My understanding of the excessive mod...
Be careful or you will confuse other players. Excessive is a Q3 Mod that also works on OA. I have always hated it. Excessive is just like baseq3/baseoa in terms of movement, weapon power, player health, etc. The differences are that you start with all weapons and ammo and the rate of fire for all weapons is completely insane. IMO, Excessive is all about SPAM.
Excessive Plus (E+) was based on Excessive back in 2001 but quickly diverged. Initially, the main differences were that the weapons were made very powerful which required that players start with slightly over three times the normal health points. Then, by 2003, virtually all servers had eliminated the insane rate of fire.
I have been playing E+ since 2004 and have never seen an E+ public server setup like Excessive. Nonetheless, in homage to the Excessive Mod, the Excessive Plus Mod still contains 5 configs (excessive1 to excessive5) that are integrated within the pak file.
...you start with all weapons, unlimited ammo, and generally you can't hurt yourself.
This is what I have tried in quake 3 and OA for excessive. Your saying it's not "excessive" like that?
I am saying it doesn't have to be. What most ppl don't understand about E+ is that there is no right or wrong way to setup an E+ Server. The entire stated purpose of E+ is freedom of choice for the Server Admin.
That does not mean that certain styles are not more popular than others. The "Plus" style configuration is one of the most popular setups. Typically, you start with all weapons, have triple the usual Q3/OA health points and regenerate those points, have unlimited ammo, can perform multi-jumps, don't sustain self-damage, Rail Gun and sometimes other weapons are InstaGib weapons (that is, 1 shot 1 kill), etc.
However, even within this popular "style" of E+ there are huge variations. For every item above that I said is "typical" there are "Plus" style configs where you don't start with all weapons, where you can't perform multi-jumps or are limited to a few, where you don't have unlimited ammo, and where the Rail Gun is not an InstaGib weapons, etc.
Besides the "Plus" style, "Rail Only" and "Excessive" are also popular styles. The Excessive style does not replicate the Excessive mod but does use its physics (such as that weird sideways movement when you jump) and does not permit multi-jumps.
While the freedom of E+ may seem chaotic it is manageable. First, the E+ Mod Developers, unlike fromhell, don't get annoying requests to increase or decrease weapon and variable settings. This is so common here at the OpenArena Forum that a separate game (
OAX) is being developed to accommodate these people. If fromhell packaged E+ and a few other Mods with OA, she/he could drop the OAX project and have more resources to focus on OA.
Second, there are config standards for the official ranking of Clan matches. This ensures a level playing field for both Clans.
If I understood well, ExcessivePlus was at the beginning an extension of the original excessive mods, but now it has grown up into a full featured mod that you can finely customize for almost all your needs (even making your own weapons modifications and simple mods).
Yes. Weapon and variable modifications were available since I started to play E+ in 2004 but now many other features have been added. In fact, one on my issues with E+ is that there is not sufficient documentation regarding all of its features. Especially the new and revamped variables added in version 2.
...although I don't know how the servers for this event will be configured.
It's my event so I will be using my configs. :-)
PlusD is a semi-professional configuration that offers a moderate number of multi-jumps, enables all weapons but increases the damage of lesser weapons, enables a moderate Anti-Camp, makes projectiles from the RG and GL bounce/ricochet, sets a 2 second time-to-live on the Grenade Launcher projectiles, supports additional settings for CTF, RTF, 1FCTF, PTL and TAG, and departs from other Plus style configs with the Rail Gun and BFG settings. In addition to the typical grenade/rocket slides (player movement via weapon) the Rail Gun has a decent self-knockback, but use it sparingly as you only spawn with 50 rounds of rail ammo.
Rail+ is a semi-professional configuration that offers the maximum number of multi-jumps. In addition to the Rail Gun and Gauntlet, the Machine Gun, Shotgun, and off-hand grapple/hook (/bind "your-key" +button5) are also enabled. Lesser weapons do a bit more damage and a moderate Anti-Camp is enabled. Projectiles from the Rail Gun bounce/ricochet, additional settings for CTF, RTF, 1FCTF, PTL and TAG are enabled, and while the Rail Gun does inflict 300 damage points it is not quite an InstaGib weapon as the default health on most E+ Servers is 333 points. In lieu of the typical grenade/rocket slides (player movement via weapon) the Rail Gun has an excessive self-knockback and 200 rounds of rail ammo.
Other published configs for E+ (please note that most Server Admins/players never bother to share their configs).
http://www.excessiveplus.net/forums/thread/the-weapons-cfg-library-for-2-0a