After searching through the website and forums I realized there is no "HOW TO" or "GAME FAQ" section telling newcomers about how to play the game. Granted, I learned a lot just by playing it, but it'd be nice if someone could make a thorough "how to" section and pin it on the forums or website. It should include, but not limited to the following:
- How you become a zombie
- How you become a human
- How you win
- How you get objectives
- All the icons on the HUD
- How to get and what to do with Experience
- How many guns can you carry
- How to fire the sawed off shotgun
- What secondary fire does for each weapon
- What attacks can zombies do
- How do you control aircraft
- Can you destroy AI tanks
- Where do you find certain guns
- How long do experience levels last
- etc.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT by TSS: ive pinned this topic as the FAQ thread, left the original post though as the credit goes to |2enegade for the idea. post any questions you have here, and they will be awnserd somewhere in the thread. we'll compose a list of questions / awnsers and send it along the BB mod.

Excellent idea! excellent indeed. know what, ill start work on that right away. lets use this thread as a basis.

just ask every question you have in here, people will awnser it, and well compose a list of everything.

edit: remember, there are no dumb questions, every asked question will be awnsered.

edit2: how could i have missed this one? im sorry bout that. ill post it here.

- those funny numbers at the bottom of the screen, what they do?

well those are stat points and you can add them in 3 slots: Skill, Speed and HP. HP increases your hitpoints, Speed speeds you up, and Skill makes you do more damage and allows you to pick up heavyer guns.

to add them, go to options -> controls, and set a key for release mouse cursor. then, go ingame, press and hold that key, and click on the stats where you want your points to go.

Let's start one then

QUOTE

- How you become a zombie

If an AI controlled zombie reduces your health to or below 0, your health will be frozen to 1 and a countdown bar in your top left part of your screen (below the radar) appears. From now on you have 2 minutes until you become a zombie. You can prevent yourself from turning into a zombie by killing yourself, or getting killed by a player controlled zombie. AI controlled zombies are unable to kill you, although they might keep attacking you.

QUOTE

- How you become a human

To become a survivor again you'll have to kill a certain amount of marines or survivors. Your mission objective ticker (located above the radar) will keep you informed about your progress. As soon as you have gathered the right amount of points, you'll automatically join the survivors again after your death.

QUOTE

- How you win

By fulfilling your mission objectives. Zombies can't win, they can only try to become part of the survivors team again.

QUOTE

- How you get objectives

Mission objectives are given automatically and are the same for everyone. To get a quick explanation of what you have to do, take a look at your mission ticker (located above the radar). The place where your mission critical object is located is shown as a yellow dot on the radar and as a translucent radioactive sign on your screen.

QUOTE

- How to get and what to do with Experience

Experience is gained by killing your enemies and fulfilling your mission objectives. The red bar in the center bottom of your screen shows your progress towards the next level. When you reach the next level, you'll receive a talent point which can be distributed on the three talents:
-health (increases your max health by 8)
-speed (increases movement speed)
-skill (increases weapon damage by 5% and allows you to equip heavier weapons)
To distribute the points , press and hold the "show mouse cursor" key (to be defined in the options menu) and click on the appropriate button above the experience bar mentioned above.

QUOTE

- How many guns can you carry

You carry a garden axe by default, which cannot be dropped. You can also carry one pistol and two heavier weapons. If you want to exchange one weapon with one lying on the floor, simply select the weapon and press the "drop weapon" key (default: "g"), than run over the weapon you want to collect. Note that some weapons need a certain amount of skill (see the experience section above).

QUOTE

- How to fire the sawed off shotgun

The sawed off shotgun has 2 barrels which are fired individually by pressing primary fire for the first barrel and secondary fire for the second barrel. You can shoot both barrels simultanously by pressing both primary and secondary fire together. Note that you can only reload the sawed off shotgun when BOTH barrels are empty.

QUOTE

- What secondary fire does for each weapon

Not every weapon has a secondary fire mode. Those that have will perform a special attack or zoom, depending on the weapon. For example the M16 would shoot a quick 3 round burst while the MP5 would zoom.

QUOTE

- What attacks can zombies do

They are limted to only a melee attack with their hands. Tip: aim for a marines head to instantly kill him (must be in front or beside him, not in the back).

QUOTE

- How do you control aircraft

You don't.

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- Can you destroy AI tanks

They are indestructable. Just stay away if you're a zombie.

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- Where do you find certain guns

This depends on the map. Just explore the maps and you'll find them lying around.

QUOTE

- How long do experience levels last

They are permanent and are saved by the server for 24 hours by default. The server admins can change this time to anything between never and forever.

Great! We'll include it for the next patch and credit the author!

ive cooked up and awnsered another list of questions! remember foks, if you have any questions not awnserd, ask them here.

- LAG! why?!

zombies. pretty much that. each zombie has his own set of data, which needs to be sent to all the players so everybody knows where every zombie is. the more zombies, the more packets of data that need to be sent to everybody. then theres the players. the more players, the more data the server has to handle, since players also have to be tracked, and everybody needs to know where everybody is. and when the shooting starts, bullits have to be tracked aswell...and so on and so on and so on. the server loads like hell, and is sending out data over the net you wont belive, and you ping goes through the roof. less players less lag usually.

- so how many players would be best?

for brainbread, spawnpoints are limited to 12 players. this has to do with the limitations of the halflife engine. but reccomended would be maximum 10, around 8 for dedicated servers, and less for listen servers. home PC's hosting, well, it all depends on your PC speed and mostly connection. so its not a good idea to host with a pentium 2 and a 56k modem

- the map is wayy to small. make it bigger!

impossible. the map is already at the very limit of what halflife can handle. any bigger and the game chrashes. and we dont want that to happen now do we?

- why are there just 2 maps?

well, thats because of 2 months of development. more maps will be added later.

- i want more weapons!

the same thing as mapping here. this time, the HL model limit has been reached. if you want a new gun, we'll have to take out a old gun.

- why the grainy textures?

remember, this engine dates from 1996, which is a licensed quake engine, from 1995, and has been in development longer then that. so this game is running on a engine more then a decade old. bump maps didnt exist back then. heck the pentium 3 wasnt even invented. i'd say the textures are good looking, considering.

- i shot a zombie, but he didnt die. he should have died!

did you shoot him in the head?

- yes i shot him in the head, took half his head off!

ah, then you've seen the effects of the GOREgeous system. this system allows parts of zombies to be blasted away. to succesfully kill a zombie, you have to really pump his body full of lead, or blast off both parts of the head. sometimes though, just 1 part will suffice.

- the game doesnt work! you suck!

ok now, calm down there, and browse the forums to see if its a known problem. if it isnt, and your sure you cant find anything about it, post the bug (prefebly with your system specifications) in the bug thread, and basicly wait for somebody to reply for a fix, or a patch. remember, telling us what the bug did, where it occured, and what you cán do despite the bug helps us alot more then just blalant flaming.

- i have a great idea that might work for BB!

well congratulations! be sure to visit the suggestions forum, and post it right away. then dont be afraid to discuss it with the community and the devs. maybe it might even be incorperated into BB. any input is appreciated. even bad (in the form of constructive critizism. once again, flaming doesnt help anybody.)

- what are the minimum system requirements?

well this is a tough question. since this mod has alot more enity's (read: stuff to render) then any other mod, we dont really know what the limit or the minimum specs are. recommended, however, would be a pentium 4 (pretty much every Ghz hey come in will do), 256 megs of RAM, and a geforce 2 or up video card. this should run the game just smoothly even with a horde of zombies chasing you.

remember: still have questions, post them here

Awesome work Nekrotzar and TSS

QUOTE (Bruce Campbell @ Nov 30 2004, 05:21 PM)

If you don't see any human players, marines or tanks near you or you're stuck into a wall or something, you can use the suicide button (bind it in the keyboard menu).

Or by typing -

kill

in console. (You can bring up console by pressing this key ~ )

[QUOTE]QUOTE
- How long do experience levels last

They are permanent and are saved by the server for 24 hours by default. The server admins can change this time to anything between never and forever. [QUOTE]
Does this mean that, unless otherwise posted, Experiance is deleted after 24 hours? thats not permenant...

24 is not permanent, however, the option exists to save the data permenantly on the server.

I wish to know the knames of the servers whom save information permenantly! I COMMAND IT!

whoa sloww down buddy

No "permanent" means they will be saved on the server, so you can leave and join again without losing them. However, by default this save gets deleted after 24 hours unless the server changed "sv_savexp" from "24" to "-1". "0" will prevent the server from saving the experience. See the server.cfg located in your brainbread directory for additional commands.

I live in canada. Anyhoo, so what this means is that, unless the server advertises it, my exp will usually be deleted after 24 hours. mmmkay.



Next Question:
When will player zombies be able to infect marines and other players?