Introduction to Jailbreak

Overview of Jailbreak gameplay

Prisoners in jail

Jailbreak is a team game. Like Capture the Flag and Double Domination, players are in two teams, red and blue. Also like CTF, a map has a red team base and a blue team base. Like most other team games, the red team and the blue team aren't exactly friends. Your team's objective is to frag all the players of the enemy team. You'll know when you've fragged everyone because each time a player is fragged, he is sent to jail: a special sealed area of the map. Once all of the enemy players are in jail, your team scores a point and the round is over. All players will now respawn and a new round begins. Just like other team games, when a team's score reaches a certain limit, they win the match.

Of course, while your team is trying to send the enemy to jail, they're trying to do the same to you. But there is hope for players who are sent to jail. The mod is called Jailbreak because it's possible to "break" your teammates out of jail! Somewhere on the map, usually inside the enemy base, is a release switch. Activate this, and your fellow teammates are released from jail. Getting to the release switch will not be easy: a smart enemy will be defending their release switch. As well as trying to breach the enemy's defences to free your teammates, you should be defending the release switch that releases the enemy players you're keeping captive. If you don't defend the release switch, the enemy team will be able to break their teammates out of Jail at will!

What's new in Jailbreak 2004

If you're coming from Jailbreak for Unreal Tournament (UT Jailbreak, or Jailbreak III), you'll want to see at a glance what's new in this latest version:

• Standard release switch: most maps feature the same distinctive release switch, so you know what you're looking for.
• Maps can have multiple jails and multiple switches.
• Jailbreak-specific mutators are in the Add-ons tab. You'll find old favourites Release Protection, Llama Hunt and Celebration Screen there.
• Bot tactics: human players' behavior directly affects the orders bots assume.
• Theme music: the Jailbreak theme song plays while you're setting up a game in the launch screens.
• Choice of voices: UnrealGrrl, who provided the voice announcements to Jailbreak III, is joined by HyperFreak.
• Panorama map: jealous of your jailed team-mates who had Screen maps in Jailbreak III? Now there's a map displayed on the scoreboard.
• Cameras: these have been souped up, and can now pan, rotate and track players as they cross the field of view.

Summary

Here's what you need to do in Jailbreak:

• stay alive
• round up the enemy in jail
• free members of your team who have been captured

That's the absolute basics. But there are two other ways out of jail: the arena and the escape route, though the latter is not a feature of all maps.

That's it. You're now ready to play. You'll find more information on the concepts mentioned above on the Playing Jailbreak page.