Soldat – the fast-paced king of free 2d multiplayer shooters.
SN’s winning round against the SEALS in SCTFL (Soldat Capture The Flag League) 12 , a major normal-mode CTF league
This game’s been around on the market for years now, since it came out in 2002. Over the years it has received numerous updates, that tweaked some aspects of the game, added a little feature here and there and brought the version number up to 1.4.2, with a 1.5 update slated for release sometime within the next couple of months.
It’s been developed by a single Pole, but now the development has been taken over by other talented guys (Australia, the US, as far as I know).
However, all these changes have not altered the most important feature of the game: extreme playability of this nifty little piece of software. And, most importantly, it’s completely free. There is an option to register, which allows you to access some otherwise inaccessible features, but no sweats – you can be a competitive player even without registering. Some have criticised this, indicating that there simply is no incentive to register. Well, you find out the benefits of registering and decide for yourself.
But to the point.
Briefly about the game types: there’s the standard assortment of modes like DM, TDM, CTF (by far the most popular one), but there’s also some peculiar to Soldat. These include:
INF (Infiltration), where one team defends a flag, scoring a point at a regular interval of time the flag is at its place, while the other team tries to steal the flag and bring it to their flag, for a huge point gain. The first team to reach the set limit wins. The mode is officially recommended to be played with the Realistic game mode.
Next, there is Pointmatch, which is a standard DM with a yellow flag placed on the map, having which flag multiplies the amount of points you score for fragging.
Then there’s Rambomatch, where there is a Rambo bow on the map. The bow shoots either normal or deadly arrows (the normal variety have more range) and is a really formidable weapon. Only the bow’s owner (“Rambo”) can score points for frags. The bow also confers healing abilities to its owner.
Next’s HTF (Hold the Flag), where two teams strive to capture and hold a flag, scoring points every couple of seconds the flag is held by their team.
There are other, unofficial gametypes that are the result of map-design – Climb maps, Duck Hunt maps and TW (Trench Warfare) maps and DB (Dodge Ball) maps to name the most popular unofficial types.
An SRL (Soldat Realistic League) 5 match, DN vs PKS; note the modded user interface and modded bullets
Next, there are also various game modes (think of them as a sort of mutators) which considerably alter the standard gameplay. These include Realistic, Survival and Advance. They can be combined freely.
Realistic means that your gostek (the name for your avatar in game, derived from the Polish slag equivalent of “guy”) has limited field of vision – you see only what’s in front of you and you cannot see through walls (unlike the “normal” mode), take falling damage if you hit the ground too hard, your weapon is affected by recoil and your health is much smaller than in normal mode. This mode is the second most popular in the game.
Survival means that each game round you only spawn once. This is usually not a problem, as the maps are small, the game is fast paced and you don’t have to wait a long time. Traditionally this mode is combined with Realistic to create R/S, or Realistic/Survival, the third most popular gamemode (although considerably less players play this mode than they do the normal one).
Advance means that, unlike the standard scenario, you start with only secondary weapons at your disposal. More weapons become available to you as you frag more opponents, but you lose them again as you get killed. A rarely encountered, yet fun mode.
A couple info about the gameplay:
- Maps are 2d, but you are free to move in the vertical axis, as your Soldat’s equipped with jet boots. The boots have a limited amount of fuel, which replenishes whenever the jets are not in use. The amount is map-specific.
- There is a total of 10 primary and 4 secondary guns, plus grenades, special weapons which are special bonus pickups (Rambo bow, Flamer) and a stationary gun (mostly used in the INF game type) . The weapons balance has been worked on for years and in theory each gun has its uses. Sure, there are good all-rounders, but these will not be up to par against a specialised gun in the right hands. The gun list includes: twin Desert Eagles, MP5, AK-74, Steyr AUG, SPAS, Ruger-77, M79, Barret sniper rifle, MINIMI and the Minigun. Secondaries: knife (for stabbing, but primarily used as a thrown weapon for instant-kills), M72 LAW, chainsaw (recently buffed, meaning it became really useful – unfortunately often used for spawnrape) and the SOCOM.
- The game’s really fast-paced. Spawn times are usually between 3 and 6 seconds, round times usually around 10-15 minutes maximum and traversing a typical map takes between 10 and 20 seconds of agile movement.
- Extreme graphical moddability. It’s as easy as editing a .bmp or a .png with your MS Paint. Also, some good mods (although limited only to gfx) out there.
One of the custom maps, showing off an unorthodox, advanced graphical style that most official maps do not possess. In this game it's really not about the eyecandy, it's about F-U-N
Community
The game wouldn’t be still alive if it were not for an extremely dedicated community (and the fact that it’s free, the game that is). There’s the typical forums (recently there’s been some host problems, so the google address at the top is not going to be the valid one; here’s the current one: http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php), but the hardcore community is to be found on IRC. Have IRC and it’ll be your gateway to some really good games at a level far beyond anything the public servers can offer (for realistic and R/S it might be your only chance of getting a 3v3 CTF, because there are realistic servers but they’re mostly empty and the ones that are not are a clustered 8v8). If you don’t know how to use IRC, the recent versions come with bundled manuals on this (you have to look in the Manuals folder in the installation folder), plus there’s info on Soldat’s wiki: http://wiki.soldat.nl/IRC_tutorial
That’s on the se.quakenet.org server and here’s a brief list of the important channels:
#soldat.match
#soldat.gather
#soldat.realistic (home of the realistic gather plus a lobby for realistic clanners)
#realistic.gather (the gather channel of the LRS community)
#lrs (the LRS community channel; realistic)
Moar channels in your IRC manuals inside the installation folder. Some of them may be inactive.
Game download:
http://www.soldat.pl/download.html
Bottom line: try this game, it's tons of fun. Lots of people say it's addictive.
/agitprop off
SN’s winning round against the SEALS in SCTFL (Soldat Capture The Flag League) 12 , a major normal-mode CTF league
This game’s been around on the market for years now, since it came out in 2002. Over the years it has received numerous updates, that tweaked some aspects of the game, added a little feature here and there and brought the version number up to 1.4.2, with a 1.5 update slated for release sometime within the next couple of months.
It’s been developed by a single Pole, but now the development has been taken over by other talented guys (Australia, the US, as far as I know).
However, all these changes have not altered the most important feature of the game: extreme playability of this nifty little piece of software. And, most importantly, it’s completely free. There is an option to register, which allows you to access some otherwise inaccessible features, but no sweats – you can be a competitive player even without registering. Some have criticised this, indicating that there simply is no incentive to register. Well, you find out the benefits of registering and decide for yourself.
But to the point.
Briefly about the game types: there’s the standard assortment of modes like DM, TDM, CTF (by far the most popular one), but there’s also some peculiar to Soldat. These include:
INF (Infiltration), where one team defends a flag, scoring a point at a regular interval of time the flag is at its place, while the other team tries to steal the flag and bring it to their flag, for a huge point gain. The first team to reach the set limit wins. The mode is officially recommended to be played with the Realistic game mode.
Next, there is Pointmatch, which is a standard DM with a yellow flag placed on the map, having which flag multiplies the amount of points you score for fragging.
Then there’s Rambomatch, where there is a Rambo bow on the map. The bow shoots either normal or deadly arrows (the normal variety have more range) and is a really formidable weapon. Only the bow’s owner (“Rambo”) can score points for frags. The bow also confers healing abilities to its owner.
Next’s HTF (Hold the Flag), where two teams strive to capture and hold a flag, scoring points every couple of seconds the flag is held by their team.
There are other, unofficial gametypes that are the result of map-design – Climb maps, Duck Hunt maps and TW (Trench Warfare) maps and DB (Dodge Ball) maps to name the most popular unofficial types.
An SRL (Soldat Realistic League) 5 match, DN vs PKS; note the modded user interface and modded bullets
Next, there are also various game modes (think of them as a sort of mutators) which considerably alter the standard gameplay. These include Realistic, Survival and Advance. They can be combined freely.
Realistic means that your gostek (the name for your avatar in game, derived from the Polish slag equivalent of “guy”) has limited field of vision – you see only what’s in front of you and you cannot see through walls (unlike the “normal” mode), take falling damage if you hit the ground too hard, your weapon is affected by recoil and your health is much smaller than in normal mode. This mode is the second most popular in the game.
Survival means that each game round you only spawn once. This is usually not a problem, as the maps are small, the game is fast paced and you don’t have to wait a long time. Traditionally this mode is combined with Realistic to create R/S, or Realistic/Survival, the third most popular gamemode (although considerably less players play this mode than they do the normal one).
Advance means that, unlike the standard scenario, you start with only secondary weapons at your disposal. More weapons become available to you as you frag more opponents, but you lose them again as you get killed. A rarely encountered, yet fun mode.
A couple info about the gameplay:
- Maps are 2d, but you are free to move in the vertical axis, as your Soldat’s equipped with jet boots. The boots have a limited amount of fuel, which replenishes whenever the jets are not in use. The amount is map-specific.
- There is a total of 10 primary and 4 secondary guns, plus grenades, special weapons which are special bonus pickups (Rambo bow, Flamer) and a stationary gun (mostly used in the INF game type) . The weapons balance has been worked on for years and in theory each gun has its uses. Sure, there are good all-rounders, but these will not be up to par against a specialised gun in the right hands. The gun list includes: twin Desert Eagles, MP5, AK-74, Steyr AUG, SPAS, Ruger-77, M79, Barret sniper rifle, MINIMI and the Minigun. Secondaries: knife (for stabbing, but primarily used as a thrown weapon for instant-kills), M72 LAW, chainsaw (recently buffed, meaning it became really useful – unfortunately often used for spawnrape) and the SOCOM.
- The game’s really fast-paced. Spawn times are usually between 3 and 6 seconds, round times usually around 10-15 minutes maximum and traversing a typical map takes between 10 and 20 seconds of agile movement.
- Extreme graphical moddability. It’s as easy as editing a .bmp or a .png with your MS Paint. Also, some good mods (although limited only to gfx) out there.
One of the custom maps, showing off an unorthodox, advanced graphical style that most official maps do not possess. In this game it's really not about the eyecandy, it's about F-U-N
Community
The game wouldn’t be still alive if it were not for an extremely dedicated community (and the fact that it’s free, the game that is). There’s the typical forums (recently there’s been some host problems, so the google address at the top is not going to be the valid one; here’s the current one: http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php), but the hardcore community is to be found on IRC. Have IRC and it’ll be your gateway to some really good games at a level far beyond anything the public servers can offer (for realistic and R/S it might be your only chance of getting a 3v3 CTF, because there are realistic servers but they’re mostly empty and the ones that are not are a clustered 8v8). If you don’t know how to use IRC, the recent versions come with bundled manuals on this (you have to look in the Manuals folder in the installation folder), plus there’s info on Soldat’s wiki: http://wiki.soldat.nl/IRC_tutorial
That’s on the se.quakenet.org server and here’s a brief list of the important channels:
#soldat.match
#soldat.gather
#soldat.realistic (home of the realistic gather plus a lobby for realistic clanners)
#realistic.gather (the gather channel of the LRS community)
#lrs (the LRS community channel; realistic)
Moar channels in your IRC manuals inside the installation folder. Some of them may be inactive.
Game download:
http://www.soldat.pl/download.html
Bottom line: try this game, it's tons of fun. Lots of people say it's addictive.
/agitprop off
