I've really been enjoying focusing on positioning and out thinking lately - trying to find new ways to play. I quite enjoy the comparison of quake to chess (specifically for duel). In chess, ALL the data is known (current enemy position, current "weapon stock" (pieces on the board)), and the mental game is about what your NEXT move will be.

I think a duel mod that gives you ALL the information could be interesting. I loaded up a devmap and dueled a bot the other day, with cg_shownormals on. I've never seen ztn that way, I guess. I have to say, it gave me a better mental image, and is a useful tool to try.

Specific mod ideas:
- You see your enemy through walls at all times (possible even with faded geometry hints, like a faded cg_shownormals in the small proximity around them)
- You know their hp/armor at all times
- You see their item pickups with a timestamp, just like your own (including things like shards, though it could be summarized into 1 message)
- Major item timers on screen
- All other items would have in-place ghost timers if not spawned.

I know I'm kind of a weird dude, but a mod like this sounds really fun to me. Seems like it has excellent training/coaching potential, and could be a way to get more people interested in duel.

Do you think it would change the way you play the game too much to be useful?

Seattle LAN Was A Success!

whaz, allmEntal, EVOL, Fearghas, feroz, nkro, v1ze, driver8, relapse, n4utikal.
10 dudes, a keg from a local brewery (hefeweizen, yum!), meat from a local butcher for a BBQ (burgers, ribeye, linguisa, andouille), an ounce of that other stuff, mid 70s/low 80s both days (21-27 Celcius), and sunny all 3 days. Oh yeah, pancakes, bacon and coffee for breakfast both days :D.

Didn't have local QL LAN servers, but even with 10 of us in game, we all pinged under 17 to Seattle. LG felt amazing and rockets were hitting like rails. We even played some RA3, which I'd never done before. (Ummmm, superior format over CA, anyone? And +rstats?) The good news is, driver8 and I are gonna run that RA3 server from time to time, and we'll be able to get enough people to fill it up.

When people were taking breaks or crashing, we played some awesome "LAN vs INTERNET" CA pubs, and both won and lost. Whaz and I played a bunch of duels, and he gave me some really good feedback. Then he watched me duel ice9 on ztn 2 or 3 times, and coached me a little, and gave me feedback. It kicked ass! We set up 2v2 and 3v3 round robin CA tournaments, and challonge.com is actually a pretty handy resource.

http://challonge.com/evollan1
http://challonge.com/evollan2

Feroz and I won the 2v2 CA tourney. Feroz was a beast. 9-4 comeback on asylum. SO many ridiculous clutch shots to save the round. It was awesome seeing him play on his picmip 0 setup.

whaz, feroz and fearghas won the 3v3 CA tourney in a best of 5 (they 3-0'd us!), but the map scores were close! 10-9 asylum, 10-6 overkill, 10-9 trinity. We managed to scrape together some prizes, so whaz won a Das Keyboard Ultimate keyboard with Cherry MX Blue switches, feroz won 10 months of a pro QL subscription (courtesy of syncerror who gave us 12 months of tokens for prizes - thanks!), and fearghas won a hard surface Razer gamepad with a hardshell zipper carrying case.

On Sunday morning, feroz, fearghas and I all signed up and played in the faceit NA tourney. feroz and fearghas were seeded to play against each other first round, and feroz was sitting behind fearghas LOL. At one point I heard fearghas yell out "You better not be looking at my screen!". feroz went on to play sparks. I was initially seeded against some 1050 elo guy (Yes!) - but he pulled a no-show, and they said "Just kidding, EVOL vs chance". I lost 21-3 on dm13 :p. allmEntal and whaz were going to sign up too, but they were still asleep (it didn't look like there was going to be a faceit cup when we looked Saturday night :/)

We played some great CTF games, and even played a 5v5 instaCTF shitfest on dueling keeps, even though it took me 3 tries to spawn the server correctly (lol @ insta w/ mg, or "insta CTF" with no flags).

I'm happy to announce that this LAN exceeded all of my own expectations in every way, and I am happy to make it a yearly institution. Now that we pulled it off once, I think next year's will run very smoothly. I'd like to schedule it the same weekend of a faceit season finale if possible, so we can have it on the bigscreen at the LAN. We had 10 players, and there's definitely enough room for 20. Anyone who attended this year can have a reserve spot for next year if they want it.

I don't have a TON of pictures, and I didn't set up streaming, recording, etc - I really just wanted to be a member of the LAN, and meet these guys and play quake. I've been playing with these guys for the last 3 years. Many of them have been playing together for the last 13, and met each other for the first time. I didn't want to stress myself out trying to make some huge documentary of it. BUT....I do have a few things :)

Footy from an all LAN ca game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIdotnTEfAQ

Footy of me while playing chance in the Faceit cup (this is pretty funny haha):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbKcGtXXg08

a few pictures:
http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k525/evol...52b42e.jpg
http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k525/evol...ea910a.jpg
http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k525/evol...77932d.jpg
http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k525/evol...5481dc.jpg
http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k525/evol...a92985.jpg

Maren and I the morning after (still in recovery mode lol)
http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k525/evol...0ae7d6.jpg

Quake is where it's at dudes! The older I get, the more the game feels like a chessboard than an fps, I love its infinite depth. I love the crispness of the movement, the r_picmip 10, r_vertexlight 0 graphics, the shit talking, the cups, the celebrities, the mechanics of the weapons, the pros, the [+] whoring, the constant config tweaks, all the game modes, the clutch factor, the "cheater!" drama, zoot's stupid 8:50-down-10 comeback predictions, etc. I really like the culture, the people, the eliteness of it - all of it. I'm a software engineer/architect by trade, and it's crazy how much I think about this game, and how I'd love to be able to improve it - to contribute. I made youtube duel series initially, and those weird timer practice tools to try and help contribute in someway to the game and community that I love. I don't really play any other games - I have a wife and kids and a career, so for gaming, I really only make time for drunk mariokart with the wife, and quake live with all you dudes. Thanks for making the LAN a success. I feel like the LAN contributed to Quake history in some way, and I'm pretty stoked about it. See you next year :)


-EVOL



PS: Best wit award goes to driver8. We were in a CA pub, playings 6v6, which is already a lolfest, and it was 6 of us on LAN vs 6 online players. Esteem was leading the interwebz team, but they were losing. I'm sure he was screaming "GO NEST" with say_team every round, and at one pointed he commented, "It must be nice to have a team you can actually punch in the face", and driver8 replied: "if you were here, I don't think you would punch feroz anywhere", and we all lit up pretty good here.
(feroz is 6ft 8in tall (203cm), and could probably bench press a semi truck).

Hey guys, I'm having a LAN at my place on Friday August 30th and 31st, 2013. I have space for 15 people, *maybe* up to 20.

I want to focus more on duel, TDM and FFA, but it's the West Coast NA crowd, so there will be lots of CA. Oh well.

It's a 3700 sq ft house, we'll BBQ, have a keg, have another substance that was recently legalized in WA, and play some quake for a couple days. Contact me if you're interested.

www.deadmen.us

This is a weird one.

I'm not "old" old yet (only 31), but I try to do things to try and keep my aim sharp (even though I'm only an average aimer). Sometimes in a game I'll try to focus more on the enemy model than the crosshair, and others I reverse it (though I find it causes more eye strain when I'm consciously focusing on the crosshair - anyone else get that? It can almost seem blurry, like the crosshair is on a higher up layer).

So I remember back in the cs days, it was easy to lose your crosshair in the sky on some maps, so I made a set of aliases where when I scrolled my mousewheel, my crosshair would rapidly change color. I wanted to see if the same kind of effect in QL would help me to focus more on aim, but without consciously staring at my crosshair.

For my purposes, I just alter my binds for strafe left and right to add an extra command in there, which will change the color and rotate the bind. Here it is if you want to try it out. It's probably wayyyy to distracting for most people, but so far I really enjoy it.

// the main cmd you vstr to change the color
set xh_change "vstr xh1"

// the 8 change commands that rotate what xh_change does
set xh1 "cg_crosshairColor 1;set xh_change vstr xh2"
set xh2 "cg_crosshairColor 2;set xh_change vstr xh3"
set xh3 "cg_crosshairColor 5;set xh_change vstr xh4"
set xh4 "cg_crosshairColor 8;set xh_change vstr xh5"
set xh5 "cg_crosshairColor 9;set xh_change vstr xh6"
set xh6 "cg_crosshairColor 12;set xh_change vstr xh7"
set xh7 "cg_crosshairColor 16;set xh_change vstr xh8"
set xh8 "cg_crosshairColor 21;set xh_change vstr xh1"

// use your normal strafe keys, or bind to something else
bind s "+moveleft;vstr xh_change"
bind d "+moveright;vstr xh_change"

In quake, weapon cooldowns are constant for each weapon. So with any gun, if you just hold down shoot, you will shoot at constant intervals, and there's no "clip" or need to reload a weapon. Either you have ammo or you don't.

Quake weapon intervals (the cooldown time between each shot):
MG: 100ms
SG: 1000ms
GL: 800ms
RL: 800ms
LG: 50ms
RG: 1500ms
PG: 100ms

"Modern combat" games (counter-strike, BF-series, COD series, etc) usually have weapons that require a reload operation at some point.

The "skill ceiling" so to speak of some of the projectile based weapons in quake feels nearly infinite. The combination of projectile speeds, map sizes/layouts, player speed and weapon cooldown time really pushes the limits of what is possible with human reaction times in RL fights. It simply never gets old to watch OR to play. If you get a good bounce off of a rocket, often times the best followup is to shoot ASAP after the cooldown, because with practice, you're going to land additional shots very well. By estimating where they're going to land coming down from the bounce, you try to shoot at the center of that, and you have a) guaranteed damage and b) a good chance of getting another bounce.

Hell, even with the hitscan weapons the limits of human reactions are constantly pushed. I've seen tons of these tournament TDM games where in extremely up close fights, a player will completely dodge 3 SG shots in a row, taking zero damage. Dodge is such a huge part of what makes quake amazing!

(I swear I'm getting close to making my point and detailing my suggestion, but let me build up a little more first).

Each weapon in quake is useful in different scenarios. In game modes like Clan Arena, the LG is abused quite heavily, because it's basically GUARANTEED damage. In an up close fight, does the RL have the potential to be more effective? Definitely, but only if you're rockets are good, which takes years of practice to get to a high level. The lg has less potential usefullness in those up close fights, but it's still guaranteed damage over time, whereas the RL might be more of a risk. All of these things are great and add to the depth of the equation that makes quake the king of FPS.

What I think could be extremely interesting, and add even more to this kind of depth, would be a sort of mix between constant weapon cooldown times and the "clip/reload" model used in games like counter-strike (how you implement it in the UI isn't so that important really, just the timings would matter, but I think a reload animation would be great). So take a weapon like RL, and try the following:
- Reduce max damage 50% (50 instead of 100 for a direct)
- Decrease cooldown 50% (400ms instead of 800ms)
- Maybe toy with the speed of rockets a bit (probably to slow them down, you'll see why in a sec)
- Allow 3 shots at the 400ms cooldown rate before a "reload" is required, which takes between 1000ms and 1500ms.

I feel like the "damage potential" would be about equal, but it's just spread out a little differently in a way that would let people toy with their enemies even more. It MIGHT "noob it up" a little bit by making at least SOME damage more of a guarantee (similar to the RL/LG explanation above), but I still think it would be a lot more interesting.

You could do something quite similar with rails. In QL a rail does 80 damage and has a 1500ms cooldown. The following could be quite interesting:
- reduce damage 50% (40 instead of 80)
- reduce cooldown to 300 or 400ms
- clipsize 2
- 1500ms "clip reload" time

So you'd be able to rapidly fire TWO shots. If you hit both, you get the full 80 damage. This would change the dynamic of "rail fights" where both players stand their ground and continue to try and exchange rails in a civil war fashion. It also DRASTICALLY changes duel. Thinking about ZTN in QL, there are so many places you have enough time to land a SINGLE rail (exit damage, etc), but not 2. This could actually be a pretty bad negative side effect, and might require more tweaking and testing to see if this "short cooldown, small clipsize, long reload" model could work. It could also be a very positive change. QL duel is very +back, whereas I understand CPMA was more about being very +forward. If you only have time to land 1 rail, then you wouldn't be able to constantly cripple your opponent and maintain complete map dominance just by hitting a rail every time they pick up a YA. I think this change would be really interesting in team modes too, where you could rapidly fire 2 rails, and possibly hit 2 different opponents. Also, hitting rails on people in the air (RJ, jump pad, etc), they would now get twice the knockback, which I think would be fun.

This could be done for all guns, or just some. I like the idea of a very fast 2-shot burst GL, with a twice as long reload time to compensate (and to keep spam reasonable). Guns like MG,SG,PG and LG I'd leave alone, but you never know what changes you can make. Also I'm not asking that reborn be a Q3/QL clone when it comes to the weapons, I'm just using QL weapons as an example. Though I think you can't go wrong with the RL/RG/LG trifecta :D

I know there is a lot of elitism in quake. A lot of this "useless until used in a dreamhack 1v1 duel final vs cypher tied overtime game last second FTW" mentality, but I don't want fear of elitist butthurt to stop people from contributing ideas. If 2GD is going to deliver on Reborn, let's get our ideas heard! You never know what new dynamics are going to create a perfect balance between fun and competitive. QW, Q2, Q3 and CPMA have great formulas for balance fun and competition, but they aren't the only ones.

I hope Reborn is going good! Can't wait to see some footage!

I hate CA, but it's so hard to find a good game in any other game mode. It's pulling teeth to get CA players to play TDM. I remember someone posted a while back the idea of noobing up TDM a bit to make it less brutal to tdm newcomers. I gave it a try yesterday, and the results were fantastic. A lot of really close games, and a lot of people who'd never played TDM had a great time, and are excited to play more.

http://youtu.be/DZUgEbm7dC4

I'll be running nightly NEWB TDM games in LA, and possibly in TX / IL if that's where the players are (even though my ping is shit there. Don't care).

Settings we'll be using:
Weapon Respawn: 15 seconds (default 30)
Map Timelimit: 12 minutes (default 20)
Starting Health: 125 (this is the default)
Starting Armor: 25 (default 0)

Toying with the idea of giving SG or PG on the spawn. I wish I could make it randomly pick one of those 2 on each spawn, but whatever.

If you're in NA look for our nightly games! And add me on QL and ask for an invite to our new tdm-W clan.

-EVOL

UPDATE: Here's the start a match settings, as requested.
{"maps":["bloodrun","almostlost","campgrounds","deepinside","grimdungeons","hiddenfortress","purgatory","realmofsteelrats","retribution"],"cvars":{"g_gametype":3,"sv_warmupReadyPercentage":0.51,"timelimit":12,"g_weaponRespawn":15,"mercylimit":50,"g_startingArmor":25}}

UPDATE 2:
CA players aren't really flocking. They just want to CA. So newb'd settings are gone. Back to 30 second weapon respawns and 0 starting armor. Going to raise game time to 16 minutes (20 can still be a grind), but have kind of a low mercy limit (40 frags). That way if the game's an obvious blowout, it probably won't last more than 5 or 10 minutes, and you can fix the teams. I'll still be spawning servers almost every night, and spamming invites. Also, in order to get more mid/east players in, I'll probably run the games in TX instead of LA. Also, we're using the #qlpickups.us mumble for voice comms.

Had a crazy idea today for a fun game type. Kind of a mix between CA and TDM.

TDM Aspects:
- Continuous game, not round based
- Team with most frags wins (100 frag limit, 10 minute time limit)
- You have less ammo
- Gun pickups are important to replenish ammo
- Timing quad to the second is important

CA Aspects
- You spawn 200 armor 100 health
- No self damage
- No team damage
- No items (no guns, no ammo, no armor)
- Only item is quad (every 2 minutes)
- Spawn with all guns
- Spawn with default TDM ammo (except rockets are 15 instead of 10, lg is 130 instead of 100)

Why it's fun:
- More action!
- You never have to wait for the round to end. Just respawn.
- You don't have to "go bridge"
- If you don't "go bridge", your team doesn't get mad
- More +forward, less +back
- Players that play +back don't lose the game for your team
- Dying isn't frustrating.
- The big "initial fight" that happens at the start of every CA round doesn't really exist.

I don't know what else to say. It feels chaotic like a FFA, when you're running the items good and getting good quad runs. Except you have teammates. And right off the spawn, you have armor and guns. It's fun as SHIT. Played 3 games tonight and had a blast.

It IS possible to spawn a non-prem version of this, but the problem is the timelimit is fixed at 20 (tdm default), and you can't change the frag limit. 20 minutes is WAY to long for this game mode.

Anyway, here are the "start a match" settings if you want to import them and try it. =)

{"maps":[],"cvars":{"g_gametype":3,"sv_warmupReadyPercentage":0.51,"web_spawnSkillMatched":1,"teamsize":5,"g_complaintLimit":10,"g_friendlyFire":0,"g_startingArmor":100,"g_startingHealth":200,"g_startingHealthBonus":0,"dmflags":28,"g_dropPowerups":1,"g_dropCmds":6,"g_spawnItemAmmo":0,"g_spawnItemArmor":0,"g_spawnItemHoldable":0,"g_spawnItemHealth":0,"g_spawnItemWeapons":0,"g_startingWeapons":255,"g_forceDmgThroughSurface":1,"fraglimit":100,"timelimit":10,"mercylimit":50,"g_startingAmmo_rl":15,"g_startingAmmo_lg":130}}

Hey guys, short on time but I wanted to get this posted. I've created a windows app that will scrape the quakelive.com profiles of all the players in the server you're connected to, and display the summary data. Currently it doesn't display the data in-game (I'll add that soon), so you really need a 2nd monitor for the app to work properly.

Screenshot
http://deadmen.us/QLStatsAnnouncer.png

Version 1.1
http://deadmen.us/qlstatsannouncer.zip

C# Source (VS2010, .NET 4)
http://deadmen.us/QLStatsAnnouncer-src.zip

It doesn't have to be installed, you can just run it in place.

This is really fun for a lot of reasons. You can see if someone is an lg or rail whore (wep usage). You know whos lg to watch out for. You know who is just +forward rockets. You can find trolls easily (2 day old account averaging 50+ lg).

Also, it's not obvious, but you can click the column headers in the output data to sort by that column.

New in version 1.1
- CA Elo and CA Rank are displayed

Planned for future versions:
- Option to display the results in game (in the console)
- Balanced team recommendation based on CA Elo (maybe)

Enjoy!

-EVOL

Disclaimer: I know this is a tricky community to be a part of. There's a lot of controversy surrounding just about everything. I know there have been a lot of cheating/hacker threads, and it seems that sometimes they are welcome, and sometimes not. If a whole thread seems like overkill for trying to prove that some no-name in QL is cheating in a pub FFA, my bad. I really want to get the guy banned, cause I hate losing to cheats. Normally I wouldn't make this kind of effort, because normally it's newly created QL accounts. This seems to be the guys main account, created in Feb 2009, so he gets special treatment. Demos have already been submitted to support@quakelive.com. Anyway, here's the video:

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vCLs30ihyQ
Demos: http://www.mediafire.com/?sdrhy9zu53x0hgu

Youtube video description, copied and pasted:

So in video #14 (an FFA on dm13) some player "dahoood" accuses me of using an aimbot (at 3m49s) (oh noes! 30% lg!!! hacker!)
link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHLQvobHz2g&t=3m49
Well he wasn't very good. In fact at the end of the 7 minute game, he'd only managed to scrape 8 frags together. On his QL profile page, his lg is 24% acc with 8% use. I believe in that game he hit less than 20% lg. So I played another FFA with him on dm13 a couple days later, and WOW did his game ever improve! Suddenly he was hitting 42% lg and had an amazing sense of where players would be. This time I BARELY beat him (1 frag difference, which I barely secured in the last few seconds). Quite an improvement! I watched the demo in wolfcam, getting things from his perspective whenever I could, and he was obviously wallhacking (and botting too I think, but whatever, that's harder to prove when they smooth things out). Well I've submitted demos to id before when people were using obvious wallhacks, and they don't do anything about it when the game is your POV, because they can't watch the player in question the whole time. They only get small glimpses, when their location is in your demo stream.

Fast forward to today. I go to play some FFA, and guess who's in the server! Dahoood! I immediately went spec and recorded him playing 4 or 5 maps. This video is all from games played on 12/4/2011, all from dahood's POV, played back in wolfcam with cg_wh set to 1 so you can see enemies through walls. I don't have the games in their entirety, because that would be a very long video. I just did some quick edits to show some of the more obvious moments. What you WON'T see in this video is the rest of the story (which you'll get if you watch the demos). Quake can be a very spammy game. In all 5 demos, not ONCE does dahoood spam anything. Not a single grenade, rocket, pg, nothing. Every single shot he ever takes is either at a visible enemy, or one that's just coming around a corner. That alone seems very revealing to me. Another thing I think is quite strange is he VERY rarely jumps, and he doesn't do a single strafe or circle jump in all of the maps he played. He doesn't really strafe or dodge either, it's quite strange to watch.

If you browse his games on his QL page
link: http://www.quakelive.com/#!profile/matches/Dahoood
you'll see that his average lg is less than 20%. Yet look at the games from 11/30/2011. He's getting between 70 and 95% lg accuracy. And it's not cause he uses it just once on some dude on a jump pad. Check this game out on dm13:
http://www.quakelive.com/r/profile/matches/Da...fd90/ffa/1
95% lg acc, with 8 kills. There's another one on t9 where he got 87% lg with 16 total lg kills.

Anyway, it's hilarious that he accused me of hacking, when the guy is a super obvious aimbot and wallhacker.

Here's the QL demos that were used to create this youtube video:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sdrhy9zu53x0hgu

id software, if you're listening, please ban this dude by IP.

Was practicing dm13 against a bot, and was outside on the mega level with no RL. Wanted to get up top for position, and only had pg. A plasma jump occurred to me, but it's too far/high, but there's that little section of wall, so I decided to find out if a ztn style pg climb is possible. It is! Is this a known trick? Or did I actually discover something new?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV2sgFPwuc4

#10 - EVOL vs jbis2s - ztn (Bloodrun)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8AVlFpYHtk

#11 - EVOL vs K1lLeRm - hub (Aerowalk)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rJgO1mVmLA

Some good games, good analysis of my own mistakes, and good discussion (or as much as can be expected from a low low level T4 dueler, haha. 1145 QLR ELO ftw!).
Enjoy!

I know it's been a while, but I have this one and 3 more coming this week. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMOETuTcXSw

Features:
- Mountain man beard has been shaved! Starting over for winter
- Quake tattoo is healing up
- Better in depth analysis of mistakes I made during the duel
- Use of "cg_wh 1" in wolfcam at times to show the positioning of the other player
- Use of "follow 1" at times to show the other player's viewpoint
- Better analysis of combat and weapon selection

Basically, instead of commentating this match as if it were a live match, I wanted to analyze it more (rewind, pause, talk, slowmo, etc), to really see what I can do to improve. This is the approach I want to take with future videos, since this is supposed to be a learning experience for me (and other noobs).

I'll be making another vid tonight, also vs Whiskeyyy on aerowalk (a game he wins), and in the next few days I have 2 really good games on ztn vs realmdivine and chompz that I'll be casting as well.

Enjoy!

EDIT:
EVOL Commentary #7, Game 2 vs Whiskeyyy on Aerowalk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbAwfGJ9n1o

I wish we had something like this in the US, West Coast...

I've never used WASD. Been playing FPS since Wolfenstein, and you used arrow keys to move, and ctrl to shoot. At some point I remember setting up Doom (or Doom 2?) to aim with the mouse, but I was still using left ctrl to shoot and alt to toggle strafe movement (you strafed instead of turned when moving the mouse).

Enter Quake 1, +freelook. Upgraded to ctrl to shoot, z & x for strafe L/R, and space to jump. I've always used the left mouse button to +forward, and the right mouse button to +back.

At some point during the Half-Life 1 years, I upgraded to my current config, which I call ASDF.

Middle keys (SD, so ring finger and middle finger) are used for strafe L/R, outer keys (AF, so pinky and pointer) are used for +zoom (A) and +attack (F). Mouse buttons are still used for +forward and +back.

I like having my fingers on home row, since I'm a programmer anyway, and it's a very natural position for me.

Now, with this setup, I'm aiming with the mouse (right hand), and shooting with the left hand (F key).

ON TO MY QUESTION:
Does anyone else do this? Does anyone think that there's a possible aim disadvantage, due to both hands being involved for aiming and shooting? That "move the mouse, click" would yield better aim?

I've been using my ASDF config for soooooo long, WASD just seems impossible to get used to. I would have to relearn the basics all over, to get new muscle memory. The most time I've spent trying to convert is a few hours. After that I switch back because WASD is so frustrating.

Using a page like http://deadmen.us/quake-reflexes.html I average about 270ms reaction speed when using the keyboard, and about 310 when using the mouse. 40ms slower with the mouse seems pretty significant. This could be due to my muscle memory (I'm using to using my left pointer finger on the F key, so I respond more quickly), or it could be because I have a nice mechanical switch keyboard, and the actuation is easier/faster with the keyboard than it is with the mouse (a razer deathadder).

I'm mostly looking for input from players who have used a scheme similar to my ASDF scheme extensively, as well as WASD. For those of you who have, which do you prefer, and why?

I have average aim in duels and CA games right now. 30/35+ lg and 40+ rail on a good day. Rarely under 30 lg or under 30 rail.

Got this done yesterday in Seattle.

Commentary #5 is up!
EVOL vs thecoupe - Hub (Aerowalk)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHHbXFecfUY

Coupe is a GREAT player, and no matter how much I practice timing items, position, when to +back, etc, it all goes out the effing window when I play him. Nerves just get the better of me. Anyway, it's a good game, and this is the best I have ever aimed in a duel. It was ridiculous, actually.

Enjoy!

-EVOL

Previous episodes:
#4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGt5Gcmyp6Y
#3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q5xTaMH6Z0
#2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZoRtcAaXbA
#1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsOT_fg2JXk

Commentary #4 is up!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGt5Gcmyp6Y

This time I'm dueling Communist316, a great player I've played only once before, quite a while ago. He has really good map knowledge on T9, and puts me to work pretty hard. For the past couple of weeks, I've been trying to really focus on my timing and on staying calm throughout the match. I did a really good job of both of those in this match, so I'm pretty happy with the game. Though to be fair, the timing was pretty easy, since I was only timing mega (there's no RA on T9, just 3 yellows, and I wasn't about to try to time all of them, so I just tried to feel them out).

Hope it's helpful to other low tier 4 duelers like myself, or anyone else who's getting started.

Enjoy!

-EVOL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q5xTaMH6Z0

The Coupe gave me some good advice on item timing. RA:MEGA. Keep that fixed sequence of items, regardless of the timing. So if RA is up at 12, and mega is up at 20, say out loud "12, 20", and keep repeating it if you find that you aren't paying attention to the clock or you forget the times. Even if the spawn order is reversed (if mega is first), keep the order RA:MEGA. Be consistent, that way you won't mix up the spawn times for the 2 items. So in that example (12, 20), if you pick up RA right at 12, do the math (I do it by +10, +10, +5, saying the numbers out loud, so if I picked up at 12 I'd say "22, 32, 37), to figure that the next RA is at 37. Now you have the new times, so say out loud "37, 20". In this video, I use this strat against a bot, trying to time the 2 major items to the second. I make a lot of mistakes, and forget the numbers sometimes (or mix them up), but the idea is to show you guys how you can practice this if item timing is something you have trouble with (as I do).

Hope it helps! More commentaries on the way....

-EVOL

Thread title says it all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNbTZmWnkGc

Also, music in the vid is from my band's debut album, Capitol Thrill. If anyone is in the Seattle area, come see is WRECK it at The Funhouse next Thursday (7/21/2011) or next Saturday (7/23) at The White Rabbit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZoRtcAaXbA

I got a really positive response from everyone with the first video, so I'm going to try and keep it going.

#2 is EVOL vs Fadeout on Hektik. In rewatching the video, I notice that some of my insights aren't totally correct, but it'll do. I'm new at this. I figure after a few more I should have the hang of it pretty good.

From your feedback on the first video I got a cleaner HUD, switched to Wolfcam, and started exploring some accel options.
Keep the feedback coming!

Enjoy!

EVOL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsOT_fg2JXk

So I'm not very good (very low tier 4 I guess), but I've only been dueling about 6 months. I'm going to start doing more of these commentaries, because it forces me to rewatch my games and analyze them in depth, which really helps me focus on the areas I need to work on. All feedback (good and bad) is welcome. Thanks!

UPDATE:
Commentary #2 is up. EVOL vs Fadeout - Hektik.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZoRtcAaXbA

I've been dueling more, and want to get more people playing TDM instead of CA, so I really need to work on my item timings. I whipped up this page to help me memorize all of the +25 and +35 timings for items.

http://deadmen.us/quake-timers.html

Hope it's useful. Enjoy!


EVOL