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Urban Mercenary Manual
Current version is: manual_1_1402
Minimum System Requirements
Weapons List
Server Section
Install Instructions
Health Vs Energy
Notes About the Server
Setup
Bootcamp
Trouble Shooting
Object of the Game
Internet Play
Uninstall Instructions
How the Winner is Determined
How the Money Works
FAQ
Minimum System Requirements
1. Windows 9x, ME, NT, 2k and Linux
2. nVidia (TNT2, GeForce...), Voodoo (3 or above) chipset
or S3 Mobile chipset, GeForce, Viper II, Savage
2000, Savage 3D, ATI Xpert, All-in-wonder128
3. 64M Ram
4. 200+ M in Windows partition
5. 16 bit sound
Please shutoff ICQ or any messager program before starting Umerc.
You also should have a good connection, we recommend a
highspeed connection like DSL, ISDN or cable, 56K or
lower is border line.
Install Instructions
Go to the site www.urbanmercenary.com and download
the game. Or just hit this baby.
The faster your connection the faster the game will
download. The file is about 71 Megs, so it can take
a while on a modem connection. But it will be worth
it, promise. It is a free game after all and you can
play it and win money, I figure that says it all.
Just hit the download button. And of course get a
Bloodmoney membership. We have put the game in a
handy executable file that even places an icon on
your desktop. There is nothing to it.
To play the game, double click the file that you just
downloaded. This will initiate the installation. Go
through the installation steps - they are self
explanatory. Then hit the desktop icon and you're off.
We recommend that you restart Windows before playing
the game. We also recommend that you close all your
other programs while playing Urban Mercenary. If you
get an icq message or e-mail notification while you're
playing there is a good chance that these programs will
grab control of your machine, tossing you out of the
game, which would really suck.
So make sure you are set for no interruptions and have
everything shut down before you play.
Note about your resolution: You can set your resolution
in UMerc to match your Windows resolution, this allows
you to alt+tab back to Windows while the game is running.
To find out what resolution you are currently running
click Start>Settings>Control Panel then start the
Display applet.
Click the Settings Tab and make note of the current Screen
Area setting.
Now launch Urban Mercenary and choose Setup>Video and
select the resolution that matches, then click Go Back
twice to go to the main menu.
Exit and restart Urban Mercenary for this change to
take effect.
You can also change the resolution by modifying the
res.umc file. This is helpful if you are having trouble
running the game. To change the resolution without
running the game -
1.Open Windows Explorer and browse to the UMerc\umc folder,
in our last example this would be:
c:\moshpitrules\UMerc\umc
2.Double click the res.umc file in that folder, if an
'Open With' dialog pops up then scroll
down and choose Notepad.
3.Then click Ok.
4.Change the default 640 480 to match your windows
resolution, ex. - 1024x768. Make sure you keep the
file format intact, the file should look like this
before you save it:
1024
768
(or whatever resolution you need to change it to).
Close Notepad and choose 'Yes' when asked to Save
Changes.
Setup
Player
This is where you get to choose what you look like. Pick out
your skin and your clothes. (That sounds disgusting.) You can
cycle through the skins during game play by pressing "[" or "]".
WHen you cycle your skins the skin you're using at the end of
the game will NOT be saved in your player configuration.
Controls
Configure your keyboard. This part is pretty self explanatory.
Just put the cursor over the action you would like to change,
click your left mouse button then press whatever keyboard/mouse
button you would like to assign that action to. We have the
default set up in the standard formation we all use, so you
might not need to change the controls at all unless you're a
crazy left handed or inverted mouse kind of person.
Weapons
Choose which key will represent which weapon. This works the same
way as your control configuration. Also on this page is a chart
which tells you your weapons settings. When you are in Bootcamp
the settings are always the same but when you move to a server
these settings will change. It is a good idea to check here
before every game to see how powerful your different guns are so
you can decide which weapon is your best friend. Here are the
definitions of the categories.
The weapon drain is how much energy you will loose by firing the
weapon. The weapon damage is how much damage you can do with the
weapon. The weapon fire rate is how quickly you can get your
rounds off. The weapon time out is how long the bullet, bomb
etc. exists. The weapon velocity is the time lapse between
bullets, bombs etc.
Decoys - When playing an internet game, you can press "Y" and
spawn an image of yourself. You can spawn an number of decoys,
but warning: the more decoys you spawn, the more weapon energy
you use. Why have four of you, when all four of you are dead?
Still, this is a good fake-out.
Audio
This is where you set up your sound effects levels and sound
preferences. The bit rate affects the quality of sound. The
higher the bit rate the better the sound is so 16-bit sound
would give you better audio than 8-bit. Most sound cards can
handle 16-bit sounds, but if things sound strange, or don't
make any sound at all, you might want to try 8-bit.
The sound effects slider is your volume control for sound
effects in the game. The CD slider is - well - your CD.
You will be able to listen to your own music
while you play Urban Mercenary.
Video
This is where you select your screen resolution. The default
resolution is 640 by 480. If you have a computer with limited
resources then keep your resolution low since the game play
will be faster. You will have to restart your game after you
reset your resolution in order for the new resolution to kick
in. During gameplay, you have the option of increasing or
decreasing the gamma (making it brighter or darker) by
hitting F7 (brighter) or F8 (darker).
HUD
This section is all about your heads up display. This is the
information around the outside of your playing screen. Some
people like a lot of information while they play, some only
like a little. Fiddle around with things and see what
works for you.
Crosshair
You can change the look of your crosshair.
Mouse Sensitivity
The higher the setting, the more sensitive the mouse is to
your movements. You will want to find the point where you
can turn fast enough to see trouble coming, but smoothly
enough to be accurate.
Energy Icon
Shows the energy available to your weapon. 100 is full,
0 is empty. You can have this readout displayed on your
screen - or not.
Health Icon
Shows your health level. 100 is full, 0 is dead. You can
have this readout displayed on your screen - or not.
Weapon Icon
Shows you which weapon you are using. You can have this
readout displayed on your screen - or not.
Energy Distribution
This shows how much of your energy goes to replenish weapon
power, and how much goes to replenish health. You can fiddle
with the balance to you allow you more firepower or faster
healing.
Score List Icon
This shows the players in the game and their scores. You can
have this readout displayed on your screen - or not. The TAB
key will toggle this on or off during a game.
Frames Per Second
This shows how many frames per second your computer is
displaying. You can have this readout displayed on your
screen - or not, depending on how much of a propellor head
you are.
Always Run
You can have your character always run as opposed to always
walk. Here's a tip: If you always walk, you will be owned.
Invert Mouse
The default is that if you push your mouse away from you, your
character will look up and when you pull your mouse towards you,
your character will look down. Inverted mouse is - well - its
inverted - like - the other way around. Am I really tired or was
that hard to understand? People who play a lot of flight
simulators tend to like an inverted mouse.
Object of the Game
Right - you might want to know this....
Its pretty simple really - you want to frag
(shoot/kill/annihilate/shitkick/whoop) the other players and
pick up the coin that they drop when they hit the floor.
The person with the most coins at the end of the game wins.
Things to note:
When you kill someone they generate a coin and leave it on the
floor where they die - this coin doesn't come out of their
pocket - it gets created when they die - the person on the scene
first gets to pick up the coin - so not only do you have to kill
the person you have to rush over and get their coin before anyone
kills you. The harder this game gets the more I like it.
If you have 0 coins and you kill yourself your coin count will
drop to -1. You will go negative for suicide if coin count is 0.
Game physics while playing Bootcamp is substantially different
than those in a network game. For instance, the rocket jump
technique described previously in this manual does not apply
while playing Bootcamp. You'll also notice that weapon damage,
weapon drain etc. differs between Bootcamp and Network play.
Go and try the game.
And remember if you are stuck e-mail [email protected]
How the Winner is Determined
After the game you will see a combat summary which displays the
outcome of the tournament.
The summary is based on:
coins (how many coins each player collected),
deaths (how many times the player was killed) and
kills (how many times you killed someone else).
The ranking is determined as follows:
the player with the most coins wins.
If there is a tie then the person with the least deaths wins.
If there is still a tie then the person with the most kills
takes the cake.
If two players are tied in all of these aspects then the final
determination will come down to health. He with the
most health wins.
If the game is still tied - this is highly unlikely - then the
money is split evenly. For instance - if 3 people tie for 3rd
place and the 3rd place winner would recieve 12% then each of
the 3 players in the tie recieve 4%.
Weapons List
There are a number of weapons available in Urban Mercenary.
And that number is 9.
Each weapon has a certain range where it is most effective and
a certain amount of ass kicking that it can dole out. All
players have access to all weapons at all times in the game.
There are no hidden weapons and no power ups. Energy for
the weapons comes from the power supply in each player's
armor, and the same amount of firepower is available to
everyone.
Let me make this perfectly clear: You start the game with
all the weapons, armor and energy that there is. You do not
have to look for more guns, power-ups or friggin' keys. Your
only job in there is to kick ass.
This is important: Each weapon takes a certain amount of energy
to fire. Your energy is replenished constantly (as is your
health, as you will see later). The more powerful and disastrous
the gun, the more energy you will use when you fire it, and the
longer it will be before you can fire it again. Weapons strategy
is pretty important for doing well at this game. You should also
check out section 6.0 on health Vs energy.
Machine Gun
Fires rapidly and has a medium range.
Lightening Gun
Fires rapidly and has a short range.
Rocket Launcher
Has a medium range and a large zone of splash damage.
This can also be used to rocket jump. To rocket jump you fire the
rocket down beside your feet and hit jump right after you fire.
You can control the direction of your jump by looking
straight up and then walking towards where you want to land
(now there's a pro tip for you - all hail Patrick). But be
careful,because the action of firing a rocket launcher near
your own feet will cause you damage (well think about it) so make sure you have plenty of health going on before you try
this.
Rail Gun
Very high damage - Very high range. This thing hurts a lot,
but it uses a ton of energy, so you'd better not miss....
Plasma Rifle
(aka shot gun) - Short range - Medium damage. Quick firing
weapon with medium energy drain. Good if you are of the
fire wildly, jump and circle strafe school.
Freeze Ray
This does not take health from your opponent, but it freezes
them so you can change your weapon and then nail them - or run
like a big chicken. This thing doesn't require very much energy
so it's good to use when you're low on energy. (oh another pro
tip- all hail Pat for that one). This will freeze your opponent
for five seconds if you score a direct hit. The further off you
are the less freeze time you will get.
Drainer
This is a shield - It requires high energy. You can't shoot
anyone when it's up but then again no one can shoot you.
You can, however, pick up coins while it's up. So it's good to
use when there's a shitstorm going on and you want to deke into
the middle of a battle and pick up some coins (I thought of that
tip myself - okay it's an easy tip but you read it here first
- that's gotta be worth something). Also (this is super cool)
the energy that gets drained from your energy is absorbed by you!
Grenade
Huge splash damage (that means that it can still hurt you even
with an indirect hit - think of the shrapnel - god just think
of it - zoinks). This has a high damage quotient if it hits you
or lands close to you and takes medium energy. A nice thing to
leave behind to let people know you know they are there. Also
useful when you are on high ground....
Flash Grenade
This grenade blinds people. When hit with this, your opponent's
screen will go white so they cant see a thing. You switch weapons
and bring the love. This will blind your opponent for four seconds
if you score a direct hit. The further off you are the less blind
time you will get.
Health vs. Energy
Urban Mercenary has a feature in it that you might not be familiar
with - the notion of health Vs energy.
Every player has a distribution balanced between their health and
the energy they use to fire their weapons. You will see your
distribution icon in the bottom middle of the screen. Your health
is in red on the right and your energy is in green on the left.
During the game every player regenerates at the same pace. You can
choose to have the bulk of those regenerative powers go into your
health (like if you just totally got your ass kicked) or into your
energy (like if you totally want to kick ass). The balance is up to
you.
If your health is down and you get hit and you have all your
regeneration focused on your power instead of your health you
will go down in a fragarrific fire. The same goes if you have
all your regeneration focused on your health and you want to
fire the rocket launcher a bunch of times then you will be outta
ammo (yikes).
Get it? If not, read this over again.
If you really don't get it then you can e-mail me and I will try
to explain [email protected] So once again - all health
then no regeneration for firing your weapons. And....
All power then no regeneration for boosting your health.
You can change the balance of your regeneration at any time during
the game. Configure your keyboard so the keys are easy to reach.
Bootcamp
This is where you can play with no fear of losing (or - oh bummer
- winning) any money.
But just in case you need a couple of warm up rounds to get your
game on you can do that here.
1.Click the up and down arrows to choose your mission.
All missions are single player.
2.Hit the screenshot of the map that you choose to play.
3.In the blank spaces in the picture you will see a
description of the map and the level you are playing.
4.Play daddio play.
Internet Play
This is where you can play in a multiplayer game on the net
for money.
When you select the Internet play option Urban Mercenary
connects to the master server and retrieves a list of all the
active servers on the Internet.
You will see -
the server name
the game map
the style of game (They are all death matches for now but more
game styles are coming.)
the number of players per heat (8/16 means that there are 8
players left out of a tournament of 16)
game fee (This is stated in Bloodmoney credits.)
time limit in seconds (This indicates how long each game in
the tournament runs.)
ping time in milliseconds (The ping time is the delay between
the servers and your computer so the lower the
ping time the better for you.)
Based on these statistics, you can pick the game you want to join.
You can not join a game that is already in
progress.
1.Click on the game you want to join and hit GO.
2.Type in your Bloodmoney login name.
3.Type in your call sign. This is the name that will be displayed
on the screen for other players.
4.Type in your password. This is the same password that you use
for your Bloodmoney account.
5.Now you will be in a queue. Just wait for your game to fill up
with players so you can all start.
Play! Yeehaa!
After the game you will see a combat summary which displays
the outcome of the tournament.
The summary is based on:
coins (how many coins each player collected),
deaths (how many times the player was killed) and
kills (how many times you killed someone else).
The ranking is determined as follows:
the player with the most coins wins.
If there is a tie then the person with the least deaths wins.
If there is still a tie then the person with the most kills
takes the cake.
If two players are tied in all of these aspects then the final
determination will come down to health. He with the
most health wins.
When the game has ended you can join the same server by pressing
the spacebar. Alternatively, you can press
Esc to return to the Internet Play screen and select a
different server.
How the Money Works
Right now we have 2 types of games, Deathmatch and Tournament.
Deathmatch can be played as a 2, 4, or 8 player game. In a
Deathmatch all the contestants play in one game to
determine the winners.
Tournament can be played as a 8 or 16 player game. In a
Tournament players compete in playoff games in heats where
the top players in each heat progress to the final round.
Here are the breakdowns of the pay outs for each type of game.
Deathmatch - 2 player game
1st place
winner takes all
Deathmatch: 4 - 6 player game
1st place
75% of the total prize pool
2nd place
25% of the total prize pool
Deathmatch - 8 player game
1st place
75% of the total prize pool
2nd place
25% of the total prize pool
Tournament - 16 and 32 player game
1st place
50% of the total prize pool
2nd place
25% of the total prize pool
3rd place
12% of the total prize pool
4th place
8% of the total prize pool
5th place
5% of the total prize pool
Server Section
Here are the items that are in the server config file,
and a brief description of what they do.
CLIENT_TCP_PORT 53333
This is the TCP/IP port that server will listen for
incoming requests on. The default is 53333, but users
may want to change this value due to firewall
restrictions.
USER_NAME Your_Bloodmoney_UserName
This is where you enter your Bloodmoney Login Name.
It also specifies the account that will get paid
for each player that uses this server.
USER_PASSWORD Your_Bloodmoney_Password
This is the password that matches the Bloodmoney
Login Name provided above.
SERVER_UUSID 0
This value should remain 0.
SERVER_NAME Unnamed_Server
This value contains the name that will be displayed for
your server to the outside world. It defaults to
Unnamed_Server.
MODEL_MAP starship.bsp
This value specifies which map will be used for
running games. You may have multiple MODEL_MAP values
defined, and the server will rotate through these in
the order you specify them in the file.
TOURNAMENT_STYLE TOURNAMENT_8
This specifies what type of contest you wish to run
on this server. There are two types of contests:
Deathmatch contests consist of only one game to determine
the winner, Tournaments consist of a series of games that
determine the winner through a process of elimination. Valid
values are DEATHMATCH_2, DEATHMATCH_4, DEATHMATCH_8,
TOURNAMENT_8, TOURNAMENT_16 and TOURNAMENT_32. The numbers
in each of these values represent the number of contestants
in each tournament or deathmatch.
ENTRANCE_FEE 50
This determines the amount of the tournament entrance fee.
The tournament entrance fees are what determine the value
of the final prize pool that will be awarded to the winners.
GAME_TIME 300
This value sets how long each game will last, in seconds.
Notes About the Server
1.If you leave a game or somehow lose connection to a game
that has already started you can re-enter the same game
providing it has not ended. Simply log in to the same server
using the same Login Name,
Callsign and Password.
2.To win money don't have to be in the game when the timer
reaches 0. In other words, if you are leading with the most
coins and you exit the game, if you are still winning when
the timer reaches 0 you still come in first place. The
reason for this is so that we don't have players pinging
other players into oblivion.
3.If you confirm entry into a game but the game hasn't started
and you leave the 'confirmation list' your money will be
refunded. As long as the confirmation list is not complete your
entrance fee and network maintenance fee will be refunded to your
account. You can verify this yourself by checking your account
balance on the website, then compare this amount after you enter
and exit the confirmation list.
4.If the game starts and you exit the game, your entrance fee
and maintenance fee will NOT be reimbursed. By 'game starting'
we mean once the number of required users has been filled,
(ie. - once the 4th player has entered a 4 player game).
The reason for this is so that players do not leave a game they
are losing with 10 seconds remaining.
Trouble Shooting
Here are a couple of things to try if you have trouble installing
the game.
1.Restart your computer and, without opening any other programs,
try the install again.
2.You may not have enough room on your hard drive to
install the game.
If you have another hard drive, try to install the game on it.
You may want to save the download file to the other drive as well.
You will see the prompt for this as soon as you hit the download
button on the Urban Mercenary site. Hit 'save as' and choose your
location.
3.If you only have one drive, you can free up space on your hard
drive by deleting all unnecessary files from your temp folder.
Your temp folder is usually found at C:\windows\temp but it
might be in a different location depending on how you set up
your system.
4.You might also want to delete the temporary internet files
(or cache) that your Web browser has stored on your machine.
5.Try installing the game to a different location on your drive.
Create a new directory. When prompted to choose a directory
to install to, you can select your new directory by typing it
in or browsing to it.
Uninstall Urban Mercenary
To uninstall Urban Mercenary. (This is the least read section of
this manual by the way.)
simply:
1.Go to your start menu
2.Select settings
3.Select control panel
4.Double click on add/remove programs
5.Double click Urban Mercenary
6.Listen to my heart break