Tremulous

Lore & Background

Tremulous's development by the Dark Legion group commenced in early 2000 as a modification for the commercial computer game Quake III Arena. The gameplay is generally inspired by the Quake II modification Gloom, which also features alien vs human teams with distinct user classes. Although, Tremulous shares no content with Gloom or other similar themed games from around the same time. Another game with features similar to Tremulous was Natural Selection, but developers say it is neither based on it nor inspired by it. Following the release of the Quake III Arena source code under the GPL on August 19, 2005, the developers decided to rework Tremulous into a standalone, free and open source game. Tremulous is licensed under the GPL, although it includes code from other projects that was released under other GPL-compatible licenses. Most of the game media is licensed under the CC BY-SA 2.5 Creative Commons license.

In Their Own Story

Sergeant Vance checked his rifle, the silence of the alien planet pressing against his ears. Somewhere in the dark jungle, the Hive was stirring. He could hear the skittering now—claws on metal, chitin on stone. The base lights flickered as the generators strained under the load. He wasn't just fighting soldiers; he was fighting an ecosystem that wanted to eat him alive. "Hold the line," comms crackled. Vance tightened his grip. There would be no retreat from this nest. Through the smoke, a massive alien silhouette emerged, its carapace gleaming under the emergency flares. The drone was gone; now came the hunter.

Reader's Guide

Tremulous is an asymmetric team-based first-person shooter with elements of real time strategy. Each team may construct and defend a base, consisting of structures which aid the players in some way. Players spawn from a spawn structure. During a match, players may attack the enemy, or maintain the base and construct new structures. Humans utilize various weapons, armor and other upgrades, while aliens may evolve into more powerful classes, each of which possesses unique abilities. The teams do not have access to all possible upgrades and buildings at the beginning of the game. Each team must reach a threshold of frags in order to advance to the next developmental stage. The point at which a stage change occurs varies dynamically depending on the number of players on each team. Each new stage brings more upgrades for the humans and more classes for the aliens. In addition to requiring a certain stage, each human item or alien class must be purchased using currency earned in game. The aliens are awarded frags for killing their foes which may be used to evolve (these points are commonly called evolution points or evos by players). The Humans gain credits. Players earn currency by killing enemy players or by destroying enemy spawn or power structures (Reactor and Overmind); the amount of received currency depends on what class the opponent was (or what structure was destroyed) and how much of the target's total damage was dealt by the killing player. As a mechanism to encourage builders, who naturally don't engage in combat, players are also rewarded currency every two minutes by simply staying alive. Builders are responsible for construction of new buildings and base maintenance. Each building takes up a certain number of build points available to each team. The number of build points can vary from map to map and server to server, limiting how large bases can become. To reduce the likelihood of the match ending in a tie, most games enter a sudden death mode ten to fifteen minutes before the draw/tie time limit. This is a period during which the building of most or all structures is prohibited, allowing attackers to more easily overwhelm the defenders. The alien base is centered on a structure called the 'Overmind', which is needed for their other structures to function and new structures to be built. Unlike the Human team structures, aliens may build on walls a

Did You Know?

• Tremulous was voted Player's Choice Standalone Game of the Year in Mod Database's Mod of the Year 2006 competition.
• Tremulous later came in first in a 'Best free game based on GPL Quake source?' poll on the Planet Quake website.
• Tremulous was selected in March 2010 as 'HotPick' by Linux Format.