Just Pub #062

Overboost: He who could frag, too

Overboost just released his first fragmovie yesterday entitled: “He who could frag, too”. Good player, good movie (imho) – check out the hq-videostream on own3D.at or download it via the Crossfire.nu-Thread.

Sadly or not – Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is a game, where tweaking your configuration and/or hardware can get you big advantages over those, who don’t do it or who don’t have set up the game optimally…But before going to the details I may wanna destroy your dreams by pronouncing the following rule:

No, there is not the single ownage configuration optimized for aiming, accuracy, jumping or stuff like that. You always gotta find your own special configuration that suits you best for your setup (hardware, mouse, mouspad, way of playing, …) and then stick to it not changing it again every now and then!

But now to you config…

Where do I get good configs from other players as examples?

CF: download configs on player profile pages

Search the Crossfire.nu-community. There are many players who let you download their game-configurations. Maybe you want to start with the configs from urtier, foonr or overdrive and then you can rummage further in their buddy-lists. Try out different configs and look if they will suit you with little adaptions (e. g. keyboard, mouse, …). You can also get a lot of suggestions on how to organize your configuration-files by having a look on the setup of experienced players… So: download a lot of them. It’s free!

No way, dude. I want to start off with my own config; how do I do this?

If you don’t want to take another configuration as a basis, you can of course set up your autoexec.cfg completely on your own. This might even be useful, because this way you force yourself to deal with the meaning and effects of all the variables in W:ET and get a real crack (or geek?).

• I you want to set it up completely on your own, the article “Console and CVAR-Commands” may help in combination with “Scripting for newbies“.
• 

  Config Maker V3.0

  You can also use a software/config-maker, if you know the meanings of all the variables; try out Config Maker v3.0 from MiguelNunes (2005).

What are the key-factors I may have to adapt and tweak?

In order of their importance (opinions on that of course may vary):

1. Mouse-settings
   - overall sensitivity:
   Download and work through “Aiming By RaZiel” to find your personal best sensitivity. Basically if you are able to focus clearly on a spot while strafing with or without stamina, you meet most requirements to own. – vertical & horizontal sensitivity: read the details here- acceleration (coming soon)

   - dpi (coming soon)

   - other stuff (e.g. pointer-precision)

2. 

   keyboard buttons and their variable names

   Keyboard-settings
   Read on at
   “Planetwolfenstein for newbies: Setting up your controls“

3. Graphics settings for getting high and stable 43/63/72/76/83/100/ 125/166 fps. Please find an exhaustive guide in the “Wolfenstein for newbies: Tweaking Guide“. All important variables are explained by text and screenshots.
4. Netsettings for optimal client-server-communication.
   I recommend to read on at “Connection, Framerate and Visual Tweaks“. The article explains the netsetting-variables of the quake3-engine. But it also applies on W:ET which is based on the engine.
5. Other tweaking (e. g. other memory- and cpu-eating stuff like sound)
6. Fine-tuning (e. g. your view, cross-hair, hud, having a dedicated config for some maps)
7. Scripts (e. g. for quickly changing spawnpoints or your class without losing focus on frags). Read on at “Planetwolfenstein for newbies: Scripting for newbies“
8. Vsay-binds and your colored nickname (help)- yeah we all need some personality, do we?!

Last but not least…

• Be sure you have the latest drivers and updates installed for your hardware (graphics, motherboard, soundcard, bios, …)
• Besides the ingame tuning (your configuration) you might also have a look at the global settings (graphics-driver setup for performance, windows mouse setup (6/11 at Win XP), …)
• You may wanna consider to also tweak your hardware (e. g. mouse on USB vs. PS/2)

Anything missing? Suggestions? Is this collection of links helpful..?

Well.. together with the trailer, we now got some serious parts of the whole movie. So go and get some more old-school quality frags:

Suck My Ping 3 – NEW – the first 3:20 minutes:

Suck My Ping 3 – Trailer:

(lol @ 1:10 min.)

Khamoshi fragmovie

Flash from Czech Republic presents us his first movie: Khamoshi, which means something like “friends”. Most people on Crossfire stated that there is missing some spice in it, but form your own opinion and have a look.

Watch it on own3D.at: http://www.own3d.at/watch/10506

View ET-hitboxes: buggy/offset on railgun (ET Main)

As Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory uses 2 to 3 boxes drawn around the actual player model, it is essential for you to know how these boxes look to get a good aiming. So perhaps you want to check out for yourself what they look like in different situations (e. g. while climbing a ladder, while beeing in the railgun-train, while swimming, …). In order to view the hitboxes, you need a server that allows cheats and use debugbullets. Sadly in most cases there are no possibilities to view the hitboxes in your recorded replays/demos unless the game was recorded with cheats enabled, because the debugbullets hit boxes are server side things. But you of course can start a server on your own and have a look at those hitboxes, analyze them and improve your gameplay by beeing some knowledge-steps ahead.

If you are alone and if you don’t have another PC in a network, do the following:

/sv_pure 0 // allow any custom content, like supplydepot
/devmap MAP* // start a local server
/g_debugbullets 8 // go into debug mode
/cg_thirdperson 1// go in third person-view to see your hitbox
/cg_thirdpersonrange 100 // play with the value
/cg_thirdpersonangle 180 // play with that value, too

* replace MAP e. g. by oasis, fueldump, battery, railgun, goldrush, radar

If you have a second PC available in a network, start again a localhost-server with cheats enabled, connect the other server and again go in debug-mode:

/devmap MAP* // start a localhost-server on PC 1
/connect 192.168.0.XXX** // type this on PC 2 to connect with PC 1
/g_debugbullets 7 // go in debug-mode

** replace XXX with the local IP of PC 1 – get it e.g. by using “ipconfig” on ms dos-commandline

Now everytime you hit the other player model, its strong>hitbox-model will be visible to you and you can take a screenshot and do some analysis. Other useful things in this context:

/bind ENTER screenshot // bind "take a screenshot" to a key
/cg_railtrailtime 5000 // specify how long the boxes and bullet trails will be visible in ms

How do m_pitch and m_yaw work?

As the author of the rtcw.jolt.co.uk-article points out correctly: illustrations may be the easiest way to describe the effect of a.) sensitivity, b.) m_pitch and c.) m_yaw:

Note those are just illustrations to visualize that you can squeeze your mouse-responsiveness vertically and horizontally using m_pitch and m_yaw.

How does the game engine translate your mouse-movement?

As ruffnux points out in his acceleration-bug-report, every “count of frames” times per second the mousemovement is calculated like (1.) mouseX * sensitivity * m_pitch and (2.) mouseY * sensitivity * m_yaw. The default setting for m_pitch and m_yaw is 0.022. Now if you lower m_pitch or m_yaw, you get an ellipse instead of a circle for your vertical or horizontal mousemovement. So with lower m_pitch it will be easier for you to keep your cross-hair at head level. But as always: no pain, no gain, as on the other hand it will be more difficult to aim up and down (e. g. for compensating your cross-hair going down when crouching or proning or to aim at someone on a balcony or stuff like that).

How do I set up m_pitch and m_yaw?

Both settings depend on each other. As a rule of thumb ruffnux suggests to ensure m_pitch is at least 2/3 of what m_yaw is set to. So e. g. if you leave m_yaw at the standard setting of 0.022, set m_pitch to 0.66 * 0.022 = 0.015. Most servers will anyway include punkbuster-restrictions, that where introduced by clanbase at RTCW back in 2003. The reasons was to avoid players locking their cross-hairs to headshot height and so demanding more aiming skills. After restricting m_pitch to a range also m_yaw had to be set to a fixed range or value to achieve this goal. The reason is because you can also achieve a lower vertical responsiveness by (1) lowering your overall sensitivity and (2) compensating that by increasing your vertical responsiveness again with m_yaw to get back your original vertical sensitivity. The restrictions

pb_sv_cvar m_pitch out -0.015 0.015
pb_sv_cvar m_yaw in 0.022 or pb_sv_cvar m_yaw out -0.022 0.022

This means your minimum values on punkbuster-servers can be 0.015 for m_pitch and 0.022 for m_yaw. So on punkbuster-servers those values should be set up to:

set m_yaw 0.022
set m_pitch 0.01501

Are there other ways to tweak my vertical responsiveness?

Yes there are other ways. For example some mouse-drivers (Razer) will let you adjust your vertical and horizontal mouse responsiveness. Using some configuration hacks It was also possible for Logitech users in the past to use Razer-drivers with Logitech mice (see e. g. this article on Crossfire [thanks to oBs for the hint], “Razer Drivers with Logitech” on ESR or this guide):

Is this still possible – anyone tried it out?

Poll:

PC Player '03

I just came across an interesting rating-article about Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory from back in 2003 when it was released. I saw it in a forum post from Saadi on et-scene.de. Check out the article – if you speak German….

Read the article: http://www.pcplayer.de/~tf/ET_high.pdf (pdf, 2.65mb)

… and still this game rocks 5 years later!

Check out “Suck My Ping” for nostalgia:

(Or go with the high quality version at own3D.at)

Kaily also released “Suck My Ping 2“. Plus he announced “Suck My Ping 3″ and postponed it several times if I remember it correctly. But Part 3 was never released though (except for the trailer).

What’s the mouserate?

To be able to move your mouse cursor on screen of course your operating system has got to know the mouse has been moved by you on the mouse-pad. This is done by polling the mouse for any input at the device it is plugged in. Basically you can use the standard PS/2- or an USB-port to plug in your mouse. PS/2 comes with a standard polling rate of 80hz (adjustable from 20 hz to 200 hz). USB comes up with a standard polling rate of 125hz (overclockable to 250hz, 500hz and 1000hz). Depending on your setup, you force your mouse to send data via PS/2 or USB to your operating system every 8 ms (= 125hz), 4 ms (= 250hz), 2 ms (= 500hz) and so on…

What’s the positive effect of a higher mouserate?

Your cross-hair may move more smoothly the higher the polling rate is set up. You will feel the difference from 125hz to 500hz. But you probably won’t feel any more difference between 500hz and 1000hz. A smooth mousemovement is essential in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, as you need to be able to aim precisely, you need to be able to target fast and you got to avoid any erratic movements. Sometimes it is just the little 1 ms of reaction time that is missing due to imperfect hardware setup and that thus makes you lose a duel. So you should set it up to 200 hz (PS/2) or 500hz (USB) if you don’t witness any of the possible disadvantages (USB) – like I do …

Any risks of a tweaking the USB-polling-rate?

Yes – there may be some! First: the higher the USB-polling rate, the higher your cpu-usage will be. Depending on your hardware this increase can be massive for each usb-device that is excessively refreshing data at high frequency. Further more common risks in combination with overclocking your USB-polling rate are damages to your hardware (e. g. your mainboard or your usb-peripherals such as your mouse if it can’t handle the higher polling rate) or stability issues with your pc. Tweak on your own risk!

How do I raise the polling rates?

PS/2 settings from RaZiel

To tweak your USB-ports use UsbRate v0.5 from RaZiel (download). Make sure you disable the realtime feature as it may crash your pc.

To tweak your PS/2-port go into your mouse-properties menu or use the PS2Rate-Tool (download) and adjust it like the thumbnail shows.

Reboot to let the changes take effect.

How do I test the changes?

Use mouserate.exe from Oliver Tscherwitschke (download) to measure your actual polling rate. To do this, move your mouse around in circles and watch the output. Ideally the measures are constant or at least not changing massively each poll. This would eventually damage your mouse and besides it would not support a smooth aiming.

So… in the end?

Don’t expect to be able to boost your aiming skills by adjusting the polling rate. But this is just one of many stones in the mosaic you can use for little improvement. I personally use a Logitech MX 518 mouse via the PS/2 port. The samplingrate is set up to 200hz with input buffer length 100. RaZiel suggested an input buffer length of 300 (see thumbnail from Aiming By RaZiel-Tutorial). I tried out USB at 500hz once but it ate just too many of my cpu-resources plus it seemed I did not to get a stable polling rate, so I got back to PS/2 again with which I played for many years… and it still works fine for me.

Poll:

View This Poll