The standard configuration that comes with the installation of the game may look good – the graphics are nice, the sound bumps through your headset and you can move intuitively through the map. But to blast some ownage, it is necessary to do some tweaking.

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 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..?

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:

When your mouse pointer flickers or doesn’t run smoothly, maybe the refresh rate of your mouse it set too low…

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:

In Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory you do not necessarily shoot at where your cross-hair points: like in real life bullets do spread. There are three dimensions where you should know the details to master spread and improve your accuracy and aiming: (A) the game engine, (B) your setup/configuration and (C) your way of playing.

But now to the insights…

(A) The game-engine and weapon-spread

In ET the spread of your standard weapons (mp40, Thomson, Luger, colt, Sten, …) is affected by 5 factors:

1. View: moving your cross-hair / looking around increases spread
   The more you move your cross-hair around, the more weapon spread you will get. In times you move your mouse, spread increases while in times you don’t move your mouse, it will decrease steadily. Player velocity does not have any impact on spread of unscoped weapons. You can see the size of your weapon spread by activating cross hair-pulsing for example:

   set cg_crosshairPulse 1 // activate cross-hair pulsating
   set cg_drawcrosshair 4 // cross-hair: little spot in center plus pulsating circle around it

   

   big hitboxes (jaymod): hitable behind a corner

   So be aware of the ET’s hitbox model (hitboxes are much bigger than the models which makes some cross-hair-movement unnecessary) and reduce cross-hair-movement to a minimum. Especially avoid erratic mouse-movements and trace as smooth as possible. RaZiel mastered the idea of aiming like this – have a look at his tutorial.

2. Shooting: continuous shooting increases spread
   Short range fights usually don’t last long and every hit is crucial, so in most cases you are forced to shoot continuesly and shooting bursts is no option. Long range combats often last longer. Shooting small bursts of 3 to 5 bullets each should be considered if you can’t start of the fight with doing massive damage to your opponent. Concentrate on short range duels to get the maximum out of you rounds.
3. Receiving Damage: getting hit by bullets increases spread
   When you get hit by your opponent, your screen shakes. This will hurt your aim. Further more the knock back will raise weapon spread (analysis/implications from overdrive). Both make it inevitable for you to do your best not to get hit – strafe with and without stamina, use obsticles as cover, crouch, prone, …
4. 

   spread

   Movement: crouching and proning decrease spread while beeing in the air dramatically increases spread
   [GORE]Hallelujah did an analysis on how movement affects weapon-spread back in 2003. He found out that spread in standing/crouching/proning-position is nearly equal, when you fire small bursts of 2-3 bullets. If you fire continuously, the spread of crouching and proning is still the same but in standing position it is much higher (see screenshot). Further more Madscientist found out in his analysis 2006 that crouching will reduce spread to 50% from standing position. Being in the air (jumping, free fall, strafing on rough terrain, …) will result in twice the maximum spread you get when shooting in standing position. And proning will give you maximum spread for the first second and then decays to half the spread as crouching does.

5. Experience-Points: light weapons level 4 and covert ops level 3 decrease spread
   When you receive light weapons level 4, your weapon spread will reduce by 35%. (Note that it is level 4 and not level 3 like the manual says as [GORE]Hallelujah points out). Further more covert ops level 3 reduces spread by 35% for the Sten and the FG42. Interestingly this spread reduction seems to be transportable on the standard-weapons and also combineable with light weapons level 4 for maximum spread reduction (see analysis again from [GORE]Hallelujah). You should be aware of that to be able to evaluate your own aim and that of others on the server (e. g. if you join a server with players who have many XP).
6. Your weapon choice: the MP40 (Axis) seems to have slightly less spread than the Thomson (Allies)
   

   Spread: MP40 vs. Thomson

   Ifurita from planetwolfenstein did an analysis some years ago in RTCW on how many rounds a weapon is able to fire per second. He found out that the MP40 has a slightly higher firering rate than the Thomson (~ 6 vs. 5 rounds per second). You should now probably expect compensating the Axis advantage by having more spread. On the contrary: from the screenshots he made you can conclude that the MP 40 also has slightly less spread when fired in small bursts from 3 to 5 rounds. Of course all on the condition that the analysis is a.) correct and b.) also applies on Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory.

(B) Your Config

1. Mousepad/-underground: Make sure your mousepad is clean and you just a minimum friction between pad and your mouse. The more friction, the less smooth will be your mousemovement.
2. Sensitivity: a sensitivity of zero would reduce weapon spread due to crosshairmovement to zero of course. But that wouldn’t be practical. Low sensers have got some advantages considering weapon spread. So they usually also do more headshots than high sensitivity users. I use a sensitivity of 5 in connection with pointerspeed 6 of 11 in windows xp which is very high, but manageable. See the Aiming by RaZiel-Tutorial for finding your sensitivity.
3. FPS / Frames per second: As overdrive states in his article, FPS increases recoil and your mouse will react a lot faster the higher the frames per second. Keep your FPS high, but as stable as possible at the same time. I have a quite old computer and thus I use com_maxfps 76. In most maps I can archive a stable FPS like this.
4. Mouserate: the higher, the smoother your aim can be. Basically you can chose between USB and PS/2. RaZiel stated 2003 that for him PS/2 worked better than USB, because with his Logitech Mouse he het a.) a higher mouserate of 200hz and b.) a more stable one that with USB (120hz). Overdrive stated 2006 in his article, that nowadays for most mice USB would be more suitable than PS/2 and that you can archive 450, 500 or even 1000hz. I myself use a Logitech MX518 with 200hz and inputbufferlength 100 on PS/2. With USB I could only get a maximum of 120hz. To check how often your mousedata gets refreshed check mouserate.exe from that RaZiel-Package (Tools-Folder).
5. FPS > mousrate: Madscientist found out about the phenomenon that spread due to cross-hair movement will decrease when you got more frames per second than mouse signals per second. This sounds logical as some for some frames the game engine cannot register any mouse movement which results in decreasing spread. Turn spread can be even reduced to zero (!) when FPS is twice as high as the mouserate. So if you put your mouse on USB with standard polling rate of 125hz and you have constant 250fps – … lucky boy!
6. Mouse-DPI / -Dots Per Inch: the more dpi, the smoother your aiming can be. But be aware of a little bug in the quake-engine that causes negative acceleration with high DPI.

(C) Your way of playing

(soon)

Note: if you want to play the game completely without spread, just check out the server under 85.17.39.194 which Madscientist set up (2006 – still active?).

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…