Just A Monkey

Bid For Power
*All of the pictures on this page are from the official BFP site*
*click on a picture for full sized one*

Note: Bid For Power has officialy been canceled. There still is some hope through out the DBZ community that it will be released so we are going to leave this up here for now.

About -- I decided to write this for all you people who are still confused or don't know about Bid For Power. Most of the info here I got from the FAQ on the Bid For Power site and just compiled it into the important stuff. The pics are just thrown in there to give you an idea of what it looks like, they aren't in any order or related to the text that they're next to. If you see an interesting one, click on it and you can see the full sized one. Well there ya go. Read on.

As most of you already know, Bid For Power is a total conversion (TC) mod for Quake 3 Arena. A TC is a mod when almost everything in the game is totally redone. So Bid For Power (BFP) is pretty much a completely new game, it really just uses the Quake 3 engine to run it. For those few people who don't know what what Quake 3 is, it's a first-person shooter created by ID Games. If you feel like learning more about it, you can go to the company's site, here, or you can go to Quake World. To be able to play BFP, you're going to need to buy Quake 3 Arena. You can find it pretty much anywhere, just go to Wal-Mart or Target and you can get a pretty good deal.

Now back to BFP. Bid For Power uses DBZ characters and attacks to create a truly awesome fighting experience. You'll be able to fly, zanzoken, and perform various other moves from the anime. BFP also uses power levels to help determine how strong your character is. The more people you kill, the higher your PL becomes and the more attacks you earn. At the start of the game however, the character you choose doesn't reflect how powerful you are. So even Krillin would have the same power as Freiza, although in the anime Freiza kicks his ass easily.

There are six different types of multiplayer deathmatches, each having different rules and goals. They are Free For All, Capture the Dragonballs, Last Man Standing, Battle for the Planet, Team Play, and Tenkaichi Budokai. They are explained below.

Free For All -- Basic deathmatch rules. You try to kill as many as your opponents as possible in the given time, or you try to reach the frag limit. The player with the most frags (kills) when the time is out, or the player to reach the frag limit first is the winner.

Capture the Dragonballs -- In this variation, the players are divided into teams. It's similar to capture the flag, but you must capture all seven of the dragonballs instead of a flag. Two (or even three) teams will be placed at separate ends of the level, in each base are seven dragon balls. Spread throughout the level are seven dragon ball mantles, three on Earth Special Forces side, three on The Saiyajin side and one in the middle. The object of the game is to take as many Dragonballs from your home base and place them in the Dragonball mantles before the other team can.

Last Man Standing -- Each player has four senzu beans and starts with all of their attacks. It's basically just a free for all, but when you die, you use one of your senzu beans. When a player runs out of senzu beans, they lose and have to sit out until a new round begins. The last player alive wins.

Battle for the Planet -- In Battle for the Planet, one player is randomly picked to be either Freiza or Vegeta. That player is given an extremely high PL level to start with. The other players all try to defeat them, but their PL's are the regular level. The player who defeats Freiza or Vegeta gets to become the supercharged villain in the next round. If the other players (the Earth's Special Forces) aren't able to defeat them before the time/frag limit, the villain wins and can blow up the planet, and get to be the supercharged player in the next round again. The location of the battle depends on whether the villain is Freiza or Vegeta; if it's Freiza it takes place on Namek and if it's Vegeta it takes place on an Earth map.

Team Play -- The same rules as in Free For All, but with organized teams.

Tenkaichi Budokai -- This is basically just a huge tournament. The fighters go against each other in separate divisions, until everyone is eliminated and a champion is crowned.

There are many different moves you will need to master to be an expert at Bid For Power, and probably even to compete with anyone decent. It's definitely anything but a simple button masher. The most important of these are ki attacks, which I will go into more detail on later. The second way to inflict damage on your opponents is melee combat. While not as important as ki attacks, it is still necessary to be an avid BFP player. Another very important thing is flying. Flight will simply be a matter of pressing a button to toggle it on or off, then looking in the direction you want to go. Flight is limited by the amount of ki that you have, which is also later on in these preview. Midair combat will be very common and you should make sure that you learn how to fly very well. The fourth thing is the speed boost, which will allow you to move much quicker for a period of time. Like flying, this also uses ki. It can be used while running, or while flying to go extremely fast. The last thing in this section is blocking. To block, you simply hold down the block key. Blocking uses ki, but all damage inflicted while blocking is taken away from your ki instead of HP.

Power Level -- Your power level is how strong you are. It determines how much damage your attacks do, how much damage attacks do to you, the amount of ki you have at your disposal, how fast you move, and the attacks you have available to you. Each player starts the game with the same PL. Your PL increase whenever you kill other players. When you die, your PL is determined by the average PL of all the players, and when the round ends, all PL's are set back to the default level.

Power Tiers -- The number of attacks available to you is determined by the power tier you are in, which is determined by you power level. The color of your aura is also affected by this. Here is a simple chart to make it easy and organized.

Tier 1: < 100,000 PL. Blue aura, only one ki attack available.

Tier 2: 100,000 – 250,000 PL. Red aura, two ki attacks selectable.

Tier 3: 250,000 – 500,000 PL. Red aura, three ki attacks selectable.

Tier 4: 500,000 – 999,000 PL. Red aura, four ki attacks selectable.

Ultimate Tier: 1 mil PL. Yellow aura, all attacks selectable.

When you reach the ultimate tier, if your character has a transformation, it occurs. So if you're a saiyan, once your PL reaches one million, you go SSJ.

Ki Energy -- Your ki is what you use to fuel your ki attacks, flying, using the boost, and blocking. The maximum amount of ki you have is determined by your PL, so the higher your PL, the longer you can fly and such. You can recharge you ki by powering up. The downside of this is that you're immobile and highly visible to other fighters while you do this, but it's necessary, especially for players at lower PL's.

Hit Stun -- While in hit stun, the player cannot move, attack, block, or charge. 3 seconds of hit stun is added when melee is used in combination with the boost key. 1 second of hit stun is added when the player runs out of ki.

Ki Attacks -- Ki attacks are what you'll probably use the most to fight with. Unlike normal Quake 3 weapons, these attacks have dimensions instead of just a trajectory, and if two attacks collide, the more less powerful one will explode and the other will continue on it's course. The exception to this is beam attacks, which will destroy other attacks regardless of power. There are five different types of ki attacks. They are:

Standard Attacks: Hold down and you fire

Charge up attacks: Press fire to start charging, then release to to fire attack

Minimum charge-up attacks: These attacks must be charged for a minimum amount of time before you can use it. A ball of ki is formed when the attack is ready

Beam attack: Another type of charge-up attack, but you can only fire one at a time. Once you fire you can guide its path with the crosshair

Homing attack: These attacks home in on the nearest player