Since this subforum is for gamepimpin, I'm gonna pimp this great mod: Air Buccaneers (for Unreal Tournament 2004).
http://ludocraft.oulu.fi/airbuccaneers/Basically it's an team deathmatch with slighty varying objectives, though the main part of it is team deathmatch. The two teams fight eachother either for points, for barrels of treasure or for controlling various points in the map. However, you can't simply walk to the enemy base. Well, you can... but as you walk towards it evil fungus will spawn and spit death at you. And if you touch water, some evil finnish lake demon will drain your soul.
The main part of the game is spent in the air, riding pretty flippin awesome air balloons. Neither blimp nor zeppelin fits since it's like they removed the guard railing from an normal air balloon and stuck a big old cannon on it instead. An ideal crew for a small balloon is 2-3, though it's still very possible to do it solo. One guy steers the balloon, another aims the cannon, which has 270 arc, meaning the pilot has some leniency if he messes up. The third guy loads the cannon with a cannon ball and then puts a torch to it. Hopefully the aimer will land a hit on some neat enemy balloon.
The other ship class is the battleship, which each team has but one of. It's longer like a viking ship minus the guard railing and + some cannons. It's ideally manned by 5-6 people, one for steering and 2 per cannon with a spare. Unless you're going to get it into battle on both sides at once, since then you have a total of 4 cannons to man :/
It becomes a bit more difficult to reliably destroy your enemies if they are nearby, since all players have a grappling hook that they can use by simply pressing space while flying, and it hooks up to *any* nearby balloon or battleship, and they can scurry up the rope and board the ship. And then engage in good old fashioned sword-fightin'. Or they can drop a few lit bags of powder and jump off to hang under the vessel as the powder bags explode, clearing the deck by either forcing the others to jump off or die. And hey, if you're lucky the ship doesn't explode and you can board it again, hopefully without any foes left on it or boarding. You got a new ship, camophlaged in their colours too. If it does explode and you survive the fall, scroll up to see what happens to people in the wilderness between bases
The game is fairly simple in objectives, either its simple killing, or simple killing and grabbing the treasure balloons (why they put their treasures on mini-emergency balloons I don't know) for points, or dominate a location for a certain time. This location may be a giant flying structure that hovers closer to the enemy base the closer you are to winning.
However, it's sad that the mod has mostly fallen out of use. People used to play organized games every sunday around 18-19 GMT, but I don't know if they still do. I'll find out shortly though. Meanwhile, it would be neat if some other people would start playing this, although the bots are a bit silly, varying between ignorable dummies to ridicoulous threats.
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Topic: UT2004: Air Buccaneers (Read 5124 times)