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Nexuiz is a free to play, arena based, first person shooter which has been in development since 2002 by Lee Vermeulen and Forest ‘LordHavoc’ Hale, co-founders of Alientrap Software. The purpose of Nexuiz is to create a high quality shooter that can be played freely across multiple platforms (currently available on PC, Mac and Linux). The game uses DarkPlaces, a modified Quake engine. Nexuiz features 9 different weapons, each of which has an alternate firing mode. There are 24 official maps as well as hundreds of community created maps. Nexuiz also features a wide range of effects including HDR; bloom; and realtime, world and dynamic lighting.
Gameplay
In Nexuiz, players battle it out amongst each other to obtain the highest kill count. However, unlike similar games, Nexuiz doesn't have a health cap. Instead players start with 100 health and it will degenerate or regenerate depending on the circumstance. When the player has more than 100 health, health will degenerate back to 100 if no health is collected within a short period of time. The higher the amount of health, the faster the degeneration. When the player has less than 100 health, health will slowly regenerate back to 100 if the player is not hit after a short period of time. Armor also works in a similar fashion, although it will never regenerate.
Movement in Nexuiz is controlled by momentum. Since the ground has friction, the more you are in the air, the faster you will move. If you continually jump in sequence, you will move extremely fast. In turn, strafe jumping will actually cause you to move slower due to increased air resistance. However, strafing is still a reliable way to quickly move across the ground whilst dodging projectiles. Nexuiz also gives the player plenty of opportunities for "rocket jumping". Every player starts with a weapon that shoots a laser projectile which does little damage, but is extremely effective for jumping very high or pushing people into pits or off the map.
Within the game, there are 9 weapons, each of which has an alternate firing mode. Each player will start with a shotgun, which is very inaccurate but can deal a lot of damage at close range; and the aforementioned laser weapon. One common place weapon in arena shooters, that can also be found in Nexuiz, is the rocket launcher. The rocket launcher has a slow moving projectile with a very large splash radius that can be triggered to explode early with the right mouse button. This means players can strategically explode rockets without having to shoot a solid surface. Among the 9 weapons are 2 viable alternatives to the rocket launcher: a grenade launcher called the mortar and a plasma projectile weapon called the electro. The mortar has a very fast and long arc and the electro shoots a fast moving projectile which deals high damage with a small splash radius. The alternate firing mode on the electro will shoot out containers that will explode after a set amount of time, or they can be triggered early by shooting them with the primary fire resulting in very high damage.
