So, we have been talking a little about how we are going to call out timings on mm3 in d99.. And we are wondering how other clans do it.

1.
I'm thinking that saying

like: (dm2)
"Low (rl) 10 late" -
"Quad 5 late" -
RA (mega) - 10 late -
or "Quad on time"
... etc
Would be a good way to do it. And gives both the 'item taker' and receiver the same amount of "work". And you could even remove the 'late' from the sentence as people get it down.

Counting up from 0 or 29 seconds in every minute for weapons. And looking at the clock and seeing the seconds its delayed does not seem to take a lot of 'work' for the "taker"?
For armors it's also seems fairly simply to count up from 0 to 20 as well. 0, 20,40.

Saying just one 'number' instead of two seems more efficient and clean as well.
Also its independent if your clock is counting up or down.

Of course everyone has to know item and armor etc spawn times for this to work.20, 30 and 5 min.
It doesn't work for mega though.


2.
While others like saying the complete time for next item.

Like: (dm2)
"low rl 2:40" -
"quad 2:35" -
"low ra 2:50" -
etc...

As they calculate the next spawn time when they see item getting taken or take the item.

This seems better for the receiving players as it gives them less work to do - but it does take more 'work' for the taker.

Also I'm thinking it might cause more confusion as there looks to me to be more to "process" and it feels like it will become a bit of a "blur" as the game progresses. 2:25 becomes... 4:40...6:45... 8:60... 12:20...16:50 etc.. a whole range of different combinations that could become confusing as the game goes on?

Its two numbers to say, compared to #1.. and with a bunch of different dialectic ways of saying the numbers it also seems a bit counter productive for me. "sixteen:forty two..." ... "thirteen:twenty seven"..

But it does work for mega - and you get very precise timings when everyone has the same clock !

3.
Another way to do it?

How do you guys do it?

"there was some guy at that place errrr... low rl or whatever"
"enemy going water or something, might have rl"
"lol i died"
"fucking finneluck"
"i have yellow with green (c) Hooraytio"
"fucking pines everywhere hooraytio, what the fuck (c) Elguapo"
"asså jag orkar inte (c) Flintheart"
"comeon i was waiting for that and you just took it (c) flintheart"
"tu-er, fi-ta (c) Pollox"
"rocket to the pussy (c) krab"


all in all, we dont really have a coordinated description of areas and items and we mostly forget the time

BUT! to answer your question we mostly say how much delayed a certain item is like: quad 10 late

We used to discuss this quite a lot and concluded to call out the item times like your option #2, but without the minute as that is superfluous (e.g. "Quad 53". I think the "late" methodology is fine also and in particular works better if you have different gameclock settings (counting up vs down.... usually only an issue if playing with standins).

Assuming you use English I would also recommend not simply saying the standard item abbreviations like "RL" and "RA" because these can sometimes sound similar (especially if you have players of different nationalities and hence accents), and have multiple syllables. We used the following:

RL = "Rock"
RA = "Red"
LG = "Shaft"
etc

We'd also call out enemy positions that way e.g. "rock at red" is a lot cleaner to say than "en-em-y R-L at R-A"

I used/preferred late/early combo. RL 5 early or RL 25 late, the former is way easier to say and remember. As small numbers as possible and you have the advantage of before/after as "hooks" for the brain, not just numbers. You might forget exact quad time but you remember it was early for instance, meaning you cut the possible time span with 50%.

(Edited 2015-01-13, 21:17)

I use the "late" way of reporting times (and sometimes even "early" if it's very delayed ) just for the simple reason that people may use the horrendeous setting where the clock counts down!

Ok, seems like we're already pro then

I was part of those discussions that HangTim mentioned, so I've also thought about this a lot.

The only things you have to worry about are efficiency and clarity, and the "red at 15" method has both. The only potential issue is when people use a mix of countdown/count up clocks, but that can be standardised with a team vote or an executive decision. I've changed clock 2 or 3 times for different teams now, and it has never been an issue beyond the initial couple of maps of adjustment.

The disadvantages of the "late/early" method are that it takes longer to say, it gets muddled very quickly with armours (or when any item starts to get so late it becomes early), and it asks both the communicator and the interpreters to perform distracting calculations every single time an item is mentioned. This can happen 10 times a minute on a dm3, and that time adds up to a lot over the course of a match. When thinking about the length of the numbers used, remember that you have to say "late/early" too, and then everyone has to do the calculation on top of that. It saves nothing.

Another thing we discussed was the use of distinct terms for spawned weapons or packs, and weapons held by enemies, to remove the need to say "enemy" every time, and to eliminate ambiguity when someone wasn't fully heard, or they neglected to say "enemy". In HangTime's example, I believe "rock" was the term we used for enemies, and "rl" was the term used for the item There's a lot of optimisation you can do for communication when you work as a unit with standardisation, instead of as a mix with different terms, different settings, and different methods of relaying information.

Having been a teamplay newb myself until this last year, I learned a lot from the existing USA players.

I really liked their use of "on time" for armors. Generally, on time means :00,:20,:40 plus or minus a second for armors. In 2on2 this works great. But with powerups, or in 4on4 with weapons being so important, I prefer knowing exactly the time :52 instead of "22 late" / "8 early". I can't tell you how many times BLooD_DoG has stolen a dm2 quad because he knew it was at :14.5.

For 4on4, I prefer saying the next time an item spawns ("next rl at 52" ) and I do that whenever I can. But regardless of what is said when it is taken, I think reminding the team again later helps out the most. E.g. ~15 seconds later ("rl at 52" ) and near when the item is coming back up that it will be available. ("rl in 5 seconds, who wants?" ).

Reminding the team that the item either won't be available for awhile or will be available very soon will hopefully allow them to make better short term (and even long term) decisions. For instance, (oh, I can get an armor before coming for that item - "I'll be there with RA" ), (oh, I can ignore this fight and go pickup that item - "Coming, shoot path behind me" ), (oh, if I take the quad I can pressure that item - "I'll attack that low rl with quad, hold tele" ).

In tight games I find myself only remembering the times for items that I'm (1) protecting or (2) want to take. In scenario (1) I can tell my team really accurate information about the items I'm protecting. In case (2), I'm preparing myself to take that next item but it could be a long time away (quad/pent/next weapon), and a lot can change in that time.

Having a teammate say "this will be available next" considerably helps me make decisions when I'm a shotgunner, I've recently died, or if I was just pushed out of the position I was holding/protecting. None of the "took" messages from a while ago help me here.

Hah! It's hard to call half-seconds but it does come in handy. Pent time is another example, since if your team doesn't have control on dm3 then it's helpful to know that pent is at 3.5 instead of 3 so that your team SGs can jump out of window at the right time to steal it. One way to call half seconds is that if you just fought for an item without knowing exactly when it spawns (except that it's coming "soon" ), delay your respawn for a few seconds so that you can see/hear exactly when it's taken while you're dead. You don't have to worry about dodging/aiming so can focus only on clock and the item pickup. Then you can call out the time and be prepared for the next item spawn (and in the case of pent, I'll remind the team about 30 seconds before that "Pent at 3 and a half" ).

Another example of "scouting" for the time without any intention to try to take/steal the item is to just listen from a safe location. For example, if enemy has control of quad area on dm2 and is guaranteed to take it, you can just sit at big or path for a while and listen to when it's picked up. This will better prepare you for the next attack, and also helps defeat the strategy where the enemy delays taking quad to surprise you because it lasts longer than you expected, or to confuse you about when the next spawn is. Listening like this, especially if you are otherwise useless to your team because you don't have a weapon, also helps because you can call out which way enemy quad will be attacking from. Your team's weapon carriers will then know where to hide and for how long so they don't lose their stack.

Back to the topic of how to call out items in mm3, I don't have much else to add to the discussion other than to say I'm a bit of a spammer with times. I usually say the exact upcoming time in seconds, like "low RL 23" or "red 45". I prefer this to using early/late as it feels simpler and no calculations are involved for anyone, at least for the immediate next item spawn (assuming everyone uses same count-up or count-down clock). Occasionally instead of saying the upcoming respawn time I'll say the time I took it or saw a teammate or enemy take it, like "took low 23" or "enemy took high 17". That gives 2 pieces of information. I'll then try to say the upcoming spawn time if/when appropriate, like "low 53".

However, nearly as important as item times in mm3 is to call out important enemy status (e.g. "2 RLs at quad", "LG at sng", "Quad coming path" ), and very importantly where/when to flood. ENEMY WEAK AT TELE or QUAD WEAK is extremely important to know when fighting for map control. I feel like flooding is underused in mixes and lower div games, it's pretty annoying to know precisely that an enemy RL or Quad is about to die but 3 teammates are waiting at low or ra/mega together doing nothing for an entire minute The enemy will regain health and armor, the close fight was for nothing, and the teammates who were too afraid to die will end up losing whatever weapon or armor they waited for anyway during the next attack. Another benefit of proper flooding is to starve the enemy of health and armors by taking them yourself before the enemy can. I hate it when enemy takes quad on ztndm3 2on2 and ends up taking an uncontested RA because teammate decided to run away. The decision to hide now might keep you alive for 10 more seconds, but it will cost you control and lots more deaths in the long run! Only when control is clearly lost and enemy is already stacked might it be a good idea to play slower, but countless results could have turned out differently just by applying a bit of pressure.

Anyway, enough rambling by me!
BD

I do the same as Blood Dog. I actually learned that while playing with oclan and I really like it that way.

Since the timings of weapons and powerups are very easy to calculate (30 secs / 1 min), then I usually just say the seconds, for example:

- took rocket 22
- took quad 12
- took lg 44

Sometimes I also just say the timing, when I know :
- lg 35
- rocket 42

And the same with enemy...
- enemy quad 4
- enemy quad 22

Edit: I usually avoid too much flaming on voice and try to give only real useful info, describing as fast and as short possible, as I don't like that chit-chat talking when im playing..

So even if sometimes I'm at high bridge and I hear that LG was taken in the water, I just report: - lg 36

I don't know if it was enemy or team who took it, but as I get the timing because I hear it being taken, I report to the team.

Of course being sane I use the countdown method for timing, so when I play with p!ng or any of those fellas I have to say "RL 10sec late" etc... Or I have to do the math for them, hard life for sane, but it works out in the end.

I would suggest when playing in a team 4on4 that you maybe first try to agree on what direction your team needs to put the gameclock countingup? counting down?
For me personally i Always had a gameclock that was counting up, but i can switch if needed for the team altough i ahve to be honest that i rather wouldnt do that but in the end i think i could manage.
Then for example keep in mind that if every player just do 1 item you already have like 4 item timings.
I dont even know for that matter if its allowed in eql or for that matter in any other leagues to make use of a timing script?
Back in the q3 osptdm area there was a script that was available for timing in combination with the numeric keypad.

But dont forget also in the beginning that trying to time too much can get a negative effect rather then a positive.
Also make sure that you keep track of sometimes runnig the same path so that the items with the same spawn time spawn again when you walk again that same way.


greetings veRRo.

There were timer scripts in QW at one point that would automatically print out times for items you had taken if I recall correctly. Thankfully they were fairly quickly banned in competitions and certain restrictions on what kind of scripting you could do in your config were imposed in the "smackdown" ruleset in the client.

Edit: I might have lied above. Was thinking about the Angelina tool but wiki has a very innocent description of that controversy (basically only stating it fulfilled the same purpose as the, at the time, non existant gameclock. I thought the retrieved time was also used for scripting purposes to calculate item times)

^ might be confusing it with automated took message.

When it comes to armors, I feel like telling the exact time is quite often redundant as it'll keep getting delayed and the info quickly becomes meaningless unless it's fetched all the time. You could either say "took armor" in which case people will notice it and pay attention to the time, or you could say "it's coming soon, approx 10 seconds" if you notice someone who needs it is approaching it, OR you could simply say that the armor is coming soon(ish). It's not like mm3 is super hectic where there's noise all the time and no possibility to ask for information. Then again I'm quite shit so what would I know.

I'm bad at 4v4 and 2v2.

THAT SAID:

I tend to say things like "low rl is on time" or "low rl is 5 seconds late".

I don't like when people say "took rl 5" or anything like that because I, like the old grandmasters of yore, use a clock that counts down instead of up, while it seems that a LOT of other people have their game clocks counting up instead of down. I've been screwed a lot of times because of that, so now I tend to ignore such drivel and wind up asking "how late is low rl?" if people are doing that.

(c) tp n00b

_|_

(Edited 2015-01-20, 03:04)

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Sincerely, Forum Police Gestapo

i use "get quad" if i think its close to spawning, and "team quad %t" shows when i took or i hear it globally emit over the sounds.

____________________

A little tip:

Sometimes on mumble I say "get pent" really quietly even on maps like dm2. It makes everyone think, and thinking is important.

There are "some" players who are easily overwhelmed and distracted by the amount of buttons on maps like dm2, so it really helps to bring them back to reality so that they can take a calm breath, rationally consider their surroundings while they think about where pent might be, and then get back into the action with their sg and axe like true barbarians of this great game QuakeWorld.

And on e1m2 sometimes I say lg is up but it's just for lulz tbh

I prefer reporting absolute times (the next time the item will reappear, "RA 44" ) since
a) it works for all items ("late" is bad for MH)
b) it is universal, I can use the same method in for example q3, where "late" would make little sense (armors respawn in 25 sec. intervals etc).

For these two items i simply tell in what amount of seconds they will be spawning instead of how late they are, despite the fact i say "late" for powerups and weapons.