How is that possible?
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phantasmagoria
- Posts: 8523
- Joined: Wed Oct 22, 2003 7:00 am
What I don't understand is people who are just genuinely shit at games. I play daily on a cs rats server and i usually come about 3rd, which I'm happy with, I don't play that competitively and usually try not to be your average m4/ak whore etc... but there are regulars who play on the server who are lucky if they get a kill. They've been playing for about 6 months and they're just shit. It can't be much fun spawning, running out of your base area and dying immediately, over and over and over again. So why do they persist?
[size=85]
Well am sure everyone has their own reasons, but I persist because aside from school/sports and friends I have nothing better to do with my time. And the rare times I do actually win a match it encourages me to keep playing.It can't be much fun spawning, running out of your base area and dying immediately, over and over and over again. So why do they persist?
Were you born a fat slimy scumbag puke piece of shit or did you have to work on it!?
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NitrousFlare
- Posts: 81
- Joined: Sun Oct 30, 2005 6:32 am
what i found, is that at pretty much EVERY game i try, there's a trick to it. and i had to figure it out, otherwise i would extremely suck, for instance, CS, my trick was (this got me from last place in 32 ppl servers, to a cal-i sponsered clan with 9 servers) crouch and pull down when shooting.
i haven't exactly figured out the trick to q4, but im gettig close =p
i haven't exactly figured out the trick to q4, but im gettig close =p
Move as fast as possible. In a 1v1 if you can move faster then your opponent you can whored the items, and if you have equal or even slightly worse aim, you will still come out on top.NitrousFlare wrote: i haven't exactly figured out the trick to q4, but im gettig close =p
Movement is life. :icon32:
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phantasmagoria
- Posts: 8523
- Joined: Wed Oct 22, 2003 7:00 am
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[xeno]Julios
- Posts: 6216
- Joined: Fri Dec 10, 1999 8:00 am
Some excellent advice in this thread - I should check this forum more, since it seems to have taken over from the old Competitor's Edge forum.
Krazy_k, perhaps treating quake as a martial art will help - I know it certainly has helped me.
Your motor visual system is absolutely fundamental in becoming a good player. Higher level skills such as movement, weapon, combat, and strategy will progressively develop, but it is key to optimize the machine that is your body, if it is to successfully interface with the game.
First, you might want to treat the game with the respect that a martial art, or competitive sport requires. This means preparing your mind and body for intensive learning sessions. It means devoting sustained bouts of attention, which requires patience, among other things.
If you cannot do this, then you need to address the problem on this level.
The most direct interfaces between your body and the game are the eyes and the upper body motor system. You thus want to ensure high quality visual information (visual config, monitor settings, etc), and high quality motor functioning (seating position, mouse dynamics, keyboard config).
Think of the mouse as your sword. You want to develop a confident and useful grip and a way of handling the mouse. As has been alluded to in this thread, there are many different sets of muscular groups that can interact to control the mouse. Some players use the muscles in the upper arm as a primary controller (pivoting at the elbow), while others use the forearm muscles (pivoting at the wrist). At either extreme are the chest and back muscles (pivoting at the shoulder), and the metacarpal muscles (flexing and extending your fingers).
Some players use many or all of these muscle groups in an integrative fashion - that is, they use multiple groups at once, like a set of gears, while others specialize in single groups.
Think of conducting an orchestra with a baton - for wide sweeping movements the entire arm moves as a whole (chest and back muscles), while for tinier movements, the conductor's fingers may barely twitch.
The positioning of your body with respect to the desk and mousepad, and the positioning of the mousepad, with respect to your desk, will need to be adjusted to accomodate your own unique style. Work with your body type, just like learning complex movements in the gym requires you to work with your own particular body structure.
In general, I find that the further in your mousepad is (how deep into your desk), the more you are favouring the broader strokes (chest&back), while keeping the mousepad closer to the edge of the desk favours wrist movements.
Grip is also crucial. I only have extensive experience with the wingman gaming mouse, so take that into consideration. Depending on the style of the mouse, and your own preference, you may choose to use either a two finger (2f), or a three finger (3f) grip. A three finger grip allows for more control, since you involve an extra group of muscles (fiver fingers instead of four) to modulate the control of the mouse. However, a 2f grip allows for a tighter control unit. To understand this, consider that with a 2f grip, you can grip the side edges of the mouse with your thumb on the left side, and the ring finger on the right side. With a 3f grip, it's the thumb on the left side, and the pinky on the right. From my own experience, it seems that the ring finger is stronger and better coordinated than the pinky, and being able to control the sides of the mouse with strength and coordination is an advantage when trying to modulate the lateral velocity of the mouse. For instance, if you're flicking to the right, you can use the muscles that are acting upon the right side of the mouse to act as a braking force which can control the movement and duration of the flick.
However, this advantage may be not as significant as it seems, and the advantages of a 3f grip may outweigh this relative insignificance.
Unfortunately, many three button mice have the three buttons quite close together, which cramps and restricts the fingers. The wingman (which is essentially dead) allows for a 3f grip where all three fingers are in relaxed position - with the same amount of spread as there'd be if you were sleeping. Take this factor into consideration when choosing the grip.
Another important aspect of grip is the parts of your hand which are in contact with the mouse. This is a function of the shape of the mouse (flatter mice = less surface area in contact with palm, humped mice = more), and the arch of your hand. You can increase the arch of your hand by pivoting your hand upwards, around the wrist, and by flexing your fingers (so that fingertips rotate toward palm).
Notice that if your entire hand is in contact with the mouse, it is virtually impossible to use the metacarpal muscles to control the mouse. A quick experiment will demonstrate this clearly:
Grasp your mouse so that your entire palm and all the length of the fingers are in contact with the mouse. Now draw a circle on the screen with your cursor (or a figure eight or whatever).
Now grasp the mouse with a curved arch so that only your finger tips are in contact with the mouse, and draw the same figure. be sure to use your metacarpal muscles to control the movement.
Notice the surgical precision?
Assuming a 3f grip, when you flex your middle three fingers, the cursor moves down, and when you extend them, the cursor moves up. When you flex your thumb, the mouse moves right (if thumb is positioned on left edge), and when you flex your pinky, the mouse moves left.
Note that you now have five independent modulators which can seamlessly interact with the mouse in order to produce a desired movement.
Some people prefer more surface area in contact with mouse (with much of their palm in contact with mouse), because it provides a more stable and rigid contact with the mouse from which to use the higher level muscle groups, and it is more comfy; This would make sense if you didn't want to use the metacarpal muscles at all, but if you do want to incorporate them, you'll need a grip that compromises palm in favour of fingertips. You must develop your own balance, and experiment.
The way in which you configure your mouse settings should work in concert with your control style. The key thing to consider is that with larger movements of the mouse, you can afford lower sensitivities, and smaller movements require higher sensitivities. For instance, if you use all wrist, your muscles can only move the mouse over a small distance on the mousepad. As such, you'll need to use a higher sensitivity so that you can cover more area with the crosshair with those small movements.
Lower sensitivities have the advantage of increased aiming resolution (which is why sniping requires low sensitivity).
Higher sensitivities have the advantage of being able to cover more crosshair area per unit time.
If you used all wrist, and a low sensitivity, you would need to twist the wrist multiple times to do a 180 degree turn. It wouldn't really be a flick, rather than a series of flicks, each of which is interrupted by picking up the mouse. This is because the wrist only allows the mouse to arc over a few centimetres.
If, however, you used all chest and back, you could move the mouse over a metre long arc, and would thus be able to do a 180 in one flick even with a very low sensitivity (course you'd need a very large mousepad and would need to make room for the arc by moving your keyboard).
Now of course, pivoting your entire shoulder in its full lateral range of motion takes longer than pivoting your wrist in its full lateral range of motion, but the point is, they are both continuous and finely controlled movements, which is important in flicks.
Furthermore, you are not going to use your entire shoulder range to control the mouse (unless you're tom cruise in minority report using the holographic interface). More likely, you'll use a combination of some of the lower groups. Once you have decided upon your mousing style, you can then start tuning your sensitivity so that you can easily flick, with one quick and continuous motion of the involved muscle groups, over a respectable crosshair area.
180 degrees is a good standard for a flick, so tune your sensitivity so that you can flick 180 degrees within the margins of your muscle movements.
Mouse acceleration can be a benefit depending on your preference. If you choose to use it, I would recommend the following tuning method:
Turn off accel. Choose a sens at which you can comfortably and accurately track the "foveal" portion of the screen (that is, the tight centre of your focus over which the xhair tracks).
Next, start increasing accel until you can do a natural and effective 180 flick.
You can fine tune this by adding or decreasing sens, and/or adding or decreasing accel. Using the console is critical here, as you can input the values directly using even decimals.
Find your own balance over time, and don't be afraid to experiment. I radically changed my own paradigm of mouse control years after I had reached a high level of control with one style - in effect I went from one extreme to another. Took me months to get used to the new style, and to start mastering it. Took a lot of open mindedndess to stick with it so I could really assess it properly.
I went from a 2f grip with mouse right at edge of desk, super high sens/no accel, and wrist only (you could have nailed my wrist to the edge of desk and i'd've still been able to play), to a 3f grip with mouse a foot and a half into desk, with super low sens and a decent amount of mouse accel, using all my muscles integratively. Both configurations used the bridged fingertip approach (fingertips also allow for tiny and ultra-fast modulations to aim).
You may also want to devote some energy into learning about the game engine itself. The fact that you don't know what timescale is probably means that you haven't experimented much with the engine (through the console).
You also may want to start training in an rocket arena environment.
This allows for a focus on combat and weapons training.
Krazy_k, perhaps treating quake as a martial art will help - I know it certainly has helped me.
Your motor visual system is absolutely fundamental in becoming a good player. Higher level skills such as movement, weapon, combat, and strategy will progressively develop, but it is key to optimize the machine that is your body, if it is to successfully interface with the game.
First, you might want to treat the game with the respect that a martial art, or competitive sport requires. This means preparing your mind and body for intensive learning sessions. It means devoting sustained bouts of attention, which requires patience, among other things.
If you cannot do this, then you need to address the problem on this level.
The most direct interfaces between your body and the game are the eyes and the upper body motor system. You thus want to ensure high quality visual information (visual config, monitor settings, etc), and high quality motor functioning (seating position, mouse dynamics, keyboard config).
Think of the mouse as your sword. You want to develop a confident and useful grip and a way of handling the mouse. As has been alluded to in this thread, there are many different sets of muscular groups that can interact to control the mouse. Some players use the muscles in the upper arm as a primary controller (pivoting at the elbow), while others use the forearm muscles (pivoting at the wrist). At either extreme are the chest and back muscles (pivoting at the shoulder), and the metacarpal muscles (flexing and extending your fingers).
Some players use many or all of these muscle groups in an integrative fashion - that is, they use multiple groups at once, like a set of gears, while others specialize in single groups.
Think of conducting an orchestra with a baton - for wide sweeping movements the entire arm moves as a whole (chest and back muscles), while for tinier movements, the conductor's fingers may barely twitch.
The positioning of your body with respect to the desk and mousepad, and the positioning of the mousepad, with respect to your desk, will need to be adjusted to accomodate your own unique style. Work with your body type, just like learning complex movements in the gym requires you to work with your own particular body structure.
In general, I find that the further in your mousepad is (how deep into your desk), the more you are favouring the broader strokes (chest&back), while keeping the mousepad closer to the edge of the desk favours wrist movements.
Grip is also crucial. I only have extensive experience with the wingman gaming mouse, so take that into consideration. Depending on the style of the mouse, and your own preference, you may choose to use either a two finger (2f), or a three finger (3f) grip. A three finger grip allows for more control, since you involve an extra group of muscles (fiver fingers instead of four) to modulate the control of the mouse. However, a 2f grip allows for a tighter control unit. To understand this, consider that with a 2f grip, you can grip the side edges of the mouse with your thumb on the left side, and the ring finger on the right side. With a 3f grip, it's the thumb on the left side, and the pinky on the right. From my own experience, it seems that the ring finger is stronger and better coordinated than the pinky, and being able to control the sides of the mouse with strength and coordination is an advantage when trying to modulate the lateral velocity of the mouse. For instance, if you're flicking to the right, you can use the muscles that are acting upon the right side of the mouse to act as a braking force which can control the movement and duration of the flick.
However, this advantage may be not as significant as it seems, and the advantages of a 3f grip may outweigh this relative insignificance.
Unfortunately, many three button mice have the three buttons quite close together, which cramps and restricts the fingers. The wingman (which is essentially dead) allows for a 3f grip where all three fingers are in relaxed position - with the same amount of spread as there'd be if you were sleeping. Take this factor into consideration when choosing the grip.
Another important aspect of grip is the parts of your hand which are in contact with the mouse. This is a function of the shape of the mouse (flatter mice = less surface area in contact with palm, humped mice = more), and the arch of your hand. You can increase the arch of your hand by pivoting your hand upwards, around the wrist, and by flexing your fingers (so that fingertips rotate toward palm).
Notice that if your entire hand is in contact with the mouse, it is virtually impossible to use the metacarpal muscles to control the mouse. A quick experiment will demonstrate this clearly:
Grasp your mouse so that your entire palm and all the length of the fingers are in contact with the mouse. Now draw a circle on the screen with your cursor (or a figure eight or whatever).
Now grasp the mouse with a curved arch so that only your finger tips are in contact with the mouse, and draw the same figure. be sure to use your metacarpal muscles to control the movement.
Notice the surgical precision?
Assuming a 3f grip, when you flex your middle three fingers, the cursor moves down, and when you extend them, the cursor moves up. When you flex your thumb, the mouse moves right (if thumb is positioned on left edge), and when you flex your pinky, the mouse moves left.
Note that you now have five independent modulators which can seamlessly interact with the mouse in order to produce a desired movement.
Some people prefer more surface area in contact with mouse (with much of their palm in contact with mouse), because it provides a more stable and rigid contact with the mouse from which to use the higher level muscle groups, and it is more comfy; This would make sense if you didn't want to use the metacarpal muscles at all, but if you do want to incorporate them, you'll need a grip that compromises palm in favour of fingertips. You must develop your own balance, and experiment.
The way in which you configure your mouse settings should work in concert with your control style. The key thing to consider is that with larger movements of the mouse, you can afford lower sensitivities, and smaller movements require higher sensitivities. For instance, if you use all wrist, your muscles can only move the mouse over a small distance on the mousepad. As such, you'll need to use a higher sensitivity so that you can cover more area with the crosshair with those small movements.
Lower sensitivities have the advantage of increased aiming resolution (which is why sniping requires low sensitivity).
Higher sensitivities have the advantage of being able to cover more crosshair area per unit time.
If you used all wrist, and a low sensitivity, you would need to twist the wrist multiple times to do a 180 degree turn. It wouldn't really be a flick, rather than a series of flicks, each of which is interrupted by picking up the mouse. This is because the wrist only allows the mouse to arc over a few centimetres.
If, however, you used all chest and back, you could move the mouse over a metre long arc, and would thus be able to do a 180 in one flick even with a very low sensitivity (course you'd need a very large mousepad and would need to make room for the arc by moving your keyboard).
Now of course, pivoting your entire shoulder in its full lateral range of motion takes longer than pivoting your wrist in its full lateral range of motion, but the point is, they are both continuous and finely controlled movements, which is important in flicks.
Furthermore, you are not going to use your entire shoulder range to control the mouse (unless you're tom cruise in minority report using the holographic interface). More likely, you'll use a combination of some of the lower groups. Once you have decided upon your mousing style, you can then start tuning your sensitivity so that you can easily flick, with one quick and continuous motion of the involved muscle groups, over a respectable crosshair area.
180 degrees is a good standard for a flick, so tune your sensitivity so that you can flick 180 degrees within the margins of your muscle movements.
Mouse acceleration can be a benefit depending on your preference. If you choose to use it, I would recommend the following tuning method:
Turn off accel. Choose a sens at which you can comfortably and accurately track the "foveal" portion of the screen (that is, the tight centre of your focus over which the xhair tracks).
Next, start increasing accel until you can do a natural and effective 180 flick.
You can fine tune this by adding or decreasing sens, and/or adding or decreasing accel. Using the console is critical here, as you can input the values directly using even decimals.
Find your own balance over time, and don't be afraid to experiment. I radically changed my own paradigm of mouse control years after I had reached a high level of control with one style - in effect I went from one extreme to another. Took me months to get used to the new style, and to start mastering it. Took a lot of open mindedndess to stick with it so I could really assess it properly.
I went from a 2f grip with mouse right at edge of desk, super high sens/no accel, and wrist only (you could have nailed my wrist to the edge of desk and i'd've still been able to play), to a 3f grip with mouse a foot and a half into desk, with super low sens and a decent amount of mouse accel, using all my muscles integratively. Both configurations used the bridged fingertip approach (fingertips also allow for tiny and ultra-fast modulations to aim).
You may also want to devote some energy into learning about the game engine itself. The fact that you don't know what timescale is probably means that you haven't experimented much with the engine (through the console).
You also may want to start training in an rocket arena environment.
This allows for a focus on combat and weapons training.
Last edited by [xeno]Julios on Fri Jan 27, 2006 9:01 am, edited 2 times in total.
Dude. Post more, wtf. *Bows* er
I found out... just recently, actually, that I don't pay attention. I thought that I was just well coordinated and so I didn't have to. I am a drummer and so I can literally do five things at once with different apendages while talking and not missing a beat. The thing is... I got too confident and never really, really concentrated. It sounds stupid, but just sitting there and preparing to concentrate on exactly where my mouse is going, and just really trying to track them helped me alot. I am doing alot better now in q4, and in music. I am living up to my potential. Tracking is really stressful. It is literally physically taxing for me to just keep my mouse on someone with a rapid fire weapon, but as long as I am really concentrating, I can come out with above average accuracy and bring home the 1st's almost every time. I have realized that the nailgun is one of the best weapons in q4. I used to think that nothing even came close to rg/rl. The sg is really devastating as well. It's hard to explain. You just really have to try. It is a mental discipline... I used to talk about trying but I literally didn't know how untill just recently. It is impossible to explain. Just concentrate and focus, and put as much work and effort into aiming as possible.
Movement on the other hand, that is just a connection with the engine. I feel, like I am sure most of the others here do, that the engine is an extension of my own body. To sit here and think about what keys I hit when I strafe jump is just wierd. It is completely natural. I have put alot more work into movement relatively than aim and competition than most people I think. It is all practice, man. Trick maps are cool, but only so usefull. I used to play vortex in q2 all the time, and there were like one minute warm up times while people bought Items from the armory, and all I would do is blaze through a preset route on the map, over and over and over again. I did this on every map, every time and eventually I could move faster on those maps than almost everyone in the entire mod. Alot of q4 maps don't have that kind of flow, though. They changes q2dm1 in scale and specifically the little walkway part near the plat that leads to the high rl, which screws me up pretty bad. The fragging yard is pretty horribly in general, imo. Too high flighing, not enough flow. They are playing to n00bs with that shit, and we all know it. Same thing with dm17. Practice strafe jumping alone on the competative maps, over and over again, from this item to that item as fast as possible, alternate routes, learn the trick jumps. Then do it with people. One hard thing is aiming while strafe jumping. For full on scrims it will be necessary to come out of your train, but it is pretty awesome just to toss out a rail while flying by. Then there is strafejumping backwards to get away, plasma spamming. This is a usefull technique that I see almost no one use, that can easily give you a well earned edge.
It is of the utmost importance that you build on your connection to the game by always practicing and always challenging yourself. God I want to play ztn3tourney1 right now. pro-q3tourney4!!!! shit I miss it. I would also suggest not to put too high an emphasis on rocket jumping and the like. It is just not oftenly important in a competative environment. It is useful to know how every once in a while, but it is not a turn around kind of thing. God, we need a ctf mod.
I found out... just recently, actually, that I don't pay attention. I thought that I was just well coordinated and so I didn't have to. I am a drummer and so I can literally do five things at once with different apendages while talking and not missing a beat. The thing is... I got too confident and never really, really concentrated. It sounds stupid, but just sitting there and preparing to concentrate on exactly where my mouse is going, and just really trying to track them helped me alot. I am doing alot better now in q4, and in music. I am living up to my potential. Tracking is really stressful. It is literally physically taxing for me to just keep my mouse on someone with a rapid fire weapon, but as long as I am really concentrating, I can come out with above average accuracy and bring home the 1st's almost every time. I have realized that the nailgun is one of the best weapons in q4. I used to think that nothing even came close to rg/rl. The sg is really devastating as well. It's hard to explain. You just really have to try. It is a mental discipline... I used to talk about trying but I literally didn't know how untill just recently. It is impossible to explain. Just concentrate and focus, and put as much work and effort into aiming as possible.
Movement on the other hand, that is just a connection with the engine. I feel, like I am sure most of the others here do, that the engine is an extension of my own body. To sit here and think about what keys I hit when I strafe jump is just wierd. It is completely natural. I have put alot more work into movement relatively than aim and competition than most people I think. It is all practice, man. Trick maps are cool, but only so usefull. I used to play vortex in q2 all the time, and there were like one minute warm up times while people bought Items from the armory, and all I would do is blaze through a preset route on the map, over and over and over again. I did this on every map, every time and eventually I could move faster on those maps than almost everyone in the entire mod. Alot of q4 maps don't have that kind of flow, though. They changes q2dm1 in scale and specifically the little walkway part near the plat that leads to the high rl, which screws me up pretty bad. The fragging yard is pretty horribly in general, imo. Too high flighing, not enough flow. They are playing to n00bs with that shit, and we all know it. Same thing with dm17. Practice strafe jumping alone on the competative maps, over and over again, from this item to that item as fast as possible, alternate routes, learn the trick jumps. Then do it with people. One hard thing is aiming while strafe jumping. For full on scrims it will be necessary to come out of your train, but it is pretty awesome just to toss out a rail while flying by. Then there is strafejumping backwards to get away, plasma spamming. This is a usefull technique that I see almost no one use, that can easily give you a well earned edge.
It is of the utmost importance that you build on your connection to the game by always practicing and always challenging yourself. God I want to play ztn3tourney1 right now. pro-q3tourney4!!!! shit I miss it. I would also suggest not to put too high an emphasis on rocket jumping and the like. It is just not oftenly important in a competative environment. It is useful to know how every once in a while, but it is not a turn around kind of thing. God, we need a ctf mod.
[img]http://myspace-001.vo.llnwd.net/00555/10/05/555355001_l.gif[/img]
A scientific view on mouse control in games. Nice. 
Nerd alert, btw.
Nah i'm just as much a cyber-athlete wannabe as you are probably. :icon31:
I use a 3f grip most of the time, letting go of the pinky on some moves/flicks to the right i guess. In the past two years my mouse control has developed towards high sens (sens 7.2, 1600 DPI Diamondback with master sens 1 tick below middle), no accel and wrist and fingers only. Mouse pad at the very edge of the desk like you said. This is best suited for fast mods like CPMA imo.
Ugliest grapics settings (high picmip, vertexlight) do not necessarily give the best visibility btw. Flat lighting can make make brush edges blend in with the background so that they are almost impossible to see. Teleporter models can become unrecognizable because of picmip. High picmip and vertexlight distracts me more than it helps me, because of the lack of visual input. For some reason i need crisp details to feel at home in the virtual arena. So visibility/distracting elements have a different meaning for different people.
Disabling useless gfx effects and HUD elements can pay off though, but that doesn't have to do with visual detail.
Nerd alert, btw.
Nah i'm just as much a cyber-athlete wannabe as you are probably. :icon31: I use a 3f grip most of the time, letting go of the pinky on some moves/flicks to the right i guess. In the past two years my mouse control has developed towards high sens (sens 7.2, 1600 DPI Diamondback with master sens 1 tick below middle), no accel and wrist and fingers only. Mouse pad at the very edge of the desk like you said.
This is best suited for fast mods like CPMA imo.Ugliest grapics settings (high picmip, vertexlight) do not necessarily give the best visibility btw. Flat lighting can make make brush edges blend in with the background so that they are almost impossible to see. Teleporter models can become unrecognizable because of picmip. High picmip and vertexlight distracts me more than it helps me, because of the lack of visual input. For some reason i need crisp details to feel at home in the virtual arena.
So visibility/distracting elements have a different meaning for different people.Disabling useless gfx effects and HUD elements can pay off though, but that doesn't have to do with visual detail.
Yes I use mostly my wrist to aim and have a very low mouse sens, as this is what I got used to from Unreal Tournament, because it was easier for me to aim with hitscan weps from a farther range. And so yes it takes me like 3 or 4 flicks to turn 180 degrees, which is probably why I have a hard time with close range rocket whores. And as far as eyes and upper body motor system goes, I think that's a bit messed up. Because my keyboard and mouse are in front of me but my moniter is to my right because of how my desk is set up. I didn't think much about that before but some of my friends from UT said that thats the most awkward setup theyve ever seen and they don't see how I can play like that. So when I'm on the computer I'm always twisting my body to the left to use the mouse and keyboard and head position to the right to see the moniter. Never considered this though because Ive just gotten so used to it it doesn't bother me. But they say that could be one of the main reasons why I don't do so well.
Were you born a fat slimy scumbag puke piece of shit or did you have to work on it!?
Ah no I see the problem now Krazy_K, the problem is you played UT. Full stop. Do not proceed... 
Heh, but no, if you need 3 or 4 flicks to turn 180 your in serious trouble right off the go. That really could be a serious problem for you. I am sure your opponents can pick up on that, flank your ass and its all over. I would whore rockets all over you as well if I saw you couldnt turn...
Your keyboard/monitor set up could be hurting you but then again if thats what your used to and it works for you fine. I played at Fragapalooza here in Edmonton a few yrs ago and there was a guy playing, phlud, leaned all the way back in his chair, keyboard on his lap, just moving his mouse with his wrist/fingers and he has some of the best movement/aim out there...
Heh, but no, if you need 3 or 4 flicks to turn 180 your in serious trouble right off the go. That really could be a serious problem for you. I am sure your opponents can pick up on that, flank your ass and its all over. I would whore rockets all over you as well if I saw you couldnt turn...
Your keyboard/monitor set up could be hurting you but then again if thats what your used to and it works for you fine. I played at Fragapalooza here in Edmonton a few yrs ago and there was a guy playing, phlud, leaned all the way back in his chair, keyboard on his lap, just moving his mouse with his wrist/fingers and he has some of the best movement/aim out there...
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[xeno]Julios
- Posts: 6216
- Joined: Fri Dec 10, 1999 8:00 am
by the time i upgrade so i can play quake4 (my current vid card is a tnt2 vanta so it won't even run quake3 properly), i hope they've enhanced the console so it has cl_mouseaccel and all the rest.jester! wrote:Nice post Julios.
All about wrist and finger aiming for me. In q3 I had a low-mid sens and low-mid accel, different numbers for each weapon, different FOV as well. Oh how I miss that flexability, my SG and LG suffer. :icon21:
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[xeno]Julios
- Posts: 6216
- Joined: Fri Dec 10, 1999 8:00 am
Hah speak for yourself - i'm no wannabe!Oeloe wrote:Nerd alert, btw.
Interesting. My main reason for using high picmips is that it reduces the visual complexity of the level, so that the foreground (enemy) stands out more against the background (walls, floors, etc).Oeloe wrote: Ugliest grapics settings (high picmip, vertexlight) do not necessarily give the best visibility btw. Flat lighting can make make brush edges blend in with the background so that they are almost impossible to see. Teleporter models can become unrecognizable because of picmip. High picmip and vertexlight distracts me more than it helps me, because of the lack of visual input. For some reason i need crisp details to feel at home in the virtual arena.
It's basically optimizing the signal to noise ratio. Perhaps you could paste a quake3 screenie that shows what enemies look like against the background?
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[xeno]Julios
- Posts: 6216
- Joined: Fri Dec 10, 1999 8:00 am
Here are a few snippets of ancient posts from the CE archives (they're offline unfortunately):
[xeno]Julios wrote:My biggest piece of advice with regards to aiming is to be able to fluidly use both keyboard and mouse for aiming. The keyboard is a more complex device since you have to serve two functions with it, namely controlling the model's position (which directly effects (sic) your dodging patterns) as well as sliding the xhair as a form of target acquisition. (the mouse also serves a dual role when you are aiming while moving)
Circumstances are too varied to be able to generalize which mouse and aiming techniques belong to each weapon - depends on the momentary combat configuration (i.e. is your opponent blindsiding you to avoid your shotgun blast in which case a quick instinctive wide flick may be the most effective choice; is he in front of you jittering with such a narrow strafe pattern that you don't even need to strafe or adjust mouse to hit him with 100 percent of your machine gun bullets, is he traversing a circle that is concentric to your own circle strafe in which case you'd need to use a smooth mouse turn to follow the target with lg; is it a long distance rail gun battle where the entire combat is based on strafe patterns and timing (left-right-right-left etc)
[xeno]Julios wrote: re strafe patterns - the way to think of them is exactly that: patterns.
The key to overcoming your opponent is to acquire his patterns (strafe, tactical, strategic, psychological, etc) and generate your own patterns that are "invisible" to him. Applied to strafe patterns, this is where you try to discern what sort of pattern your opponent is doing with his strafes. The brain cannot generate something out of nothingness thus we have to draw on constructs in our brains - whether these be mathematical abstracts or rhythms (strafing to the beat of a particular rhythmic beat - preferrably breakbeat-esque) - they are patterns that can be acquired.
Once acquired, you will not have to match the opponent's strafe patterns tit for tat, left for right, but rather be able to know exactly where and when to fire.
This all happens preconsciously... - the more patterns you are exposed to the larger your "database" becomes - the more you try to generate your own patterns, the larger your repertoire grows. (database isn't a very good metaphor, as pattern recognition doesn't necessarily function around distinct patterns).
Of course this must be matched by both finger dexterity (assuming you use your fingers for movement) to be able to generate complex and even chaotic sequences, and reflex/hand eye coordination so you can act upon your predictions of the opponent's patterns.
As for thinking in combat - at the beginning you should try to analyze what you are doing, if not real-time then at least immediately after each encounter. By applying your cognitive processes early as opposed to purely relying on trial and error reinforcement, you will accelerate the learning process. Eventually, these lessons will be internalized to such an extent it will become second nature...
So basically an intelligent and moderate blend of cognitive mediation and natural human learning will be optimal imo.
Last edited by [xeno]Julios on Wed Nov 23, 2005 2:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
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[xeno]Julios
- Posts: 6216
- Joined: Fri Dec 10, 1999 8:00 am
Yeah i get that, but for me world detail isn't noise (with some exceptions ofc).[xeno]Julios wrote:It's basically optimizing the signal to noise ratio. Perhaps you could paste a quake3 screenie that shows what enemies look like against the background?
Maybe there isn't a fundamental reason why i want that detail except that i'm used to it, but it the entire map just feels foreign to me when all the details are gone.Promode skins reduce the necessity of picmip to almost zero, imo (depending on the texturing of the map too). The S/N ratio might be lower at picmip 0 and lightmap lighting, but the contrast ratio is even higher than it is with vertex. I use overbrightbits 0 and r_intensity 1.65 to reduce shadows a bit though (and i used it to solve the bright desktop issue when minimizing Q3 with an nVidia vidcard).
I think that for many players the reason (bigger than visuality) for using high picmip is that they have been looking at the Quake textures for years and they don't care to see them anymore. For me it's the other way round (i can't stand the Wolfenstein 3D look).
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NitrousFlare
- Posts: 81
- Joined: Sun Oct 30, 2005 6:32 am