Urban Terror is a free, great first-person shooter based on the ioQuake3 engine, and developed by FrozenSand. Although the engine is open-source and licensed under the GPL, the game data and assets of Urban Terror are non-free. Urban Terror features a wonderful online experience, taking place over dozens of maps resembling various urban locations. The motto of the game is "fun over realism", and Urban Terror encompasses a fast-paced gameplay along with some pretty neat features. This guide applies to Urban Terror 4.2, which is based on the ioQuake3 engine. This version is actively developed, with improvements and bug fixes made available on a regular basis. The 4.2 incremental release was built upon 4.1 and brought in some really major changes regarding the gameplay style. Currently the latest release is 4.2.015.

This guide contains information on how to install and configure Urban Terror, how to start a dedicated server, as well as an overview of the features and the gameplay it provides.

Note: The resources section has some links to several comprehensive guides to Urban Terror, so make sure to check it out too.

Note: There is a new game in the works, called Urban Terror HD. This will be a completely new game which will no longer use the ioQuake3 engine.

• Installing Urban Terror
• Overview
• Configuring Urban Terror
• How to Start a Dedicated Server
• Screenshots
• Resources

I will show two ways of installing: one by downloading the whole package which includes everything the game needs to run, and the second method by using the Urban Terror updater, which automatically fetches the game files. You can download the complete archive from the official homepage (direct link), and then uncompress it to a location of your choice. You can then run the Urban Terror binary from that directory. This method makes use of the Urban Terror Updater, which will download and install the game automatically for you. First, download the updater from here, uncompress it and run the updater binary from that directory.

Once you have the game installed, just run the updater from time to time to ensure it downloads and installs the latest bug fixes and changes. Urban Terror is a fast-paced first-person shooter taking place over various urban environments, including an online multi-player mode, various maps, weapons and game mods. It's highly configurable and has a somewhat different gameplaying style. Nickname authentication is also possible.

One of the power features of Urban Terror are the trickjumps, dodging off walls, healing yourself or other wounded teamates and the stamina bar. The stamina bar allows you to only run or jump for a limited period of time, and the more wounded you are, the less stamina you will have. There are around 40 maps which come by default with Urban Terror, and more are available to download online. Some of the most popular include Abbey, Algiers, Casa, Kingdom, Mandolin, Prague, Turnpike and Uptown. Maps mostly resemble urban environments, however there are some which take place in forest or jungle environments, like Mayan Standoff or Raiders.

Uptown Mayan Standoff There is a very wide range of weapons to choose from: AK47, LR-300, SR-8 for sniping enemies and so on. Pistols, grenades and the usual knife are also available. You can choose to wear a helmet or equip your gun with a silencer. Some weapons are more useful for short range, while others, like the SR-8 sniping rifle, can be used to scope and then frag your enemies. There are two different teams in Urban Terror, generically called the "Red Team" and the "Blue Team", wearing uniforms accordingly colored. However the servers can specify the names to be used for the teams. Urban Terror 4.2 comes with no less than 9 game modes, including the usual ones: Free for All (FFA), Team Deathmatch (TDM), Capture the Flag (CTF). Besides these, there are several more: Team Survivor (TS), Follow the Leader, Capture and Hold, Bomb, Jump and Last Man Standing.

• Free for All (FFA) - this mode is a deathmatch without teams, everyone is by himself and you get frags from killing any opponent
• Team Deathmatch (TDM) - there are two teams fighting each other until all the players in one team die; servers may configure a continuous respawn, without having to wait for everyone to die, so in this case the team with most frags in the end wins
• Capture the Flag (CTF) - there are two teams and each team is trying to steal a flag and bring it back to the own flag; the team with the most flags captured at the end wins

One of the great features in Urban Terror is the ability to run and dodge of walls. This is also capped by the amount of health you have and your stamina bar, which decreases when you run or jump, so in order to replenish it you will have to walk or rest for a while. There are dedicated servers with maps created only for trickjumping, where you have to reach a certain point to win. There are also very skilled players performing these trickjumps, which require quite some time before mastering them. The official website has some nice videos of these.

Once wounded you can heal yourself, and you can also heal your teamates. This is called "bandage" in Urban Terror.

One of the big pluses Urban Terror has is that is actively maintained and the official homepage provides new videos and updates regarding the progress made in Urban Terror 4.2 and Urban Terror HD, the upcoming game from FrozenSand. A while ago there was also a Questions & Answers live online chat meeting with the developers. Really great support from the team behind the game. Starting from left to right, the default HUD displays:

The health bar, which is blue when you have all your health and all your stamina. When the health bar is grey, you don't have stamina, while if part of your health bar is red you're wonded.

In the screenshot below, the player has approximately 40% stamina and 80% health (you can see he is wounded because the first two sections of the bar are colored red). On the bottom-right side of the screen you can find information about the currently selected weapon (in this case M4A1), ammo status in the current clip (30 bullets left), available clips (4 ammo clips), weapon mode (burst or automatic) and a small score table. Notice that the HUD can be configured from within the game or via the config files, as explained in the section below. Note: Since Urban Terror is using the ioQuake3 engine, configuration is very similar to configuring ioQuake3. Here is a guide which explains how to configure ioQuake3, and most of it applies to Urban Terror too.

I will only explain how to configure Urban Terror using config files. As with any ioQuake3-based games, configuration can be done via text config files, and in our case the config files will be located inside the $HOME/.q3a/q3ut4/ directory. You can create a text file here called autoexec.cfg, and all the commands inside it will be ran automatically when the game starts. You can create additional .cfg files in this directory and manually run them in the game console using /exec file.cfg. Or you can create additional .cfg files and then put commands inside autoexec.cfg to run them.

Example of autoexec.cfg file: Example of settings.cfg: In this example, when Urban Terror starts, it will automatically execute all the commands inside autoexec.cfg, and thus will execute the commands in settings.cfg too.

To add custom options, you will add them in the form of seta variable "value". For example, to show the current FPS, you would add the following line inside your autoexec.cfg file: You can configure CVARs using the seta command (e.g. seta cg_fov 110) and bind keyboard shortcuts using the bind command (e.g. bind v "ut_weaptoggle knife").

• 1 - knife
• 2 - sidearm
• 3 - grenade
• 4 - secondary submachine gun
• 5 - primary submachine gun

• W - forward
• A - move left
• S - back
• D - move right
• R - reload
• Q - bandage

This is a list of available weapon binds. Use bind KEY weapon inside your autoexec.cfg to configure them.

• ut_weaptoggle knife
• ut_weaptoggle sidearm
• ut_weaptoggle grenade
• ut_weaptoggle secondary
• ut_weaptoggle primary

A list of other actions:

• +button5 (reload)
• +button6 (bandage)
• +button7 (defuse/doors)
• +button8 (sprint)

You can basically bind keys to anything. For example you could bind K to open the team selection menu (bind k "ui_selectteam") or L to open the weapon selection menu (bind l "ui_selectgear"). You can also configure any aspect of the game like audio volume or graphics details. This is my autoexec.cfg file, rather simple but still enough for my needs. There are comments throughout the file explaining what certain commands do: Notice how I have binds to cycle through sensitivity settings and to cap the maximum FPS, depending on how well the map performs on an entry-level graphics card.

Here is a nice script for SR-8. This will zoom in once showing the scope when you press MOUSE2 (right mouse button), and will keep the scope for as long as you keep pressing MOUSE2. Once you release it, the zoom will be back to normal. Very useful for sniping with the SR-8. To start a dedicated server you will first need to set up the server config file (for this example it is called server.cfg) and the map cycle file (called mapcycle.txt), then you will have to run the dedicated server binary with several arguments. This section will explain how to create these files and how to start your dedicated server.

So, here are the main three things:

• Server configuration file, for example server.cfg
• Map cycle file, for example mapcycle.txt
• Dedicated binary running in command-line with several arguments

Here is an example of how to start a dedicated server: Notice that Quake3-UrT-Ded.i386 is the dedicated server binary for the 32-bit version, you should replace it with the one for 64-bit (called Quake3-UrT-Ded.x86_64) if you're using a 64-bit system. Also, keep in mind that you can specify the arguments from command-line directory inside the server.cfg file, and use only something like Quake3-UrT-Ded.i386 +exec "server.cfg" to run your server.

Quake3-UrT-Ded.i386 - the name of the server binary
+set dedicated "2" - make the server dedicated
+set net_port "27960" - choose the port on which the server will listen for connections
+set fs_game "q3ut4" - the type of game to start; this should always be q3ut4
+exec "server.cfg" - specify the server configuration file This is an example of the server configuration file, server.cfg: Don't forget to replace the rconpassword with a password of your choosing. The RCON password is used to access your server via remote connection, and gives you unlimited power over controlling the server. You can load new maps, kick and ban players, change the game mode and so on if you have the correct rcon password, so be careful who are you giving it to. And now, the mapcycle.txt file which specifies which maps should be played on the server: You can further add or remove maps from this list. Now you can start your server, then start up Urban Terror and browse for it in the server list. Abbey Tohunga

• Homepage
• Download
• Forum
• Official Documentation

• TaggedZi's Urban Terror Oasis
• A comprehensive Urban Terror guide for beginners
• Scope Zoom In with SR-8

By Craciun Dan on October 06, 2013 | Updated: October 21, 2013 | v0.2.3 r4