Tips for a n00b that aren't in the Beginner's Guide

[Faulty]

Hello! I've just purchased Quake 3: Arena and Team Arena via Steam and wow... I've never played anything like this. The closest I've gotten to a game this fast paced thus far is Unreal Tournament 3. I've braced myself for getting my ass kicked but before being blown to pieces over and over I figure I'd ask for any tips and suggestions from pros that aren't in the Beginner's Guide. Thanks a plenty.

[Mulletman]

Play, play, play, and play some more! Also check out he numerous free mods for Quake 3 Arena!

[Peenyuh]

You wanna see fast? Connect to this server. Try the FFA first. The CTF is AMZINGLY fast. The firsat ime I jumped in, I was too shocked to even be embarassed by the as-kicking I recieved. Once you get into your zone, it's alot of fun.

http://vogonhq.com/pak01.html

[Nanoko]

HELL YES. This Vogon HQ 1-Anarchy is my favorite server /ever/. CTF Chaos comes in second. Then there are random LAN games at school. Those are fun, too. :P

[DTS]

Play the mod called Defrag to improve your movement. Cap your com_maxfps to 125 (type /com_maxfps 125 in the console) or use pmove_fixed 1 if your PC can't do 125 fps constant (if you could play UT3 I guess it can). You'd need to callvote pmove on (/callvote pmove 1) in OSP (one of the most popular mods), or in CPMA, which is simmilar, you wouldn't need to cause it's always on and can't be turned off (same in Defrag nowadays if I'm not mistaken). Run a timedemo to check your average fps for your config (type /timedemo 1 in the console, press enter then type demo thenameofyourdemo. There's an old demo called four that you might be able to run or you might have to use some other one). After the timedemo has finished (you can turn off timedemo by /timedemo 0), in the console it will say what the average fps was. If it's low you might need to lower resolution or turn off effects in your graphics card settings like FSAA or antiscopic filtering or whatever it's called (I haven't had a graphics card that has it so I don't know). Use a config that gets you high fps for all mods (copy the config over to their directory). Some mods might be resource heavy though so you might need to tone down your config for those; e.g. in Generations Arena before I had to turn off 3D items (they show as 2D icons instead then) cause the items they made for the mod were too high-poly (and/or they didn't scale the LOD properly, it seemed that even the lowest LOD was too high, if there even was a low LOD.).

Is rocket jumping in the beginners guide? I haven't read it. There's a tower map that's for rocket jumping in Defrag that's good.

Edit: I mentioned CPMA, well if you play that mod you have to be aware that the gameplay might not be VQ3 (vanilla quake 3, as in the original) but Promode, which changes the physics. You can callvote to change it to VQ3 or just play on a server that always has it set to VQ3. (Type /callvote in the console and press enter for a list of vote commands, as in most mods.)