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Player configuration files...share your tricks and how you play  XML
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Spacey

Wicked Sick!
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Joined: 01/07/2005 21:28:14
Messages: 589
Location: Da'Burgh (Pittsburgh) PA
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Fodder started a similiar thread talking about useful keybinds, but I would like to expand the topic quite a bit to cover the whole config file issue. I would also like to encourage folks to share their config files during this discussion, but remind them to scrub their files of any stats/chat/server passwords or generally useless server cache information!!! So, to get things started...

First, you can find my User.ini on my BEL Clan member page. The direct link to the file is http://belclan.ka8zrt.com/Members/spacey/BEL_e_user.ini/view. This is designed for use with a normal 104-key keyboard, and if you download the file and look at it, you will hopefully notice several things:

1) I have removed many of the movement keys from the left side of the keyboard. I do not use them! More on this in a moment.

2) There are some interesting aliases and key binds in place, such as BELAdmin, which logs me in as an admin on Spacey's Spaceport (see http://belclan.ka8zrt.com and click the Spaceport navigation link in the left slot for info), I can turn on/off my FPS and network stats with a single key, and I have some custom canned text messages.

3) I have radically changed the priorities of the weapons, they have different crosshairs, and have turned automatic switching off. The last thing you want to happen is to run out of ammo on your current weapon and switch to a deemer, or back across it in the middle of a face-to-face fight. A friend of mine use to play on the pro-tour servers all the time, and he also taught me to toss almost empty junk weapons at an opponent. For someone in a DM/TDM/CTF game, this can prove lethal. Worse, imagine tossing the deemer to an opponent in a CTF match, with your guys waiting in the wings and lots of theirs around the flag.

4) If you are really good (or try playing with my INI), you may notice that I do not see my weapons. At one point, you would actually change weapons slightly faster if you turned the weapon view off. It may or may not be the case now, but I still have one big advantage. I can do things like lob flak grenades at opponents with a pretty good arc, and still see where they are landing.

Before I go on to explain the changes around the way I move and such with the keyboard, I also want to point out something you may not realize. The name of the file is no cooincidence. I play with my user.ini file having a special name. Instead of just being "User.ini", it is "BEL_e_User.ini". If you want to see how to do this, just take a peek at http://belclan.ka8zrt.com/howto/multiple_profiles, but it is a great trick if multiple people play on your machine, or in my case, you sometimes play radically different styles. Some of you may also find this useful if you play one profile/name for an adren junky, and another for loaded weapons.

Now, regarding the movement and other aspects of how I play.
Instead of having my left hand where it normally would rest, when I play, it rests on the arrow keys. This allows me to se my pinky and thumb to handle things like jumping (CTRL) and crouching (NumPad0). In addition, I can select the transloc with the SHIFT key, or go pretty much directly to any weapon by using the numeric key pad. Best of all, I can generally go (pretty much) directly to a particular weapon by pressing the appropiate button on the numeric keypad, with my bindings putting my better/more favorite weapons closer to the arrow keys, and the more hazardous/less favorite weapons being slightly more of a reach. So the RL is bound to NumPad4, the flak to NumPad7, and so on. It could stand a bit of tweeking on the DC server playing the way I do now, but I hesitate to change things and flub a change at a critical moment.

Now, regarding my right hand, that is for my mouse. I have a Logitech MX1000, which uses the laser and gets more resolution. It also provides me with a X-Y scroll button, and three separate thumb buttons. I have bound the TL to one of the thumb buttons, the talk button to another, and best weapon to pressing the middle button.

So, what do the rest of you do???

*BEL*_e (spacey), BEL Clan General -- You Frag em, I'll Slag em!
LA -- *BEL*_e (level 283 - Extreme AM), LW -- *BEL*_o (level 26) MM - ?? ( *BEL*_Rolaids ?? *BEL*DrWho??, Engineer... *BEL*BS_E_E [BSEE '89, Ohio U] (level 22)

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320

Wicked Sick!

Joined: 10/11/2005 21:28:38
Messages: 605
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Controls are mainly personal preference. I don't use WASD, I use RSDF for controls. If you've had formal training in typing, your fingers naturally fall on the home keys. Your left hand falls on ASDF. Thus, using RSDF is very natural for me. It is also naturally angled like an ergonomic KB. I get a stiff back using WASD. In addition, on many keyboards, the F key is notched for easy acquisition.

I have most of my crosshairs set to the same type, in my case, Circle 1. I also set them to the same color, which is a bright pink, and roughly the same size. Circle 1 is great because it's a circle with a dot in the middle. It works well with both sniping type weapons and "spray and pray" weapons.

On my mouse I have a scrollwheel and two extra buttons in addition to left and right mouse. This is an 800 dpi mouse that cost me about $20. It took a little getting used to but if you play FPS games on a regular basis, this is a very worthwhile investment. It basically makes your mousing more precise overall.

My scrollwheel button is set to switch to translocater. The first extra button uses the current artifact item. I mostly use this to easily turn on and off the triple damage. The second button is still a bit undecided, but right now I have it as Shield gun. I might change it to mines or maybe Avril.

Like Spacey, I have my weapons hidden from view. This took some getting used to because when I switched weapons I relied on being able to see them as I scrolled through them. Now that I've retrained and instead look at the weapon bar, I am much more accurate and fast, and don't scroll past the weapon I want three or four times. After I made this switch I set the translocator, Avril and superweapons to different crosshairs with different colors because I do occasionally screw up and leave them equipped.

I turn off all gore and most of the optional effects. I set shadows to blob or off. In a nutshell, framerate is king.

I set superweapons as lowest priority.

I turn off auto weapon switching. I believe if a weapon has an attribute, such as Protection, it will not autoswitch if it runs out of ammo. Since I can't rely on the switch to happen consistently I turn it off. That forces me to monitor my ammo level.

When all is said and done, I loosely track how well I score. I just jot down my map scores minus the bonus if we win.

For example, when I got resupply 1, I was surprised to find that I went from about 600 exp in 16 rounds to around 850! And then when I got loaded weapons 1, that went to around 1000. With loaded weapons 2, it went up even more. In some cases my gamescore was a bit better but in many cases, I seemed to go up only a little. But my exp was going up much more by comparison.






Spacey

Wicked Sick!
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Joined: 01/07/2005 21:28:14
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320 wrote:

I have most of my crosshairs set to the same type, in my case, Circle 1. I also set them to the same color, which is a bright pink, and roughly the same size. Circle 1 is great because it's a circle with a dot in the middle. It works well with both sniping type weapons and "spray and pray" weapons.
 


Here is my general thinking on the crosshair settings I use. For things like the RL, sniper, and lightning, I have really tiny crosshairs (at least one is a single dot), since I tend to use them at a distance. My friend taught me this and my accuracy is way WAY up from where it was in the UT99 days. Indeed, on Face last night, I was up top picking off titans at the base of the other tower with no or very minimal zooming, and was able to see the incoming rocks they were throwing at me. For the super weapons, I use huge, garish crosshairs (which loosely remind me of the radiation trefoil) since I want to know when I am holding a weapon with one heck of a kill zone. Then for things like flak, bio, and mini, I go with some more open crosshairs, since they splatter nicely.

320 wrote:

Like Spacey, I have my weapons hidden from view. This took some getting used to because when I switched weapons I relied on being able to see them as I scrolled through them. Now that I've retrained and instead look at the weapon bar, I am much more accurate and fast, and don't scroll past the weapon I want three or four times. After I made this switch I set the translocator, Avril and superweapons to different crosshairs with different colors because I do occasionally screw up and leave them equipped.

I turn off all gore and most of the optional effects. I set shadows to blob or off. In a nutshell, framerate is king.
 


As previously noted, I differentiate with the crosshairs. I very rarely look at the weapons bar, except to see if I have a given weapon or how much ammo I have, and even that is rare. Most of the time, I am using a wide view half-focus (the same one I use in martial arts such as kendo and SCA heavy combat) to take in the whole screen, and focusing down generally causes me to miss something.
And given my key bindings, I generally go straight to the desired weapon. Only when I am carrying a grenade launcher does it get complicated, and this is why I tend to dump it early on. I don't want to use no stinking grenades which I have to detonate...instead give me that quick kill with the flak instead!

On the gore, I have it turned either way down or off. Nothing like having a rock come flying through the gore from a gasbag to nail you and drive this point home! As for shadows, I have kept them on to some degree, as I have occasionally caught some opponent or bug around a corner trying to ambush me by noticing the shadows from time to time.

320 wrote:

When all is said and done, I loosely track how well I score. I just jot down my map scores minus the bonus if we win.

For example, when I got resupply 1, I was surprised to find that I went from about 600 exp in 16 rounds to around 850! And then when I got loaded weapons 1, that went to around 1000. With loaded weapons 2, it went up even more. In some cases my gamescore was a bit better but in many cases, I seemed to go up only a little. But my exp was going up much more by comparison.
 


I find that my exp and score vary too widely, and that the biggest variables are the map and who else is playing. If a number of higher level players (or just more players) are on, my score goes down since the bugs are harder to kill due to sharing, bug strength, etc. And some maps make this worse than others. But I do know that my changes to crosshairs, no weapons in view, etc. made a very dramatic increase in my scores once I made them and got used to them.

*BEL*_e (spacey), BEL Clan General -- You Frag em, I'll Slag em!
LA -- *BEL*_e (level 283 - Extreme AM), LW -- *BEL*_o (level 26) MM - ?? ( *BEL*_Rolaids ?? *BEL*DrWho??, Engineer... *BEL*BS_E_E [BSEE '89, Ohio U] (level 22)

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senor_taco

Rampage
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Joined: 02/02/2005 12:58:20
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I use the ol' fashioned WASD for movement. I use mostly default crosshairs, but I shrink them down about 10% of their default value.
I am used to seeing my guns and ammo (no pun intended) ever since the days of doom. Therefore I do not move those off screen.
I have shrunk the appearance of my weapons by about 5% as well.
I also set the value for my FOV to 100 degrees as opposed to the default 90.
I have music toned down, player voice toned down, and game sound at max. I do have text to speech enabled (no headset for this taco).
Lastly, My mouse sensitivity is set to maximum.

I figure if it aint twitchy like an overcaffeinated refried bean of doom, whats the point?

"Kimi no shi ni bashou wa koko da!"
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320

Wicked Sick!

Joined: 10/11/2005 21:28:38
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I would probably play a little better if I turned down the music but on some maps it gets me pumped up, so I leave it on.

I also forgot, I use a wider FOV as well. I bumped it *slowly*. Literally, I played for about a month at 95 before bumping it to 100.



FodderFigure

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Joined: 03/31/2005 17:04:57
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Location: Northern Indiana
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320 wrote:


..... The first extra button uses the current artifact item. .....



 


What is the command line for this? I cant seem to get my mouse button to do this.






You mean I really am important? How I feel when I'm drunk is correct?



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http://www.disastrousconsequences.com/dcforum/posts/list/1093.page

My Loaded Weapon character is known as [DC]FodderFigure
My medic character is known as [DC]FodderFigure_MD
My Artifact character is known as [DC]FodderFigure_LA
320

Wicked Sick!

Joined: 10/11/2005 21:28:38
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FodderFigure wrote:

320 wrote:


..... The first extra button uses the current artifact item. .....



 


What is the command line for this? I cant seem to get my mouse button to do this. 


I did this one in Configure Controls. I do recall I initially thought I needed to set "Use" to the mouse button but that's not the case. There is a specific command, near the bottom, I think, that says "Use current inventory item".

In my user.ini it looks like this:

Mouse4=InventoryActivate

Another thing about this that I didn't notice until I set it to a mouse button (because it's faster) is that you can't instantly turn off the triple damage. When I first set it, I tried to quickly on/off. It went on, but not off, and I thought there was a problem. You just have to let it eat some adrenaline before it will shut off.

I assume this is the same for the godmode charm but I don't use that one much.
320

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Joined: 10/11/2005 21:28:38
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In the user.ini it is:

Mouse4=InventoryActivate

You can also do it from the Configure Controls menu, but note that it's not the 'Use' button, it's 'Activate Current Inventory Item'.
Chyster

Wicked Sick!
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Joined: 02/08/2005 20:26:37
Messages: 573
Location: Victoria, TX
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I really don't use anything special. Everything is default including my FOV. The only thing that is not default is a piped command to log in and out as admin.

I do use the Nostromo N52 virtual keyboard (game pad) by Belkin
instead of a keyboard. I feels natural and it was too hard to find the keys on the keyboard in the dark, which to me is the best way to play.


If at first you don't friccasee, fry, fry a hen.
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