JailBreak is / was a mod for
id software's
Quake II, created by
Team Reaction.
Jailbreak is a deathmatch mod for Quake 2 in the tradition of CTF. Basically, there are two teams.Each team has a base with a Jail in it. When you kill someone on the otherteam (or they kill themselves :) they go to your Jail. When your Jail is full (ie, the entire team is captured) they all get Executed in a shower of gibsand your team earns massive quantities of frags. However, on each base is abutton to free the people in Jail, so the other team will be trying to freetheir people. And of course, if you get killed you go to the opposing Jail. So, basically the game is a slaughterfest with each team trying to balance between defending their jail, killing the other team, and freeing their own team.
- taken from http://www.planetquake.com/teamreaction/jailbreak/about.shtml
JailBreak also featured novel (at the time, anyway) player-controllable turrets. Handy for defense, but many felt they were over used ("Hey, stop spamming grenades!") and so usage was discouraged.
From humble beginnings, and with initially only a few developer-created maps, JailBreak quickly developed into a rather popular mod. As more maps and players began to pour in, the mod and Team Reaction were honored by
PC Gamer Magazine when they featured JailBreak both in the magazine and on the CD (WhiteNoise, the original JailBreak coder, later won
PC Gamer's mod contest with
Qpong).
Like all things, however, JailBreak began to fade. The original coder, WhiteNoise, and most of Team Reaction moved on to
Gloom, leaving JailBreak programming duties to fellow Reaction'er
anarchy. Real life intruded, and for a long time anarchy was unable to update and refine JailBreak.
JailBreak's popularity began to wane, eventually leaving behind a small band of dedicated players gathered around Team Reaction's forums.
Team Reaction has slipped on the soap!
Upset over Team Reaction's handling of the mod, and with
Quake III approaching, a group of JailBreakers broke off to form their own mod team,
Black Knight Productions. Their goal was to create a new JailBreak-like mod, dubbed "
Prisoners of War".
Team Reaction soon announced their own plans for a Quake 3 version of JailBreak, and the community began to split into two camps (ignoring those who didn't really care): those who supported Reaction and those who supported BKP.
BKP was first out of the gate with Prisoners of War, but eventually both sides calmed down and the two mods were combined into one: "
JailBreak: Prisoners of War".
A JailBreak mod was also created for Unreal Tournament, but I know little of it.
Lastly, I bring you websites: