Curious George's Redeemer Insanity {CG}

{CG} is the cornerstone server of the House of Hermskii. Way back in 1999 I had just bought my 1st computer and was taking classes to become a Microsoft Certified Network Engineer. The computer was a clone PC consisting of a Pentium 166 and all of the other basics. My PC costs me about $2,400 back then. A friend showed me this game (UT) and I was immediately hooked. Prior to UT the only other game I had played was Warlords, a turn based strategy game. UT made me want to have a better PC since mine struggled so badly.  I couldn't afford a new one so I had to make what I had run faster. I slowly learned how to overclock my system. I quickly learned how important a good video card was too. I bought more ram, I upgraded the processor to a AMD K6 2-300 and then finally just broke down and built my own PC and bought a Voodoo card! Life was then good on the UT front for me!

I had found over several months of playing that I was still no match for the kids and their godlike reflexes. My buddy and I would end up just racing to find the redeemer and shoot it before we got killed in the hopes we'd take out one another and maybe a few other players. Our map of choice was Deck 16 since it was so easy to get to the redeemer. One day while cruising the DM servers we came across a server called Curious George's Redeemer Insanity. It only cycled DM-Deck16][ and was packed all of the time. Why was it packed? Most likely it was full of people like us who weren't really good enough to hold our own on their servers. You see, this server ran a certain mod. A redeemer only mod! You would spawn and you would start with 999 redeemers in your pocket. That was it. It was like a dream come true! To keep this short, after a few months, one day the server disappeared. After several months of anguish, I happened across a similar server. This one was called "Schwantz's Redeemer Arena" (SRA). It too ran a redeemer only mod but it actually cycled several other maps as well! I was quickly taken in by the fine crowd he had collected there and became a regular. I played there for about a year at which point I asked if I could have a copy of the mod because I wanted to start my own cut back version of his server. Schwantz gladly sent me a copy of the mod and I built my 1st server. I kept it strictly stock maps so no one would have to download anything to play. I went with the only name I could think of at the time which happened to be the same name of the server I first played this mod on; Curious George's Redeemer Insanity. So that is where the name of my server came from.

I am often asked what does the <SRA> clan like tag in front of my name and several other players names stand for. Here is the basic story: SRA (Schwantz's Redeemer Arena) had a ton of regulars and a ton of maps but we (the regular players there) weren't really getting any new blood (noobs) to fight against and we were getting tired of the same results with the same players night after night after night. Don't get me wrong...it was fun but after a couple years of the same people with usually the same results, it started getting slow. Part of the issue of no new players were the large amount of custom downloads (Maps, Voices, Skins, Textures, Music, Sounds) on the server and back then, no one knew how to use redirects so they took FOREVER to download and nobody was that patient.

I asked Schwantz if he'd mind giving me a copy of the mod he was using. I told him I wanted to make a training grounds of sorts for noobs to learn on and then I'd send them to the slaughter house called SRA after they had enough skill have a chance. He said sure and sent me the mod.

I built the server and used nothing but default maps so no one would have to download anything to play. They would get in instantly on their first try. I had a message that told the new players that if they could ever beat me, I'd direct them to the playing fields of the real Redeemer Arena pros. I told them that they would have to stress it was a qualification round so I would know to try hard as I used to be pretty good back then but I didn't play every single round like a championship round. So they would say they were going for it and I would go for it too. So if they won that round on any map, they knew and I knew that they won fair and square! They earned the right to play against the very best players this mod ever produced. They had earned the right to play at SRA!

As people would beat me I would have them email me their email address and I'd send them the name of the SRA Server and Forum. The plan was great and worked great except for three things: The first problem was that they would finally go to Schwantz's Redeemer Arena and they would get totally owned by the regulars there because they had never played on many of the custom maps that Schwantz ran. That put the noobs at a huge disadvantage. That would cause problem number two which was they would all come running back home to {CG} with their bloodied little noses where they could continue to own all of the less experienced noobs. That caused problem number three: the regulars from SRA knew that if they wanted to get to frag noobs, they'd most likely be at {CG} so the regulars started showing up at CG (the training grounds site for noobs) and would own them there too. I tried kicking, banning and everything else I knew how to do back then to keep the regulars out of the {CG} server. Nothing worked as they always found new and very clever ways to get back in and quench their thirst for noob frags.

I had even started banning players who had graduated to force them to continue their efforts on Schwantz's server but many had legit complaints being they were 56kers and the maps cycled so fast at the SRA server that they couldn't download the maps and additional files before it cycled and they'd get disconnected and not have any of the files that they had been downloading for 10 minutes. Others just hated that after finally making the senior grade status on the training server they would get knocked back down to being a freshman on the SRA server by the senior players there. The graduated noobs hated getting owned enough that they refused to play at SRA.

I eventually removed the bans and just let everyone play at {CG}. Schwantz had started new work and wasn't wanting to keep the level of focus on his server that he had maintained over the past several years so he shut SRA down handing {CG} the torch for the time being. SRA has been back up a couple of times as Schwantz has had time but he takes it back off-line when he gets busy.

Several other servers running this mod have come and gone over the years too. A few have made a real mark for themselves and have large followings of players.

{CG} has easily hosted over 300,000 games. I have long since settled down from my weekly modifications and such. This server still hosts about 50 games a day and I plan on leaving it up as long as anyone wants to keep playing on it. {CG} cycles about 150+ maps which mostly all of them can be downloaded through a link that I have listed below. I wanted this site to be a place for everyone to learn about this server and the people behind it as well as offer a place where people can download most of files needed that this server uses.

To make the most of your experience at {CG}, I have created this instruction set which will walk you through every thing you will need to play on {CG}. There are several maps cycling at {CG} currently. In order for our 56K players to play too, I compressed all of the maps into separate zip format Map Packs. Go straight down to the Map Pack section if they are all you need right now. If you are new to UT entirely, this is also a great place to get the Official UT Patch and Bonus Packs that were made after the game’s release. Just follow the directions below and you should then be able to connect to most UT servers without any issues.

Install UT but at the end of the install when if gives you the option to play, select finish instead.

Now download and install the 436 Patch. This fixes all of the problems that the game shipped with and has a built in NO-CD crack so you won’t need the game CD to play it anymore. Get the Patch here: (If you aren’t using the original installation CD, skip this download and go to the next step)

http://hermskii.com/files/UT436Patch.zip

If you are installing the game from a copied CD, you may have issues trying to use the UT 436 Patch. If this is true, then use this UT 436 No-Delta Patch instead of the one above. This patch works exactly as the one above except that it never checks to ensure the original CD is in the CD-ROM at the time of install. Get the UT 436 No-Delta Patch here:

http://hermskii.com/files/UT436NoDeltaPatch.zip

Install the Patch but don’t play yet. Move on to getting the Bonus Packs. These Bonus Packs have new maps, skins, sounds, music and textures that really enhance the game. Notice that I only listed Bonus Packs 1, 3 and 4. Bonus Pack number 2 turned out to be a bad Bonus Pack. Don’t ever install it unless you like having problems with your UT installation and never expect to play on line. I compressed the Bonus Packs using a tool called winrar. It works just like WinZip except it is able to compress better and still allows for zipping and unzipping WinZip files. You must use the winrar program to unpack .rar files however, I have compressed all of the files here using the zip format which as I mentioned above, can be opened using winrar. You can get the free version of winrar for Windows here:

http://hermskii.com/files/winRAR320.zip

Now that you have the winrar utility installed, you need to download the Bonus Packs. The Bonus Pack files are compressed but once you unzip them using a program like WinZip or winrar, they will then be in a format called .umod. A UMOD file is just a setup type file. Just double click the BonusPackName.umod and follow the instructions to install the Bonus Pack. Get the Bonus Packs here:

http://hermskii.com/files/UTBonusPacks134.zip

It’s time to get all of the other maps I use but I need to mention two things about these map packs. 1st: Some of these map's names have been altered to match the maps title listed inside of the map. I did this to avoid file mismatch errors and because several of them had the same name and yet were different maps. I also altered some of the map's names to meet Epic Map Naming Conventions such as capitalizing the DM before the map name and capitalizing the first character of every word in the name or separating words with underscores etc etc. This was not done to disrespect any of the actual map authors. I did this to simply ensure they listed in proper order in MapVote and listed in some cases by map type such as all of the Deck type maps start with Deck so that they will all list together and in order like Deck1, Deck16][, Deck32][ and so on and so on. The 2nd thing I want to mention is that I think that all of these maps are single file maps. What do I mean by that? I mean that the map is a stand-alone file. No music or textures or sounds or anything are required to play any of these maps. That's awesome because that means that all you'll need to do is download the Map Pack and unzip it straight into your c:\UnrealTournament\Maps folder and they will be ready to be played. Get the Map Packs from here:

http://hermskii.com/files/CGMapPack1.zip (This link does not work and will not be restored but the server uses high speed redirect so the files you need will download quickly!)

http://hermskii.com/files/CGMapPack2.zip (This link does not work and will not be restored but the server uses high speed redirect so the files you need will download quickly!)

Once that’s all downloaded and installed, you’re done! Start the game, set your preferences and get to fragging! Good luck. Please direct any questions or complaints to hermksii@hermskii.com . Thank you!

Disclaimer: Unreal Tournament is owned by Epic, Atari, GT Interactive and maybe a few other companies. Some of the files here may be trademark or copyright protected. If I have altered a map's name against the wishes of that map's author, please contact me and I will change it back to the original format or remove the map from this download site and from the server. Additionally, if anything here that has been made available for download by me and it should not be, I will happily remove it from this site as well upon request.