Soldat's homesite
#gwsoldat @ irc.whahay.net - Our Soldat channel.[/color]

Links:

Soldat 1.4 (not the latest version)

Hello. As probably many of you guys know, Soldat is a fairly popular game here on GW, we got own sub-forum as well. It's been played here for over 3 years. However, lately, it hasn't been as active as it used to be. Partly this is because ramirez and I don't play as much Soldat with others from GW as we used to and partly because we haven't really tried to do anything about the lack of activity for some months now. However, it's time to revitalize GW Soldat and I hope we'll get new players and maybe some old players back as well. This will be a long yet informative topic about Soldat, and I hope you'll read through it and consider playing with us because I guarantee you Soldat is a great game once you get into it. If you are really too lazy to read this all, you can find movies and screenshots at end of the topic. I suggest you'll at least read the community part because it's important if you are willing to play with us!

So, many of you surely know the name of the game, but what do you know about the game itself? One purpose of this topic is to explain what Soldat is, how it works and show it in action. The other purpose, like mentioned, is to get new players to play with us.

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Story[/color]

A couple of guys decided to kill each other and you can be one of them.

Gameplay[/color]

In short, Soldat is a quite unique fast paced 2D online shooter. And it's totally free.

The basic gamemodes are:

- Deathmatch:
As the name implies, it's a simple deathmatch where you play alone against the other players, trying to get as many kills as possible. I'd like to point out that many of us are fans of dueling, and it's quite different from DM with a lot people, or even few. Deathmatch is really hectic with a lot of players.

- Pointmatch:
Pointmatch is not much different from Deathmatch. You fight against the other players and try to get as many kills as possible. The only difference is that there's a flag and the one who is holding the flag gets kills two points from a kill instead of one.

- Teammatch:
Pretty obvious. You play with your teammates against the other teams. The team with highest amount of kills wins.

- Rambomatch:
Another variation of Deathmatch. There's a so-called rambo gun in this game mode and only the player who carries the gun and kills with it gets points. It's a one-hit kill weapon with almost no reload time, speed and range. But when you are holding the bow, all the other player are after you so surviving isn't as easy as one would assume.

- Capture the Flag:
By far my favorite game mode. Two teams play against each other and try to get other team's flag and score. This is most likely the most played Soldat game mode.

- Infiltration:
In this gamemode one team defends and the other attacks. As long as the defending team can keep the flag in their base, they will get points as the game goes on. Attacking team has to steal the flag and score with it to get points.

- Hold the Flag:
The newest game mode in Soldat, and yet another team based game mode. There's one flag and the point is to hold the flag as long as possible and get points while holding it. The other team tries to get the flag. The team which has hold the flag longer wins.

That's for the basic game modes. There are, however, more game modes invented by the community itself. I'll get back to them later in this topic.

Game options:

There are also a few game options which more or less signifantly change the way Soldat is played. The options which don't affect the gameplay that much are such as special bonuses (cluster grenades, invisibility, flame thrower, vest), friendly fire, respawn times and so on. Nothing big. Then there are some options which will affect the gameplay in a much larger way:

-Realistic Mode:
Using realistic basically takes away the fast pace of Soldat and makes it much more realistic. Imagine the difference between Unreal Tournament and Counter-Strike. It's something like that. Players have low health, weapons kill much faster, there is recoil, falling damage, you can't see players behind objects and walls and there are no special bonuses.

-Survival mode:
This is often used in Realistic Soldat. When you die, you won't respawn instantly and you will have to wait until there is only one player left or your team has won the round (by capping or killing everyone in the opposing team(s)).

Advance mode:
In this mode, there are no primary weapons when you start, only secondaries. As you kill players, you will randomly get different primaries. In this mode, it's good to be skilled with many weapons because you never know what you'll end up with.

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Some gameplay related stuff:

I don't want to make this topic too long so I'll keep this section simple. I won't go in-detail how the game's physics work or what all is possible to do in Soldat. If you are going to start playing, we'll help you with stuff like that if needed.

DEFAULT CONTROLS: (taken from soldat manual)

[size][A] - run left
[D] - run right
[W] - jump
- crouch
[Left Mouse Button] - fire
[Right Mouse Button] - fly
[E] - hold down or release after a while to throw grenade
[F] - throwaway current weapon
[X] - go prone position
[Q] - change weapon to secondary
[R] - reload weapon
[T] - chat
[Tab] - activate/deactivate weapons menu while waiting for respawn
(There are also other moves such as backflip or throwing flag)

[/] - enter command
[F1] - players list with scores
[F2] - hide player names / [ALT + F2] - switch on/off sniper line
[F3] - statistics (FPS, ping, network bandwith)
[F4] - take screenshot (saves it to Soldat\Screens)
[F5] - stops/plays music
[F6] - previous music track
[F7] - next music track
[F8] - record/stop demo / fast forward while playing demo
[F9] - minimize the game
[F10] - pause game
[ALT] - + a,b,c... or 1,2,3...0 keys - chat taunts or commands
[ESC] - stops the game and shows the game menu[/size]

WEAPONS: (taken from soldat manual)

-Primaries:

[size]1. Desert Eagles
Akimbo weapon! An automatic hand-gun that can break a man's arm. That's why it doesn't fire so frequently but the bullets can easily pierce thick armor.

2. HK MP5
The most popular submachine-gun in the world. Fast and furious. In short ranges it can defeat heavy weapons.

3. AK-74
Modified version of Automat-Kalasznikov from 1947. Weapon of terrorists and most of world's army forces. The best rifle in the past 50 years.

4. Steyr AUG
This weapon looks like a toy but it sure isn't. With great speed it spits out bullets killing everything in a fast attack.

5. Spas-12
This Shotgun makes a massacre with its 12-Gauge bullets. The best weapon for close-contact.

6. Ruger-77
A hunting rifle. Very fast and accurate. Good for hunting deers and people.

7. M79
The famous grenade-launcher from the Vietnam War. Viet-Cong quickly ran to the bushes when they heard its characteristic sound. The 40mm grenade can blast anyone into pieces even after a shot behind a hill.

8. Barret M82A1
This sniper weapon has incredible power. It was designed to pierce tank armor. The Army didn't even plan to use it against people. But who cares?
Sniper mode available if you crouch or go prone.

9. M249 (FN Minimi)
The best machinegun with great firepower. Can be very helpful for backing-up your team.

10. XM214 Minigun
The famous "O'll Painless" from the movie Predator. This chaingun is mounted on army helicopters. It uses a tremendous amount of ammo and can kill the same amount of enemies.[/size]

-Secondaries:

[size]USSOCOM
 Standard US special forces weapon. You get it always after respawn as a secondary weapon.

Combat Knife
 Standard infantry combat knife. One direct hit with this little thing eliminates the enemy at once. Best for covert operations.
Can be also used as a throw knife with the throw weapon button.

Chainsaw
 A chainsaw used for cutting piles of wood. If somebody finds a different use for this please let everybody know.

M72 LAW
 Anti-tank weapon, fires an explosive missile. Can be used only from the crouch position.

Fists
 After throwing out your weapon you can play Rocky.[/size]

-Other:

[size]Fragmentation Grenades
 A good tactical throw can harm or kill a couple of enemy's at once.
 On start and when you pickup the green box grenade supplies.[/size]

More random crap:

I know, stupid title but I want to separate this from the other gameplay shit. I'm talking about modding and such here. Although Soldat's community isn't very large compared to those large commercial games, the community is constantly creating new ideas, maps, mods and tools to make playing more fun and varying. I'm not going to bother listing any of the custom maps, tools or mods here though. You'll find out about those things if you play with us. We have plenty of great custom maps for example.

Graphics

... Are shit. (not really)

Community

I REALLY REALLY REALLY SUGGEST YOU TO CHECK OUT THIS TOPIC BECAUSE IT HAS ALMOST EVERYTHING WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO KNOW ABOUT OUR COMMUNITY. IT IS VERY INFORMATIVE AND VERY HELPFUL!!!!

Now, on to the important part, our community. You can find most of this information in the link I posted above so I won't make this too long.

We have two servers (thanks to Belross for paying the US server), one in Europe and one in North America. We mostly play on the European server but both servers can be used by GW players whenever there is a free server.

CHANNELS:

#gwsoldat - Our main channel.
#gwsoldat.admin - Try joining if you want. :d
#gwsoldat.eu - Here you can see what happens in the EU server and talk in the server using mIRC (talking requires voice on #gwsoldat).
#gwsoldat.us - Here you can see what happens in the US server and talk in the server using mIRC (talking requires voice on #gwsoldat).
#gwsoldat.ae - Here you can see what happens in the AE (ramirez's and dragonslayer's clan) server.
#gwsoldat.cw (our second clan war server) - Here you can see what happens in the CW server.

SERVERS:

EU server:
NAME: eu.gwsoldat.net
PORT: 23073

US server:
NAME: us.gwsoldat.net
PORT: 23073

ADMINS:

Head admins:
ramirez (Finland)
DragonSlayer (Finland)

Normal admins:
Belross (US)
Jeff (US)
MysteriousWanderer (Canada)
Cliff (The Netherlands)
Bablo (Finland)
Untitled (UK)
Noz (Canada)
Chaka (Germany)
Sol (America)

That's it for the most important information. I don't even bother of making a list of active players but we have plenty. Not everyone is playing all that much right now but I hope you can change that. We aren't just looking for new players but you are also welcome to come to the channel any time you want to and talk about with us. It's not just Soldat we talk about, in fact, we talk about everything. We have a friendly community and the channel is the second most active channel on the network and everyone is welcome. Hope to see you there.

As for other community stuff, remember when I mentioned other game modes? Well, I ought to explain what I meant, I suppose.

Challenge maps:
There are two kind of challenge maps, CTF and Teammatch. In CTF challenge maps you join a team and try to finish the map without dying. Since there are no checkpoints, dying means you will have to start over. Teammatch challenge maps work in exactly the same way but there are 4 teams and checkpoints. Red, blue, yellow and green teams. Once you reach a checkpoint, you can switch team and you don't have to start from the beginning if you die. Challenge maps are a good way to test your movement and how good you are with game's physics. I don't recommend them to new players though. They can be pretty irritating. Anyway, challenge maps are pretty popular on GW Soldat.

There are other modes too but they aren't as noticeable so I'll just mention two which come in my mind.

Race maps, can also be played in normal maps, but it's different and not as fun. The point is to finish the map faster than other players. Usually weapons are turned off in race maps but on some occasions they are on so you can sabotize other players. I don't think our servers have race maps at the moment, though. We used to have them though.

King of the Hill. UPRC and I came up with this a long time ago. Two players in a same team will try to drop the other player from a platformer. We made a few King of the Hill levels but it never got popular and it hasn't been played in a long time.

Well, I don't know what else to say about the community. I would write about our history but I'm going to make an article about it for GW History sooner or later so I'll just skip that. Moving on.

Movies[/color]

Ah, finally here. I really suggest checking these movies out because the screenies don't really speak for the game. These movies feature some really skilled Soldat players and although some of this stuff might seem easy, it's not all that easy at all, especially considering the fact that they are playing against other good players (ok, not project X).

The movies are pretty large so first I'll show some short clips by me. They are just some random kills and shit like that. But they aren't too bad so I suggest checking them out.

DS short clips:

[size]Knife kill 1
Knife kill 2
Bouncing bullet with Barret (sniper)
Chainsaw skills
Throwing flag in REAL ACTION

All of these are fairly old but yeah. I got tons of demos so maybe one day I'll make a movie, dunno.

>>> Soldat Veterans Movie (created by antiCamper) <<<
GET THIS

Link: http://own-age.com/vids/mirrors.aspx?id=6118&dlmirror=8898 (if it doesn't work, try to go here and download it.)
Size: 205.6MB
Length: 12 Minutes
Cool information: DS dies many times in this movie.
Screenshots:







This is the best Soldat movie made, in my opinion. Very good players, good editing and overall very well made. It's large but I really suggest this. Really. Even if you aren't going to play this game, get this.[/size]

Project X:

[size]Link: http://www.selfkill.com/webv3/content/sd_redir.php?id=131
Size: 56MB
Length: too lazy to check
Cool information: It's pretty old but it's still a solid video. I suggest it even if it's not as good as Soldat Veterans one.
Screenshots: -

Another good video. The material for sv|movie was taken from clan wars and high level ctf rounds so it's much more impressive than Project X, which was mostly recorded in random public servers with more or less skilled players. It still has some cool frags and tricking so I recommend it as well.[/size]

And that's it for movies. There are tons of more movies but I don't have any on my PC and I'm not going to find any because these are enough. If you still want to see more, I suggest heading over to Soldat forums and finding them there.

Screenshots: (taken from Soldat's site)
















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Well, that's it. I hope some of you got even a bit interested in Soldat and are considering playing with us. Once again, I really recommend Soldat. It's extremely fun and there's no other game like it. I warn you that there are a fair share of bugs (most of them were fixed in the newest version, however) which are pretty annoying sometimes. But it's my third favorite game ever and that's saying a lot.

Thank you for reading this.

1. Playing Soldat will only be a ton of fun if I play with people I know from GW.2. People I know from GW seem to be masters at this game, and my suckiness compared to them will make my Soldat experience unenjoyable.

1. Soldat definitely is more fun when playing with people you know. Pubs are fun too though, but only for so long.2. Don't worry, we got our share of good and bad players. And if we get more new players, it'll be all the better. And we don't care if people suck or not, we are just having fun.

Wait, you're in the Soldat Veterans movie? I did not see you! Or maybe that was a different movie.

Just getting killed like omeg said. I am not in sv so naturally they don't show anything focusing on me. I think that I die 13 times in the movie, but I'm not totally sure. I play a lot with them. Or used to, they are inactive now.Also, I'm going to organize a tournament in near future so I hope that'll get some people interested as well!

Story[/color]A couple of guys decided to kill each other and you can be one of them.

Well I'm a man for story and there's no way you can top that... So I think I'm going to have to start playing hardcore yo!

Please everyone, download this game. Even if you do suck, at least you'll beat NeoGear. The best thing about Soldat is also the GwSoldat which is a great and intimate community, and it's easier to get to know some of the key members on this forum through killing them in Soldat rather than going "LOL GR8 POST". Almost everyone in GwSoldat gets along (well I don't get along with everyone, but everyone else seems to have a great time with each other). We don't only play Soldat, we arrange team games in other games too (like WarCraft 3, Age of Empires, Civ 4 or whatever you want to play). We also have discussions and duels (in which you can spectate the players dueling each other). To put it simply, GwSoldat is the biggest Gaming channel in GW (since #gamingw is more for general discussions and who is shit and etc).  We arrange tournaments for everyone to join, we play team games with each other, focusing on having balanced teams so everyone can join and everyone will have a challenge on their hands, we do goofy games like challenges or knife/chainsaw duels or just plain deathmatch games. Want to test your skills? Duel someone you know has been better than you to see if you're better. Want to hone your skills even when GwSoldat in inactive? Play on publics, learn some tricks and come back, show them off. GwSoldat isn't just a community for soldat. It will be the best gaming community you'll take part of if you take the time to know all of us. All you really have to do is download the game (and the map packs if you want to avoid having to download  maps between games, even if that is automated through the soldat.exe), download IRC and follow the simple instructions. See ya there ;)