, this add-on will be updated as well to keep track of those fancy shadings.

So, in December 25 all what you see here (with exception of Map Pack) will be released and i hope everyone have a blast with it once more.

Welp, guess that's all for now folks, keep fragging! Ah! And as usual, don't forget to join the mod's official discord for realtime updates and cooperative match makings in Zandronum: