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Dodgeball
It's an incredibly simplistic mod at heart. Relax, it's easy to pick up.
Basic mechanics: When you kill someone, they go to Prison, an area behind the enemy lines. If you kill someone from Prison, you return to the field. Balls, usually 5, spawn in the middle of maps. Rounds continue until one side no longer has any fielded players, i.e. everyone's dead and in prison. You cannot move while holding a ball, but you can jump and maintain aerial momentum you had prior to picking up a ball. When you are the last fielded player on your team, you can move and dodge while holding a ball, albeit at a reduced speed.
Firing modes and Catching
There's two offensive shots in Dodgeball - a volley, and a shot.
A volley is done by simply firing the ball while it is moving through the air, or lying on the ground. Your 'shield gun' fires in a wide cone in front of you, it has significant reach. The main thing to keep in mind when volleying is this: aim your gun, don't aim the ball. If you're not looking at least a bit up, you'll fire the ball into the ground, diminishing velocity and effectively committing suicide against anyone with a right mouse button.
Note: Neutral balls that are bouncing around with a green trail are vollied with lower velocity compared to stationary balls or balls players fired.
A shot is performed with your ball launcher, which you automatically switch to when you walk over a ball, or catch one. Regular fire charges your shot - the longer you charge, the faster your ball will fire. If you charge it completely, however, your ball will fire off in a random direction. While you charge, you can curve the ball with the next/previous weapon buttons. By default, scrolling up curves to the left, and down to the right. You can curve more or less by the amount you scroll. Additionally, slower balls curve more than faster balls, with uncharged curve shots turning close to 90°.
Note: Curve balls are not inherently superior to straight shots. While they are useful in shots utilizing the walls, when not aimed perfectly, curved balls are experienced as easier to catch.
Alternative fire with the ball launcher simply fires the ball with a different sound effect, and slightly faster than an uncharged regular fire. The actual firing time, or the release of the ball from the gun is identical. It is advised to outright ignore alternative fire. The time lag before you switch back to your shield gun is signficantly greater than regular fire, increasing the time before you can catch/volley again.
Note: Both volleys and shots can kill as long as they have your team's colour trail, which is lost after the second bounce.
Catching is your alt fire functionality while not holding a ball. When you catch an opponent's ball, they die and are sent to prison. When you catch a prisoner's ball, they are put in Permanent Prison (PP), unable to return to the field. At this point, I do not believe Permanent Prison works as intended. It was fixed at one point, but the fix was lost somewhere along the road. I hear Izumo has plans for this. Your catch can retrieve balls from a distance, across the Prison-Field barrier, or the middle line.
Known bugs:
When you die while charging a shot, you may spawn without a weapon, or be knocked into Spectate. Suicide resets you in both cases, though you lose 1 point from your score. You may also Spectate/Join, which is useful when you don't want to be tossed into Prison for suiciding. This obviously resets your points entirely.
When an opponent dies while holding a ball, catching that ball before it hits the ground may kill a random opponent still in-field. Or yourself. (Suicide through this method does not put you in Prison).
Unreal Open
It's tennis, though lenient with more specific rules. For example, in UO, you may return a serve before it has bounced, which would normally be illegal. For the point system, please refer to an actual tennis game.
Serving: Like tennis, you have to serve diagonally, into the box closest to the net on your opponent's side of the field. The firing modes are identical to dodgeball - you may charge your regular fire, and alt fire fires a ball slightly faster than an uncharged regular fire. For beginners, the easiest serve is jumping, aiming slightly up, and hitting alt fire. Jumping makes everything easier as far as landing serves go.
The playing field is determined when the game starts. If a side starts with 1 player, they play with a Singles field for the rest of that match. If a side starts with more than 1 player, they play with a Doubles field. In doubles, the field expands to include the alleys on the sides, also known as tramlines - though the serve area remains the same.
Firing: Except for the serving shot, UO is played almost entirely through volleys reminiscent of Dodgeball. Again, aim your gun, not the ball. The ball doesn't necessarily have to be in your field of view to hit it, the UO shield gun has a ridiculous cone.
Regular fire simply volleys with medium power. Alt fire is a charging shot - uncharged, it is slightly slower than a regular shot. Fully charged, it is a wild smash, nigh-unstoppable. While charging, your jump height is increased, your walking speed is decreased, and you cannot dodge.
Known bugs: if you charge your gun at the end of a round, you maintain that charge when you respawn in the next, without suffering the movement penalties. Game-breaking bug, and it'd be totally awesome if someone could fix it.
Well, there you have it.
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