Welcome to the Mean Mod!

                        =========
                        HOLY WARS
                        =========

Version  : 2.1 (for Quake 2)
Date     : 26 of September, 1997
Authors  : Paolo "Nusco" Perrotta and Roberto "Taz" Bettazzoni
Email    : nusco@planetquake.com
WWW page : http://www.planetquake.com/holywars

==========================================
Take it easy, people... you don't need to
read all this stuff to play. Give a glance
at section #1, jump on a server and
      GET DOWN LIKE A SEX MACHINE. 
==========================================


#1. THE GAME
    --------

1.1. What is Holy Wars
     -----------------

Holy Wars is a deathmatch mod for 3 or more players. It's extrememly simple in concept and operation, but incredibly fun. 

Holy Wars is strongly oriented towards mayhem and carnage, rather than subtle strategy and tactics. Who needs strategy, btw? GORE! WE WANT MORE GORE! 


1.2. The rules
     ---------

At the start of a level, all players are Sinners. They won't score frags for fragging each other. 

Soon, a luminous Halo appears. Pick it up to become a Saint and receive some armour and health. The Saint scores frags. Being the Saint is a Good Thing.

If you kill the Saint, the Halo falls on the ground. Pick it up! An abandoned Halo will soon disappear, to respawn in its starting position later.

The Sinners should ideally avoid killing each other and concentrate on the Saint, their common enemy. Of course, hunting accidents always happen. But watch out! If you kill other Sinners indiscriminately, you'll lose a lot of frags and become an Heretic.

Heretics cannot pick up items, and cannot use armor and most weapons. Killing an Heretic grants bonus frags bonus to both Saints and Sinners - so Heretics have no friends. Becoming an Heretic is a Bad Thing.

There is more, but you'll find out by yourself eventually. What's important is:

			=====================================================
			                 THE CENTRAL IDEA

			Everybody tries to kill the Saint and steal the Halo.
			The game is always a furious "The Saint vs. The Rest
			of the World". The result is total carnage. 
			=====================================================


1.3. Score system
     ------------

 The defailt scores are:

 Sinner killing Saint:    3 points
 Saint killing Sinner:    1 point 
 Sinner killing Heretic:  3 points
 Saint killing Heretic:   4 points
 Becoming an Heretic:    -5 points
 Picking the Halo:        2 points and Sanctity!


1.4. Installing and launching
     ------------------------

Just unzip the file in your QUAKE2 directory. IMPORTANT: Remember to keep subdirectories when unzipping. If you're upgrading from a previous version, overwrite the old files (warning: you might want to backup any customized files first). Launch it as you would with any other mod, or use the holywars.bat that you find in your HOLYWARS directory. The same directory contains an hwdedic.bat to start a dedicated server.



#2. CONFIGURING AN HOLY WARS SERVER
    -------------------------------

2.1. Maps
     ----

 Holy Wars includes some top-quality maps for you to play into:

HW1 ("Kick the P.A.", by Dennis "headshot" Kaltwasser)
HW2 ("Fear in your Eyes", by Warren "Taskmaster" Marshall)
HW3 ("IKDM1", by Iikka "Fingers" Keranen)
HW4 ("Painkiller for Holy Wars", by Sten Uusvali)
HW5 ("Infernal Base", by Daniel "Gom Jabbar" Leinich)
HW6 ("The Dark Zone", by DaTa)
HW7 ("The Gun for Quake 2", by Dennis "headshot" Kaltwasser)
HW8 ("The Killing Machine", by Sten Uusvali)


2.2. Customizing
     -----------

HolyWars is a very, very customizable mod. If you want to change something, chances are that you can. There are many different ways to customize the mod:

MESSAGE OF THE DAY:
You can change the message displayed when a player connects by editing the motd.txt file in the HOLYWARS/CONFIG directory. Instructions are in the file itself in the form of comments. Server admins are ancouraged to put detailed informations about their server in the MOTD, and keep it updated.

MAPS ROTATION:
Server administrators can customize map rotation by editing the map_load.ini file in HOLYWARS/CONFIG. Instructions and examples are in the file. You can put options on the maps, so that they're loaded only when the number of players or their average ping is higher/lower than a certain number.

PARAMETERS:
Many things in the mod can be adapted to your tastes. These include the scoring system, the Halo movement, all the timings for halo spawn/disappearance/respawn and much more. Just edit the param.ini file inside the HOLYWARS/CONFIG directory. Don't be put off by the file's length - almost all the lines are comments which tell you what does what.
Warning: the Holy Wars parameters were set to defaults which were chosen after extensive playtesting with a variety of different values. Changing a parameter which affects gameplay might look like a very good idea at first, but sometimes it isn't. Always test your ideas in an actual game.

CUSTOM MAPS:
If you launch the game with a map which is not part of the original set of Quake 2 maps, the Halo base will automatically be put in a randomly chosen deathmatch respawn point. This sucks. You should only use this feature to test a level.
If you decide to play a custom level with Holy Wars more than once, you'll probably want to choose a nice place for the Halo base in it. This way, the base will stay at the same spot in every game. It's incredibly easy to add a permanent Halo base in a level - in fact, we used this feature to set the bases in all the original Quake 2 levels and the official Holy Wars levels.
To set an Halo base in a level which doesn't have one, or modify its position in level which already has one, just follow this simple procedure:
 1) type HW_EDIT 1 on the console to enter "edit mode";
 2) start the map;
 3) walk around until you find a place you like for the Halo base (you can use CHEATS 1 followed by NOCLIP to reach every place in the level, even if it's in mid-air);
 4) type HW_BASE on the console to set the new base at your current position.
 5) Restart the map.
As soon as you give the HW_BASE command, the Halo base will be placed in your current position. The position data will be saved in a file called levels.ini, into the HOLYWARS/CONFIG directory. The level file itself remains untouched, so don't worry about ruining your levels.
After restarting the map, you can write HW_HALORESET as many times as you want to force a respawn of the Halo and see if you like your new base (this useful to test strange bases in mid-air, etc.).
The HW_EDIT console variable can only be changed on the server. Set it back to 0 to forbid Halo base editing. Please, always keep this variable at 0 when playing (changing the base and forcing respawns in the middle of a game is cheating).


2.2. Logging
     -------

Holy Wars is compatible with the Quake2 Logging Standard 1.2. It can produce logs which can later be processed by a program like GibStats (www.planetquake.com\gibstats).
To start a log, type SV LOG on the server. To stop logging and unlock the log file, type SV UNLOG. The game will be logged to a file into the quake2 directory. The name of the file is set by the STDLOGNAME variable.
You can keep the server up for some time and then, when noone is playing, use UNLOG, rename the log file and use LOG again (if you just copy the file, the new log will be appended at the end of the previous one). This way, you can get periodical loggings of all activity on your server.


#3. DISTRIBUTION NOTES
    ------------------

3.1. Disclaimer, copyright and permissions
     -------------------------------------

We don't make any implicit or explicit guarantees about this mod: you're using it at your own risk. BTW, it was playtested extensively by many players on different servers before release.

Quake 2 is copyright by id Software. This mod is subject to all the legal stuff distributed by id Software in their Quake2 license. 

Holy Wars is copyright by Paolo "Nusco" Perrotta (nusco@planetquake.com) and Roberto "Taz" Bettazzoni (bettazzoni@sis.dsnet.it).

The maps included are copyright by their respective authors. Look into each map text file (directory HOLYWARS/MAPS) for copyright info specific for each map. We don't own these maps.

Authors CAN use this mod to build other mods. In fact, you can do what you want with this mod, excluded: 

1) strip out this copyright notice from it; 
2) use it in any way which doesn't comply to copyright laws or any other law;
3) use part of the source code into your own project without making your projects' source available to others;
4) make money from it in any way without asking for the author's permission first.

"In any way" means: "No, you cannot pick up this stuff and put it on a commercial CD".

Any non-commercial use is allowed and welcome. You can redistribute this patch at your own leisure. You can modify it or include it into your own multimod patch. You can strip code from it and use it for you own mod. 

Clearly and publicly acknowledging our work is a must here. Letting us know of any use of this patch (appearances on web pages or in compilations, modifications, etc.) would be polite. 

The strange language that I used to write this document is my own version of English, and it's copyright of myself. 


3.2. Availability
     ------------

Official Holy Wars web page: 

        http://www.planetquake.com/holywars/ 

You'll also find HolyWars 1.5 for Classic Quake on the same site.


3.3. Credits:
     --------

Look on the mod's page for a detailed list of credits. And to all the friends, betatesters and the incredible number of people helping, commenting and giving suggestions:

                           Thank you, guys.
