Late November, 1999

You want squad-on-squad combat all over the map? Check! Overwatch, suppression fire, wall hugging, sniping? Roger! Defend a location, eliminate a target, or storm a building? Affirmative! Set up battles your self? Just do it... with CGF.

Finally, CGF 0.8X for Action Quake2 has arrived. A mod with a clear goal: putting you up with/against AI soldiers trained in team tactics. See them cover their buddies' back, prefer dark spots, seek cover, switch to 3rb, zoom their sniper rifles, or patrol. (Or do you really prefer fighting uncoordinated 'terrorists' instead?)

Also included: fog¹, close to twenty weapons², out of the box support for the popular maps urban, urban2, city, monastery, actcity2, downtown, riot, coverme and p1_lightbeam, and lots of missions.

And new for CGF mission developers: debugging support, and real documentation on mission and terrain (route) file creation.

CGF aims to provide you a single-player experience close to multi-player team on team fights. Squad-on-squad combat that challenges both your tactics and reflexes. This is realized using:

• autonomous bots
  The CGF teams of bots function without requiring you to 'nurse' them. They realistically decide themselves whether to patrol, attack, defend, suppress or regroup. They inform you of their progress via radio. And they go just about anywhere you can go. Even after you've become a casualty...
  No nasty 8 men or 'single team' limits: this is real squad-on-squad combat. Fight with and against as many bots and teams as you and your CPU can handle³.
• tactical/terrain/team AI
  The CGF AI understands when to apply specific team tactics, and how to execute them for the threats and terrain at hand: the AI teams use overwatch movement, suppression fire and disperse when needed.
  Bots understand and predict where threats are likely to show up; you'll find them aiming for those locations. Patrolling teams favor dark spots, close to cover, and along walls.
  The AI builds up experience with every battle, and learns where the bottlenecks and kill zones are.
  As a result, battles are different each time you enter them.
• fair opposition
  Your bot buddies, your opponents and you all are subject to the same rules, physics, and weapon accuracies. No cheats, no super-natural aiming. Except for the individual bot skill (which is up to you), all bots have equal capabilities. And to make it fair to human players, the CGF vision, tracking, aiming and hearing are as close to yours as the Quake2 engine allows. You can read about it here.

• missions: goal oriented fights
  CGF supports various kinds of missions: you can be a hitman, tasked to take out a specific target. You may need to survive amidst patrolling opponents for some time. You may have to sneak out and reach a specific location. You may be part of a defense trying to hold a specific building.
  Missions define the opposing forces and teams, their load-out, and their initial positions and plans. An example mission is illustrated here.
  Missions are defined in text files, which you can edit by hand or using the CGF Mission Editor. You can write missions for both existing and new AQ2 maps.
  Mission are browsed and launched by the handy CGF Launcher.
• customizability
  CGF is an open system: you can create terrain files ('route files') for just about any AQ2 map ⁴, and write as many missions for that map as you like. With CGF missions, you can circumvent the normal AQ2 TP limits, and use any combination of player models, skins, weapons, ammo and items you need.
  So, go ahead, whip up your favourite battle field, and get the fight going. (And start demanding that other tactical shooters do the same).
• getting the most out of killer mod Action Quake2
  CGF extends the 'number one' Quake 2 mod: Action Quake! Supported by one of the biggest Quake2 communities, Action Quake2 has become one of the most popular, fanatically played and well balanced multi-player mods. Over 100 user made maps have been made specifically for AQ2. AQ2 is compelling because of its location based damage, reloads, manually operated doors, single shot kills, bandaging, aiming accuracy based on movement and posture, team radio, exciting blood splat special effects, terrific animated weapons (in both your hands and in the hands of your opponents).
  CGF tries to recreate AQ2's best moments without the need for a net connection. And in 'single player' mode, thus without the risk for lag, you're able to benefit from AQ2's ejecting shells, bullet holes and blood splats.

• fog, breakable glass and additional weapons
  CGF didn't just take AQ2, but added a number of optional extensions: transform the map (and change the tactical situation) by enabling fog, or enhance the 'action movie' feeling by crashing through breakable glass.
  With some help from friendly Q2 mods, CGF has been able to introduce some 11 new weapons to AQ2, including the AK47, M82A1 Barrett, Mac-10, and the Ithaca Model37. With hostile AK47 sounds on your left flank and friendly M4 fire behind you, squad-on-squad engagements become even more immersive.

Even with some problems (bot movement needs more work) and incomplete (no hand grenades and co-op multi-player only in beta), CGF already is one of the most advanced tactical shooters this millennium. It is one of the very few games that delivers fast-paced squad-on-squad urban combat between teams using realistic military drills.

Go here and download this experience! (And look here for the team behind CGF).

William

¹ Fog is available only to gamers with a OpenGL1.1 compatible card. Go here for more info.

² The additional weapons are: AK47, Barrett M82A1, UZI (by the Terror Quake2 team), the AK97, H&K UMP45, Ingram MAC-10, Dragunov, Ithaca Model37 shotgun, Beretta 92F (by the Navy Fortress team), the old-style hand cannon (early AQ2 versions) and the gangster style Tommygun (by AHL's Odd-Job).

³ I've used CGF to host platoon-on-platoon engagements with over 70 bots at Urban2 (running a dedicated server, no human clients, on a Celeron @ 300MHz). Though this experiment demonstrates CGF's scalability, Quake2 and Quake2 movie editing tool Keygrip2 both had serious troubles digesting the resulting (serverrecord) network traffic/demo file.
I might give it another go when my PIII/500 arrives. Then I'll select a map featuring more separate areas, and issue silencers and stealth slippers to all participating bots to cut down on network traffic.

⁴ You might experience problems when deploying the bots on maps with button operated doors, elevators, and platforms. Until the movement has been improved, you're advised not to use the bots on maps featuring sloping (natural) terrain.