The Ultimate Quake Live Guide

[Yakumo]

This is a slight hack of 'Yakumo's q3 guide for all levels of player (mk II)' posted on 27-Oct-2003. Most of it is still entirely applicable to QuakeLive, but QL has added a lot since. Always W.I.P.

This guide is many many hours of my work, and I retain the rights to it, please do not repost unless in full, with credits maintained and a link back to this thread. Yakumo.

I kept finding myself repeating things so I wrote this guide on the most
asked about cfg settings and QL/Q3 playing tips so you can learn to play like this, or duel like the pro's

INDEX

Post 1: Hardware, Abbreviations And Common Terms
Post 2: Weapon Selection, The Console, Advanced Movement
Post 3: Config Files, Punkbuster, Playing Tips
Post 4: Demos, Configs Part 2, Yakumo's Cfg
Post 5: Crash Tutorial, Tiers, Quakelive Damage Chart, Quakelive Item Respawns, Useful Links
Post 6: Coloured Text / Names, Custom Colour Bright Skins, Weapon & Crosshair Colours, Super Bright Skins
Post 7:block player chat, relocate quakelive data
Post 8: Mouse Sensitivity Calculation, Mouse Acceleration
Post 9: +Zoom, R_Mode & R_Inbrowsermode List, \alias command (+vstr)
Post 10: Scripting (advanced), Debug Networking
Post 11: Keyboards, Health/RSI
Post 12: Mice

HARDWARE

Networking:
WiFi is NOT particularly suitable for realtime online games. All
kinds of weird latency issues such as connection spikes are common. It is worth getting an
Ethernet cable connection to your router instead that way you wont suffer from
other WiFi interference, microwaves etc. A 30 meter cable can be bought
for less than £10 online.

System :
It barely matters these days the Q3 engine QL is based on runs so well
on any accelerated card, and most can achieve the 125fps prefference for
pro level competing.

NB. Disable pre-rendering of frames in graphics drivers to cut 3 frame+ input lag (globally or for the browser you play in)

Controllers :

The best way to play FPS games is with a mouse/keyboard combo, keyboard
for forward/back strafe left/right usually on the cursor keys or
W,A,S,D, and the mouse to aim/fire/jump.

Keyboards :
Near anything will get you started, but cheap keyboards have a small signal buffer which ends up causing combinations to fail, for example not being able to run forwards while changing to a particular weapon, or move right while ducking.

Look for 'anti ghosting' 6KRO or even NKRO to avoid this.
You should also consider the health implications (RSI, cramps) of a bad keyboard.

In Depth - please read Post 11: Keyboards

Mice :

Though the IE 3, WMO 1.1 and IMO 1.1 are still used by several world top professional players sensor technology has moved on significantly.

Optical mice are far superior to ball based mice, more reliable, accurate, easier to clean and longer lasting. Avoid unknown mice as the sensor will likely be sub par and often lose it's tracking (stop reading / go crazy)

Recommendations:

• Razer Deathadder Black Edition
• Logitec g9x
• Steelseries Xai
• Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical 1.1a (WMO)
• Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical 1.1a (IMO)
• Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer v3 (IE 3)

*MS 'a' version mice are simply OEM, no box, otherwise identical to 1.1.

In Depth - please read Post 12: Mice

NB. See Sensitivity in post 8

Quake Protection :

If you're a heavy player and are getting sore red marks or calluses on your mouse hand palm, buy a SmudgeGuard
it almost eliminates the problem entirely even for 5 hour a day
players, and means you can play longer without discomfort. Less geeky
than explaining away 'Quake Palm'.

Mousemat :

A good pad won't confuse your sensor, wear down limiting life and
creating dirt, wear teflon feet down much, be hard to clean, or be hard on
you physically. A desk is not a good mouse surface option it will make your mouse feet filthy and destroy them.

Hard mats:

• Steelseries SX - The best hard mat you can buy imo. Aluminium. It's maybe slightly more wear on teflon feet than cloth but they are cheep to replace, after a year my pad is completely unchanged.
• Icemat black (steelseries i-2) - My favourite for 10 years playing Quake (the clear ones are not good for laser mice).Toughened glass. bl0key used to use an icemat but now high DPI mice make it feel like it's losing tracking.
• Razer Destructor - After 3 months of seriously excessive play (100,000+ frags) this now has the friction of a cloth pad, it's still good but I replaced it with the SX.

Soft/ Cloth mats:

Often still the choice of real Pros, I just don't like having to replace them often.

• Razer Goliathus Speed Alpha
• Steelseries QcK heavy
• Alsop

Sound :
I occasionally play without sound, it's relatively easy in FFA as
dying doesn't really matter, and I'm so used to the maps, where to
expect people to show up etc, it helps raise your visual awareness and
accuracy when doing 180 turns.

If you really want to be on top of your game then headphones are
a MUST, absolutely essential for clan games or duel. 5.1 speakers are
all very well but q3 only really produces 2d stereo sound, the absolute
best way to be able to hear accurately where people are, from as great a
distance as possible is play using headphones. When used to the maps
and sounds of players moving around you can accurately predict when they
will appear around a corner and plant a rocket at their feet before
they get there, or even rail them almost before they even realise
they've turned corner themselves. You can also get a rough idea of how damaged someone is so you know whether to keep hunting them down or make a brake for more items yourself.


Budget choice - plantronics headphones
Well built, have good mics for voice comms. A good headset mic
is the only way to use voicecomms, playing with speakers gives massive
feedback and will really *&*@ all your team off.
Alternatively sennheiser, their kevlar reinforced cable has lasted 3 years so far on my ipod.

No I'm not sponsored by any of these products (boo, I know they've
all sold a lot over the years from this guide) but they ARE fantastic

POSTURE / HEALTH

It's best to not be looking down at your monitor, but straight or slightly
up, otherwise you'll end up with neck and general posture problems,
it's worth thinking about this as you could end up in that position for
thousands of hours over the years, and habits form fast. Also don't
forget to blink, playing games people concentrate so much it inhibits
the blink reflex, and your eyes will dry up.

Please check out the anti RSI health recommendations in Post 11

ABBREVIATIONS AND COMMON TERMS

MG - MachineGun

SG - ShotGun (SSG - SuperShotGun relic from q1/q2 days)
PG - Plasma Gun (PR - Plasma Rifle)
LG - Lightning Gun
GL - Grenade Launcher
RL - Rocket Launcher

RG - Rail Gun (yay)
BFG - Big F****** Gun
NG - NailGun
CG - Chaingun
Prox - Proximity Mines

RA - Red Armour
YA - Yellow Armour
MH/Mega - Mega Health/100 Health poweup
RJ - Rocket Jump
PJ - Plasma Jump or Phone Jack

TN - Timenudge
FFA - Free For All
DM - DeathMatch (same as FFA)
TDM - Team DeathMatch
CTF - Capture the Flag

CA - Clan Arena
SJ - Strafe Jump
CJ - Circle jump
CSJ - Circle Strafe Jump
OB - OverBounce (not in QL, see bellow)


Vert - Short for 'Vertical' in Quake you can only look so far up
before it locks. A shot that hits from this position fully locked up is a
'vert'. The most impressive shots to pull off. Especially If the
opponent is far away, and you RG, RL them or PG/LG pin/carry them
maintaining the vert using strafe to keep hitting.

LAG - Slang for latency, when your ping is high, or just when it goes higher than normal.
Spikes - With cg_lagometer 1 you see a green bar representing
your connection, if your ping fluctuations show as spikes on the bar.
llama - a lame player for x reason =)

PB - PunkBuster, the anti cheating system

Hitscan - Weapons that just plot where it was fired from and
where it's going to hit, it gets there as soon as the server registers
that you fired it, as opposed to range weapons like the rocket launcher
where the projectile travels from point a to point b and it takes time.

Ping - Networking term for timing how long it takes a packet to
it's destination and back again, like a submarines radar ping. This is
shown by your name on the scoreboard. Lower is better, it
makes the game smoother and aiming easier without having to lead shots.

©Yakumo unr 2003-2013

[Yakumo]

The next 3 are terms you might hear from oldschool Q3A players -

VQ3 - Vanilla Quake 3 :normal Q3 with no mod, so it just uses only the pk3's from the "baseq3" directory.

OSP - Orange Smoothie Productions - Also the name of the most
reliable, secure anti cheat mod for Q3, that is also designed for league
server administration, much more advanced voting and other options than
normal Q3, it also has slightly improved (in most peoples eyes) net
code to VQ3.

CPMA - Challange Pro Mode Arena - A mod which introduced CPM physics a strange mix of q1/q2/q3 movement, makes for very intense
games, with q2 style trick jumps, there's a lot more to learn with CPM
about moving around etc than normal Q3 physics so it tends to keep
newbies away as they get slaughtered by CPM regulars, it is a hell of a
lot of fun playing with people of your own level though. It's adictive
as there's so much more scope for learning new things.

WEAPON SELECTION

If you are still using keys or the mousewheel to scroll through
weapons you are going to find it hard going online and find many
players go from one gun to another faster. The best thing to do is to
have one button per weapon. I have RL and RG on mwheelup/down and the
rest on keys for example.

THE CONSOLE

Some settings that do not have UI menu's are accessible through a
command console. Settings that could be used to cheat are locked and can
not be changed in multilayer games. QuakeLive advanced menus cover more
settings that previous games, but there are still some things that can
only be done if you use the console or edit your cfg.

To open the console in QuakeLive hold CTR+ALT and then hit the tilde key (above tab).

The tab key auto-completes commands, map names and (if disconnected) demo names like a unix terminal.

Text copied into the windows clipboard can be pasted into the console with ctrl+v

type
\com_allowconsole 1
and then hit enter, and you will not need to hold ctrl+alt any more to toggle the console with tilde.

All console commands should be prefixed with \ if you forget just hit tab and it will auto-complete it for you.

\cvarlist
will list all variables you can change
the *wildcard works so ..

\cvarlist *mou*
will list all variables containing mou

\cmdlist lists commands

\bind x "say_team ^3quad soon!" now pressing x tells your team

\callvote (options) call a vote, most of this can be done in QuakeLives options menu, but quicker to type.
eg. \callvote map retribution.

\quit instantly quits q3a/QL.
\ragequit same but prints 'ragequit'

\in_mouse 2 mouse input mode. 0 off, -1 win32, 1 directInput, 2 raw (best)
\in_mouseMode shows you the active setting
\in_restart restarts the input system to activate changes

network settings for cable/adsl :

\cl_maxpackets 125 (but drop to 100 or 63 (default) if too laggy.

\snaps 40 this command was removed from QL

\cl_packetdup 0

(stops it sending repeated date that's supposed to help keep gameplay
smooth over packet loss, not many people actually get any packet loss
these days though, if it's not 0 then weapons are unresponsive on isdn
or modems)

\cg_predictitems 0

Stops you hearing an item pickup noise only to hear it repeated again
when someone on a lower ping actually got their first but the server
hadn't caught up yet

\cg_predictLocalRailshots 1 - changes weather the rail fire
effect is predicted or not, 1 is snappier, 0 makes me feel it looks like
I hit when I didn't and vice versa.

\timenudge : Extrapolates player movement client side, negative values predict further ahead.

Refresh rate : if you use win2k/xp/vista a lot of people have
problems with games stuck at 60hz, that makes them seem flickery, in Q3/QL
you can force a refresh rate by using r_displayrefresh, if you have a
USB mouse, and your monitor supports it, it's best to use a resolution
that enables you to use a refresh rate of 120hz ( r_displayrefresh 120 )
this gets it in sync with your USB mouse's sample rate and makes things
a lot smoother when your aiming.

With some drivers even if your monitor supports your chosen rez at 120hz
windows may not recognise it, but you can usually add custom
resolutions in the control panel. Do NOT mess with this unless you know
for sure your monitor supports the refresh rate you want or you could
damage your monitor testing it.


\com_maxfps : QuakeLive does not have physics or networking
dependencies on frame rate. All jumps should be perfectly achievable for
all players. 125 is still the preference to play on as GPU's do
not motion blur between frames, and it syncs well with mouse input.
Lower than 125 will not disadvantage your movement, so it can help to
cap it a bit lower to maintain a consistent rate for a more playable
experience if your computer is having problems maintaining 125.

Quake2 sent and received a set number of packets per frame, Q3/QL uses
cl_maxpackets to govern this instead, all the graphics display is
totally separate from networking.



For other settings see CONFIGS PART 2 below in post 4 and my CFG attachment with comments. You can also read the Advanced Client Options thread.

ADVANCED MOVEMENT

High wall jumping : In Q3A on LostWorld (q3dm13) you can run straight towards the 100h and jump up to
it from the floor when you bash your knees against the wall, there are
quite a few steps in q3 that are that exact height and you need your fps
locked to 75 or 125 to be able to do it.

In Q3 this was an FPS only thing, all the other tricks require skill and
practice not a specific config setting. In QL it should work for all FPS,
and most of these jumps have actually been lowered anyway (dm13 MH)

you can also do it from a distance as long as you jump at the point where you will hit the wall at the peak of your jump.

Rocket Jumping (RJ) : make sure you have more than 50 health, or
as low as maybe 35 and a lot of armour, look down, or at an angle behind
you or to one side depending on where you want to go, and press jump followed by fire a picosecond after (or at the same time with less sensitive button mice, but you risk a dud jump)
This is another reason why it's best to have fire on mouse1, and jump on mouse2.
Practice offline or just play clan arena somewhere.
If your on a very poor connection and forgot to set cl_packetdup 0 you
may have a bad time trying to rocket jump as it tries to jump you twice
or all sorts of weird things.

Strafe Jumping : jumping while holding forward+left of right
travels further, you can build up a large amount of speed by doing this
repeatedly using the mouse to guide your direction, and pressing jump
again just before you hit the ground. It can be mixed with circle
jumping to get insane speeds and distance per jump, see
Quake Live Strafe Jump Troubleshooting (tutorial video) , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfb_kwvhQ9c and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTLZAn4Z1n4 on RAZ3R's QL training map.

Plasma Jumping : Same as rocket jumping but only has a small
effect, and only works if your looking absolutely straight down best
used when running forwards or you wont get anywhere really, useful is on
dm5 getting to the RA from the YA floor quickly without having to line
up run-up strafe jumps.

Plasma Climbing : It's best to have some armour, and a lot of
plasma ammo, go up to a wall, and look diagonally down, the angle you
want is basically looking straight at the join between the floor and the
wall as you are as far forward as you can go, jump up holding forwards,
press and hold fire, and most importantly LET GO OF JUMP, if you
don't let go of jump you go nowhere! (in QL you can get max height
holding jump, but if you need to hit strafe you stop)

Circle Jumping : This one I'm afraid is almost unexplainable in
text, it's a fairly fast flick of the mouse from as you jump, it gains
you even more speed and distance with you jumps and requires a LOT of
practice, it's the HARDEST and most advanced trick there is in Quake so don't expect to get it even after days of practising, There's Q3A practice maps or the q3a DEFRAG mod, but for QL see RAZ3R's training map(howto vid on youtube).

©Yakumo unr 2003-2013

[Yakumo]

If you really want to see
how it all works in Q3 (slightly different angles need in QL) tutorials
for Q3A Defrag trickjump mod : Genesis pt1, pt2

Other than that you really need to be on a server with someone good at them to guide you =)

Teleport Jumps : Press jump while your actually inside
teleporter, it can get you across the gap to the CG platform, it can get
you a VERY fast exit from the teleporter. on ProvingGrounds, if you let go
of holding forward just before you click jump inside the teleporter, and
hold a direction immediately after exiting the teleporter you can make
it onto the side of the platform with the chaingun on instead of falling
to near the jump pad below. These work best if you jump into the
teleport to start, when you come out again if you do it right the sound
effect is 2 jumps rapidly together, like Q2's double jumping.

OverBounce - a bug in the Q3a physics code & maps that would
let you jump very far/high/fast after hitting the ground at certain
points, more reliably on certain server settings. eg. you could land on
the YA near the MH on dm7 and bounce back to the bridge without pressing
jump. OverBounce bugs have been removed from QuakeLive.

CONFIG FILES

All of your setup information is stored in a .cfg file, if you start
quake3 and there are no cfg files in it's baseq3 folder then it
generates a default qzconfig.cfg file for you. Everything in it can be
altered with a normal text editor, though if you open the generated ones
it may look wrong as it is in linux format so it will seem to be all on
one line with notepad, a good editor like notepad++ will have no
problem with it. The settings in the cfg file
relate directly to the console commands, so if you know the console, you can write a cfg, and vice versa.

Quakelive puts its cfg files into -
(copy and paste exactly into address bar of explorer, or start -> run dialog )

Vista/win7 -

%AppData%\..\LocalLow\id Software\quakelive\home\baseq3

XP -

%appdata%\id Software\quakelive\home\baseq3

Linux -

~/.quakelive/quakelive/home/baseq3/

OSX -

~/Library/Application\ Support/Quakelive/

They are plain txt files you can open and edit with notepad / notepad++ etc.

Each line takes one command usually, and you can comment out any line with // at the beginning.

It is not a good idea to change the qzconfig.cfg, as every time you quit quake it re-writes this file, a crash may corrupt it.

When QL loads up, it looks for, and then loads the files qzconfig.cfg,
and then, if it exists, autoexec.cfg from the directory of the currently
running mod.

More advanced users may like to create YourName.cfg in the same
directory with all your permanent settings & scripts , and just have
'exec YourName.cfg' in autoexec.cfg

\Exec name.cfg is the console command to run a config.

For simplicity in quakelive, and as their aren't different mod
directories I have just been using the command 'writeconfig autoexec' to
dump out whatever my current cfg is, to a file that wont be overwritten
by the game, that gets loaded up automatically.

PUNKBUSTER

Punkbuster is an anti-cheat system
that scans your system and config files for known cheats, or for
settings that the host of the server you're playing on has told his PB
server to ban. PB is regularly updated by evenballance, it's creators,
to keep cheaters at bay. Anyone playing q3 these days needs to have
punkbuster enabled, this can be done in the menu, having seta
cl_punkbuster 1 in your cfg, or typing \pb_cl_enable in the console.

\pb_plist in a console will list all players and their punkbuster
status. This is also a way to get playerid's for kick commands.

Updating the pb system files :

If you connect to a Quake 3 server, play for a bit, and get kicked back
to spectator mode as soon as you die, it is because your punkbuster
client needs to be updated. in order to do this, you can either sit and
wait for a while, it will happen automatically, or you can go to
http://www.evenbalance.com/index.php?page=dl-ql.php and download pbsetup.exe, then run that program to force a manual update.

the pbscv.exe service installer can be also used to run a test on your
punkbuster setup at any time to check the services are working.

If even THAT doesn't work properly, you can this in the q3 console

\pb_sv_enable
\pb_sv_update

wait for a while for it to update, then :
\pb_sv_disable

If your having problems with punkbuster kicking you for reasons you really can't fathom, you may want to try:

\pb_security 0
\pb_sleep 500
\pb_writecfg
(pb writes it's own cfg file)

on some systems (like mine) this does really nasty things to the
netgraph though, lots of weird drops terrible to play on, so
alternatively:

\pb_security 1
\pb_sleep 20
\pb_writecfg


The place to go for punkbuster feedback is http://www.punksbusted.com

2 of the most common pb errors are fixed by this post

where evenbalance employees read and reply to the forums sometimes.

PLAYING TIPS

Just some quick ones, play lots, play better people than yourself, and
spectate better players a lot too and you'll learn, don't be afraid to
ask questions, but try not to get too put off or upset or anything if
they don't answer, some players just wont, some have had bad days maybe
and they don't feel like it, some are just busy, and some are just plain
not very nice people.

No-one can change weapons faster than anyone else, but do bear in mind
that you can put the command in to change weapons at any time after
you've fired one, and it will change to the new one as soon as that
weapons reload cycle is complete.

If you have a lot of experience you tend to have a good idea of what
weapons you want to start off a fight with, and what you want to change
to as soon as you've hit the first time, or first few times, so you
already have a head start, this was especially important in the slower,
more tactical quake2.

Many mod's aren't just about good aim, it's about knowing where to go,
where to look for people, when to get into or back out of fights, how to
prioritize your targets, run the map for powerups, there is a LOT going
on, experience counts for an awful lot.

If you ever see someone doing something you don't understand, it seems
to fast, or they jump too far etc, don't jump out and call them a cheat
as I've had when seen doing the rl to rg dm6 jump, try asking politely
how it's done, or if they wont explain it come ask some of the admins in
#byq3
though my hope is after reading this guide you should be able to figure
out how everything is done even if you can't quite manage it yourself
yet =)

Just remember it will all come together after enough practice. (Thanks RAZ3R)

Yakumo
unr.Yakumo

©Yakumo unr 2003-2013

[Yakumo]

DEMOS & BENCHMARKING

To record a demo simply type
\record
into the console and a demo will be recorded with an automatically generated name.

\record mydemoname
would record a demo called 'mydemoname'

\demo mydemoname
plays the demo 'mydemoname'

Demo's are stored in the \demos folder under the same folder holding your .cfg files.

You can benchmark your system with the current settings by using -

\timedemo 1
\demo yaku_bench1

or any other demo, yaku_bench1 (linked) is a fast, hectic demo of a full game taken online, it is over in 3 minutes so is a good way to quickly get a fairly realistic benchmark figure but in very little time.

\cg_autoaction 0
0 - do nothing
1 - auto record all games
2 - auto record a screenshot at end of all games
3 - auto record demo and screenshot

cl_demoRecordMessage 0 hides the recording demo message

QuakeLive Demo Tools (QLDT) windows tool for parsing demo's or initialising the client to view.
QLDP: The QUAKE LIVE Demo Player (FF Extension) FireFox extension for playing demo collections of any size.

Finally Greasemonkey Alternative Server Browser is an excellent script for several things, including an easy demo launcher, you just have to type or paste the name in.

I've also attached a demo.cfg for demo playback to this post, if you bind your cursor keys to things for use in game, you would need to \exec demo.cfg before demo playback, or when your CFG is loaded again it will take over the cursor binds :

UPARROW=normal speed
DOWNARROW=Pause
LEFTARROW=timescale decrease (0.9, .08, 0.7 etc) slowmo
LEFTARROW=timescale increase (0.9, .08, 0.7 etc) ffwd

Added controls :

numpad insert : toggle r_shownormals

numpad 5=toggle 3rd person
numpad up/down=zoom in/out 3rd
numpad left/right=pan around 3rd

New Grayscale to Color Video Effect by GreasedScotsman, bound to kp_plus

CONFIGS PART 2

Some common tweaks you may come accross in CFG's, not available in the in game advanced menu are :

r_enablePostProcessing 0 - disables bloom and colour correction, can give an fps boost.

s_mixahead "0.140" very advanced tweak, needs a lot of testing
s_mixPreStep "0.05" - Can give a large FPS boost if you really need it, but can corrupt audio and give net spikes (code blocking I guess)

• Can cause netgraph blips even if audio seems fine, careful
• s_mixahead should be a larger value than s_mixPreStep.
• Benchmark a demo with 16 players to check FPS.
• Shoot an 'I can win' bot to check the MG hit sound isn't lagged.
• Test a 16 player nightmare practice match on Longest Yard (dm17) will soon find if audio will crackle.
• Always reset this to default before debugging any audio problems after any updates.

For my PC 0.11 mix and 0.06 preSetp give ~ 10fps boost without issues. Keep mixprestep between 0 and 0.10, higher gives more fps but more chance of crackle.

r_ext_compressed_textures 1 - gains FPS on many systems, with tiny IQ loss you probably wont notice ever.
cg_shadows 0 - they can be handy, but if 1 fps is harmed badly on most hardware with many players on.
r_ignorehwgamma 1 - This has a negative side effect of disabling windows Aero when you launch quake. set to 0 will not do this, but other settings have to be tweaked to try and match visual gamma/intensity compared to having it on 1.
r_contrast - this is only usable if post processing is enabled.
cg_smoothclients, snaps - removed in QL
cl_maxpackets 125 - maximum number of packets you can send the server

r_depthbits 24 - If you have a gfx card with a 32bit Z (depth) buffer, then this should be 24 (not 32). This is nothing to do with the colour depth.
r_stencilbits 8 - this is where the other 8 bits are used (needed if you want advanced shadows)


Important: If you mess with com_hunkmegs to give Quake more ram, keep it a multiple of 8 and NOT more than 256 in QL or QL may fail to start at all, or alloc_hunk crashes or odd bugs like freezing can occur when a player joins the server. Default is 96, take that as a minimum also.

YAKUMO'S CFG

BACK UP YOUR OWN CONFIG BEFORE USING THIS BY DOING \WRITECONFIG (yourname)

Due to lack of room, I'm laving the rest to my CFG it has comments for most obscure settings now.

(lol, last time i pasted my cfg n this guide was 27/10/2003, today is 27/02/2009 nearly 5 and a half years to the day.)

The swelt hud I was using throughout the QL beta is attached, it is a very minor mod that i mostly use for the moved clock.It was original posted in the giant hud thread on the official forums here. I started to use it as I used to dislike the default QuakeLive one so much compared to the default Q3A hud that I have always used.

For custom huds the 2 files go in baseq3\ui where 'baseq3' is the one described above that holds your config files.

If anyone is interested in EXACT mouse config then see http://www.quakelive.com/forum/showt...446#post152446

I would NOT just copy this into your own install as your monitor may not like the rez/refresh combo, remove/change r_mode and r_displayrefresh to make it safe.

In autoexec.cfg I just have :

  exec Yakumo.cfg

//end

Yakumo.cfg attached in a zip as it is it's too large to past into a post, and the custom hud is included, QLive forum does not allow .cfg so .txt is added on the end of demo and maps configs as seperate downloads.

Use an editor that understands unix line breaks or it will al seem garbled on one line. Even better use one like Notepad++ (Free) that you can tell to view .cfg files as c/c++ syntax for highlighting
(n++ language menu) it makes comments etc a lot easier to read.

Yakumo cfg custom keys of note :

F4 toggle r_fastsky
F5 enable/disable clan tag (change in cfg to your own first)

F7 move to spectate
F8 toggles dead player sparks
F9 reload autoexec.cfg
F10 toggle 3 forcemodel settings
F11 screenshot JPEG
F12 stop/start demo record

UPARROW toggle demo Record Message
DOWNARROW toggle Level Timer Direction

home toggle simpleitems
del toggles speedometer 2 for spectating
end hide/show acc permanently (bug: can't chat with it up)
ins toggle for the old q3 rail style I used to use
' swaps TEAM colours BRIGHT red/blue
[ optional custom xhair (I never use it any more tbh)
] callvote shuffle
z toggle extended zoom for space maps

All keypad keys are used for team binds, please read the CFG for more info it is fairly well commented where not obvious.

emSixteen's hud from EmSixTeen's custom HUD and config slightly modded

\vstr hudc //load default QL COMP hud
\vstr hud0 //load default QL hud
\vstr hud1 // emSixteen modded hud with normal crosshair
\vstr hud2 //emSixteen modded hud with emSixteen crosshair


PLEASE NOTE cg_autoaction "1" records *ALL* games, you probably want to set that to 0.

This CFG is a VERBATIM copy, PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU search for 'name' and
'clan' (appears 3 times in scripts) throughout and change to your own!

[ You must be logged in to see attachments ||| every time the file is updated the download count resets ]

©Yakumo unr 2003-2013

[Yakumo]

BLOCK PLAYER CHAT

If you feel the need to ignore a player, but it's not so bad you wish to record it and submit it to suppot to have them disciplined you can use \block eg:

\block AnnoyingTroll

you need the player name, not the clan tag to do this (clan tags are always at the front of the name)

This will block ALL chat from them both in game, and via the QuakeLive chat system

to see who you have blocked

\blocklist

to remove someone from the list
\unblock AnnoyingTroll

RELOCATE QUAKELIVE DATA

This is UNSUPPORTED but possible,

If using a network or multi-user PC this example will move and link only the baseq3 directory with the PK3 bin/map files in, that way
individual users keep their quakelive/home directories for their own .cfg files, demos, screenshots etc but share the pk3 files so if the
QuakeLive system updates they will only re-download once for the first user to try them.

If you are an individual user I would suggest leaving the files where they are and creating a shortcut to them, If you need to relocate the
install for lack of disk space, just remove "\baseq3" from the example text, and move the entire "QuakeLive" directory from within "id software".


1) locate your QL installation, leave the "id software" directory and move (not copy) the complete "baseq3" dir with all the .pk3
files.

For this example I create "e:\quakelive\" and move baseq3 into that, so I now have "e:\quakelive\baseq3" holding lots of .pk3 files.
e:\quakelive itself would not hold any other user accessible files, only the baseq3 directory is going to be linked to.

XP/Vista/Win7 it would in fact be sensible to move the baseq3 folder to

%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\id Software\QuakeLive

We will create a link where the old directory was, through to this new location where we moved the actual data to.


2) (win) got to "Start -> Run" and enter "cmd".

3)

Vista/Win7

This uses /J for a Junction (should cross different disks) so it is server processed if necessary, please read File-Based Symbolic Links If you need the link to traverse SMB boundaries you must use /D for a symlink instead.

mklink /J "%APPDATA%\..\LocalLow\id Software\quakelive\baseq3"  "e:\Quakelive\baseq3"

XP

1) download the tool "Junction" from the microsoft site
2) extract it to your windows/system32 folder

junction  "%APPDATA%\id Software\quakelive\baseq3" "e:\Quakelive\baseq3"

*NIX (untested example)

ln -s /opt/Quakelive/baseq3  ~/.quakelive/baseq3

©Yakumo unr 2003-2013

[KittenIgnition]

HARDWARE

Networking:

WiFi is NOT particularly suitable for realtime online games all
kinds of weird latency issues, spikes are common. It is worth getting an
Ethernet cable to your router instead that way you wont suffer from
other WiFi interference, microwaves etc. A 30 meter cable can be bought
for less than £10 online.

awkward/incorrect grammar. should be more like:

HARDWARE

Networking:
WiFi is NOT particularly suitable for real-time online games. All kinds of weird latency issues and ping spikes are common. It is worth getting an ethernet cable for your router instead, as that way you won't suffer from other WiFi interference, microwaves, etc. A 30 meter cable can be bought for less than £10 online.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

BLOCK PLAYER CHAT

If you feel the need to ignore a player, but it's not so bad you wish to record it and submit it to suppot to have them disciplined you can use \block eg:

\block AnnyoingTroll

spelling error in post #7

should be annoying (annoying > annyoing ;D)

[Yakumo]

awkward/incorrect grammar. should be more like:

Some of it was better before but didn't fit, some of that is an outright mess yes :/

I'll see what I can do, thanks

spelling error in post #7

should be annoying (annoying > annyoing ;D)

That's not how that ex-user spelt it, honest ;op

[KittenIgnition]

Some of it was better before but didn't fit, some of that is an outright mess yes :/

I'll see what I can do, thanks



That's not how that ex-user spelt it, honest ;op

i only read for a few minutes. ill check the rest of the OP(s) eventually, cuz im sure theres gonna be a couple more mistakes. its inevitable, when you have 20 freakin' OPs.

i do like this guide though. especially the post with the link to my thread

im catching up in views!

[Yakumo]

WINDOWS ACCELERATION FIXES

In_mouse 2 should give you completely acceleration free mouse movement in windows, if you can't use this for some reason, or just want no accel in other games then you can try these registry patches :

MarkC Windows 7 Mouse Acceleration Fix - Win7 ONLY

CPL Mouse Fix or Cheese Mouse Fix - NON win7 machines. The Cheese fix is the more accurate of the two but requires specific screen refresh

MOUSE SENSITIVITY CALCULATION

Measure how far your mouse has to travel to perform a 360 degree turn in game.

1. Place Mouse at edge of mouse mat when aimed at an exact point
2. move slowly round till looking at same point again
3. measure mouse mat edge to mouse edge .

This simply measures where the edge of your mouse started, to where it ended up completing a full 360 degree turn. cm/360 or inches/360 depending where you're from.

This is assuming acceleration is off, otherwise speed will alter things considerably.

If it's less than 3 inches (7.5cm) then I would argue that your sensitivity set-up is far to high for accurate play, you will unlikely to track well with LG and MG ('well'=near 40% accuracy) and your movement will suffer, circle jumps especially.

The formula to compute sensitivity in inch/cm for a 360°

Assuming no acceleration is used:

Sinch=360 / (M*R*B)
Scm=360 / (M*(R/2.54)*B)

with

Sinch=sensitivity in inch
Scm=sensitivity in cm
M=m_yaw
R=mouse resolution (dots/counts per inch)
B=ingame sensitivity

fov sens change calc

Because it is a 3D world seen on a 2D plane (your monitor) this is not true. I took a few screenshots to illustrate this: http://img31.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=shot0008xln.jpg

Only the fov is changed between the screenshots. If you compare the size (width or height) of the Quake Live logo between the screenshots you'll get the following:

fov 100 - size 1x
fov 75 - size 1.55x
fov 50 - size 2.56x
fov 25 - size 5.38x

You can easily verify this yourself by counting pixels in any photo editing software. So going from fov 100 to fov 50 doesn't make things 2 times bigger, but rather 2.56 times bigger! This means that you need to divide your sensitivity by 2.56 in order to cover the visual distance with the same physical motion of your mouse (compared to fov
100).

The formula to calculate this is:

Zoom_sensitivity=sensitivity * tan((zoomfov/2) * (PI/180)) / tan((fov/2) *(PI/180))

Example:

sensitivity 4
cg_fov 100
Desired: fov 50

4 * tan(50/2 * pi/180) / tan(100/2 * pi/180)=1.5651.

Notes:
This is not the only way to calculate a new sensitivity. Other ways are:

A) zoomfov/fov (linear)
B) Take aspect ratio in account: atan(1/aspect_ratio*tan(zoomfov/2*pi/180)) / atan(1/aspect_ratio*tan(fov/2*pi/180))
C) Setting random values
D) Use +zoom and just play the damn game. [img]ultimate_quake_live_guide_v2_files/rolleyes.gif[/img]

Use whatever you feel most comfortable with!

cg_zoomsensitivity 1 lowers your sensitivity using a scaled algorithm

Values higher than 1 are multiplied by the result of the scaled algorithm, so if your sensitivity was 1, and during zoom the result of the scaling (which takes your original fov, and zoomfov into account) was 0.36, setting cg_zoomsensitivity to 2 would be 2*0.36=0.72 .

cg_zoomsensitivity 0 uses an older algorithm, which was a simple ratio.
For example if your zoomfov was half of your fov, your zoom sensitivity would be half. This wasn't technically correct and was later changed, see the forum link above.

MOUSE ACCELERATION

This patch comes with an alternate set of cvars to configure and tweak mouse acceleration. Nothing fundamentally new but it's a bit easier to setup mouse acceleration, and it's an option offered in QUAKE LIVE which I'm contributing to the GPL'ed quake3 source already.

Below is a bit of documentation I posted about the system.

TTimo

--

I've been using an experimental mouse acceleration code for a while, and decided to make it available to everyone.

Don't be too worried if you don't understand the explanations below, this is mostly intended for advanced players:

To enable it, set cl_mouseAccelStyle 1 (0 is the default/legacy behavior)

New style is controlled with 3 cvars:
sensitivity
cl_mouseAccelOffset
cl_mouseAccel

The old code (cl_mouseAccelStyle 0) can be difficult to calibrate because if you have a base sensitivity setup, as soon as you set a non zero acceleration your base sensitivity at low speeds will change as well. The other problem with style 0 is that you are stuck on a square
(power of two) acceleration curve.

The new code tries to solve both problems:

Once you setup your sensitivity to feel comfortable and accurate enough for low mouse deltas with no acceleration (cl_mouseAccel 0), you can start increasing cl_mouseAccel and tweaking cl_mouseAccelOffset to get the amplification you want for high deltas with little effect on low mouse deltas.

cl_mouseAccel is a power value. Should be >= 1, 2 will be the same power curve as style 0. The higher the value, the faster the amplification grows with the mouse delta.

cl_mouseAccelOffset sets how much base mouse delta will be doubled by acceleration. The closer to zero you bring it, the more acceleration will happen at low speeds. This is also very useful if you are changing to a new mouse with higher dpi, if you go from 500 to 1000 dpi, you
can divide your cl_mouseAccelOffset by two to keep the same overall 'feel' (you will likely gain in precision when you do that, but that is not related to mouse acceleration).


Mouse acceleration is tricky to configure, and when you do you'll have to re-learn your aiming. But you will find that it's very much forth it in the long run.

So in summary, with cl_mouseaccelStyle 1, you need cl_mouseaccel higher that 1 for any positive acceleration as the value is a power, exactly 1 would be no acceleration. If you have it less than 1 (as you may have had with style 0) then you would have NEGATIVE acceleration.
A setting of cl_mouseaccel 2 matches the old style 0 power, but then you have to match the offset :

ian` came up with an algorithm to help the transition, so you can convert old style accel feel to the new system.

q3accel = cl_mouseaccel setting when using cl_mouseAccelStyle 0 (or accel in quake3 arena)

• When cl_mouseAccelStyle 1
• Set cl_mouseAccel 2
• cl_mouseAccelOffset = (1 / q3accel ) * .8

• Added cl_mouseSensCap
  (default 0/disabled) to cap the mouse speed if you are using
  acceleration. Pass it an equivalent sensitivity with no acceleration
  value, and the acceleration code will not go beyond that.

style 1 has 3 main problems with it:

1) it's framerate dependent (if your framerate drops, your accel will drop). it doesnt cause framedrops itself, but it will change due to them. if your framerate drops by half, your effective accel will also drop by half.

2) the offset is not actually an offset, the name and description is misleading. the offset cvar just divides the accel term - it does the same thing that cl_mouseaccel does for style 0, but it divides instead of multiplying. In other words, the only 'new' feature that style 1 gives over style 0 is the custom power.

3) style 1 doesnt preserve directionality. this means that the direction in which your view moves depends on how quickly you move the mouse even if you are moving the mouse in a straight line. For style 0, the direction in which the view moves ONLY depends on the direction of mouse movement.


Also note that senscap works with BOTH accel styles, it's not special to style 1.

use cl_mouseacceldebug to fine tune, this creates mouse.log in your cfg containing directory.

©Yakumo unr 2003-2013

[Yakumo]

+ZOOM

The +zoom bind initiates zoom, and has some new accompanying cvars for Quake Live:

cg_zoomOutOnDeath "1" (0/1) self explanatory
cg_zoomScaling "0" (0/1) toggles the zoom in/out animation
cg_zoomToggle "1" (0/1) when set to 1 makes +zoom toggle on/off instead of you needing to hold the key down.
cg_zoomSensitivity "0.9" (float) multiplier that alters
sensitivity when zoomed, 0 uses old Q3 code, values greater than 0 use
corrected code as the Q3 code was flawed.

R_MODE & R_INBROWSERMODE LIST

r_mode "-1" is for custom resolutions. Having set this Set your desired resolution with :

set r_customwidth "1280"
set r_customheight "720"

r_mode "-2" detect desktop resolution and use that when going fullscreen

If r_noFastRestart is set to 0 QL will attempt to change from
fullscreen to windowed mode without re-loading all game data. If this
fails to work for you, then try this with r_mode and r_inbrowsermode set to the same resolution.
You will need QL to be using the same colour depth as your desktop (eg r_colorbits 32 in QL , and 32bit colour windows desktop)
If your in game refresh is the same as your desktop refresh (eg 120hz on good screens) then this switch is instantaneous.

The web sites game settings for browser mode set the browser mode actual visible area.
This means if your r_inbrowsermode is 800x600 (or higher), but in
[QL Website] -> game settings -> it has browser mode as 640x480
much of the actual image will be outside of the smaller window that
your browser actually puts it in.

Mode 0: 320x240
Mode 1: 400x300
Mode 2: 512x384
Mode 3: 640x360
Mode 4: 640x400
Mode 5: 640x480
Mode 6: 800x450
Mode 7: 852x480
Mode 8: 800x500
Mode 9: 800x600
Mode 10: 1024x640
Mode 11: 1024x576
Mode 12: 1024x768
Mode 13: 1152x864
Mode 14: 1280x720
Mode 15: 1280x768
Mode 16: 1280x800
Mode 17: 1280x1024
Mode 18: 1440x900
Mode 19: 1600x900
Mode 20: 1600x1000
Mode 21: 1680x1050
Mode 22: 1600x1200
Mode 23: 1920x1080
Mode 24: 1920x1200
Mode 25: 1920x1440
Mode 26: 2048x1536
Mode 27: 2560x1600

R_TEXTUREMODE

Effects visual quality, available filter names :

GL_NEAREST
GL_LINEAR
GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_NEAREST
GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_LINEAR
GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST (bilinear in the menu)
GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR (default, highest quality, trilinear in menu)

MULTIPLE MACHINES ONE WAN IP

More than one machine behind your router that wants to play at once?

In the quakelive console of each machine type

net_port 27977

(or 27963 etc, in the range 27000 to 27999) to change the port used for quakelive (every machine needs to be on a different port)
then

net_restart

VISTA / WIN7 ROUTER PROBLEM FIX

Some poor quality routers (not always meaning cheap) lock up or have
problems with TCP auto tuning, they don't like large TCP receive windows
that vista/7 can allow, so you can try various options (in bold) to
limit the size.

If your having problems with quake you can try one of these in an
administrator level cmd prompt (start-> type cmd, hold left ctrl+left
shift then hit enter for admin prompt).

If it has no effect or makes things worse, then I recommend you reset it to the default.

(in order of restrictiveness) :

netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled disable auto-tuning
netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=highlyrestricted
netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=restricted
netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=normal this is the default
netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=experimental allow super large windows, if your router has problems as it is, this would make it worse.

netsh interface tcp show global shows current state

WHY MANUAL CFG'S?

q: doesn't QL save my config already?
a: yes, it does, same as q3a it will save them to the default cfg file.

in q3a it is 'q3config.cfg' in QL it is 'qzconfig.cfg'.

BUT that file is saved every time you quit the game, and so if
something goes wrong the file can end up with settings you don't want,
or worse reset to default entirely.

Also sometimes the odd var consistently does not get saved to q3 or
qzconfig.cfg such as r_displayrefresh (and I think in ql
cg_predictLocalRailshots), you would have to keep typing them in every
time it loads if you don't create an autoexec.cfg

\ALIAS COMMAND (+vstr)

-thing exists for all +things built into QL, so +moveup has a
coresponding -moveup that is called when the key is released.

You can now create these, or script shortcuts that don't need vstr in front with the /alias command

/alias +vWalk "r_fastsky 0;cg_draw2d 0"
/alias -vWalk "r_fastsky 1;cg_draw2d 1"

/bind space +vWalk

so in this made up example the sky would be drawn but all hud graphics would disaapear as space was held, and they would return when it was released.

It is also possible to do

/alias campgrounds "callvote map campgrounds"

and then call that vote with

/campgrounds

instead of /vstr campgrounds if you had made a seta style script.

/unalias +vWalk
/unalias -vWalk

will wipe the example alias
or /unaliasall to wipe all

CG_TRUELIGHTNING

if you want your shaft to appear in the place where it hits, including antilag effects, you need:

y=1 (ping 80ms or less)
y=80 / x (ping greater than 80ms)

x is ping in ms, y is value of cg_truelightning.

This is all entirely correct.

©Yakumo unr 2003-2013