Menu

Ok, so over the past week I’ve started playing Painkiller multiplayer again. And I must say, I am enjoying it as much as Quake 3 Arena. The speed at which a simple 1v1 game goes, makes going back to Q3A seem like I’m playing in bullet time (q3a = bullet time that is). And I find I’m running into walls and can’t control my character as well after a good 30 minutes of Painkiller.

Now most people look at Q3A and Painkiller and go: “these games are so similar”, well, lets take a look at the differences shall we?

Movement:
Quake 3 Arena – acceleration is achieved by strafe and circle jumping, that is alternating your strafe left and right keys while moving forward and constant well timed jumping, with mouse movements in the direction your strafing at the time. Air control is limited, that is not much freedom whilst in the air.

Painkiller – Acceleration is gained quickly by holding down a single direction key and well timed jumping, the maximum speed is not capped, and players can easily reach over 1500ups in speed. Players get complete control over their left and right movement whilst in the air, this means that you don’t have to lose any speed whist going around corners.

Maps:
Quake 3 Arena: Typicly features maps with open areas, bounce pads, and wide hallways, maps often feature trickjumps to get from place to place quickly. Maps tend to be small to encourage confruntation.

Painkiller – Maps feature open areas, bouncepads that shoot you strait up and not to any specific location. Hallways are comonly tight. Maps are often large, but due to the speed of the game crossing them makes them feel smaller than a q3a one.

Weapons:
Quake 3 Arena – Gauntlet[50dmg] (melee), Machine gun[7dmg] (spawn), shotgun[10dmg per pellet], grenade launcher[100dmg], rocket launcher[100dmg], lightning gun[7dmg], rail gun[100dmg], plasma gun[20dmg].

Painkiller – Killer[80dmg] (melee, alt fire shoots of the spinny thing[100dmg]), Stake gun[125dmg] (altfire is a grenade launcher[100dmg] and tri fire is stake grenade[200dmg]), Shotgun[good question on DMG, alot i'm guessing] (alt fire is freezer that stops players moving), Rocket Launcher[100dmg] (altfire is chaingun that does 10dmg per hit), and driver[30dmg] (alt fir is electro that does 10dmg, tri fire is shooting primary fire with the alt fire doing 40dmg per hit)

Game pace:

Quake 3 Arena – Games are typicly slow and very calculated with players trying to get the upperhand on each other before attacking.

Painkiller – Extreamly fast paced, players rushing for items, same tacticle game play but really-really-really fast, reflex comes into the equation often, knowlage of map is crucial.

And this is only what I’ve learned in painkiller so far, I keep finding new ways of doing things, its allows for a VERY individual style of play, its hard to find two players who play the game alike. Some people rely heavily on weapon tricks and positioning, others use speed and reflex, others use shear aim, others try stacking to 200/300, some play agresive, some defensive, some rely on hitscan alot, others like prediction weapons. Some make use of combos, others use just a single weapon.

Ok, as many of you know, for a good part of last year I spent alot of time doing research of choosing a mouse to suit my PC usage.

Now, seeing as I have some of the best accuracy percentages outa anyone who reads this, or is likly to read this, I figured I’d write a little piece on how to use a mouse, and some quick help tips to help with the use of your mouse.

First off, we need to look at the Windows mouse properties. There are two settings in here which are wrong by defult. Well one wrong for general use, and one wrong for gamers and graphical designers.
The first thing to change here is to lower you Windows mouse sensitivity from 7/11 to 6/11. Why do this? Well, 6/11, no matter what the DPI of your mouse allows Windows to read the input in a 1:1 ratio, this means no pixel skipping, and a smoother mouse movement.
The second option is a reletivly big change, but should be done for graphical designers and gamers. This setting removes mouse acceleration. Yes, ok you have setpoint installed, and all that with acceleration turned off, but Windows hasbuilt in acceleration that isn’t turned off by these drivers. Simply uncheck “Enhance pointer precision”. It is going to take ALOT of getting used to, but having the Windows mouse acceleration turned off will help greatly with precision in graphics, and your movements in game, simply put, the curser/crosshair will now move as fast as you move the mouse (depending on DPI).
Yes, turning off windows acceleration will feel VERY yuck at first, but the change is so worth it. If you really need that acceleration in game, use the games built in acceleration, or logitech’s acceleration, the althograms used in these are much much better than the Windows one and will ensure a smother motion (whilst less precise than no acceleration).

These next tips refer specificly to FPS gaming.

The first tip, is to figure out what FPS you play most often. THis will dictate wether you need reflexs, accuracy, or a combo from your mouse setup.
For example, Quake is a combination of reflex and accuracy.
Counter Strike is all accuracy, reflexe’s mean very little.
Reflex is required generaly in Unreal Tournament due to the effectiveness of projectile weapons.

Now, I will only focus on Quake and CS here, as UT99 is rarly played anymore, all games require some for of accuracy nowerdays.

So how do you increase your accuracy? Well you need more control over your mouse, and this means it needs to travel over a larger area on your mousepad. If you look at all the top Counter Strike players, they mostly use over 50cm for a 360degree turn in game! Its crazy seeing the mouse movements at events as they turn around in game, but the fact that they rarly miss any shots speaks volumes.
So generaly if you play Counter Strike the most, you want you sensitivity in FPS games to be 50cm+ with no acceleration preferably.

The second, is if you play deathmatch game, proforming a 180* turn or two in less than a second is more important that hitting 80%+ of your shot. So evedently having a sensitivity that takes you 50cm to do a 180* turn is not ideal. As you will so, most quake players have between 30cm and 20cm for a 360degree turn, altho there is the rare play who has between 10cm and 15cm.
Having a sensitivity around this area means you can track aim excelently as well as quickly make those required flick-rails.

The third thing you need to concider is your style of crosshair.
Now obviously a dot will give you maximum accuracy, but will get lost in a sea of action.
A solid cross you will never lose track of, but long shots become hard.
What you need to do is choose a corsshair that suits how you aim. That is, do you place the crosshair around your opponent or on it.
Generaly speaking, weapons that you have to track with are easier to aim with circles, or crosses missing a dot, that you can put around your opponent, and single shot weapons are best with a THIN cross or dot.
Personaly, I think the best croshairs to choose are either your clasic dot and cross:

or a dot with brackets or a circle around it

Thats it for tips.
What you must remember, is that this is only a guidline, don’t take any of this, except the windows setup stuff at the start, as fact. The most important thing about aim is that you find what works best for YOU. You might find a 180×180 solid cross is better for you than a 32×32 one.
The sensitivities for games are also subjective. I play Quake with what I’ve described as a counter strike sensitivity because thats what I find comfortable. As long as your sensitivity isn’t below 10cm for a 360* turn, you should be able to build a consistant aim.

I did have a LONG and interesting article on aiming in FPS games planed to be released today.

But with the events of this morning, I felt it in apropriate to release.

Fcuk, how can people be so cold as to kill in cold blood? 

I found this video on the GGL site, and couldn’t stop laughing at it.

Just keep in mind, Carmac who does this interview speaks flawless english.