The Ultimate QuakeLive Guide

[Yakumo]

Last updated : 20/05/2009

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, only some .cfg things needed to be dropped really. Always W.I.P.

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
(Some topics cross post boundaries)

Post 1: Hardware, Weapon Selection, Abbreviations And Common Terms
Post 2: Coloured Text / Names, 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 9: Color Bright Skins & Extras

HARDWARE

Networking:
WiFi is NOT suitable for realtime online games you will have all kinds of weird lag, get an Ethernet cable to your router, even 10mbps is better than wifi. 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 pro level competing requires. Until recently I only had a 4-5 year old P4-ht AGP-7600gs and QL worked fantastically.

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 :
almost anything will do, cheep keyboards tend to have a small signal buffer which ends up causing some keys not to work at all while others are pressed, which, with some configs, can cause problems like not being able to run forwards while changing to a particular weapon, or move right while ducking for example, I prefer Cherry keyboards tbh, microswitched rather than rubbery feel, Cherry Click 105key Win95 PS/2, microswitched keyb, I haven't found a combination of keys yet that fails to work, and cherry guarantees each key for >50 million key presses.

Mice :
Previously the mice to get were by a LONG way were the Microsoft Explorer v3 mice, or MS Intelipoint 1.1, MS Wheel Mouse Optical (WMO) 1.1 mice not any older version and not the wireless (wireless lags).

They are optical mice but don't suffer any of the old optical problems, I am a fast mouse mover and mine never sticks or hiccups. If you can't check the version number don't buy, you may not get a good 6000 samples per sec model. The MS explorer v4 has the same tech, but is not as well liked.

All the older versions sample at a much lower rate so stick, or go crazy if you move them too fast,

These mice are still used by a lot of the world top players, and can be found very cheaply now (under 20 GBP easily).

6 months ago though I swapped to a Razer Deathadder, about the same size and weight as the inteli 1.1, they are superb now all the bugs have been fixed (~30 gbp)

All are very smooth to use, very very accurate, better than any ball mouse as there is no ball to stick or clean.

Check out ESRealitys mouse comparison page

NB. See Sensitivity in Configs Part 2

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, be hard to clean, or be hard on you physically. Your desk is not a good mouse surface option.

Icemat black (steelseries i-1) - My favourite for 10 years playing Quake (the clear ones are not good for laser mice).A big hunk of toughened glass so it will last 10+ years totally undamaged, it's easy to clean. bl0key used to use an icemat too. High DPI mice make it feel like it's losing tracking a little sadly.

Razer Destructor - After 3 months of seriously excessive play (100,000+ frags) this now has the friction of a cloth pad, it's still great but I replaced it with :

Steelseries SX - very happy with this so far, it's slightly more wear on teflon feet but they are cheep to replace, after 2 months the pad is completely unchanged.

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 they are 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

It's best to be looking slightly UP at your monitor, 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

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 thing to another faster. The best thing to do is to have one key/mouse function per weapon. I have RL and RG on mwheelup/down and the rest on keys for example.

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 Q3 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 - Short 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 keeps jumping up and down a lot you see it 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 when you look at the scoreboard. Lower is better, it makes the game smoother and aiming easier without having to lead shots.

[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.

COLOURED TEXT / NAMES

To colour your text you use ^ like ctrl+k in IRC. just do ^x b4 the text you want coloured where x is a number from 1 to 7. eg typing ^1hello will say hello in red, if you colour your name please put ^7 at the end otherwise q3 will over colour other peoples text immediately after your name ever comes up (fixed in QL)

ie in console

\say "^1one ^2two ^3three ^4four ^5five ^6six ^7seven ^8eight"

displays

one two three four five six seven eight

(black does not work in names for QL however)

THE CONSOLE

Ever since Quake many game settings that did not have UI menu's were still accessible through a command console. Settings that could be used to cheat are locked and can not be changed in multilayer games. QuakeLive has menus for more settings that previous games to try and make things easier for newcomers, 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 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

\callvote (options) call a vote, most of this can be done in QuakeLives options menu, but it's somethings quicker to type.
eg. \callvote map qzdm7.

\quit instantly quits q3a/QL.

\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

(is what i use since it was enabled in q3 1.32, but drop to 100, 60 or 30 (default) if the servers too slow/rammed, anything under 30 is considered cheating by anyone in the know, leagues, etc )

\snaps 40

(most people beleive this should either be the same as , or higher than, the servers sv_fps setting, and if it's higher the server's setting caps it anyway, it's a bit of a missunderstood setting by most inclujding myself tbh, just keep it at 40 unless you KNOW the servers sv_fps)

\cl_packetdup 0

(stops it sending repeated date that's suposed to help keep gameplay smooth over packet loss, not many people actually get any packet loss these days on cable and good servers, and if it's not 0 then q3 feels really slow in comparison and weapons are unresponsive especially on isdn or modems)

\cg_predictitems 0

(helps prevent you hearing a 'you picked up an item' 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 : Sorry Q3a players (or hooray depending on your perspective) Timenudge does not exist in QuakeLive. Aanyone playing above 100ms will sorely miss this though.

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 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 : Q3's physics worked best with com_maxfps set to either 75 if you have a low frame rate, or, the absolute best setting is 125.

Unlike Quake2 your FPS does not effect network performance AT ALL q2 sent and received a set number of packets per frame, Q3/QL uses maxpackets to govern this, all the gfx display is totally separate from networking. In Q3A 125 made all the good trick jumps work superbly.

QuakeLive imported 125 physics fixes from CPMA, and is thus frame rate independent, all jumps should be perfectly achievable for all players. 125 is still nice to play on as GPU's do not motion blur between frames, and it syncs well with mouse input.

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 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 FPS only thing, all the other tricks require skill and practice not a specific config setting. In QL it should work for all, 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 peek 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 modem and forgot to set cl_packetdup 0 you will have a god awfull 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. Q3a's Defrag mod is the best way to learn really, it can be mixed with circle jumping to get insane speeds and distance per jump, see these video guides - 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, and the only place i can think of atm it's actually useful is on dm5 getting to the red armour from the YA floor quickly without having to line up run-up strafe jumps.

Plasma Climbing : this one requires decent FPS tbh, 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'll go nowhere!

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]

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 QZTourney2, 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
q3config.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 -

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

XP -

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

Linux -

	Code:	~/.quakelive/quakelive/home/baseq3/

OSX -

	Code:	~/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

http://mail.google.com/mail/images/cleardot.gifIf 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

[Yakumo]

DEMOS

You can record demos by just typing
\record
in the console and it will name it for you, or
\record mydemoname
to name it yourself, there is also
\cl_autoRecordDemo which will record every game for you in seperate files per map.
\demo demoname (no extension needed) will play back a demo

QuakeLive in-game DEMO Viewer is HERE!!! is a brilliant little mod, an in game demo file selector.
QLDP: The QUAKE LIVE Demo Player (FF Extension) fantastic FF extension for playing demo collections.

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

CONFIGS PART 2

The tweaks most are looking for that are not available in the in game advanced menu are :

r_ignorehwgamma 1 //This has a negative side effect of disabling windows Aero when you launch q3. 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.
cl_packetdup 0 //minor change on broadband, not good if netgraph has red
cg_forcenemymodel "keel/bright" //brightskins
cg_smoothclients// Smooths out choppy players a bit at risk of broken prediction. I prefer 0.
rate 25000
cl_maxpackets 125 //maximum number of packets you can receive from server before

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)
r_enablepostprocess 0 //this is the single biggest fps boost for most people in QL. and doesn't have a huge impact on visuals.

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 56, take that as a minimum also.

Sensitivity: Do measure how far your mouse has to travel to perform a 360 degree turn in game. Place Mouse at edge of mat when aimed at an item, move slowly round till looking at item again, measure mat edge to mouse edge.

This is assuming acceleration is off, otherwise the speed you move the mouse could 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) , or flickrail 180, and your movement will probably suffer, circle jumps especially.

If you are using the new in_mouse 2 try lower sensitivity by 0.5 to match your old turning circle.

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 :

	Code:	  exec Yakumo.cfg

//end

Yakumo.cfg attached, it's too large to past into a post now, QLive forum does not allow .cfg so .txt is added on the end. Use an editor that understands unix line breaks or it will al seem garbled on one line. Even better use one like Notepad++ (Free as in beer) that you can tell to view .cfg files as c/c++ syntax for highlighting (Language menu) it makes comments etc a lot easier to read.

The map binds have win talleys as I'm an active beta tester, and I've been trying to keep track of things so I can accurately report award bugs.

Added some toggle binds for sparkly gibs, having fun with them on for now less distracting than blood was (I'd still like blood as a 3rd option!), cg_forcenemymodels toggle, and a vstr for legomode, off default still.

vstr LegoOn
vstr LegoOff //back to my default
vstr LegoV //with fullbright so it's like vector graphics, terrible to play on

Also using emSixteen's hud from EmSixTeen's custom HUD and config though I have done a tiny mod to have a near transparent clock (included in my config zip)

\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

UPDATE 15/04/2009: Added forcemodel cycling so you can F10 to cycle through brightskins on+teammodel crash, brightskins on+no force team, no brights skins+no forced models.

UPDATE 14/08/2009: lowered sens to 8cm 360, and dropped mouse2.cfg entirely. Moved to a modded
emSixteen hud.

UPDATE 13/09/2009: Added support for QLDP playlists to demo.cfg (prev/next demo on , and . ), added settings for new cvars, moved obituaries down a bit in emsixteen hud as not printing frag messages any more.
use vstr b/ vstr r to change team and have correct team colours, or ' to just toggle colours fast.

PLEASE NOTE cg_autoaction "1" records ALL games, you may want to set that to 0, and do change name/clan in cfg etc.

[Yakumo]

NB. seta r_ignorehwgamma "1" was an alternative way of changing brightness, it used to be the only way to get brightness to work in win2k. In q3a it had a side effect of making the invisible shell a bit easier to see, in Qlive I think they've fixed this anomaly so it's the same.

eg. from my old q3a cfg the 2 alternatives for same brightness -

	Code:	 //win2k adjustments
 seta r_ignorehwgamma "1"
 seta r_overBrightBits "1" 
 seta r_gamma "1.7"
 seta r_intensity "1.4"
 seta r_mapOverBrightBits "2"

 //alternate win2k adjustments
 //seta r_ignorehwgamma "0"
 //seta r_gamma "1.3"
 //seta r_intensity "1"
 //seta r_overBrightBits "0" 

CRASH TUTORIAL

If you can't get past any of the tier selection challenges, take a look at strafe jumping and rocket jumping above. The hallway after the rocket jump is a long strafe run you have to complete in time to get through the doors, or you can cheat with a reverse rocket jump.

Also, there is a secret room you can check out

TIERS

The skill levelling online is quite complicated, especially for duel which uses an ELO system (ELO rating for QL explained )
The server reports an average of the current players on it, and simply offers a guideline as to if it thinks it will be harder, easier or skill matched for you. Be aware with people joining and leaving this can change very rapidly.

Quakelive filters players into skill tiers of 1 to 5 to set the bots for single player in DM, TDM, FFA, CA.
You can see your single player tier with vith's Greasemonkey script .

QUAKELIVE DAMAGE CHART

	Code:	       Wep  dmg      dps             reload (ms)
   1  G      50                            400
   2  MG   5          50                 10
   3  SG   110      110                 1000
   4  GL   100      125                 800
   5  RL   100*      125                 800
   6  LG   7-6-5**  100-140          50
   7  RG   80        53                 1500
   8  PG   20        200                100
   9  BFG                                  200
   10 Grap
   11 NG 120
   12 PM 100
   13 CG             80-160***

dmg = max damage per round (SSG has 11 damage per pellet in each round)
dps = damage per second if it with 100% accuracy
*RL max 42 on self splash (non direct/full on hit), max 84 on other players
**LG damage is 3 numbers as the shaft is in 3 sections, close-mid-long range
***(80 during 1sec of spinup, 160 at full speed, assuming all bullets hit)

QUAKELIVE ITEM RESPAWNS

	Code:	Item               seconds to spawn
Weapons              5  (12 sec in Team Deathmatch, 30 in pro tdm)
Ammo packs        40 

Quad                    120 |  Damage listed above  times four
Regen                  120  |  Increase health to 200 at 1hp per sec.
Haste                  120  |  Increases movement speed and rate of fire.
Battle suit             120 |  25% Damage reduction and Protects the wearer from lava, slime, drowning, 
                                                                and other hostile conditions including   
                                                               ALL splash damage from weapons but not fully from direct hits.

Shard                  25  |   5 armour   |  Takes 2/3 (66%) of all damage |  max 200 
Yellow Armour       25    |  50 armour |  Takes 2/3 (66%) of all damage |  max 200 
Red Armour              25  | 100 armour |  Takes 2/3 (66%) of all damage |  max 200
Health sml         25   |  Clear shell, green cross | Adds 5 to health       |  max 200
Health med        25  |  Clear shell, yellow cross | Adds 25 to health     |  max 100
Health lrg          25   |  Yellow shell, yellow health | Adds 50 to health |   max 100
Mega Health      35   |  Adds 100 to health                                                |  max 200  (120s respawn on t4 and t6)
Medkit              60   | Puts health to 125 if lower
Teleport            60   | Teleports you to a spawn point as if you had died

CTF Runes:
Doubler                    10   |  1.5x damage (ie +50%) NOT 2x as expected.
Scout                        10   |   Faster movement & rate of fire, 50 armour limit, no self damage, no footstep sfx.
Guard                       10   |   50% less damage
Armour Regen         10   |  Slowly regens armour to 100.

USEFUL LINKS

Stop typing, it was answered before - An amazing list of guide threads and sites
Basic Tips: A Simple Quake Live Guide for Newbies
Quake Live Beginner Questions and Guides - quick clean site with summary basics if you'd rather get straight to it
Whitecloud's Quake Strategy Guide
Quake Live Recording Tutorial (by BoxxyBabee)
Lagometer?
Tuesday update 1 IE8 plugin problems- solution!

[BEER4Lego]

Very nice guide so far and you are right, as a consistent 100+ ping player, I miss timenudge

[arterie]

+sticky this.

[EleKtriKK]

i thought that quake live saves all of the console commands and loads them everytime the game is started??? without needing to create a cfg file? I figured this was the case because QL was running at 60 hz, then i typed r_displayrefresh 75 and every time after that it ran at 75 hz. Can i get a confirmation that a cfg file is not needed for these settings??

[Yakumo]

CUSTOM COLOUR BRIGHT SKINS

colourskins.jpg
thanks to Poros1ty for modelling

The letter based (non hex) colours fairly closely match the cpma colours :
cpma_colors.jpg

(nb. I'm English, the commands aren't, hence the colour/color spelling swapping ;op )


First you must set your enemy and or team model forced skins to a compatible model, with bright as the skin:

cg_forceEnemyModel keel/bright
cg_forceTeamModel visor/bright

Also tankjr/bright and crash/bright are available.

then use for example

\setenemycolor iii
\setteamcolor blh

(there is also cg_forceRedTeamModel and cg_forceBlueTeamModel, that use the setenemy/teamcolor vars, you may need to use clearcvar (eg "\clearcvar cg_forceRedTeamModel") to wipe those cvars if they've been set as they can cause conflicts)

the letters are for Body, Legs, Head

setenemycolour and setteamcolor are commands, not cvars, that set 3 cvars (per command) for you, so don't put 'set' or 'seta' in front of them in a config.
You can set the three cvars that those commands set manually yourself if you wish for a greater range of colours with a hex value , 0xRRGGBBAA (Red, Green, Blue, Alpha). You can get the hex for the first part from the web colours of any javascript color picker eg http://johndyer.name/lab/colorpicker/ use the hex value by the # at the bottom, and add FF to the end for alpha.

You can use just one letter - setenemycolor i to set the whole model green all at once to that colour.
You can use two letters to just set body and (head+legs), eg setenemycolor vn gives pink body, blue head+legs.

NB. The setenemycolor and setteamcolor commands also set the cg_enemycolor / cg_teamcolor cvars, these cvars do not do anything else, they just store the last used set*color value, changing them will not adjust colour for you.


SUPER BRIGHT SKINS

setenemycolor i is green, but only sets 0x008000FF for the hex, 0x00FF00FF is the maximum green but the difference is only really noticeable using one of two sets of modes:

1. If r_enablePostProcessing is 1, also with that if r_overbrightbits is 1 then it is so bright it starts to obscure other skin detail.

2. Vertex lighting mode (r_vertextlight 1) with r_overbrightbits 1 no matter the postprocessing status.

Simply - without processing or alternatively vertex lighting mode, you only have half the colour range with bright skins.

without r_overbrightbits 1 you only have about half the brightness.

Unless you want a shade of white/grey/black (0xFFFFFFFF, 0x00000088, 0x000000FF)
it is best to leave the last two digits for Alpha at FF for any settings, as it is currently otherwise unused,
but may be adopted later, and you wouldn't want that to suddenly mess up your config.

eg my settings :
seta cg_enemyHeadColor "0x804000ff" //orange, same as c
seta cg_enemyLowerColor "0x008000ff" //green, same as i
seta cg_enemyUpperColor "0x5e8000ff" //greeny yellow, same as f

these could be brighter (in modes with higher colour range described above) by increasing the high 80 values in any colour range to FF. eg:

seta cg_enemyHeadColor "0xFF4000ff"
seta cg_enemyLowerColor "0x00FF00ff" //brightest green possible
seta cg_enemyUpperColor "0x5eFF00ff"

'u' is the brightest pink available via setenemycolor, if you want super bright pink then manually set 0xFF00FFFF

MOUSE ACCELERATION

Originally Posted by TTimo

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.

Originally Posted by SyncError

• 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.

MOUSE SENSITIVITY CALCULATION

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

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) to change the port used for quakelive (every machine needs to be on a different port)
then

net_restart

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


R_MODE & R_INBROWSERMODE LIST

r_mode "-1" is for custom resolutions
r_mode "-2" detect desktop resolution and use that when going fullscreen

Originally Posted by DCR

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

+VSTR TRICK

-thing exists for all +things built into QL, so +moveup has a coresponding -moveup that is called when the key is released. There isn't a way to configure your own +/-, but you can trick it. eg.

so bind x "+attack;toggle r_fastsky" (example, you can use vstr toggleMycommand or whatever)

tap the key once for a single shot and +attack fires one shot, 'r_fastsky becomes 0 (if 1 b4)

then as the key is released -attack is automatically called stopping you fire, and r_fastsky is toggled again.

if you don't want a +thing activated, then script with +mlook as the cmd your piggybacking as then it won't affect the game at all.

so you will see one shot fire, and the sky flash on then off (or off then on if you normally have it on)

The only problem seems to be that if you hold the key down, the script section after +thing will keep repeating rapidly, trips out and you'll end up coming out of it with the wrong state. The result being when you let go of the key the status is reversed and then pressing the key again would just toggle it again so you'd be stuck with it in reverse until you hold it down and manage to come out of it reversed back again to how you wanted it.

So it is technically possible, but you may end up finding it doesn't work reliably enough for you to want to use it. You could have a reset state bind to force it back to the initial state if it bugs out, but that's getting quite a hassle then.

CG_TRUELIGHTNING

Originally Posted by SyncError

This is all entirely correct.

[EleKtriKK]

ah i see, thanks.