2024 will be a WoP year

The Real PadMod Title

Welcome to 2024, we hope you had a good start into the new year and were able to sleep in a little. This year will certainly be a WoP year, because on the one hand, the development of WoP 1.7 has made a decent leap forward in recent weeks and months with a status of over 70%, which makes us feel positive and hopeful for a release this year. On the other hand, our counter on the website shows it very clearly. The PadMod, version 1.0 of World of PADMAN so to speak, will be 20 years old this year and of course we want to celebrate this with you.

Hectic has spared no expense and effort and set up a server based on ioQuake3, where you can play and review the PadMod with all available addons throughout the year. The server is still in the experimental stage, so please don’t be surprised if it is offline from time to time. But maybe one or the other Padday will take place there. We will now explain what you need and how to get everything up and running, at least on Windows and Linux. We are currently unable to provide support for Mac.

To be able to play on the PadMod server, you definitely need the game Quake 3 Arena with all patches, as this is what the PadMod was originally created for. Alternatively, you can also use ioQuake3 directly, but you will also need the original Q3A game data in PK3 format. You should carry out the following steps:

  1. Either install Quake 3 Arena and update to at least Point Release 1.32c or alternatively download and unzip ioQuake3 for Windows or Linux.
  2. When using ioQuake3, copy the file pak0.pk3 from the Q3A disk into the baseq3 directory and then download the Q3A patch files and unzip them there as well.
  3. Now the PadMod is still missing, which is best downloaded and installed in the form of the all-in-one installer for Windows or Linux, as this contains all add-ons except the music packages, which must then be downloaded manually. However, the missing files can also be distributed via Hectics Server if the auto-download option is activated in the game under Setup/Options.

The PadMod should then be started via the newly created shortcut and not via the mod menu from Quake 3 Arena. Regardless of whether, here e.g. for Windows, via “quake3.exe” or “ioquake3.x86_64.exe”, both files should be started with the parameters “+set fs_game wop +set hunkmegs 128”, as the PadMod already required a little more memory than Quake 3 Arena at that time.

What should work right away with the original Quake 3 Arena may fail with ioQuake3 due to a completely black menu screen. This is due to a faulty menu shader of the PadMod, with which ioQuake3 does not cope so well. If this is also the case for you, you can either temporarily switch to the OpenGL1 renderer, where the menu is at least visible, albeit without background animation, or you can download the specially created patch wop_05.zip and unzip the file it contains into the wop directory (parallel to the baseq3 directory). To switch to the OpenGL1 renderer, open the console with Shift+Esc and enter the two commands one after the other and confirm with Enter.

/cl_renderer opengl1
/vid_restart

The connection to the Hectics server is established via the menu by clicking on Multi and then on Specify. There you enter the address 168.119.185.219 and the port 27962. However, it is best to activate the autodowload option under Setup/Options beforehand. Those who are familiar with the console will enter the following directly:

/cl_allowdownload 1
/connect 168.119.185.219:27962

The server should now distribute the patch wop_05.pk3 at the latest. If you use ioQuake3, the native screen resolution should be set automatically when starting WoP, no matter what is in the graphics menu. If this is not the case, or with the original Quake 3 Arena, you can help with the following commands, here e.g. for a widescreen resolution of 1920×1080:

/r_mode -1
/r_customheight 1080
/r_customwidth 1920
/vid_restart

Finally, the graphics quality in ioQuake3 can be improved somewhat with the following console commands, regardless of the renderer used. Most of today’s computers should be able to handle this without any problems.

/r_lodbias -2 | model details always set to maximum
/r_subdivisions 1 | curves details always set to maximum
/r_ext_texture_filter_anisotropic 1 | activates anisotropic texture filtering
/r_ext_max_anisotropy 16 | sets 16x anisotropic texture filtering
/r_ext_multisample 4 | activates 4x MSAA with OpenGL1
/r_ext_framebuffer_multisample 4 | activates 4x MSAA with OpenGL2
/r_ext_compressed_textures 0 | deactivates texture compression
/r_flares 1 | activates dynamic flares, if supported by the maps

That’s all for now and we hope you enjoy your journey back in time to the beginnings of World of PADMAN. You can also find a lot more help on ioQuake3 in the Players Guide on the project website. If you still need help, please contact us on our Discord server. We and the entire [PAD] community will be happy to help you.

Your WoP-Team