Nerf Arena Blast

This page sucks. If you could make it suck less, that would be awesome. Specifically: This page is a mess of vague editor's notes that can't distinguish between actual unused content, pre-release info, hearsay or seemingly irrelevant observations.

Nerf Arena Blast is a Nerf-themed family-friendly first-person arena shooter based on the Unreal Engine.

Unused Mode#

[NerfI.LabRatGame]
bNoMonsters=True
bHumansOnly=False
bCoopWeaponMode=False
bClassicDeathmessages=False

A "Lab Rat" gamemode is defined as a GameInfo class, but is unused and unfinished.

Unused Weapons#

• There's two unknown guns in the introductory cutscene. One looks like a squat pulsator, while the other seems to be a quad tubed rocket launcher.
• Also in the cutscene, the Scattershot had some alternate naming... the Impactor is my best guess, but the source is very blurry.
• The squat green rockets in-game were some form of early Whomper ammo (it is possible that the Whomper functioned more like the Devastator from Duke Nukem at some point).
• Commented code is a great source of insight, but is not always 100% reliable. However, some code reveals that at one point the Whomper and Electroshield shared a single type of battery (probably forcing you to choose draining your shield for insane firepower).
• WeaponPaks have some (minimal) documentation in the manual (I think), and I'm sure were intended to act as weapon replacement mutators, so Nerf could release periodic weapon packs as updates or expansions to tie in with new products.
• Nerf Cannon has the original name Mighty Mo in both the manual and on the skin.
• "TraceRockets" are present, but not used in any guns. Speculation, they are unfinished seeking rockets intended for the Triplestrike (as UT's rocket launcher has a lock-on feature).
• There's an unused class of projectile MightyRox, a Nerfcannon ball with rocket physics (i.e. no drop, explodes on walls).

Miscellaneous#

• Sam had a flat top if the original icon is to be believed.
• Several taunts are unused by the AI.
• The original Barracuda's poster in the plaza featured a Ryan player who was re-skinned (in truth, his uniform was hue shifted to an odd combo of light brown, aqua and some other colors).
• The long-gone website of an Unreal map designer said he was part of a team designing third party maps for NAB's multiplayer, but due to time constraints, the feature was cut before any were really made.
• Obviously there's a lot of holdover code from Botpack / Unreal, I think the Flak Cannon primary fragments are present. Code for menu interfaces for IRC exist. "Face" icons, not used because NAB players don't "talk" like they do in UT.
• There's two ball repositories in every vanilla BallBlast map, and in one or two of those maps, one of the repositories is worth 2x score, but the other levels never had this implemented.
• There was another site that showed off a beta, unfinished build of the game for Macs, but the interesting part was the screenshot showing Amateur arena in an earlier state, such as the point targets being in recessed tubes in the wall.

References#