[lee vieira]

Wow, I experienced a pretty big case of 'spank you very much' last night

Now, I played and beat the original DOOM and DOOM 2. I've played a bit of Quake 1 and Marathon and UT on my iMac, and I seem to kick major booty on UT on my gfriend's Dreamcast. I don't find any of these games that hard.

Then, just last night, I downloaded the Quake 3 Arena demo.

Oh, wow. Those bots just wasted my sorry ass.

On the lowest difficulty level, 'I Can Win', of course, the game is no problem. Its hard to even get the bots to shoot at you. But go up even ONE difficulty notch (to 'Bring It On'), and alluva sudden its a war.

For chrissake, its even embarrassing. If its a multibot batch I do pretty well by killing guys when they're fighting one another, but 1 on 1, me vs bot, I tend to lose. They just seem so accurate, and the game so much faster than what I'm used to.

Have I

1) just been molly-coddled by an overly easy Dreamcast UT etc.?

2) just been complacent in my FPS career, and now must become a perfect mouse-aiming, circle-strafing ninja to live in Quake 3?

3) just been configing myself or Q3 wrong?


And is it just me or is Q3 really THAT much faster and harder than UT?

This isn't a slam by any means on UT (I bought it for my gfriend, after all), I'm just wondering why I suck so bad only on Quake3, that's all...

--lee

[sessamoid]

I'd say probably it's a combination of all the above. For your config, check the various q3 web sites to see what the configs of the pros look like and gets tips on getting yours to suit you.

UT on dreamcast? That's really not very challenging.

I was a pretty decent q2 player, but nothing special. I had very little difficulty beating the bots in Hardcore the first time on all maps except for maybe a few that took 2 to 3 tries. Nightmare is a different story. That actually takes me some work, and their ungodly aim on nightmare just makes it no fun anyway.

Anyway, I've played UT as well (usually finish 1st or 2nd on public servers back when I used to play it a lot), and yes q3 is a much faster game that requires better reflexes and aim. Thanks to my quake-trained aim and reflexes, I still do fairly well in UT even though I have no clue about the weapons. I just use whatever weapon I'm holding in UT <g>. One thing that helped me with q3 was watching the demos from professional matches. You can find them in various places, but start with xsreality.com and cached.net. You won't believe what these guys can do.

Anyway, stop by our clan server some time for friendly advice and fun! www.aswp.net.

[Archangel]

Yeah, my guess is that the UT version for Dreamcast screwed your skills up. I've never played it on DC, but I'd imagine they would have to dumb it down for the the DC and for the people who play (console gamers tend to be less of the hardcore gamers in my experience).

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I got a yellow slinky from Outpost.com

[OverclockedHomoSapien]

It's probably a combination of things. For starters Quake 3 has a very responsive game engine so gameplay is much faster and more chaotic than UT. You probably haven't acclimated to the new engine yet.

I'd say the biggest problem is Quake 3's artificial intelligence. Quake 3 basically has two skill levels: I can win level where the bots just stand and stare at your ugly ass, and Nightmare level where every shot fired from across a crowed room frags your ass. There is little grey area in the difficulty settings for Quake 3. Anyways if you play against bots you will develope some bad habits and get totally fragged when you play other people, so it's best to play online if you can.

One nice thing about Quake is that it is superior in networking to UT. You'll get better pings and less lag on Quake compared to UT.

[lee vieira]

Originally posted by OverclockedHomoSapien:

I'd say the biggest problem is Quake 3's artificial intelligence. Quake 3 basically has two skill levels: I can win level where the bots just stand and stare at your ugly ass, and Nightmare level where every shot fired from across a crowed room frags your ass.

Well, that certainly sucks

Is there a patch or a handicap level that cures that partially, or is singleplayer Q3 just screwed?

Of course, you're right about multiplayer being where Q3 is at, but it'd be nice to be able to practice without the game being way too easy or way too hard.

--lee

[OverclockedHomoSapien]

Single player in Quake 3 is screwed. Carmack even said that he didn't concentrate on AI for Quake 3, he intended it to be a multiplayer game. I think Id outdid themselves for making Quake 3 the best multiplayer game, particularly with it's excellent data transfer for online connections.

The good news is that for Doom 3, Id is reportedly concentrating on the single player experience, and the AI is being given full attention. If it's half as good as it looked at MWT, then I bet it will totally ROCK!

[seanyepez]

I can take out Nightmare bots.

Anyway, you are probably deprived of the full gaming experience if you're on anything less than a G4 tower with a GeForce2 MX or a RADEON. Configure your machine for speed. Play at 1024 by 768 pixels (or 640 by 480 if you're on anything with iMac-level graphics) and 16-bit color. Full texture detail doesn't kill frames per second, though, as one might imagine. On most machines I've tweaked, making everything look ugly actually lowers the framerate.

Your mouse sensitivity is really important. Tweak it as much as you can. The default is 5. Use the command "/sensitivity x", where "x" is the sensitivity you choose.

10 is good for medium-range combat. A higher sensitivity is harder to aim, but you are trading quantity for quality in raising/lowering your sensitivity. An extremely low sensitivity sucks because it is hard to track your opponents, and if you get to close range, you will be owned.

I use 6.65 for long range and 13.3 for close range. I have binds that change my sensitivity.

"/bind x sensitivity y"

"X" is the key you want to assign to set whatever sensitivity. "Y" is the value you want your sensitivity to be after pressing that key. I bind my "z" key to 6.65 and my "x" key to 13.3.

Single player sucked. It's too easy to beat, and the bot AI is stupid. You can own the best of the best by camping, as they're programmed not to notice you. They hear sound, too. If you're playing CTF against a bot, it will unload all its ammo into you until it runs out, and when it does, it pulls out the gauntlet. It will keep aiming it at you, but it will not close and attempt to actually use it. There are quite a few quirks that need to be worked out, but the real experience is online gaming. Online gaming is fun, as there are real people you're playing against. It's not fun when you have anything more than a 250-millsecond ping, though, because you can't aim worth anything after that.

Good luck. Quake III is very challenging to newbies, but you'll get the hang of it.

[seanyepez]

Number two addresses the concerns exactly.

If you're playing on a public server in California that is hosting up q3dm17.bsp or ra3map1.bsp, chances are I'll be there.

Before you start practicing, perfect your sensitivity.

[lee vieira]

Well, thanks Sean. I'll even forgive the 'newbie' slap since you gave so much good advice

Just one correction though-- it's generally ok to play Quake3 in 32-bit color on any Mac that has an ATI card in it(this includes iMacs). The ATI cards take hardly any performance hit from 32-bit (as opposed to the nVidia cards, which do, but which are better in other ways).

Of course, tests show that iMacs do start bogging in 32-bit @800x600, but that's probably more due to insufficient VRAM and what textures can do to that. 640x480 16-bit vs. 640x480 32-bit = virtually no difference in frame rates.

Now to work on my mouse sensitivity...

--lee

[seanyepez]

You generally want more than 50 frames per second at any given time to play. Even though some can argue the human eye can only see 35 frames per second, when you're in a tight situation, you need the extra frames to spare. Also, if the CPU and video card are less stressed, more time will be diverted to sampling the mouse and reducing "cursor lag".

If you have a broadband connection, try "/snaps 125". That will lower your ping slightly. Play around with the "/cl_maxpackets 30" command. 30 is the default setting, but I use 100, because that sends larger/more packets. It makes your ping seem higher, but it feels the same.

"/cl_timenudge -x" is good for reducing the lag if you have a broadband connection. Remember the negative sign, otherwise you'll be adding lag. I wouldn't use more than 50 as the variable, as it will chop more as you increase the "timenudge".

If you like mouse accelleration, use "/cl_mouseaccel x". It's the command for mouse accelleration. Play around with the variable. It's good to sweep to your target without taking much mousing room, and once you're there, have a steadier aim. I don't use it. My railing skills make me "twitch" to hit a rail. If you play with a sensitivity long enough, you'll start to learn the ratio of movement to movement of the cursor on screen, and with that, you can pull rails blindly.

Forcing player models and disabling dynamic lights also gives you more frames per second.

"/com_maxfps x" allows you to change the frames per second cap. If it's higher, you risk screwing up Internet play. I would not use anything higher than the default if you're on a dial-up connection. I cap mine at 125 frames per second, as that's 5 hertz faster than my monitor refresh, and tested to be smoothest for movement (USB mice sample at 125 hertz).

I think the only real way to get better is practice. Use sidestep instead of look left/look right. Always know what's behind you, around you, under you, in front of you, or wherever. Use sounds to your advantage. Disable the in-game music for a few more frames per second, and the in-game music that comes with Quake III: Arena sucks, anyway.

I hope these tweaks help out.