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                            NIQ 1.95 for Quake II
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Please take the time to read through the following so that you will know what
resources are available to help you get NIQ for Quake II up and running and
to have a basic idea of how to get started.

For the very latest information please check the official NIQ web site at

                         www.planetquake.com/niq


What is NIQ?
------------

NIQ is a mod for Quake II which removes all items from the game. The server
hands all clients the same weapon for, say, 1 minute, and dishes out ammo and
health to everyone at the same rate. Since there are no items to look for and
control, this changes the game play considerably. NIQ now includes Eraser Bots
support and CTF play on the standard q2ctf CTF maps.


Sources of Information
----------------------

The main help file for NIQ is the file niqinfo.txt. This is basically a text
version of all the important information from the web site. You should find
this file included in whatever version of the NIQ zip that you have.

0README.TXT       This file.

niqinfo.txt       Detailed installation, configuration and troubleshooting
                  information for NIQ.

ebinfo.txt        The main Eraser Bots readme file. Read this for information
                  which is specific to using and configuring Eraser Bots.
                  Most of the information here is correct, but a few things
                  have been changed and these will be explained in the file
                  niqinfo.txt (e.g. the map cycling code has a new option).


Other Needed Files
------------------

NIQ is generally 100% server side (clients don't need any files) unless you:

1) enable visible weapons (clients will need the visible weapons .pak),

   and/or

2) enable CTF mode or use the q2ctf maps or graphics (e.g. the grappling hook 
   or techs) in non-CTF modes (clients will need to have Q2CTF installed). 

See the Downloading and Installation section in niqinfo.txt for more
information on where clients can get these files. You will also have to
install these on the server as well (I don't think that a dedicated server
needs to have the visible weapons patch though). 

(IMO, you haven't lived until you've seen Eraser Bots playing CTF with
visible weapons enabled, so both of these are definitely worth trying out at
some point.)


Installation Overview
---------------------

See the Downloading and Installation section in niqinfo.txt for more
information. If you do not plan to use any CTF features (e.g. you aren't
going to play CTF, or use the CTF maps, grappling hook or techs etc.), create
a 

    \quake2\niq subdirectory 

and install and run NIQ from there. Otherwise, you should install NIQ in your

    \quake2\ctf 

directory (you will probably want to back up your existing ctf dlls and paks
and create a batch file which places the right CTF files into the \quake2\ctf
directory prior to starting the server).

Unzip all files to the appropriate directory, restoring any subdirectories.

If you don't plan to use the Eraser Bots, you can delete the route table
files in the routes subdirectory and any of the Eraser files listed below if
you want (make sure niq_ebots=0!).


What are Those Other Files?
---------------------------

NIQ files:

GAMEX86  DLL    The NIQ DLL!
PAK6     PAK    Small NIQ console background (thanks to Joseph Davila).

MYBOTS   CFG    Use "exec mybots.cfg" to spawn your favorites.
NIQ      CFG    Config file for NIQ, no bots.
NIQEB    CFG    Config file for NIQ, bots enabled.
NIQEBCTF CFG    Config file for NIQ, CTF mode, bots enabled.

NIQMOTD  TXT    MOTD file for NIQ. Up to 4 lines shown when clients join.
NIQWEAPS TXT    List of weapons to use in the game.
NIQAMMO  TXT    Initial, increment and maximum ammo amounts for all weapons.

Eraser files:

ROUTES          Eraser Bot route files (needed to use bots on these maps).

BOTS     CFG    Specific bot configurations.
BOTS_600 CFG    Even more bot configurations.
CHAT     TXT    Bot chat strings.
EBTODO   TXT    Ridah's todo list from the 0.992 release.

DEFAULT  CFG    Default Eraser Bot settings.
LAUNCHER CFG    Commands to be executed just after starting.

UNZIP32  DLL    DLL used to unzip route tables.
ZIP32    DLL    DLL used to zip route tables.

MapMod files:

MAPS     TXT    List of maps to use if MapMod cycling enabled.


Non-WIntel Builds
-----------------

There are currently Linux and Solaris builds of NIQ 1.9 available on the NIQ
site. The sources for the latest version of NIQ are also there, and people
can do more-or-less whatever they want with these.

Revision History
----------------

1.95:

Fixed hook bug which could crash server.

1.94:

Moved to newer, better hook code (thanks James A.), made hooking sky optional
(default = false). Hook now does less damage to enemies and releases more
quickly.

1.93:

Added support for a Lithium-style off-hand tractor beam (grappling hook).
Just bind a key to +hook to use it.

1.92:

Added logging status to help screen #4.

Fixed the annoying problem where the scoreboard stayed up too long after
you were killed and respawned, so you couldn't see much.

1.91:

(never officially released)

Support for standard logging thanks to Louis (Mr.Bungle) de Carufel. This
probably doesn't work for bots and hasn't been tested for CTF (but should
work, for what its worth). Also, the output does not take NIQ's scoring
scheme into account at present.

1.90:

Fixed the problem where players could spawn outside of the map or inside
walls etc. (this only happened if the server had disabled bots with
niq_ebots=0). 

Other Information
-----------------

If you are using bots and visible weapons, avoid the map city3. This map
combined with vwep and the Eraser code causes too many models to be
allocated. Other large, complex maps may also have this problem but all of
the regular, dm and q2ctf maps apart from city3 seem to be ok.

There may (or may not) still be a problem when using bots when bots are being
added/removed as clients exit/join the server. I haven't been able to
reproduce this so far but I will continue to investigate. If you see this
happen on your own server, please note the circumstances under which the
problem occured and let me know (mfox@matrox.com). This will be very helpful
in tracking down the cause of the problem (if it still exists).

I also made bot_free_clients default to 1 in case this isn't set on startup.
I can't really think of why you would want to have this set to 0 unless you
want to spawn maxclients bots for testing or just want have the bots play.

Note that just in case:

    niq_blk1=1 will disable code which is supposed to fix telefrags while
               clients are in observer mode

    niq_blk2=1 will disable putting clients into observer mode when they
               connect

These are both set to 0 by default, but set these to 1 *if* there seem to be
any problems related to the above (I haven't seen any, but you never know).


If you are using bots, note that even at skill=1, the Eraser Bots are very
tough opponents. Expect less advanced players to find these pretty tough and
maybe frustrating to play against. You may be able to keep more players happy
by using skill=0 unless you expect a lot of advanced players on your server.
Alternatively, and I haven't tried this yet, but setting bot_auto_skill=1, is
supposed to force the bots to adjust their skill level according to how well
they are doing.

When using bots, the game must be able to write the route files when
necessary. Make sure these do not become read-only some how and make sure you
have enough free space on your hard drive for these files.

Also, unless you make or obtain good-quality route tables for any maps that
you use, the bots are going to play fairly poorly, at least until real
clients have shown them the map (this probably will not result in a good
route table though, especially for CTF). Check out the NIQ site
(www.planetquake.com/niq) for links to sites with excellent route tables.

---------------------------

Happy NIQing!

Mike (Artful Dodger) Fox
www.planetquake.com/niq
mfox@legendent.com
