Teams MOD for Descent 3 - Release Version 1.0 - August 1, 2001

Programming - Chris "Gwar" Ledwith


The Teams MOD is intended as a superior alternative to D3's Team Anarchy, 
which ships in the box. Teams has all the features of Team Anarchy, with 
these additions:
-support for 3 and 4 teams
-a team damage, or "friendly-fire" option best suited to LAN play and/or 
 higher pilot skill levels
-text tokens that can provide your teammates with valuable info about 
 your current state


INSTALLATION
------------
Installation is easy: simply extract the zip archive to your "/Descent3/netgames" 
folder.


TEXT TOKENS AND CONFIG (OPTIONAL)
---------------------------------
Teams supports a set of special text tokens that let you inform your 
teammates about your current state, quickly and easily. In order to use 
these text tokens, you must know how to set up text macros for your Descent 3 
pilot. To set up text macros in D3, follow these steps:

STEP #1: Select your pilot from the Pilots menu, and click the "Configure" 
         button.
STEP #2: Click the "Ship Configuration" button.
STEP #3: Click the "Set Taunt Macros" button.

You will now see the 8 custom text macros for your pilot. These are the 
text strings sent to other players when your press Ctrl-1 through Ctrl-8 
in the game. You can insert special text tokens (see below) into these 
macros, which the Teams mod replaces with certain text strings.

The following text tokens are available to you while playing Teams:
$$room - the name of the room you are in (rooms must be named by the 
         level designer)
$$ship - the ship you are flying
$$prim - your currently selected primary weapon
$$scnd - your currently selected secondary weapon
$$pamm - the ammo remaining for your currently selected primary weapon 
         (most primaries do not have ammo, however)
$$samm - the ammo remaining for your currently selected secondary weapon
$$s    - your current shield rating
$$e    - your current energy rating

Also, note that putting "Team:" at the beginning of a text macro will 
send the text string to your team only.

Here's an example. Say you followed Steps #1 through #3 above and are 
now staring at your text macros. Now replace text macro #1 with the following:
Team:My shields are at $$s and I need assistance in $$room

Then when you play Teams, if you press Ctrl-1, the following message 
might be sent to your teammates:
"My shields are at 17 and I need assistance in Red Short Hall"

Important Notes: all text tokens must be completely separated from other 
characters (such as ,.?!) or they will NOT work. This is simply a limitation 
of Descent 3.

If you don't want to mess with your text macros because they're set up 
for another mod (like Anarchy), consider making a second pilot with your 
nickname followed by "-Teams". So if your nickname is 'Feeble' you could 
name your Teams pilot 'Feeble-Teams' and set up text macros for the new 
pilot. Then everyone still knows who you are but you have preserved the 
text macros for your other pilot.

CUSTOM CONFIGURATION
The first time you play Teams, the mod will create a file named "Teams.cfg" 
in your "/Descent3" folder. This file contains various configuration 
settings that you can modify. If you open this file (in any text editor), 
you will see a config key named [TokenFills]. Within this key, you may 
customize the text strings that the text tokens use. For example, the 
first record is 

    "Pyro-GL"="Pyro-GL"

    This means that, when you use the $$ship token in a text macro, and 
	you are flying the Pyro-GL, it will replace the token with "Pyro-GL" 
	in your text message. You could edit this line to 

    "Pyro-GL"="the good ol' Pyro"

    and now "the good ol' Pyro" would replace $$ship in the text macro.

Here's another example. The fifth record reads 

    "Laser"="Laser"

    You could replace this with 

    "Laser"="wimpy lasers"

    and now "wimpy lasers" would replace $$prim in the text macro, whenever 
	your currently selected primary is Lasers.

Important Note: make sure to leave the last record ("dummy"="1") intact, 
but DO NOT REMOVE IT or your config file may get corrupted.


SERVERS
-------
COMMAND LIST
Press F8 while playing and then type the command, or just type it at 
the console if you are running a dedicated server.

setteamdamage
Usage: $setteamdamage <0|1>
Sets or displays team damage (friendly-fire) state.


KNOWN BUGS
----------
-scores do not always match up on all players' machines

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT REPORTING BUGS:
If you run into a bug not covered in this readme, please type '$debug' after pressing F8 in the game, just after the bug occurs. Then email me about it and attach the "dueldbg.txt" from your "/Descent3" folder. Look up the $debug command in the COMMAND LIST elsewhere in this readme for more information. If you forgot to type '$debug', just give me a description of the bug and what you were doing at the time that it happened.

LEGAL STUFF
-----------
Teams MOD for Descent 3: Copyright 2000 Chris Ledwith

Files that are part of the Teams MOD for Descent 3:
teams.d3m - the mod itself
teams_readme.txt - this text file

You may not make changes to this Descent 3 mod for any purpose, without 
the written permission of the author.

You may distribute this Descent 3 mod freely over any electronic medium, 
so long as you include this text file and all files listed above, and 
so long as you do not charge any fees for access; you may not "sell" 
this Descent 3 mod as part of any for-profit venture.


FINAL NOTES
-----------
Thanks to Sirian for some helpful input on this mod, and thanks to the 
#300baud design team for creating the excellent 3-Teams and 4-Teams level 
sets which will no doubt be the premier playing grounds for Teams.

Thanks to Outrage for a great game, and for releasing the SDK in the 
first place.

MOD Website:
http://users.drak.net/syrinx/

Comments, questions, donations:
chris.ledwith@gte.net

Thanks for playing Teams
Chris Ledwith aka Gwar


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