Zero G Arena Unofficial Manual

Overview

An unofficial manual that may hopefully tell you everything you want to know.

Introduction

I will add anything you think people should be aware of here. For example, anything you think you learned a bit late.

This guide can’t be perfect from the beginning, so feel free to criticise. Please deliver it in a reasonable manner though 😛

Basic overview

The game is set in zero gravity, but you can walk on specific magnetic surfaces. These surfaces are often but not always identifiable by the lines of blue lights across the surface.
While your magnet is off, your character will float helplessly, but you can pull yourself around using the grapple beam and the wall jump (controls below). When you turn your magnet on, you will be pulled towards a floor, if you are in its magnetic field. When the your feet touch the floor, you’re in walking mode and can move like you would normally.
With a combination of zero gravity, grappling and the magnet boots, you can perform unlimited range of manoeuvres as physics allows.

Default Controls

Basic

• Toggle magnet (aka magboots) – E
• Fire weapon – Left mouse button
• Fire grapple beam – Right-click, then hold to keep active

While grappling players or other moveable objects (e.g. the Sphere in “Capture the Sphere” mode), the grapple will break if it is interrupted.
With advanced grapple control (AGC) off (default), the grapple will pull automatically.
With AGC on, It will not pull automatically, but the pull force can be adjusted with the below controls:

• Reel-in the grapple (pull toward where the grapple’s end has stuck) – Mouse-wheel down (“Increases pull force per movement of mouse wheel, up to a maximum”)
• Reel-out the grapple (loosen the rope so it doesn’t pull you toward where the grapple’s end has stuck) – Mouse-wheel up
• Reel-in the grapple (by holding a key) – Q

Movement:

• W, A, S, D – foward, leftward, backward, rightward movement respectively (while walking/crouching/etc. on a surface with the magnet on)
• Crouch – CTRL
• “High Jump” – Spacebar with none of the above movement keys pressed down
• “Standard Jump” – Spacebar with a movement key pressed down (you will jump in the direction of the movement key as you would expect)
• “Long Jump/Dodge” – Spacebar with a movement key and the Crouch key pressed down (Note: if you want to maximise speed, you should tap the Crouch key then spacebar quickly so you don’t actually Crouch (since movement when crouching is slow so will reduce your speed)
• “Wall Jump” – Spacebar + Movement key in the direction you want to go after the jump. This will only work if there’s a solid surface in the opposite direction to the chosen movement key (i.e. to kick off of). If the direction you want to go is upward (relative to the camera orientation) then don’t press any movement key. The Wall Jump key combo can be held down to wall jump when a surface is in range to kick off
• ‘Manual Melee Kick’ – Works exactly the same as wall jump, except you jump off a player, which also inflicts damage and knocks them away. The reticle/crosshair is irrelevant.
• ‘(Lunge) Melee Kick’ – Shift. Will kick forward, and if you hit an enemy, it has the same effect as the melee kick above (won’t propel the player forward if you are floating, but will if you’re walking etc. on a surface with the magboots on)
  HUD:
• Open/close menu while in a game/match – M or ESC
• Chat – T
• Show player list & scores – TAB
• Show framerate – H
• Show ping & speed – V
• Superior framerate monitor – 8
• CPU and GPU and draw calls (time per frame) – J
• Breakdown of time spent by GPU on various tasks (per frame). A bit buggy, appears to take a screenshot but is probably it’s writing to a log or something? – K
  Weapons:
• Laser/’Charge Laser’ – 1
• Shotgun – 2
• Railgun/Megarail – 3
• SMG – 4
• Homer Gun or Rocket Launcher – 5
• ERC 479 (Ricochet projectiles) – 6
• Next weapon – R
• Previous weapon – F
• Zoom – Middle mouse button to toggle on/off, or zoom whenever you hold down CAPSLOCK

Servers

On the first screen of ZGA, from the “Find a Game” menu button, you will be able to see and join others’ servers, and vice versa. There is a dedicated server that should always be online – if it isn’t, post a message on the discussion forum to let Jon know! This dedicated server I presume is like the Auto-Managed servers (see Host a Server below), that have timed matches and hold map votes to start a new match after the previous one ends.
From the “Join a LAN Game” menu button, you will be able to join a game on your local network,
that is, you can’t join games that require an Internet connection, nor do you need an Internet connection (though you’d need to use Steam in offline mode in that case :P) (refer Update 36). You enter the Host’s local IP address. If it doesn’t work in a few seconds, it probably never will – if somethings wrong, there are no errors, nothing will happen (as of Update 36).

You can host a Listen server from the “Host a Listen Server” menu button and choosing the settings you want. That is, the map, max number of players, game mode, and whether you want to require a password for someone to be able to join, as well as: Lan mode – for local network computers to join only, and Auto-Managed – you as the host will have no control over the server, and instead the server will start matches and hold a map vote for these matches automatically (note that matches will be timed by default, though this doesn’t seem to be able to be changed).
If you did not choose Auto-Managed: After you click “Host Listen Server” to host the server, the in-game menu will be there, and by going to the “Server” tab/menu-button you can set the time limit or score limit (depending on whether “Timed mode?” is ticked or not), or change the map and/or game mode, as well as “start” the game. If the game is not started, the players can play as normal, but the game will not end when the target score/time is reached (and “(Game Not in Progress)” will appear instead in the top-right corner of the screen). Starting the game also serves to reset the scores and respawn the players afresh.

Basic Gameplay

When you spawn, you start off with the laser, which fires an accurate, continuous beam and recharges when you’re not shooting.
You have “Health” of 100 points that will deplete when attacked by another player or injured by the environment, e.g. furnace/heat areas and eletricity beams.
You have “Defence” of 100 points which will shoulder some of the damage you receive, and recharge after a while of not being injured; that is, suppose you have at least 50 Defence and are shot and lose 50 Defence and 50 Health, but suppose you have 0 Defence instead, then you might lose 100 Health instead (I haven’t confirmed the specific mechanics for this yet).
You have “Ammo”, which simply shows you how much ammo you have left for the current weapon.

There is no sprint button. The running acceleration is 4000cm/s^2.

let X represent the damage taken, let D be the current Defence points.
Health is reduced by X * ( 1 – (D – X/2)/100 ) or X * ( 100% – (D – X/2)% )
Defence is reduced by X, i.e. the damage taken
So when I take damage, the damage-to-Health is reduced by the percentage my Defence meter is full but that reduction is weakened the higher the damage (X) is.
If I take 50 damage at full Health and Defence, then the reduction to damage-to-Health is:
100% – 50/2/100 = 100% – 25% = 75%. My health falls by 1/4 of the damage taken.
If I take 50 damage at 50 Defence, then the reduction is:
50% – 50/2/100 = 25%, which isn’t as high so my health falls by 3/4 of the damage taken.
As you can see, you will always take some damage to your Health, but this damage is reduced based on how full your Defence meter is!

You can pick up weapons found in the map which also serve to add more ammunition.
You can also pick up health packs (boxes with a green glowing plus on the top).
You can also pick up a grapple weaponiser, which is a capsule that has blue lights. The grapple will then inflict an electric shock on other players that it intersects. It doesn’t wear off as of Update 22.

There are basic flat surfaces that have magfields that pull you toward it to use as a floor.
There are also spheres that may have spherical magfields that pull you toward it so you can move on its surface (like a mini-planet).
You might also find magfields that pull you to the inside surface of a sphere or construct (aka pushes you away from a central point), that allows you to move on the inside surface of a sphere.
The magfields can pull you in any direction in any way and be anywhere, so you might find odd magfields that don’t associate with particular floors/surfaces/objects.

There are a lot of physics involved, so if you know some of that stuff then it might help when understanding how your character will move if you do certain things.
But if not, you can still experiment around and practice just like any other sport and you’ll get the hang of it (and and maybe ask people in the discussion for some tips)!

Weapons

(Possessed on player spawn)
Ammo = 100 initial, 100 maximum
Damage per second (DPS) = 175
Rate of fire = ~33 points per second
-Fires continuously when the Fire key is held down.
-Recharges/reloads continuously when not being fired.
-No recoil

Ammo = 20 from pickup, 40 maximum
Damage per pellet = 8, with 15 pellets shot per fire
Reload time = 0.5 second(s)
-Medium Recoil

Ammo = 15 from pickup, 30 maximum
Damage = 90
Reload time = 1.0 second(s)
-High Recoil

Ammo = 200 from pickup, 400 maximum
Damage per bullet = 20
DPS = 240 (=20×12), (though you would have to be quite close for every bullet to hit)
Rate of fire = 12 rounds per second
-Automatic (i.e. no reload time)
-Accuracy/spread worsens the further away the target is
-Low Recoil

Ammo = 15 on pickup, 30 maximum
Damage per projectile = 40
-Slow
-Locked-on (i.e. visible) enemies show up outlined by a blue-cornered square
-Tries to home in on the closest locked-on target
-Distinct noise and trail when travelling
-No Recoil

Ammo = 20 on pickup, 40 maximum
Damage = 80 within 0.75m of impact point, and reduces linearly to 10 at the max radius (i.e. -40 per meter). Also extra damage for direct hit (though, less than a 1-hit kill)
Blast radius = 2.5m
Launch speed = 12.5m/s
Rocket acceleration = 10000m/s^2
-Low/Medium Recoil

Ammo = 50 from pickup, 100 maximum
Damage = 50
Fire mode: Semi-automatic
Max rate of fire: 5 shots per second
Projectile muzzle speed: 6500 cm/s
-Projectiles ricochet, aka bounce off surfaces
-Low/Medium recoil
-Projectiles ricochet off each other
-You can injure yourself with them, so be careful!
-Disappears on the 4th collision (can only bounce 3 times)

Delay = Inflicts damage only after 0.4 seconds after shooting the grapple (it will change color to indicate as such)
Damage = 40 per ‘shock’
Cooldown = 1 second(s) before it can shock the same enemy again
Impulse (knockback) = 75000
-The grapple will have a blue electrified effect
-Enemies that intersect your grapple are electrocuted (and are engulfed by matching special effects) and receive damage and knockback
-Does not wear off as of Update 22

Damage = 60 + 2 x [impact speed (m/s) relative to the target], but max of 150, (In-game speed for a normal run shows as 600 cm/s, which is 60+12=72 damage)

Game modes

Simply kill any other player to earn a point. The first person to get the number of points set by the host wins.

The same as FreeForAll, except that there are two teams, Red and Blue, and the first team to get the number of points set by the host wins. Individual points earned increases your own score and increases the total of your team.

You win by accumulating time spent in the pink region (aka the “Hill”; e.g. a pink cube). Obviously, others will try to knock you out or simply kill you. You must reach the target number of seconds set by the host to win.

Same as KingOfTheHill except that the sum of the times of the players in your team is what must reach the target set by the host.

This is a team game with two teams, Red and Blue.
In this game mode, there is a giant sphere (twice the size of a person) that must be dragged to the goal of your team (well, it can be pushed a very tiny distance by weapons). If you touch the Sphere, you get electric shocked, take damage, and are knocked away. Generally, the harder/faster you hit the Sphere, the more damage and knockback you will receive.
The CTS Sphere is actually 1000kg by the way, which means it has a lot of inertia (very hard to get moving, or change it’s speed once it’s moving).

Note in team games that a player will quickly die if they enter the region of the opposing team’s dedicated spawn area (if it exists in the map).

Interface, Settings and Customisation

All general settings are accessible from the main menu outside of a game.
Some settings are not accessible from the in-game menu.

• Tutorial – Enter a tutorial map, learn the basics some moves, and attack some dummies!.
• Manual – A text manual that also includes the controls (default keybinds).
• News / Current-state – lists details such as work in progress (WIP) elements and current developmental focus
• Play Single Player – Select a map and game mode, and you can play a match by yourself (No Computer players to play against yet as of Update 22).
• Find a Game – Shows the list servers you can join (If “No sessions found”, it is likely none exist at the moment; There’s something wrong if “Search failed”!).
• Host a Listen Server – Set the map, game mode, target score (and a password to join if you want), then start. You can still change all these once you’re in.
• Settings – Graphics, Audio, Mouse and HUD settings are here. Note that there are gameplay related settings in Graphics (e.g. Field of View (FOV) and Zoom FOV).
• Edit Controls – Change the keybinds and toggle Advanced Grapple Control here.
• Customise Character – Goes to a fancy screen showing your character and some sliders to change the color of your suit and the plates of armor on it. It also shows the name that will be shown ingame, but uses your Steam name and can’t be changed from Zero G Arena as of Update 22?