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Member
226 posts
Registered:
Mar 2007
So.. I started to wonder if EzQuake (+nQuake) is rookie friendly?
Do they find everything they need in the menus? Are something missing? Are the menus easy enough?
Some points:
-Is the default EzQuake config good enough? I think the config you start with is pretty good, but the one you get after "reset to defaults" is horrible. (ie. why have the default 16-bit skin in there not the 64-one?)
-Sidenote: Could there be different config-premades in the options menu? I think the atm one's are pretty much useless "faithfull, fast, eyecandy" etc. There could be ie. Dithes, Murdocs atc configs in there instead.
-Atm we've this site for QTV-easy-access, might it be possible to connect straight via lets say quakeservers.net? The same way QTV works, you just push a button on a site and voila you're playing! How easy is that!
Member
370 posts
Registered:
Mar 2008
ezQuake is the client, nQuake is all extras like new texutres, models.
What most people do config wise is edit everything themselves, And I wouldn't call any of them "Useless", I consider that slap in the face to the creators.
Member
226 posts
Registered:
Mar 2007
ezQuake is the client, nQuake is all extras like new texutres, models.
What most people do config wise is edit everything themselves, And I wouldn't call any of them "Useless", I consider that slap in the face to the creators. Yeah, I'm quite aware what's ezQuake and what's nQuake, both have configs and gfx though. And if you noticed I was talking about rookies here, most people don't use ezQuake's menus anyway and do all the tweaking in console. I see ezQuake's menus as a tool for those who don't know all the console commands. You should not consider saying those graphical-config-presets (fast, faithfull, eyecandy, high-eyecandy) useless as a slap in the face to the creators. Why? If i'm not mistaken those presets only affect to settings you're able to tweak in the menus, so it's basicly just a faster way to change values in the menus, but there's so much you can do in QW-config, rookies don't know this. So I think it might be a good (and very easy) idea that you could change your QW-appearance drastically in the menus, ie. play with ParadokS's config, these configs shouldn't change binds, mouse-settings, volume nor name/team/color. Everybody know's I love Johnny and the whole ezQuake team. But I just started to think about this after a few rookies posted on forums that they had some problems starting QW and I know ezQuake team would like ezQuake to be rookie-friendly.
Member
271 posts
Registered:
Feb 2006
anything with more than 20-30 options is never going to be noob friendly.
Administrator
2059 posts
Registered:
Jan 2006
Everybody know's I love Johnny and the whole ezQuake team. But I just started to think about this after a few rookies posted on forums that they had some problems starting QW and I know ezQuake team would like ezQuake to be rookie-friendly. Haven't these problems all been related to problems with ezQuake + Win7 (along with the serverbrowser "bug"  though, something that wouldn't be helped no matter how user friendly nQuake/ezQuake was made to be? What's probably most important is the default setup of nQuake and that one i think is good, even if i don't use it completely out of the box when setting up a fresh Quake for myself as i'm simply used to other settings. Regardless, if changes are desired to either nQuake or ezQuake i think a general consideration should be to make the improvements as concrete as possible. I.e. not just saying "menu system sucks", but rather advise on concrete measures to take. www.facebook.com/QuakeWorld
Member
226 posts
Registered:
Mar 2007
Whenever I return I must learn everything from scratch, especially QW's console commands and I must tell you that it's really hard for a rookie to find this information. Sure, I can ask on #qwrookie and the guys there are very willing to help, but sometimes it happens that everyone is AFK and I CBA to stay on IRC for hours waiting for someone to show up.
So this time I decided to search on my own and after a while I actually found a website containing some basic config tweaks. The site is: http://fquake.sourceforge.net/getstarted.html and I found the link on the QW wiki site, though it took me a while, as I tried visiting the rookie's forum first and doing some google search. Perhaps I asked the wrong questions.
It certainly took me longer than most would care. After all, who wants to spend hours on searching for the proper console commands instead of playing? Perhaps I look incompetent in your eyes, but I guarantee that many other newbies would have that problem. We haven't been "in the business" for years like you guys. We don't navigate through sites with an ease equal to yours. Sometimes we don't even know what to look for. I doubt I would know about the existence of bright skins, were it not for my experience with other Quake games and you must agree that making your opponent as visible as possible is a VITAL setting.
Also - If I hadn't clicked this thread, I wouldn't have even known that there is a dedicated rookie FFA server! I learned it just today via this thread!
But like I said, the first place for me to visit was the rookie forum and I think many people do it as well. There are only TWO stickies there. One containing the manifesto, and one containing the guide to 4on4. It's great that you stickied those threads, but I'm willing to bet a a lot, that the majority of rookies would rather learn how to set the brightskins / configure the mouse and weapon settings / know where to even start (the rookie server) than to read right away about the most demanding mode of them all (as I was recently informed on one of the servers).
So for the sake of myself and other rookies. Please make a sticky in the rookie forum for beginners containing such information as:
- a guide to some crucial config settings (I think that http://fquake.sourceforge.net/getstarted.html is great, perhaps there are some better guide, I don't know)
- information about the rookie server - as someone proposed earlier
- a direct link to challenge-tv.com
- other basic info: armor and powerup timings / what maps are popular for particular modes etc.
Sure, you can answer with "it's all in the wiki", but take two things into account:
1. Wiki makes sense only when you KNOW what you're searching for
2. An average gamer has a VERY limited attention span. If I have to use my time and energy just to look for information on how to configure the damn game, I will go play something else.
I assume some of you are familiar with Quake Live as well. They also have some beginners' forum, which contains a stickied thread with a Quake Live guide inside. Its layout is very clear, with table of contents and everything and it covers all the basic information a rookie would like to know and even more. I think it's one of the most commonly viewed threads on the entire board. Think about it.
P.S.
I want you to take the above information as a "point of view of a rookie". Don't treat it like an attack, I want to help. The QW community is AWESOME and everyone so far has been very helpful to me. Giving me tips and words of encouragement after each duel where I end up in "double negative". I don't think anyone so far laughed at my poor level of play, and sure, I have no doubts that some assholes are out there, but for the time being I'm glad to say that this atmosphere alone is worth playing, regardless of how much I get my ass kicked. Please consider my advice so other players may experience the atmosphere as well!
--
Sure, I just wanted to say what I found problematic, when trying to get back into the game a couple of days ago. I mean, I was on the verge of giving up before I even joined a server! Configuration is important to me, and looking for all the necessary console commands is tiring (yet again I'd like to thank guys from #qwrookie! smile)
--
What do you mean by gameclock? The match time countdown? I was talking about information specific for given items. 20s for RA, 60s for quad, etc. etc.
--
As for the weapon scripts I always thought the players were changing the weapons MANUALLY all the time big_smile And they NEVER made mistakes. Then ezQuake came and taught me about preselect, weaponhide, etc. tongue
--
EDIT: Curiosity told me to look more carefully through the menus now. The options are there! I just didn't notice the brown scroll bar to the right. I thought that all the options were contained on a single screen - my mistake.
-- Btw, the help section in EzQuake is pretty awesome, the index thing is quite odd though, but I suppose it's pretty hard do view .xml in QW :-) And again I want to say this: This is NOT suppose to be a rant threat about how ezQuake is not Rookie friendly but the opposite. I just wanted to ask IF ezQuake is rookie friendly and how it could be MORE rookie friendly. Ie. there could be a "PLAY NOW!" button next to "Multiplayer" that would automatically connect to XS4ALL FFA.
Member
1435 posts
Registered:
Jan 2006
ie. why have the default 16-bit skin in there not the 64-one? Actually it's 8 bit vs. 24 bit, but anyway the reason is that there's no support for player colors with 24 bit skins, so everybody would have the same color (the color of the skin). Could there be different config-premades in the options menu? I think the atm one's are pretty much useless "faithfull, fast, eyecandy" etc. There could be ie. Dithes, Murdocs atc configs in there instead. I was never in favor of such idea, every such config has issues, and also gets outdated with each new version of the client and somebody needs to revisit it (and nobody bothers). I have never heard anyone being happy with someone else's config, maybe except from the config from def's quakeworld from which we tried to learn and change our default settings accordingly. Also typically people only want part of the configuration - the HUD, or the GFX settings, or the TP messages, etc. They never want everything. Atm we've this site for QTV-easy-access, might it be possible to connect straight via lets say quakeservers.net? The same way QTV works, you just push a button on a site and voila you're playing! How easy is that! The support is already there, ezQuake is ready to handle URLs starting with qw:// the index thing is quite odd though Well it's exactly what the name means - an index of all the pages in the help. anything with more than 20-30 options is never going to be noob friendly. That is too easy to say. It always depends how well you structure things, that is, how difficult for the user is to find what he needs to change. What you say applies in a situation when you need to change so many things before you can actually start playing. But if you get good defaults and then quite easily find the few details you'd like to change in the menus, it does not really matter how many items the menus have (as long as it does not make finding stuff there difficult). So this is the main reason why ezQuake has only 7 main tabs in the Options menu (usability studies show it is a good number), and every such tab fits on one screen without scrolling in 640x480 console resolution. These were strictly set goals we tried to achieve. But even now when I browse the menus, I discover stuff that can be moved to "advanced" mode.
Member
188 posts
Registered:
Feb 2008
I think ezquake does a pretty good job as beeing newbie-friendly. However, some things maybe approached better/differently. First of all keep in mind that there are different types of rookies. a) People with no or only casual gaming or FPS experience (IIRC over 90 % of the QL playerbase plays with default settings, no brightskins etc.). It is questionable if this is the target user base of QW atm however. b) People from other FPS which play a lot but may not have much experience with console tweaking because in their games picmip and stuff is simple a no-no. c) Other FPS(Quake or other LEGO games) players used to console/tweaking etc., those find their way through anyway (they managed to tweak q4 after all  ) I think the 'fastest/faithful/eyecandy' settings maybe replaced with 'classic': gl_no24bit ( = Quake was supposed to look/really looked like, 'modern' (= 24bit, eyecandy settings, ezquake needs to detect if 24bit extures are available before displaying this option!) and maybe 'competitive nerd' settings  It should start up with simple settings menu (the pure minimum = wp controls, resolution, gamma, color etc.). At the moment it is just too much (and too much also often means: set it wrong and never get it repaired  Stuff like wp preselect and so on should go to advanced, skins maybe too. Have a slider for enemy color like in QL maybe? (I really like enemycolor in current FTE). Maybe have a 'no-lifer' settings menu in the advanced section for even more settings ezquake should save the settings (and all settings) the user made at all costs. There is nothing more annoying then to work yourself through the menus and then, on next startup, discover that you have to do it all over again. For example, since I moved to a seperate QW dir ezquake does not save the player name, I always have to execute my config from the console after connecting to the server, very annoying. Some settings should be saved even when using presets (eycandy - faithful), atm. it resets cl_rollange and friends to the defaults, pita. What I find irritating is the fact that one can't use arrow keys for sliders/options in the menu, Enter/backspace are a bit awkward. The help is awesome btw.
Member
271 posts
Registered:
Feb 2006
one suggestion would be to have separate preset selections - one per options section. If it populates the list based on cfg files found, people can add their own or something. Might be a couple of options that should be moved sections for that to make complete sense.
as leopold says, stuff changed in the menus should stay changed - many engines save configs each time the menu is exited. Maybe show a prompt to save settings when quitting if something changed in the menus.
Administrator
1864 posts
Registered:
Feb 2006
Would be nice if it had support for loading pak files on the fly, then we could have a modern setup, a classic and a competitive one.
Member
347 posts
Registered:
Feb 2006
Would be nice if it had support for loading pak files on the fly, then we could have a modern setup, a classic and a competitive one. What if stuff is shared between the set ups? Could be wasteful.
Administrator
334 posts
Registered:
Jan 2006
wasteful? u think anyone cares about a few megabytes =)
Member
347 posts
Registered:
Feb 2006
Member
226 posts
Registered:
Mar 2007
Awwww! Executing .PAK files with EzQuake would be SO awesome! Ie, somebody has a cfg+gfx and puts it da interwebs and I just DL it and doubleclick and use hes/her stuff! Avot!
Administrator
1864 posts
Registered:
Feb 2006
What if stuff is shared between the set ups? Could be wasteful. That's how it already is, it just uses the last version loaded. And iirc it loads pak files first, and then unpacked stuff after that.
Member
347 posts
Registered:
Feb 2006
That's how it already is, it just uses the last version loaded.
And iirc it loads pak files first, and then unpacked stuff after that. I know. My concern was the wastefulness of the thing.
Member
228 posts
Registered:
Mar 2007
On the user friendly front, I was hoping EZQuake would eventually migrate to pk3 files. Be nice getting maps with teh custom textures and sounds already built into the archive.
And yes, I realize it already supports them, although I guess I have to do some testing to see what order they are loaded in relation to the paks and loose files.
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