Besides setting your overall sensitivity with “set sensitivity” you can do some fine tuning. With tweaking the variables m_pitch (vertical [up/down]-sensitivity) and m_yaw (horizontal [left/right]-sensitivity) in your configuration, you can effectively improve your aiming for getting more headshots.

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:

... acting headless?

In Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory each playermodel gets 2 or 3 boxes drawn around itself. Those boxes are the hitable sweet-spots – the hitboxes. Hitboxes have always been a problem in Enemy Territory as they seemed to be not accurate enough, wrong or even missing. This especially concerned the head-box which registers headshots that do up to 50 damage and thus far more than body shots what makes them very desirable. Bani tried to fix the problem with ET Pro and he came up with new headbox-code b_realhead (see changes in ET Pro 3.2.0, May 2005), better antilag-code and other stuff; but the results still seemed to be everything but perfect. Let’s have a look at some screenshots of ET Main & ET Pro hitboxes in different situations and draw implications for our gameplay.

Back in the year 2004, [nw]reyalP did an intersting analysis on the hitboxes in Enemy Territory. He used a custom MOD (never released though I think) which showed the hitboxes all the time (so not g_debugbullets). Also he used the ET Main code not ET Pro as he had no access to it; but from speaking with Bani, who said there weren’t any adjustments to the hitbox calculations (remark: some boxes were made taller than in ET Main) he was sure that it would also fit on ET Pro – when b_realhead is not > 0. Most servers today got b_realhead = 1 running, so that the following screenshots would not mirror accurately the hitboxes for the head.

hitbox-offset: strafing left with nade

Note: with b_realhead = 0 the heads hitbox is slightly offset to a moving player model – it actually follows slightly behind the player model; and with b_realhead > 0 the head hitbox should stay on the model while moving. To check whether you play on a server with the ET Pros head hitbox code, just enter the console and type:

/pb_cvarval b_realhead

Looking at his screenshots that contained player models in different movement situations (standing, crouching, proning, swimming, …), one state of the models animation, using different weapons (smg, grenade, …) plus the resulting hitboxes-calculation, reyaIP pointed out several interesting things:

1. The player model head can be ahead of its hitbox in the direction in which the player strafes
2. The player model ducks down a bit while moving, but its hitbox does not follow the model
   
3. A player model holding a SMG has its head offset to the left (your POV), the heads hitbox does not follow

Click on the screenshots to make yourself a picture of this:

Besides the notes from reyaIP you can see other things, which have e. g. been reported in a forum around 2005: the heads’ hitbox while crouching is not nescessarily the forehead or helmet, but more or less the chin.

And finally quoted notes from reyaIP on the screenshots for proning-hitboxes, which we all like (2nd) best :

1. The head hitbox position is based on a fixed set of rules based on player view angles, but the player model is not. You can be looking in exactly the same direction, and the player model can be in very different positions with regards to the hitbox. Where the model is depends on what sequence of turns you used to get there. While this is true for all the animations, the effects are more extreme with the prone models.
2. The animations that happen when you turn (or look up/down) have multiple effects. When you start to turn, just the head turns. At some point the body twists, then the feet shuffle around, and the whole thing starts over. Very nice from an eye candy point of view, but horrible in for the hit detection. Like the standing animation, the prone ones change a bit depending on what you are holding, and are different again for moving.

So if the hitboxes for proning are the 2nd best ones, which ones do we like most?

Swimming is like standing

Believe it or not: according to reyaIPs analysis the player model goes into swimming pose while diving/swimming and the hitboxes stick to the ones from player models in standing position.

Conclusions:

Hitboxes in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory have always been a problem and will always rouse discussions. Well I think we got to live with the boxmodel and know about its bugs or “specialities”. For example aim for the chin and not for the forehead when you got someone crouched in front of you. And don’t look for the player model in front of you but have in mind the hitboxes that probably lie behind it. It’s often annoying and frustrating but everyone knows about the problems and thus everyone plays with equal opportunities. You just got to make the best of it… Perhaps we just got to take it with humour – enjoy Just Pub #056:

Just Pub #056

Whats your opinion?

RaZiel was a famous Return to Castle Wolfenstein-player years ago. Many people today still count him to one of the best RTCW players ever. Luckily he wanted to share his recipes for improving your aiming and tactical finesse with the community, so he wrote a tutorial to the end of 2003: Aiming by RaZiel.

Download Aiming by RaZiel here (97.5mb; contains some docs, videos, tweaks, patches, analysises and configs)

Although the tutorial is quite old and targets RTCW-players, things haven’t changed that much and the lessons are also relevant to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory-Players. This one is a must-have for every ambitious player.

Some excerpts from the content:

Folder Examples:
It contains some videos with scenes of him playing plus an explanation what he did and what you can learn from the specific video. To give you an idea, here we go with the low-quality version from YouTube.com:

Note among other things how his crosshair nearly always sticks to head-level… Thats the aim we need. In the package you will find the videos in high resolution.

Folder Sensitivity:
Beside a registry-fix that will kill your Windows(R) mouse-acceleration if it’s activated, you will find a guide on how to improve your aiming. A low-quality-preview from YouTube.com to get you an idea:

The tutorial centers around eliminating most friction between your mouse and your mousepad/-underground and then adjusting & finding the sensitivity thats works best for you to precisely aim at a small spot while strafing with or without using stamina. Note how smoothly his crosshair wanders with almost no vertical movement. (I will come to the relevance of that point in another article.)

Aim sponsored by Pronto Classic

I myself use a wooden table as mouseunderground from the beginning on. Before I start to play I often use to polish the underground with Pronto Classic furniture spray to minimize friction. As I am a high-sensitivity player, I never will get that ultra-smooth mousemovement and thus that RaZiel-poweraim. But the key to success I believe is to find your personal setup and style, stick to it (and not adjust your configuration every time you loose) and improve it by practicing alot. And: The games hitboxes luckily are big enough, so that it would be overdone to be able to track a small pixel…

Wolfenstein: Enemy Terrritory is a very fast game. In close combat often the player wins who hits first, so timing is crucial. While your opponent gets hit it will be much harder for him to aim at you or rather hit you because his screen shakes and you start off the fight as it were more health for you.

Headshots usually do 40/50[*] damage while bodyshots do less. Further more you got to know that the first shot usually hits where you aim at – without any weapon spread!

These two things we combine to the following rule:

Always point your crosshair at head-level where an opponent will most likely appear (or in the middle of two points when the likelyhood of an opponent popping up there is euqal) while you wander through the map.

Note that it doesn’t matter if you are searching for opponents and thus are moving forward or if you are escaping a firefight and are running backwards – your crosshair will stay always at the point where the head of your next opponent will most likely appear, so you minimize the way you got to move your crosshair until aiming directly at your opponent. I sometimes point the crosshair in the middle of two points if the likelyhood is equal for an opponent to pop up from the right and the left side. Avoid uneven and difficult terrrain in order to keep your cross-hair in place.

*Tip: use grooves to be on head-level

In many maps you can additionally use markings on the wall to keep your aim always on track (e. g. grooves on the walls inside buildings, see the thumbnail* or video-example**). Don’t look on the ground except for reviving, placing a mine, stealing an uniform and stuff like that or if you expect an opponent move along beneath you. Be prepared at corners where opponents often camp and enjoy the corner-camper calling you a wallhacker when you got him. Also include obsticles like crates in your pre-or “as if”-aiming when nescessary. First it may be hard to pursue this rule but after some time you will see you benefit because this makes sure two important things for you:

1. you are the first one of both giving damage in the duel
2. you probably initiate the fight with a headshot giving maximum damage

But: Instead of aiming for the forehead of you fictive oponents model, you should go a little deeper (have a look at W:ET’s hitbox-model). If your opponent hits you first – for any reason – from the front, your screen-shakes will make your cross-hair move up (see the analysis from madscientist under “shakes”). So if you aimed for the forehead in such a situation, you not a single bullet probably would have hit.

[*] damage given per headshot may be lower than 50 due to helmet protection on (usually -20% = 40 damagepoints per headshot), long ranges etc. Please find information on how many damage each weapon in ET gives here.

**Video-Example: Use markings on the walls to keep your cross-hair on head-level