LMCTF? WTF?

As there's currently a revival of sorts of the Quake 2 mod LMCTF (Loki's Minions Capture the Flag) every Tuesday at 9pm EST (email 4me2poop0n@gmail.com for details) I have decided to do a quick overview of this, possibly the first ever popular CTF mod.

The first version of LMCTF, created by Jormungard of Clan Loki's Minions, came out the day after the Q2 source-code was released. In the months that followed, various artists and programmers joined the team to work on what would eventually become version 3.0 - a CTF mod with a ton of features and custom maps. LMCTF was highly successful. For a while, it was even more popular than id's own Q2CTF. The next few years would bring new team members, 2 new versions (4.0 & 5.0), plus thousands of people playing LMCTF on hundreds of servers.

One of the hallmarks of Loki's Minions CTF has been the new maps included with each major release. The last version was no different, adding yet 10 more original CTF maps, bringing the grand total up to 30. While there were plenty of gems among the previous maps ("Frozen Waste" and "Cellblock 1138" are all-time classics), the bunch in the final release were to be the best yet.

The features of LMCTF are many.

Offhand Grappling Hook
The offhanded hook allows you to grapple while keeping another weapon in your hand. Fly through the air, collecting frags the whole time. It's fun as hell.

Plasma Rifle
A new weapon that has 2 types of fire: spread and bounce plasma. The plasma Rifle uses cells as ammo.

Advanced Team-Radio and Voice sounds
At the push of a button you can send important messages to you team mates or yell something at a passer by. Radio and Voice sounds can be very useful for coordinating your team actions. LMCTF also supports 3rd party voice sounds of which there are several.

Flag Model & Animated Artifacts
The only CTF mod to have it's own flag and the first to use animated runes, errrr, artifacts (Strength, Shield, Haste, & Regen). LMCTF also sports it's own offhand grappling hook model with new sounds.

Improved Autotext & Position Info
One keystroke tells you (or your team) the location of your flag carrier or name the player in front of you.

The LM Compass
Allows players to use the compass to automatically point to enemy flag.

The LMCTF Maps
LMCTF offers 30 original maps plus support for Q2 single player, Q2 DM, Q2CTF and all 3rd party CTF maps.

3 Sets of Capture Sounds
Servers can choose 3 distinct sets of capture sounds: Wolf/Lion, Cops/Robbers, Demons.

30 Custom Skins
LMCTF offers 3 skinsets to choose from making for a total of 30 different skins.

Clan Models and Skins
LM is the only game that dynamically downloads and selects player models, skins & sounds, adding new depth to CTF and DM. This means Clan Predator may play Clan Alien and it will look and sound like aliens and predators brawling. Add-ons can be mixed on the fly.

Squad Board
This is an advanced feature, which is extremely useful for clan matches. It allows team mates to identify themselves as offense, defense or roaming. Teammates can assess the readiness of their team by looking at an easy to read display.

Observer Options
Players have the choice of free roaming or chace-cam observer modes. You can also observe all or choose to observe only 1 team.

Four Observer Camera Modes
A smooth-action chase camera that glides behind a person like a movie shot would; an over-the- shoulder-cam, a free-floating-cam and the butt-cam; it shows what yer arse sees! It's a riot to watch defenders chasing a flag thief.

Tournament Mode for CTF, DM and Team DM
LMCTF has an easy to use Tournament Mode for Clan Matches. Referees are temporary rcons who can set matches, kick players, assign teams, freeze games, & can also play. Voice & text countdowns mark the pre/post match periods, allowing all to retrieve stats.

Menu Interface for Referee & Sysop
GUI menus eliminate the need for server commands. Type your password & all server controls are set w/menus. Supports player banning too.

Full Rcon support
LM is the only mod that allows you to reopen a closed server while off-site, in addition to gui menus rcon control.

Practice Mode with new skins
Offensive/Defensive/Rover skins don't affect actual armor but they show just who's on O & D. Practice mode lets referee calm the excitable players by freezing the game. Clans may practice with one flag in order to concentrate their strategies on a single base.

Full Gibstats support and MVP
Stats till you puke! An MVP for offense and defense; see how everyone else is doing and against whom, clients may retrieve stats as easily as rcon or referee.

Scores memory, ping alert, handicaps
Winning team players switch without losing points, "the disconnected" may rejoin on same side with their score! The ping alert monitors matches for unfair pings. A scoring handicap also helps outnumbered teams (optional).

Weapon Balance
LMCTF offers it's own weapons balance for servers who wish to use it.

There have been many tournaments for LMCTF clans over the years, including Ragnarok, Ascension, Narf!, Wargrounds, Online Gaming League (OGL) and the Free Agent Fest, but the biggest was the Ragnarok and Ragnarok 2 tournaments. The Ragnarok was the first community-wide tournament which featured a round-robin regular season followed by a single-elimination playoffs. This tourney started in 1998 with a second season following in 1999. The first-season winner was Harbingers of Despair [HD].The second season Ragnarok winner was Pathetic Totally Harmless.

One notable addition to the final version of LMCTF is a new weapon: the plasma gun. This weapon shoots out lethal balls of plasma that can be shot in two forms: a spreadfire mode, which shoots out three blobs of energy, or one shot that rapidly bounces around, causing major havoc for enemies in tight spaces. Find someone in a tight spot and let him have it!

So if you fancy a game, download the below binaries and fire her up (you may need additional files, see http://www.lmctf.com). The revivial group regularly have 7v7 and 8v8 matches that are always a lot of fun and would love to get the player count up even higher to play some of the really big maps! You can also join in the practise games anytime on the public server at lm.ravenhurst.com. Think we should host an LMCTF server at Quake.ie? Let us know!