Sometime mid -97 i picked up my copy of Quake from a friend, i pirated it on 50 floppy-discs or something, played day and night for several days, the graphics were stunning.

Well, much have changed since, and even tho I've not played constant since i first installed it, I've managed to go through a handful of clients and rigs, and as of now, with ezquake and nquake it's more user friendly than ever to play quake.

I do tho call myself a rookie cause for one I do suck compared to other players in this humongous community.... and for two I seem to have a very hard time to even beat any of the few noobs that exists

So I'm in need of advice concerning configuration and a professionals point of view of it.

I'm currently running the latest build of nQuake tweaked to my likings. (not meaning its good)



settings is something like:
laptop
1280x800
con 640x400
fov 140
sens 3.5 (360 degrees roughly 15cm)
mouse1 weapon 7 8 5 3 2
mouse 2 weapon 8 5 3 2
mouse 4 weapon 6 8 5 3 2 (thumb button)
standard w s a d + space for jump
Until a few months ago I've always played with inverted mouse, but for some reason I started to like not inverted more so now it's off.

Right off the bat, is there something in my configuration that is really crap? i mean the fov, is it way too high? i've tried lower but it feels so zoomed....

Should i try to go with a lower resolution than my native?

My problem generally is that im having a hard time hitting people lol.. or more like hitting right in front of them...

arr i know the basic answer is "practice practice practice" but i figured someone must have a valid opinion on my setup.

o/

If you ever attended QHLAN, you'd be shocked by the (in my opinion) horrible setups some people use. Yet they still beat me. I am sorry to say this, but practice is the ONLY way to get better. That being said I don't see anything wrong with your setup.

Considering that I reckon you use laptop's tft display and not an external one?

Anyway, if you want to be able to beat people, laptop-qw isn't the way it's going work out good, ever, regardless of how good you are. Unless of course you get external display and keyboard.

I can't see that you use any gameclock in your hud, is this correct?

your hud is abit messy, which might be confusing. Also, as Ake mentioned, you don't seem to have a gameclock on your hud. This can be quite a huge disadvantage when trying to time when stuff spawns. High fov is nice, but 140 is maybe a bit over the top? Also abit too much eyecandy for my taste, at least from your screen, but if you can keep 308 stable fps its no problem. If you're really serious about getting better, the only thing to do is what other mentioned; play alot and preferably have a good time in meanwhile.

The most important about graphics is that nothing upset you never, for example some people cant spot easily the enemies with textures -> they use no-textures, some others cant spot enemies with textures, and dont know where they really are aiming with non-textures -> they use high miptex (legoquake). Same with your hud, some people prefer big things for fast look the important stuff, some prefer small hud for have more screen size, some prefer a lot of info, some others prefer just the important, etc..... You must keep trying until you find the perfect balance. When you are playing, you really dont care about that 24-bit texture, that nice-looking enemyskin or the light effects, you only care about kill withouth being killed ( at least i do )

Also i think you cant make your "perfect config" within the first attempts, you must test almost everything until you get your "perfect settings"

1. Ditch the laptop (or as renzo said get a CRT and keyboard for it)
2. I don't think there's any reason to go above 120 fov, 110 is average I think. (while you may see enemies quicker in some extreme rare situations, this is only a crutch for negligence, and doesn't offset the requirement to learn how to perceive depth through the distortions of high fov)
3. Make sure you have stable FPS that is a multiple of 77 (e.g. 308=4*77)
4. Stable ping, with no packet loss
5. A decent mouse, I recommend logitech MX518 or Razor Deathadder. The MX518 is the one I favour and is better value for money, the DA is technically superior but probably won't have improved performance over the MX518 unless you use quite low sensitivity
6. The best configuration of mouse input is that which has no acceleration applied to it; that which provides a linear response (the amount of units the cursor moves is dependent only on the physical distance the mouse has traveled. In windows XP (XP Pro SP2 is what I recommmend) there is a bug which makes it impossible to remove mouse acceleration through an GUI configuration panel, to remove mouse acceleration you must either: modify the XP mouse driver with this or use Logitech setpoint drivers, or Razor's drivers. Unless your mouse drivers allow you to set a high mouse rate, you'll also want to increase the mouse polling with a program called HIDUSBF, it's superior to any other method.
7. High monitor refresh rate is very nice. As high as you can get, ideally 154Hz.
8. Obviously you'll want a nice throne and a table that is the perfect height : D. you should have reach up or raise your chair too high.
9. It will take a few months to learn but I recommend zsef for movement, pinky finger on z for +back, this will really help you make seamless transitions from forward to back as well as left to right
10. Your resolution to conres ratio is good. but remember you may need to correct it once you are using your CRT which will probably be in 1024*768 or 800*600

My setup is of course the best , want to try my config?

owned!

edit: also watch as many reppie and milton demos at challlenge-tv.com as you can.

Some mice can really be super-crap-mode, especially those small "notebook purpose" ones - extremely delayed and with only 66 Hz updates. Runamok mentioned the need of good mouse, but only on 5th place and chances are you have some of those purely anti-gaming mice, in which case it should be the first thing you should replace. Then the display ofc.

wow such high amount of advice and helpful people, i almost feel special

Well, i figured someone would react to the fov 140 setting, i can probably lower that to 120 and get used to it in a week or two.

My laptop will then probably have to be ditched for a stationary machine in the future.

I do actually have a rather good (in my opinion) gaming mouse.. logitech g9, so it will have to do as of now.

gameclock will be added, thanks!

and to my HUD, i too feel that its abit messy, will definitely work some more on it, ill probably add larger health/armor.

Runamok.foe: i'd like very much to try your cfg, i feel that i need to change something drastic to get some new perspectives.

And again, thanks for all answers

Runamok - I wanna try your cfg

Send it to me pls