D-Day: Normandy

D-Day Normandy, alternatively known as dday, is a team-based Quake II modification made by ViperSoft. Although no longer being officially developed, the modification continues to expand through the work of many members in the established community. The source code for the last official version was released on July 24, 2002, allowing third party developers full control over the gameplay.

Gameplay

The game has no single player mode, only online multiplayer. Two teams fight over bombarded towns, woodland and other World War II scenery. The official version includes only two teams: Allies (Americans) and Axis (Germans), although third party modifications have been created for Russian, British, Japanese and Polish teams. Different maps have different objectives, sometimes not all of which are kill-based.

All teams have set classes (some numbers are restricted);
* Infantry (unlimited): Rifle,
* Officer (Max 1): Submachinegun, pistol and binoculars (for air-strikes),
* Light Gunner (Max 2): Light machinegun,
* Heavy Gunner (Max 2): Heavy machinegun,
* Sniper (Max 2): Sniper rifle and pistol,
* Airborne (Max 1): Submachinegun,
* Engineer (Max 1): Anti-tank weapon, pistol and TNT,
* Medic (Max 4): Morphine,
* Flamethrower (Max 1): Flamethrower.

Each team has different player models and weapons, making for a total of over 50 different weapons. For example, a German officer is armed with an MP40, while his American equivalent will be armed with a Tommy gun.

Features

D-Day: Normandy is a of the original Quake II game. All of the models, textures and maps in the official version are of original creation. Unique features include airstrikes, 3 different stances (standing, crouched and prone) and true sight (ability to aim down the sight of the weapon instead of a crosshair).

Distributions
Since 100% of the artwork in the modification is original and the source code to the original game has been released, it is possible for the game to be distributed as a standalone game: Owning a copy of Quake II is not required to play. There are several different distributions of the game. Some include just the bare bones to play the game, others include every map and expansion ever created. The original standalone can be found at the official site.

Third party modifications
There are several different versions of the server-side code, each focusing on different aspects on the game. Most include various bug fixes along with a range of (sometimes unusual) features. For example; the SHAEF modification includes visuals of a dive bomber dropping the air-strikes instead of just audio, while the Capture The Church (CTC) mod makes maps including a church to be objective based (overriding the gameplay specified in the map itself).

The very first screen shot of the SHAEF aircraft recorded in a game is here Viper vs Stuka - other aircraft modelled include the Spitfire and the Zero.

Unique rules
D-Day: Normandy is unusual in the way that a lot of the rules for the game are not server enforced, in that they require discipline from the players. The game was designed to be played in a non-deathmatch style (common of the FPS genre). This causes endless problems for both new and old players: The new players (newbies) do not know, understand or follow the self-imposed game rules, causing veteran players to become angry with them.

The following are examples of actions which are possible, but are not encouraged styles of play:
* Bunnying - Constant jumping in an attempt to avoid fire. Although this is somewhat limited by a stamina meter, it remains a problem.
* Diving - Changing stance mid-jump in an attempt to avoid fire.
* Camping - Staying in one spot with a specific tactical advantage.

As well as rules non specific to dday:
* Team killing - Intentionally killing members of your own team (also known as tk-ing).
* Cheating - Using aimbots or wallhacks to gain an unfair advantage
* Spamming - Mindless chatter, often taunting after a frag

Current state

It is a common joke to state that "dday is dead". This comes from the fact that because of developments in computer game graphics, the game has become unpopular and only has a small player base in the Northern Hemisphere. There are still a large number (20+) of servers hosting games around the world, although it can sometimes be difficult to find one with enough people for a serious game.

After ViperSoft stopped developing the game, most of the development shifted over to D-Day Dev Central (DDC).

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See Also

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