First: Confusion

When I came back it was hell. I missed some keys, got damn slow with reaction times, I was spamming too much and I got angry quickly. Urban Terror is really focused on fast paced fights and reflexes are a must. Playing often will make you a better player and it will help develop your aiming skills as well as your reflexes.. however it will make you stop thinking about what you are doing, and you will just mindlessly repeat the same actions every time.

Bad habits

Everybody has bad habits, mostly related to your aim. Coming back after one or two weeks away from UrT will make a good chance to overwrite your mind schemes. Don wrote a great post about aiming, which however requires great commitment.. most of all if you play everyday with the same old habits. It’s a good occasion to stop spamming, stop whining at bad hits and stop circle jumping the wrong way.

Predictability

Usually when you play often, you cycle through the same 10 to 15 maps.. unless you’re a fan of some obscure servers. You will come to know this map like the palm of your hand, and you will unconsciously record 3 or 4 paths in your mind that you will follow.. mostly related to the opening of the game. Coming back after a while will make you see the map like never before. You certainly know it but maybe you forgot about some spots that now seems pretty nice, or some jumps that you never tried. Experiment and evolve from there.

New weapons

Well.. you just came back, why don’t you try some new weapons? Get rid of that LR-300/M4 and start playing with an AK107, it’s a great weapon! And did you know that the PSG-1 is great for CTF or Team Deathmatch? Or why don’t you pick the Beretta instead of a DE?

New servers

As everybody you will probably have 2 to 3 servers where you always play. The same good old people that you know very well and that you play every night. Well.. you might know them so well that you actually can predict what they are going to do and they can predict what you are going to do. Playing with the same people every time is fun, but you will become naturally lazy in trying to find new way of killing them because you already know them. Jump on new servers, play with new people that you never met in maps that you never played. You might find new tactics, strategies and maybe some new friends!

New Settings

This is the right moment to change your aim settings, gear or binds. Most of this stuff relies on habits.. two different configs can work equally well with the right amount of playtime. If you always wanted to change your sensitivity or raise your DPI but you always feared to loose your accuracy.. well this is the right time to do it.

Conclusion

In conclusion.. taking a rest is totally worth it. It will empty your mind from bad habits and will force you to do better. What do you think? Ever stopped for a long time? What did you do when you came back? Tell us in the comments!

Principles of stamina

Stamina depends on your current health. Whenever it gets under the 50% of your current health your character will start to emit a breathing sound that will likely give away your position to nearby enemies. Jumping, sprinting and even crouching will lower your stamina and with a kevlar it will  lower twice as fast. You recover stamina while you stand still or while you run but it will increase significantly more slowly.

Optimize stamina use

Depending on your role you will use a lot of stamina during a round. Optimize stamina use means adjusting movements and behaviors to spend the least amount of stamina possible and still be fast and effective. You should always have at least 50% or more of stamina. This value increases as your health lowers.

1. Movement principles

You must switch between super fast movements and pauses. This means, for example, circle jumping to destination and then stopping or walking for a while.

2. Circle jump correctly

You should always circle jump… unless there is no room to do so. By slightly turning your mouse you can circle jump without gaining too
much speed. You will cover longer distances with less stamina than by simply sprinting or jumping in straight line.

3. Walk to recover

To keep moving while you recover stamina: walk. By walking you will be more silent while saving stamina. This is extremely useful while
sniping as you can still aim with an acceptable movement penalty. Don’t crouch as crouching will drain a bit of stamina.

4. Stop to recover

When your stamina is under 30% you should stop to recover. Find a good, quiet corner and sit there for a while. If you are wearing a
kevlar vest, drop it. Don’t move while recovering as it kills the purpose. When it gets back over 80% you can pick up your vest and get
back to action.

5. Limit movements when low on health

If you’re left with 20% or so of health there’s no point in sprinting or jumping like an idiot when nobody is around. Just run or walk.
Giving away your positions by breathing means death in these situations.

Do you care about stamina as much as I do? Share your thoughts by commenting!

Check this list to see if you are making this 5 common mistakes. Remember: admitting that there’s a problem is the first step for solving it.

1 – Wasting Stamina

I could write an entire post on it (and I probably will). People just waste too much stamina resulting in characters that can be heard from a mile away and that don’t have enough stamina to run away in sticky situations. Main reasons are:

• You have always the sprint button pressed.
• You don’t walk and/or crouch when you should.
• Unnecessary jumps (most common error)
• You don’t know how to circle jump correctly.

A great way to save stamina is mixing powerslides with walking. I’ve never heard my character breath again since I started to use this technique which to me is very important. There should be a post about this very soon.

2 – Lack of patience

Sometimes you should just step back and wait. The most common error is in a 1v1 situation when your opponent runs away to reload or to medic himself and you just try to finish him with your sidearm. It’s a big error when you try to do so while bleeding or with low stamina.
Depending on the number of hits that you’ve taken and also the number of hits that you dealt to your opponent you should decide if it is convenient to finish the fight quickly. I try always to bandage if an opponent runs away and also with the help of a good pair of headphones I can hear what he’s doing (bandaging or running away).

3 – Challenging the sniper

This is a very common mistake among good players.. the reason is they got pissed because they got killed by a sniper usually in the opening of the round. Normally a good sniper runs to take position and aim towards doors or cracks where he thinks that enemies will show up. A good example is aiming from the spawn to the plaza (oasis) in Algiers 0r Casa’s Narrow (spawning from New Alley). For a sniper it is a very easy kill since his opponent just doesn’t have the time to spot him and eventually shoot him down. This lends to serious discussions on pubs usually (“You’re a frakkin’ camper!” etc..) and eventually players gets pissed and try over and over to kill the sniper from the same position with poor results. If a players has a natural position advantage you shouldn’t even try. The solution is very simple: flanking. Is very easy to kill the sniper at the spawn in Algiers by flanking him from the left.

4 – Not using the knife

I can’t tell you how important the knife is in sticky situations. You should pull it out whenever an enemy comes too close to you. The reason is that models overlap and you miss him even if you shouldn’t due to bad hits recognition (caused by ping, server, bugs etc..). You should always have your knife ready in slash mode and if you feel that you are going to use it (example if you’re trying to finish your opponent with the DE) try running towards them instead of running away from them.

5 – Reloading

There are two problems about reloading. Reloading too often (reloading with 23/30 is a waste imho) or not reloading at all (for example not reloading the sidearm). It’s a common issue especially when you want to finish off a fight quickly and you forgot to reload. Every bullet is important.

Tell us if you are making other mistakes and if you found yourself in these 5.

1. Use only necessary binds

Use only the fundamental binds. Do not confuse your teammates with unuseful binds. To make sure you have the proper binds at the right moment, consider making two or more configurations depending on the gametype you are going to play (eg. one config for Team Survivor and another for CTF). For example in TS things like “Enemy Spotted” and “Enemy Heard” are fundamental, consider things like “Flank ‘em” and “I’m Flanking,” but pass on binds like “Stick with me.” In CTF binds like “Flag Exiting…” is very useful but “Enemy Spotted” isn’t.

2. Don’t write unnecessary things

Don’t write things that are not necessary within your radio calls. The voice is already telling the command (like I need a medic) and most of the time knowing how much you are hurt isn’t necessary. Also I couldn’t care less about how many rounds are left in your magazine or where the hell you are. Less is more.
For example, never use $location in your binds. Your current location is already sent in every radio message in white. Or again if you have to use “Enemy Spotted” just bind $crosshair, so the voice will say “Enemy Spotted” and your teammates will see on video just their location. Don’t be redundant.

3. Unbind the funny stuff

Don’t waste keys to bind “Nice One” or “Good Job Team.” You can just write “n1″ in the team chat. This will also feel more personal and boost the morale in the team. Also in Clan Wars don’t waste time with “Thanks” or “Sorry about that” or “No problem” or whatever… mistakes can happen and healing somebody is just ordinary business.

4. Have them at your hands

Some binds should as near as possible to WASD so you can use them without thinking. I’ve binded my radio calls from 1 to 0 (since I bound the weapons elsewhere).

5. Use colours

Use colours to increase readability. Remember: the less time you take to decrypt a message, the faster you will come back to thinking about shooting. Don’t make a rainbow. Only a few colours. (Example my “Enemy Spotted” has the $crosshair in red).

6. Agree to binds with your clan

Take your time to open up a topic in your forums and to make a lists of binds that are absolutely necessary to everybody and to explain what to do if somebody is giving an order using the radio. For example agree with your clanmates that “Incoming” means: “Everybody get here asap.”

Got more suggestions? Share them in the comments!
Do you use the radio or you prefere Mumble or Teamspeak? Tell us why!

Intro

Your goal when engaging an enemy is to deliver as much damage as possible with as few bullets (= time) as possible. That way you are more likely to live. Statistically speaking, the longer a firefight goes on, the greater the chance somebody is about to drop dead. Until you reach a certain point when both people are spamming so much that the graph levels off and you’re at the mercy of sheer luck. A drawn out firefight is bad because the longer it lasts, the more damage is dealt. You want to live, but you have to get greedy and make your goal that you want to live a productive life after firefights. Getting severely wounded means you have to wait for a medic or play cautiously. Most of the time, dying to get full health is not the best idea, so you need to get to a level where you can shoot proficiently enough not only to kill more than you die, but to also be useful after a firefight.

The process of killing someone with your gun consists of two parts: aiming (acquiring your target and keeping a bead on them as you shoot), and shooting (making bullets leave your gun in a controlled fashion so as to control recoil and spread). Aiming is easy; you’ve been doing it for years. Every time you click an icon or select a form field, you’re using aim. Tracking a target is not something you do much every day outside of gaming, but it’s really just acquiring the target over and over, and/or moving your crosshair at mostly the same speed as your target in order to stay on them. This is very easy to do, but much harder to do quickly and precisely. Improving your aiming ability takes practice, and there’s no way around it. We will discuss how to remove as many barriers as possible, but at the end of the day, if you need to improve your aim, you have to put in the hours. You also have about a 200 ms delay between seeing a target and being able to react. The more the target startles you, the faster you can react. There are many “reaction time” tests online that can prove you’ll get about 10-30 ms faster when startled. You’ll also react faster when you’re pumped up and blood is flowing well (= warm hands; cold hands make you shoot slower). Realize that it’s not really possible to do anything about this delay, and everyone experiences it. Smart play can make even the slowest reacting player capable of dominating a game.

Shooting is the main thing we’re going to focus on, because it can be greatly improved by simply knowing AND doing what is right. In pubs, and low-medium skill tier matches, being a good shooter with good aim will allow you to dominate. Tactics are important, but really only come into play at high skill levels where strong aiming and shooting are a prerequisite. That’s not to say all high skill players are great gunners; some do it just well enough to allow their skills in other areas to compensate and make them an overall skilled player. What I’m saying is that being a good gunner, even if you’re hopeless at tactics, flag running, and teamplay, can make you a valuable asset when you’re starting out with clans.

The final thing we’ll discuss is how to eliminate as much as possible the handicaps imposed by hardware, as well as by Urban Terror. Having a good mouse and the perfect config might not make you able to shoot 30% with the LR, but it will make your learning experience easier.

So now that we’ve got a complete 750 word high school essay masquerading as an intro, let’s get to the content (see, this is definitely not a high school essay – we have content!).

Aiming

There’s not a whole lot I can write about the subject of aiming. You’ll either be good enough at aiming that you will benefit a lot from learning to shoot properly, or you’ll need more practice with aiming before you see a significant difference. Or you are a good gunner already and just want to read my guide.:) Anyway…

When you aim, you should be aiming with the crosshair at a target, not at the target. Confused? Focus your eyes on the crosshair, not your target. Focusing at the target is what I do when I’m not trying to play well, and just screwing around. It’s sort of the default way I aim, I suppose. In fact, I probably play 90% of matches this way, because it seems to be the most natural way to aim, or perhaps I just learned a bad habit when I started playing FPS games years ago. This is unfortunate because I see noticeable accuracy increases when I focus on the crosshair as opposed to enemy players, but it’s nice to be able to always “step it up” when necessary, I guess. ANYWAY I find it is easier to stay on a target when you are focused on the crosshair, as opposed to focusing on the target and trying to keep the crosshair on it. You get better feedback when you’re watching the crosshair, and can track more easily. Oh and you get to actually see whether you’re aiming at the enemy or you are overshooting/undershooting them. This is something you should do when you’re getting bad hits, because it might be your aim (but it’s probably the 2 bit box with 29 servers hosted). It’s also something you should do when you want to work on your shooting skills, because you need to know your aim is as good as you can get it in order to train your shooting skills most effectively.

Consistently overshooting or undershooting a target can be corrected by changing your sensitivity (/sensitivity in the console). The default of 5 is pretty good I suppose, but it can be better. A low sensitivity (I define low as <5, high as >5, for this guide) will mute your mouse movements, giving you smoother motions, but slower aiming (at first, anyway, until you adjust to moving the mouse in faster, coarser movements). I like low sensitivity. I use 3. Some players use lower, some use higher, but I shoot better than most, because I use a sensitivity I like. A higher sensitivity means you can make smaller movements with the mouse to move your view on screen. This gives the advantage of faster movements compared to low sensitivity for a constant mouse velocity. The disadvantage is it’s harder to be accurate because of the faster speeds involved. You’ll always be more accurate when you can do something over a longer period, including moving the mouse. Very few top players use high sensitivity; in fact very few players of any caliber do. As best I can tell, the only big disadvantage to low sensitivity is that you can’t always do a 180 with one sweep, if you have your sensitivity low enough. If you have a small mouse pad or limited desk space, a low sensitivity may be impossible to use; the solution is to get more room.:)

I recommend picking a sensitivity you WANT to use, and adapting to it. There’s no such thing as a perfect sensitivity that will feel great the second you try it. You will have to practice with it, so you may as well stop wasting time trying hundreds of values, and just pick something. I like 3, but I used 4 before that and did okay. I dropped to 3 because I found I would zigzag when sliding at a target to shoot them, in the process missing more than I should. The lower sensitivity muted the movements (I don’t know why I had a habit of zigzagging my aim, but whatever) and fixed the problem. It took some time to adjust to the slightly lower sensitivity, but ultimately it helped my aim. I don’t recommend changing your sensitivity constantly, because you need time to fully adjust and see the benefits. A week or two is not long enough (assuming you play a 1-2 hour session every few days), because you could just be having a bad spell or a good spell in regards to your skill and scores. It will probably take longer to adjust to a big change (e.g., 6 to 2). If you think you can aim well enough with your current sensitivity, leave it as it is.

Finally, some people ask what to aim AT. Some say head, some say torso. I say torso. I’ve tried aiming at the head, and do not see a reason to do so. It’s too small a target to aim quickly at, track, and keep spread low enough to hit. If you aim at the upper torso (neck/shoulders area), you’ll get headshots anyway, due to spread and recoil. I do not ever purposely aim for the head, and I still get quite a few headshots. One headshot (or helmet shot) per 2-4 kills seems to be my average from screenshots I have. Lower skill games result in more headshots as people move less intelligently. My killing speed is extremely high, so obviously not aiming for headshots does not impact my speed, and in fact probably is why I can kill quickly. I really can’t recommend aiming for anything but the torso.

How to shoot – Part I

Now that you know the theory behind aiming, let’s discuss the practical improvements you can make in your game today. You want to balance spread, recoil, and damage per second. No, this isn’t WoW, but damage over time is very important in any game. “Spread” and “recoil” are generated with sustained firing. Spread is not really quantifiable, but it’s the area where your bullets can land. When you start shooting, your spread is low. The area your bullets can land is smaller. As you keep firing, the area grows; spread increases. Because you’re dealing with a circle, your spread increases quickly. Some crosshairs allow you to see your spread, but they’re not perfectly accurate. I am unsure how the actual spread algorithm works, but I assume every “pixel” (I believe the game “thinks” in Quake units, which is a whole other article in itself) in the cone of spread (it’s circular and extends out from the gun in 3 dimensions as a cone, so the farther away you are, the more your bullet will deviate from the center of the area you’re aimed at, on average; basically if you got 2 exact same vectors for your bullets to leave the gun, and shot one bullet at a wall 20 feet away, and another at a wall 200 feet away, the latter would deviate much further, but in practice, it’s not significant as there aren’t any maps big enough to really try it out) has an equal chance of being the point chosen for the bullet to land on. So when you have high spread, you really don’t have much chance of hitting an enemy more than a dozen or so feet away.

In UrT, the shooting is all about probability. It’s not like CS where the first bullet from your AK47 is always exactly where you aim. In UrT, only the sniper rifles have 0 spread when shot from a standstill. All the other weapons have a slight amount of spread when shot from a standstill; you can’t avoid this. Spread for all guns (we ignore the SPAS, HK, knife, and nades, here) is increased when moving, increased when sprinting, decreased when crouching (not the sniper rifles; also crouching in midair doesn’t do anything for accuracy for any gun), and increased when jumping. The sniper rifles have massive spread when moving even a bit; this is called movement penalty, and will not be discussed in this article. I’m going to discuss automatic weapons only; I may discuss the Desert Eagle in a future guide. Anyway, we want to maximize the probability of getting hits so we can kill quickly.

Recoil is generated during sustained fire, and increases linearly. It’s the deviation, on the Y axis (up/down) of your gun barrel, and thus the point where your bullets are generated from. Just like spread, distance matters. The further you are, the more the deviation will alter the ultimate site your bullet lands. Recoil is accurately measured by all the crosshairs. Your crosshair will always be dead center on your screen, but your view will slowly shift upwards as your recoil increases. You can easily see it by taking an assault rifle and just firing the whole magazine in one go. It’s much easier to control than spread because you just have to move your mouse down to keep your crosshair on your target. But as you’ll see, that won’t matter.:)

Spread and recoil must be kept low in order to keep the probability of hits high. I see so many players who do not control it properly, and thus shoot poorly. Shooting without regard for spread and recoil is called spamming. Spamming has its place, but most players don’t seem to know where that is, or don’t bother to keep a lid on their spamming.

How to shoot – Part II

I’ve always told people the following:
Close up: spam
Short range: burst 6-10
Medium range: burst 3-5
Long range: tap 1 or burst 2

That’s essentially correct, but it’s hard to know ranges, so instead I will teach you how to judge for yourself. I’m not going to teach you a list of ranges and how to burst for each, but instead how to control your fire in any situation.

First off, bursting means firing a bunch of bullets with 1 press of the mouse button. You click, hold it down, and then release. Tapping is clicking it and releasing it as if you were clicking an Internet link. Tapping refers to shooting one bullet, waiting, shooting another. It’s like semi auto mode except you’re not going to actually change the firing mode for your gun (I don’t even have a bind for that, though I often have to make one in game because my autoexec sets some of my rarely-used guns to semi…which is crippling if I am forced to pick one up). Bursting has nothing to do with burst mode, which is possibly the most underused feature in the game, since it removes all control over your gun, and actually leads to spamming. Here’s a video of tapping and bursting in case you are really dense.:P

As you can see, even tapping fails to be perfectly accurate at long range. You will miss many shots when dealing with targets far away. It’s best to let your sniper(s) deal with really pesky long range targets. Bursting is much more effective than spam, as you can see. At over twice the range, bursting delivers far more precise bullet placement than was achieved with spamming. I could do more comparisons, but seeing as I’m writing the guide, I am just going to say I’m the authority here, and bursting produces far better results than spamming. As you saw in the video, I bursted several shots, then waited for the crosshair to shrink back down to normal size, indicating the spread was back to normal. I didn’t actually watch the crosshair, as I just know how long to wait. The crosshair drops back to normal very quickly when you do smallish bursts like I did. With larger bursts, say 10-12 bullets, it will take longer. Honestly, though, you’re just trading time around if you do 4 bursts of 6 instead of 2 bursts of 12. You’re waiting for 2 long periods or 4 short periods, but I think you’re dealing with the same amount of time overall. Plus you don’t have to wait after the 2^nd 12 round burst, because you’d just switch to the DE or a secondary if the target was alive.The reason you’d choose one over the other is if you needed to factor in accuracy. Obviously a 12 round burst will be pretty inaccurate for medium-long range shooting, but perfectly usable for close range.

So how do you know what to shoot when? By using a crosshair that shows spread, and linking in your mind how big the crosshair is when you start to not hit. I like cg_drawcrosshair “7″ so I’m going to say you should use that. Once you know how to deal with spread and recoil, you can use whatever you want. Just play around with bursting at enemies at different ranges. After several full games (I recommend CTF or TDM, because TS is just too few kills per game), you should have an idea of how many bullets you should shoot in each burst at a given range. Make sure you push the limit so you know what the limit is. You’re not going for score, you’re getting practice. The only way you can fully learn something is to find what the limits are. If you don’t want to tarnish your name with a few bad games, use an alias, but I promise that if you’re spamming now (or shooting too conservatively), you will actually play better once you start bursting.

I said spam has a place, and it does. Up close, you need to spam. Once you’ve got the aiming down pat, you’ll find you’re not actually spamming in the typical use of the word, because you will never empty your clip to kill someone. I just want to impress upon you that when an enemy is in your face, you need to forget about bursting, and just start shooting. Between 0 and about 10 feet away from you, there is absolutely no advantage to bursting, statistically speaking. You’re close enough that the spread will rarely cause your bullets to be directed past your enemy if you’re aimed at them. If you’re not hitting, it’s because you’re not aimed at your target. That said, Urban Terror has difficulty calculating player positions and hits at extremely close distances, particularly with ping times over 50 ms. Thus there’s not really any reason not to spam.

Basically you’re going to be developing a repertoire of bursts for every situation. You’ll have everything from single shot tapping for people far across the map, to no-holds-barred spamming for close quarters combat. Forget your knife, spamming works better in this situation. To help you during this development process, I’ll give you a simple rule: if the crosshair (size 20, crosshair 7) is bigger than the enemy, you need to do a smaller burst next time. You want to know how to judge spread, when to end your burst, and when to start your next burst without watching the crosshair size, which is why you need to practice bursting. Yes, you want to be watching your crosshair for aiming, but that’s all. Of course at longer ranges where you’ll never let the crosshair get big enough to exit your area of visual focus (you’ll be focused at the middle of your crosshair for aiming, and the middle is usually a dot which doesn’t move with spread, as it’s the middle, duuuh:P), you can cheat a little and watch the size of it, but remember that the crosshair doesn’t really show spread that accurately (sorry for the awful puns lol). Plus the less you have to visually process, the better. If you’re wondering why I didn’t mention recoil, that’s because it drops back to normal really quickly, so if you’re controlling burst, you’re controlling recoil. There really isn’t much need in Urban Terror to actively counter recoil, because at any range where you run the risk of the crosshair rising enough to leave the target (requires your target to be far away, and thus small on your screen), you would have to generate way too much spread to actually stand a decent chance of hitting the enemy to make it worth correcting for recoil.

I don’t really know where to put this next paragraph, but its topic comes up a lot: accuracy stat. In the stats tab, you will see your accuracy for the round with your most-used gun. Some people put a lot of stock into this, but the truth is, it’s not that important. I shoot around 22-27% most days. Looking at past screenshots of tough matches against strong opponents, I outshot both my team and the opponent. Now these aren’t any old players; this is against clans like /VeX/ and Veneration, and my team won, so obviously my teammates were exceptional players too. I’m shooting 22% or maybe even less (I like to shoot at corners as I’m retreating, sort of like suppressive fire) against top players, and I’m still racking up huge amounts of kills. Some people would say 22% is bad. It’s not. If I’m shooting 1000 bullets and 22% hit, and someone else is shooting at 30% but only 600 bullets, I’m killing more. People worry too much about their accuracy stat. Yes, you want to hit as much as possible, that’s what I’ve been teaching you to do. But you need to not do that at the cost of speed. If you’re taking too long to kill enemies because you’re shooting too cautiously, you’re not playing as well as you can. I think 18% and over is what you should set as a goal. If you’re shooting at higher than that right now, make it your goal to keep or improve that stat while also increasing your killing speed (how fast you rack up kills during a round). Your ideal accuracy is that at which you don’t have to alter your gameplay. As you get better, you’ll probably find your accuracy stat goes up. I shoot high 20s in pubs, and can do 30s when I try to aim. Without slowing down my gameplay. I couldn’t do this 2 years ago. Looking at the players whom I’ve seen champion high accuracy, I don’t see any particularly good players, either. Don’t be intimidated if some clan says you’re not shooting a high enough accuracy stat…especially if you’re outkilling them.;)

Getting your setup in order

So now we’ve got the aiming and shooting down, it’s time to address your hardware and software. Your mouse is the most important piece of hardware when it comes to shooting. Well, if you have a bad PC which lags, that’s more dire, but I’ll assume most people don’t, because PCs are really cheap these days. If your PC can’t run UrT well, most likely it’s even slower in other apps. Even if you don’t have a good computer, you have hopefully tweaked your graphics config.

So, your mouse. If you’re using a ball mouse, you really need to replace that. Forget UrT, a ball mouse is just plain awful. Optical and laser mice are a massive improvement. I prefer laser mice since they work well on any surface, and use less power in a wireless configuration. However, optical mice are good too. Logitech makes some nice gaming mice, as do Razer and Steelseries. All those things like DPI and on-the-fly sensitivity are pretty worthless, so you don’t actually need to spend a lot. You can get a G5 for around $40 CDN, so that’s like 25€ or around $37 USD. Just wait for a sale and get a nice mouse. You should probably go into an electronics store like Future Shop or Best Buy to try how different mice feel. Obviously buy them online because those stores just price rape you, but knowing how a mouse feels in your hand is very important. Features to look for include Teflon feet and a nice long cord (6’ or more is good). USB is important too, because PS/2 is just a PITA since you can’t hotplug it without having to reboot. I use 650 DPI on my G5, and I don’t know of any good player who uses anything over 800, so you don’t need 5000 DPI or something.

A mousepad is important too. I say this as person who used their desk surface ever since I bought my first optical (MX700) mouse. A mousepad helps…somehow. I can’t tell you what improved, just I know my scores went up and my accuracy went up. I guess it produces a more uniform surface for the laser. An optical mice of course needs a mousepad or it will skip randomly. It depends on your desk surface for the optical mice I guess, since I used the MX700 without a pad and it did okay, but I have some cheapo Logitech PS/2 mice and they skip (rather jump to a random corner of my screen at the MOST ANNOYING TIMES POSSIBLE, like right before I finish slowly creeping up to an icon, hoping it won’t skip away) really bad without a pad. A pad also gives something to rest your wrist on, and makes your mouse glide smoother.

I have a Steelseries QCK; apparently some of the glass pads don’t play nice with a laser. It was only $8 CAD with free shipping, but it’s pretty good. It slides around constantly so I always have to drag it back to the edge of my desk, but that’s not really a problem since I just do it when I’m respawning every 10 minutes or so. It gets a bit dirty from dust and stuff (it’s black, and cloth; you do the math), not to mention bits of dead skin (:X). But it’s easy to shake off and apparently machine washable. It’s about 12.5” x 10.5” so it’s really big; I’ve never run off it, or indeed even gone more than 4” close to the right hand edge. There’s a bigger version which is like 16” across if you really need that lol. So there’s my QCK review! I recommend it as a cheap mousepad, but if you want to spend more, you could get one of those aluminum or glass ones. They probably wouldn’t slide so much, or at least would be more accepting of being taped down (if I put sticky pads on this, it’d make the surface uneven seeing as the mousepad is just rubber+cloth).

As far as software goes, you’ll want to disable mouse acceleration in Windows, as mouseaccel will cause you to have non-linear movement response. BAD. Many mouse driver software control panels will let you do this. Logitech’s Setpoint does, for example. Otherwise you should just Google “disable mouse accel vista/xp/7” replacing the last bit with your OS. Take the quotes off too. For XP there is a registry fix that works, probably called CPL Mouse Accel Fix or something similar, as many CPL players apparently used it. I’m not sure there is actually a way to disable it in Vista, or indeed if Vista even has mouse accel on by default. I applied a registry fix to my Vista 64 installation, but I never noticed a difference. To be honest I didn’t notice one with XP either, and in fact I stopped bothering to patch my system with the fix after every reformatting by the end of my tenure with XP. Still, it’s better to make sure it’s off.

Getting good settings for Urban Terror is important, obviously. We’ve covered which crosshair to use while you’re experimenting with spread, but there are more things you can do. A good crosshair color is important. I like to make sure it stands out against my enemies. I use cg_crosshairrgb “1 0 0 1” against Blue team, and cg_crosshairrgb “0 1 1 1” against Red. That’s red and cyan, respectively. I just change it in the menu, but I really should add some lines to my autoexec to make it a script. Oh well. White is another good color, as are pink and lime (green). I used pink for several years as it worked well in version 3.x, but with the new skin colors (orange for Red team…), it was a bit hard to see. I know many people in my clan use white, and I’ve found it’s a pretty good alternative to using a different color for each team. I’ve used green sometimes too and found it works well.

I’m purposely not discussing mouse settings beyond /sensitivity. I do not think changing x and y response so they’re different is a good idea. I prefer a constant response which I can always predict. Make sure you have /cl_mouseaccel set to 0. Mouse accel, as discussed above, is a dreadful feature which really has no purpose.

Parting thoughts

I hope I’ve done a good job explaining how to properly operate your automatic weapon.:) It takes a lot of time and effort to become a good gunner, but that’s the only way it will happen. I can tell you how to shoot your gun and give you tips to improve your aim, but you have to be the one to put them to use. Good luck!

Post updated November 24, 2009. Fixed a few typos and reworded a few sentences for clarity. No content change.

When considering a typical First Person Shooter game, most would agree that fast-paced, weapons-based combat from the (first-person) perspective of being in the game is the norm. Such is the case with Unreal Tournament, Quake, and the Call of Duty series. Urban Terror certainly captures that type of action, but there are features that make it unique among others. One such feature is the distinctive movement players can use in game: wall-jumps, slides, climbs, and successive jumping to gain speed (circle jumping, bunny hopping, and strafe jumping). Apart from making the standard game faster and more interesting, jumping in Urban Terror has become a game in-and-of itself. Jump map training is even set to become an official game mode in Urban Terror 4.2. In this article, I hope to introduce jump maps by outlining the benefits of playing them, describe some of noob friendly maps, take those jumps to the field, consider harder jump maps, and finally proffer some links.

Why Play Jump Maps?

There are many reasons to play jump maps, but below I’ve outlined a few that convinced me to start playing them.
1. Practice: playing jump maps offers practice in moving quickly around maps, doing wall jumps, and in getting to unique places on standard maps. Playing jump maps also can help one learn how to enter a room in unique ways – surprising the enemy. I personally started playing jump maps after getting blind sighted by players who moved significantly faster around the map.

2. Connectivity: playing a jump map does not rely on others for “hits,” and is thus much more enjoyable with a less than ideal internet connection. As long as the connection is steady, players can still beat a map with a 400+ ping. This is great if one has internet connectivity issues, or wants to waste some time without an internet connection. If you’re at an airport that does not offer free wireless internet, Urban Terror jump maps can be a lot more fun and engaging that solitaire or minesweeper. Just start up a server and have at it!
3. As a Change-Up: when loud gunshots and high energy head-shot blasting has become stale, jump maps offer something new. Many skilled players find jump maps to be relaxing as they can be played with the sound off and one can go AFK without feeling tethered to the computer. Also, some jump maps offer players a way to fly around the map in a manner that can be compared to riding on a rollercoaster (some maps even include loops!). Don’t expect to get this feeling when you’re starting off, however, as many newcomers experience frustration at first.
4. Camaraderie: many jump map servers have their own Mumble, TeamSpeak, or Ventrillo servers and this offers a way to meet new players within the community. Jump maps are also great for team building within the context of clans because players can have casual conversations with each other without the pressure of shooting one another. Often times this results in something akin to friendship and skilled players often race each other to the finish line. Players will sometimes even go back to heal each other, and “team jump” maps exist. Finally, players in jump maps are usually nice to each other – they say hello, ask locations, and remember each other from day to day. That is not to say that everyone is nice (one such example is the player that accuses everyone else of blocking), but overwhelmingly playing on jump maps is an enjoyable social experience.

While the above list may not be exhaustive, I find them to be the main reasons why I play jump maps. Your reason may be that it is a good way to introduce a FPS game to a squeamish significant other (in that it does not require killing others). Others may have different reasons, but for the typical Urban Terrorist, those reasons will be the main rationale for playing jump maps. The next section introduces some noob friendly maps.

Where Do I Start?

As mentioned in the introduction, Urban Terror includes some very interesting methods of movement. Some within the Urban Terror community have picked up that fact and utilized the (now) open source tool GtkRadiant (a map creator/level editor) to design new and unique third-party maps. Check it out
yourself and you may one day be able to create your own maps: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GtkRadiant.
While many maps focus on traditional game modes (Team Deathmatch, Team Survivor), a plethora of  map makers have focused specifically on making maps that you can “jump.” This is a new concept in most FPS games, as you are not competing against other players but rather the map maker. This section
will outline some of the most noob friendly maps.

1. Uberjumps: Uberjumps is the quintessential noob friendly jump map. This map features over 20 jumps, each with a reasonably progressive skill level. The upside of this is that it slowly eases players into more difficult jumps. For example, the first jump starts off with three relatively easy wall jumps and by
the time players reach one of the later jumps (one that also requires three wall jumps and climbing a ladder) they will have acquired the skills needed to be successful. Finally, while not the most beautiful map, Uberjumps is fun to look at while playing as it gives the appearance of jumping high above the
earth. Beware the “s-curve” jump near the end, as it causes you to lemming. The map name is “ut4_uberjumps_beta3.pk3.”

2. Wootjumps: Wootjumps is also one of the most noob friendly maps. This map features over three “rooms” of jumps, with progressive difficulty that many players prefer over Uberjumps. This is because the progression of difficulty is smoother in wootjumps. I personally feel, however, that Uberjumps is more aesthetically pleasing and therefore more fun to play. Don’t forget to try and find the secret (tip: it’s in the first room).  The map name is “ut4_wootjumps_v3.pk3.”
3. Dutcherjumps: Dutcherjumps is one of the shortest jump maps and one of the easiest. It does offer oodles of fun for its size with funky techno music and an icy slide as the last jump. It has nothing too difficult and it is not the prettiest but it is fun. The map name is “ut4_dutcherjumps_b1v3.pk3.”
4. Jumpcamp: This map, it seems, was designed with the noob in mind. Though it is incredibly easy (up until the “jump exam”), it even comes with a “noob training area.” The map maker also posts the current record holder’s times with the locations, and promises to update the map should someone beat that record. According to the map, the current record for completing the whole map is around 3 minutes. Don’t expect as a beginner to even come close to that time, however, as I have seen some spend over 75 minutes just getting to the last jump. The name of this map is “ut4_jumpcamp_v2.pk3.”

5. Walljumps: While not spectacular in visuals or even that innovative in jumps, this map earns a place as it is short and friendly for noobs to finish. It mostly consists of (as its name implies) walljumps. The name of the map is “ut4_walljumps.pk3.”

Honorable Mentions:
1. Mooniejumps: Mooniejumps is a great noob starter map, though it is very long and can get frustrating. It has a decent learning curve that is fairly progressive. It is not included in the top 5 because of its length and difficulty near the end. A great map, nevertheless. The name of the map is
“ut4_mooniejumps_b3.pk3.”
2. Funnyjumps: This map is difficult, but it has a very nice “noob training area.” The training area even has lines that a beginner can follow in order to learn. It is a very fun map, with some icy jumps (like an icy half-pipe) and some interesting jumps thereafter. The first “official” jump, unfortunately for
beginners, is a noobcatcher (a jump that is very difficult for the inexperienced to complete in order to keep subsequent jumps less crowded). The name of the map is “ut4_funnyjumps.pk3.”

My first medium to hard maps:
1. Jumpskills: Many people enjoy this map. It starts off relatively easy but quickly gets difficult. Not too long and has some fun visuals (such as the jump “a poor O2 place”). The name of the map is “ut4_jumpskills_beta_2.pk3.”
2. Lizzjumps: This is a relatively long map that can infuriate noobs. But it does offer some unique jumps (“jump around” and “Toxic dump”). This map is hard to expert. The name of the map is “ut4_lizzjumps_beta1.pk3.”
That is it for the “noob” jumps. I understand that with the enormous amount of jump maps there exist more “noob” friendly maps. These maps, however, are a good place to start and are in rotation on a number of servers. Try them out, get to know some of the players and enjoy yourself. There is no shame in taking a break if you get frustrated, and remember to try not to block others. Jump maps have certain norms to follow, for example: in crowded areas, try to line up and jump when it is your turn. The next section will focus on taking what you learned back to regular maps.

You Learned How to Jump but Still Suck in Team Survivor – What Gives?

Learning jump maps does not guarantee that you will become an expert on normal maps. Here are some tips for utilizing your newly developed skills.
1. Look for platforms: In a normal map, platforms are not as obvious as in a jump map. What may appear to be scenery, however, may very well be a platform. Take, for example, the roofs of the stalls in markets found on Prague and Casa. With enough practice, one can jump from one end of the market on
Casa to the end of the timber alleyway with enough speed to surprise your foes or get away from the enemy.
2. Consider Wall Jumps: A lot of time there is only one way to get to a platform on a jump map. On a normal map, however, one can usually arrive at a location without jumping. This makes it especially easy for a sniper or foe to take aim at “usual spots” where a player will travel. For example, a sniper may
aim outside a doorway or near stairs. Utilizing your newfound jump techniques, try to gain access to platforms and areas in non-standard ways. For example, on Austria, try jumping over the wall near crossway instead of going around it. There are many examples of getting around in non-standard ways. On turnpike, for example, one can start at the back parking lot and end up near the supply yard after doing a few (accurate) wall jumps.

3. Think Speed: It is much harder to hit a moving target (most of the time), and you should be able to utilize your experience in circle jumping and bunny hopping to out-maneuver your foe. It isn’t a good idea to go running out in the open, but if you must, then travel quickly. Utilize wall jumps to further
randomize your movements. Doing quick bunny hops in the open on Riyadh, if you’re moving in a straight line, won’t help you much. But randomizing your movements may give you the advantage you need.
4. Get to Unique Camping Areas: Many players dislike campers, but it is part of the game, like it or not. Use your skills to get to higher ground (the top of the roof on Uptown, the roofs on Algiers, the tops of trees on Abbey). While you are more of a “sitting duck,” camping at these unique places may give you
the extra milliseconds needed to get the kill. I don’t recommend overusing these places, and I also recommend moving after getting 1-2 kills. In a Team Survivor match, one can be sure that your position will be given away over team speak if you are camping in a unique place such as trees.
5. Don’t Forget the Stamina: After learning how to jump and some cool techniques, don’t be afraid to try them out. Remember that the more you jump and run the louder your breathing becomes in the game. Don’t give yourself away by being too overzealous.

I Want To Do Some Harder Jumps!

Some jump maps focus on so-called “pros.” Pro maps are those that only the most skilled of jumpers can complete, and they often feature what is called a “noob-catcher” – a first jump that is nearly impossible for those with less experience to beat. The reason for this is that it prevents later (and harder) jumps from becoming overcrowded. It is in my opinion, however, that the only successful noob-catching maps are those with progressive difficulty, in that “noobs” naturally get stuck on jumps for which they can complete. It is often important to remember when doing these maps that you are not “competing” with
other players, but rather you are facing-off with the map maker. Sometimes you can “cheat” and complete a jump in a way it was not designed to do.

1. Vertigo: This is a very difficult and very long map that can take months to learn. The jump clan “.LiFT” even uses it as a baseline for membership (in that one cannot become a member until completing the map). Once completing a jump, it is not uncommon to spend several hours learning the next one. The map is very rewarding, however, as it involves unique (and high flying, high speed) jumps that are fun to perform successfully. The name of the map is “ut4_vertigo.pk3.”
2.  Don’t Get Wet: This map is possibly one of the most difficult maps that is widely circulated. Many experienced players can’t even beat the first jump. I would recommend beating all of the noob maps before even attempting this one. The name of the map is “ut4_dontgetwet_devr0.pk3.” This map is also very pretty, so once you get good enough to attempt, it is very rewarding.
3. Jupiter: This map almost made it on the noob maps because it has a very good “easy” level. There are three routes you can choose to take in the beginning of the map: easy, medium, and hard. The medium route is very difficult as is, which indicates just how “hard” the hard route is. The map is very pretty, in that it utilizes crisp lines and has an “outer space” feel. The name of the map is “ut4_jupiter_beta2.pk3.”
4. Projumps: This map is extremely difficult, and also has three routes. There is a noob training ground, a normal way, and a hard way. Many experienced players can’t even make the first jump the “normal” way. The name of the map is “ut4_projumps_b4_.pk3.”
5. Jump the Shark: This map has a particularly terrible noob-catcher and consists of around 30 jumps. Some fun locals include an MC Escher room, and you also get to jump a shark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark). The map is time consuming and difficult to beat. The name of the map is “ut4_jumptheshark_beta61.pk3.”

I know that I left quite a few “pro” maps out of this list, but there are many “very difficult” to “extremely difficult” maps out there for jumpers. This list should give you a good place to start if you wish to move on to being a “pro” jumper.

Where Can I Find More Information?

I hope that this has been an informative primer on jump maps in Urban Terror. If you would like more information, check out one of the best resources on jumping in Urban Terror: the Urban Terror jump community website – http://www.urtjumpers.com. Urban Terror Jumpers has step-by-step videos, tips, a forum, and (most importantly) offers a place to download the aforementioned maps. I would also highly recommend checking out the standard Urban Terror Forums: http://forums.urbanterror.net/ for information on mapping, jumping, and advice.

My favorite jump map server at the moment is the “wTf non-icy server.” It supports up to 16 players at once (which is high for a jump server), and wTf also has a mumble server for community chat. You can find a general listing of Jump servers at this address: http://www.urtjumpers.com/server.php

Overview of CTF

CTF in Urban Terror is very similar to the real life version of CTF, except you can’t hide your flag up in a tree. If you’ve never played CTF, the gist of it is there are two teams: red and blue. Each team has a flag which is close to their team’s spawn. To score points, you run over to the enemy’s base, grab their flag, and run back with it to your flag. Typically the majority of a team plays on offense, trying to capture the enemy’s flag. One or two players will play as defense, guarding their team’s flag. CTF is played with 5-8 players per team. Anything over that and CTF stands for something else, perhaps involving the word “cluster.” This guide is geared toward newcomers to CTF, and pub play (where half your team will have no clue what’s going on). The original, unposted version of this guide focused more on strategy for organized play, but I decided to change that. I may write a more advanced CTF guide in the future. I am still including advice from a competitive perspective, since I’ve always found it helpful to know what an experience person does in a given situation. It’s difficult to discuss strategy when newcomers may be unfamiliar with the flow of maps. Once you’ve got a few dozen games under your belt, you will be able to apply your experience to your gameplay and become a much greater asset to your team.

Disclaimer: This guide is written by a player experienced with non-wave respawn CTF. There are significant gameplay differences between wave respawn and non-wave respawn, but I don’t feel they are big enough to make this basic CTF guide irrelevant for wave respawn.

There are two primary roles in CTF: offense and defense. The majority of your team should be on offense. Offense should always be pushing up, and should stay in the base as little as necessary. If the offense needs to group back up, this should be done at a forward position, and not in the base (unless you’re getting spawn camped, in which case clearing the base is the #1 priority). How defense is played depends on the map, but generally a defender will sit close to the flag in order to always have a view of it. They will not leave the base or general vicinity of the flag, unless there is a standoff (both teams have the enemy’s flag holed up in their own base), in which case they still might not leave the base, instead choosing to guard their team’s flag carrier from attack (the goal of a standoff is to recover your own flag from the enemy’s base and flag carrier). Defense typically plays from a covered position, such as behind a box, if such a position is available on a map. Defense has the secondary objective of keeping the base clear of spawn campers.

So you’re playing offense

Let’s first decide where you’re going. Have a look at your minimap. Are there any routes which have no arrows? Likely there will be a bunch of arrows going up the middle of the map, and few, if any, at the sides. Whether you want to do something about that depends on what you want to do. If you want to, and think you can, help your team by covering unattended routes of the map, is up to you. By going to undertrafficked routes, you can head off enemies trying to skirt around the main battle in the middle of the map (typically the most trafficked route is the middle, but for some maps this is different) and trying to get a sneaky grab in, and you can also do the same. This is typically referred to as soloing, as you are grabbing the flag with little help. On most servers and maps, it is very easy to reach the enemy’s flag by going through a side route, because few people do this. Your success at grabbing the flag and getting a capture depends on your skill level and whether your teammates are actually making progress with that big firefight in the middle. On more skilled servers, you will probably not find this as easy, as more players will be paying attention to the side routes. A variation of this tactic is called flanking, and all that really means is you’re waiting to grab the flag until your team is in place to help you get out safely. I recommend playing the side routes if you have a decent knowledge of the map and can handle killing enemies without assistance. As I said, this role is typically unfilled or underfilled, so you will be helping your team.

If you are playing with marginally capable players, you may want to consider grouping up with some of them. A group of skilled players in a pub will have a tremendous impact. It doesn’t have to be an official pact, you can just follow someone around and help them out. Two guns are better than one. Having a teammate or two around you is very helpful when dealing with multiple defenders. Often times you wll find several enemy players just sitting on their flag, and it’s hard to kill 3 people shooting at you no matter how bad they are. Finding the competent players on your team is not hard; in any given pub, at least half of the players will never bother to move toward the flag. They just hang around the middle of the map and only occasionally reach the enemy flag. The arrows which are consistently advancing on the enemy flag are the ones you want to be with. If you don’t think you can hang with them in the killing department, take a medpack and keep them full of life. Just don’t be an overzealous medic.

Basic tips for playing alongside another player:

- Keep your distance. Don’t be right behind him blocking him every time he tries to move. On the other hand, don’t be so far away you can’t give cover.

- Split up sometimes. Is he climbing some stairs on Abbey? Stay on the ground and cover him. By taking a different angle, you can provide greater cover by filling in for his weaknesses in position.

- Know his arrow/armband color. Some servers have retarded settings and make everyone the same arrow color, but most don’t, so you can memorize his color.

- Provide cover when he grabs the flag. This applies whether or not you’re grouping up with another player. Any time a teammate grabs the flag, give him cover. I’ll discuss this more under flag running.

Most of the time, on offense, you’ll die before reaching the flag. But sometimes you’ll reach the flag. What do you do?!

Flag running

If you’re the only person by the flag, take it and go. If you have teammates around, do a quick check of who has the most health. The healthiest player should grab. In an organized match with VOIP, it might be beneficial to do a quick poll of who has the most stamina (= longest initial range after the grab), but I don’t think any clan ever does this.:P Anyway, the healthiest person grabs, unless they’re not paying attention, in which case you should just grab as by reading this guide, you’ll be better equipped to handle the flag run than some random newbie!

First, let’s discuss a teammate grabbing. Have a look at the minimap. If you have teammates in place to cover him back to the base, you should stay at the enemy’s base and hold them back. If your flag carrier has no cover once he leaves the enemy’s base, you should go with him. Keep him safe. The same rules apply as working with a teammate, except you might want to follow closer or go ahead of him. Whether you lead or follow depends on whether the enemy will be on your tail or not. If they’re stuck in their base dealing with your teammates, lead, in case there are enemies waiting to ambush you ahead. If their base is clear, they’ll be able to chase after you full speed, in which case it’s better if you’re the first person they shoot. Oh, and obviously if you have an oblivious flag carrier who doesn’t know any of this, you’ll just have to do whatever you can to chauffer him back. A good knowledge of the map and its routes will aide you in covering your teammate. I often run ahead of my teammate to “checkpoints” where the enemy can converge on our route, making sure any resistance is dead before the FC is in danger.

If you are the one to grab the flag, you have to decide where to go. If you have teammates nearby, head toward them. Otherwise I advise going back the route you came, to be safe. This should be your default exit strategy, which is modified if you’re doing something crafty, or you have teammates holding down an area/exit. If you’re a fast player, you might want to do something really crazy like head past the enemy’s spawn to an exit which leads to greater cover. Typically, though, you will want to either head back the way you came, or go to a low-traffic route (the market on Casa, for example). You should be getting out of the enemy’s base as fast as possible. They have a stamina and range advantage because they spawn with a full health bar. You need to get as much distance as possible between you in order to reach your teammates or reach a diverging path to throw the enemy off your trail. Sometimes you can hide in a corner and let the enemies run past, but experienced players are smart enough to check hiding places. I probably have something like a 95% success rate at killing “crafty” flag carriers who think they can just let me blunder past. Just run home as fast as you can.

What should I wear on offense?

This could also be titled “Do I need a vest?”

Depends on your play style. I guess that’s a copout answer, but it really does. I have always worn a vest in CTF and always will. You are useless if you die or get heavily wounded. CTF is all about speed (not necessarily range), and even if the vest limits your range, you can at least move in bursts. The vest makes it easier to keep your stamina supply up, because your available stamina depends on your health. Sometimes I will drop my vest after grabbing the flag, but this is maybe 15-25% of the time. If I know I have good cover (= enemy is pushed back into their spawn), I drop the vest and go for a fast cap. Otherwise I leave it on because it’s so easy to get legged by some spamming idiot and then your extra range is useless. If I have a vest, I stand a very high chance of killing an attacker. It also depends on the map. For example, on Casa, when I am grabbing the red flag, I prefer to drop my vest as I can make it home at full speed with a full stamina bar and no vest. If I wear a vest, I run to weapon crates from the fountain because my range is too short to make it all the way to the blue flag. On Abbey I also drop my vest so I can make quick caps. Even wounded I can make it from the blue flag to the red flag through the middle in just seconds. Red to blue is just possible with a full bar of stamina and the vest, but it’s such a small map you will probably be wounded once you reach a flag, that you may need to drop the vest to have enough range. If you can’t jump fast, don’t even bother dropping your vest. The only time you should even consider dropping the vest is if you can make more use of the extra stamina than the extra protection. As for going completely vestless (i.e., not even spawning with one), I personally don’t recommend it, but some players might. In my experience, there are no top players who are more effective without a vest than with one. This section doesn’t apply to wave respawn CTF, where dying isn’t such a big deal.

Of course you can play without a vest if you enjoy that. I just assume people reading guides are looking for ways to be more effective and a better player, and my recommendation is to wear a vest.

So you’re stuck on defense

Defense is a thankless job and is most of the time not something people are clamoring to play. It can be really boring and really nerve wracking because you have a lot of responsibility, and sometimes no backup. And most of the time you’re just standing around trying to pick up on any enemies before they know where you are. That said, someone needs to play on defense, and all the better if that person has actually bothered to educate themselves on how.

First off, you’re going to find somewhere to camp. Preferably with some cover. I’ve attached a list of nice/common defense spots for various popular maps. Your goal obviously is to not let that flag move outside of the base. Letting people steal it is fine as long as they are promptly going to drop it on the ground after you kill them. Don’t worry, your team will help you out with this because some of the offensive players will have to pass through the flag area, and hopefully they’re also making a good effort to stop enemies from getting anywhere near your base. As the defender, you are the last line of defense preventing your flag from leaving the base.

Your camping spotS should have good cover and a clear view of the flag. Being oriented so that you are aiming mostly parallel to routes taken by fast grabs (i.e., the runner is traveling at a decent speed) is also good, because you have longer to shoot a fast grabber, and you also get a better target by shooting their back. Your biggest challenge will be the fast grabbers who come from out of nowhere (probably by flanking past your teammates who failed in covering a side route). Ideally, if a large force advances on your flag, it will be because your teammates died, and said teammates will respawn very soon.

If you have chosen a good spot, you will have several seconds before a flag carrier is out of your sight. If a flag carrier gets away, it’s your decision to judge whether or not to give chase. Again, it depends on the map and situation. If you have teammates alive, and in a position to intercept (i.e., they’re not in your base), it’s best to hang back and let someone else return the flag. If you’re the only one alive and you think you can catch the carrier, give chase. It’s very important to wound them as much as you can before they are out of your sight, because that will decrease their stamina and a leg shot will slow them down, allowing you to catch up. It also depends on map geography. A map like Casa will give you a very good chance of catching your prey, as it is very open in the middle. A map like Sanc makes it much harder, as there are a lot of corners and rooms. If you are not right on their tail, you might not ever catch them, especially if they have some stamina and didn’t do something dumb like hiding in a corner. Checking corners does not take a lot of time, and especially in pubs, a lot of players like to do silly things with the flag. If your prey took a bad route which will cost them time, you should take a faster one to intercept. Like if someone runs to market from red base, you can just run to New Alley and intercept them. Once you do catch the flag carrier, you should turn on your tunnel vision and go straight for them, ignoring any of their teammates (unless the teammates are significantly closer to you than you are to the carrier). It’s suicidal, but you will be surprised how many times it works. I’ve done this several times even against top teams. There is a slight delay after standing on the flag to it actually returning. The flag has to fall to the ground first, and during this brief fall, you can’t return it. It must be on the ground. This is such a stupid bug, but it is what it is, and you have to take that into account. It’s still very possible to get a return from a group of enemies, because there is also a delay of sorts for picking the flag up once it falls from a teammate. This might sound a bit kamikaze, but if you take out the enemies one by one, you’ll usually just die unless they’re really low on health.

It’s VERY important to call out which way the flag went. EVERYONE should do this if they see the enemy flag carrier. Have 3 binds, left, right, and middle.

/bind u “say_team FLAG LEFT”
/bind I “say_team FLAG MIDDLE”
/bind o “say_team FLAG RIGHT”

Don’t do radio binds because they’re really annoying.

Even if you are unable to catch up to the carrier (or you were killed in your base before even giving chase), someone else might be able to intercept the carrier. But only if they actually know the flag is coming. I’ve had it happen often that a flag carrier sneaks up behind me and kills me because I was laying in wait for him from another route.

Standoffs

Quick section. A standoff is when both teams have the enemy flag, so nobody can cap until a flag is returned. Unless your team is down on points late in the game, there should always be one person with your flag carrier, to guard them. The defender is of course the natural choice, but especially in pubs, nobody really wants to guard the carrier. If your team is losing late in the game, it’s imperative to return the flag and make a capture. Vice versa, if your team has a small lead late in the game, you should have a stronger defense for the carrier. Returning a flag is quite easy, and I find it works best just to sneak past all the enemy offensive players, so you don’t risk getting shot/killed. The suicidal push I described in the Defense section works well here too. Just run right for the carrier and kill them. If you time it right, the flag will be on the ground by the time you reach it. Just do this over and over until you get a return. If the enemy has really heavy defense, it’s best to wait for some of your teammates to make it across the map, but I find that most of the time, most players just do dumb things like throw smoke grenades or try to kill spawnprotected enemies. Of course if their chaos lets you sneak past…

Useful binds for CTF

/bind x “say_team FLAG LEFT”
/bind x “say_team FLAG MIDDLE”
/bind x “say_team FLAG RIGHT”
/bind x “say_team FLAG FLAG FLAG”
/bind x “ut_itemdrop flag; say_team DROPPING FLAG”
/bind x “ut_itemdrop kevlar”

Popular defense positions

Stats of Terror can be downloaded here:
http://www.getlegitanddip.com/dailynade/sot.rar

Extract the contained directory with WinRAR (www.rarlab.com). There is no installation necessary. Just double click sotbeta09.exe and the program will load. It works on all versions of Windows (tested on XP and Vista 64). The author went MIA a long time ago, so there will probably never be a Linux or OS X version.

The main window of SOT has four buttons: Monitor Q3 Console, Load Game, Parse Log File, and Player Profile. We’re mostly interested with the first option, as it is all that is necessary to generate stats from a .dm_68 demo file. Parse Log File does not seem to function correctly, at least with Urban Terror 4.1; Stats of Terror was initially designed for version 2.5, so it is likely the .log file format has changed since then. Player Profile is used for generating ongoing stats from “live” games, where SOT monitors in real time. This will not be covered since it’s buggy and won’t be particularly hard to figure out once you’ve read this guide.

Generating Statistics from Demo Files

Click Monitor Q3 Console. You will be taken to a screen with several check boxes. It is not necessary to alter anything on this screen, and I don’t advise doing so, as it will only create additional messages in the console, which as I will discuss in a minute, is counter-productive. Press OK and load Urban Terror.

Once loaded, pull down the console (~) and type /cg_showbullethits 0. This disables hit messages, which only create unnecessary console messages. Furthermore, when hit messages are enabled, false player entries will be generated, and they will have to be removed after. Better to avoid this altogether. Now click the Demos button to access recorded demos. Select the demo you want to analyze and press Play.

Once the demo is over (or you stop the playback), close Urban Terror. SOT should detect that Urban Terror was closed, and popup a dialog asking whether you want to see the stats. Press cancel to see the stats. On the stats window, press Menu, then Export to HTML. Remove all the boxes besides the first two. Click Save. If you do not choose the default filename, you will have to append .html to the end of your chosen file name. I said the program had weird bugs.:)

Timescale

You may be wondering whether timescale can be used. Yes it can, but with the potential for inaccurate stats. Timescale 1 offers the best accuracy. Values up to timescale 3 will usually give you accurate stats. I also tested higher values: 5, 10, 25, and 50.

/timescale 5 resulted in 6 deviations compared with /timescale 1.
/timescale 10 resulted in 7 deviations.
/timescale 25 resulted in 4 deviations, but one of those was deviations was 2 points off.
/timescale 50 resulted in over 10 deviations, all of which were at least 2 points off; some as high as 8.

6 or 7 deviations may seem like a lot, but it really is not significant when you’re talking about high 30s and low 40s numbers. Even /timescale 25 is not bad, considering that playback of an entire 25 minute takes only 1 minute. If I had a stack of demos to generate stats for, I think the tradeoff of a few inaccurate (but still representative of the player’s performance) entries is acceptable. I did not notice any correlation between errors and the timescale value between 3 and 25. I think this is because the errors only occur in large firefights which generate more console output than the SOT program can record per “sweep.” SOT appears to work by scanning the console for messages every so often (probably around 1-2 seconds). Thus in an average game, where there will only be a few such firefights, /timescale 25 does not speed the game up enough to constantly outpace SOT. This is further supported by the fact that the same players (thus those with kills during the firefights) who had inaccurate stats with /timescale 5 and 10, also had inaccurate stats with /timescale 25. A demo of a slow game can thus be analyzed with relative accuracy at high timescale values (10-25), while a faster game (with more chances for big firefights) might require lower values. /timescale 3 appears to produce accurate stats even in the most intense games; and it’s still 3 times faster than normal playback!

Cliffs: if you want accurate stats, use /timescale 3. If you want to get stats done quickly, use up to /timescale 25. Faster-paced games are less tolerant of high timescale values.

Preparing the .html Output for Publishing

Although SOT takes care of arranging the data in a table, it doesn’t always do a perfect job. There are two things that you will want to deal with. Open up the generated .html file in Notepad. Do not use an HTML editor, as they often insert their own code. At the top, look for the string “my Urban Terror stats,” and change this to a more descriptive title if you want. Although you can change this in the Export .html menu in SOT, I prefer to do it here as it’s easier when handling multiple files. Everything between <h2><font face=”tahoma, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif”> and </font></h2> can be changed, but if you’re unsure of what you’re doing, leave the HTML code alone.

The second thing you’ll have to correct is flag colors. Usually there will be a few gray flags for some reason. These have to be changed to their proper colors, otherwise it looks like crap. If you’re handling stats from a clan match, this is easy because you can just set the gray players’ flags to the same color as the rest of their teammates. If you’re dealing with pub stats, though, it’s not so easy because SOT sorts players by alphabetical order. Your best bet is to pull up the autoscreenshot taken from the game the demo is of. If you don’t have one but having proper flag colors is important, you can rewatch the demo and timescale through until the end, then grab a screenshot. Remember to revert to timescale 1 before the end, or you’ll blast through the end-of-round pause! To fix the flag color, search for the string “grayflag.bmp” using Edit -> Find. The player’s name should be on the same or next lower line depending on Notepad’s window size and whether wordwrap is enabled or not. Change gray to red or blue depending on what color the flag should be.

If you forgot to disable weapon hits from being displayed, you’ll have another problem: fake players in the form of “[playername] for 51% damage” and such. It’s pretty easy to remove these, but because it’s impossible to tell whether they resulted from kills or deaths, stats will be inaccurate. Still, they have to come out.

You need to look at the blocks of text bordered by <tr bgcolor=”#333333″> and </tr>. Look for the ones with all zeros and “perfect” listed about half way down. They’ll also be headed by the “[playername] for x% damage” text, have a gray flag, and will always be on the opposing team (relative to the demo’s POV player). Select all the text between, and including, <tr bgcolor=”#333333″> and </tr>. Delete it. This removes the table row with the offending data. Screenshots:

Now that you’ve got the .html file cleaned up, it’s time for hosting. Upload it to a webhost along with the redflag.bmp, blueflag.bmp, and grayflag.bmp files (you only need one copy of these no matter how many stats files you upload). You will now be able to view it from your browser!

but I play one in Urban Terror!

One of the most unique things in Urban Terror is the medkit. Since this item takes up a slot in your inventory that could be used for armor or add-ons for your weapons… why do many people choose to take it? The ability to quickly heal your teammates to nearly their full health in a couple of seconds can make the difference between winning and losing the game. This article will give you some guidelines for how to be a good field medic and be the MVP of your entire team.

A few basics about the medkit. The medkit is an item that is always active when you have it equipped. It allows you to bandage faster on others as well as yourself, about twice the normal speed. With the medkit you can restore a teammate’s health to 90% of maximum rather than the 50% that you can without. Because of the faster healing, you are also more likely to survive massive damage by bandaging more quickly to stop blood loss. Also, if you have a medkit and someone else doesn’t, they can still medic you to 90% just as if they had one, albeit slower.

But there’s more to being a great medic than just slapping on a medkit. Being a good medic as well as being a good patient takes skill. So here is a list of things to think about when playing doctor.
 
 

1. Be aware of your surroundings. This is probably more important for the medic than any other player. You not only have to watch where you are, the enemies are, but keep an eye on where your teammates are and what their health is. Whenever you hover your crosshairs on a teammate you will see their name and a bar showing their health. A good medic shouldn’t have to get a call for help to know when a teammate is wounded. If you are in a safe location and they have low health, a medic call symbol over their head, or you see them limping and bleeding… heal them by going over and holding the bandage key.
2. Medding makes a lot of noise. Be aware of this. A good opponent with headphones on will be able to pinpoint the sound of a medic working a mile away. This can be an easy double kill for someone and they will usually hunt you down. If you are in a bad situation, do a series of smaller meddings. Run up, tap bandage, and back off to take a look around putting; some distance between you and your teammate. This will keep enemies from easily hitting you with spray and pray fire or catching you in the blast radius of a grenade. You can do this a few times and still heal them fully.
3. Med and run. A good medic can med someone without stopping. If just got out of a firefight, there is a good chance you and your teammates are limping. The bandaging will stop limping even if you don’t fully recover. Run up and tap bandage for someone and they will be able to run for cover at full speed so the opponents don’t have time to regroup and find you as easily… especially if they’re following that big trail of blood you’re leaving behind. If it’s just you and one other person, you can actually run behind them while holding the medic key and heal them without having to ever stop moving. If there are several people that are hit, make sure they can all run by bandaging as many as need to stop bleeding then everyone head for cover and regroup.
4. Don’t bandage in their lap. You can actually bandage from quite a ways away from your patient. Don’t hug them while you do it because both of you might need to move quickly and if you’re blocking them in some corner… there is a good chance you will both be toast if spotted.
5. Get to the choppah!! Get to cover. A quick med to stop bleeding and limping might be necessary… but if you plan on fully healing, get behind a wall or a box or a tree or anything solid. You don’t want to be rewarded for your efforts getting picked off by a sniper.
6. Duck and cover. I’ve heard this position called many undignified things. The best way to med is facing your teammate with you crouched down in front and them standing up. The reason this is so important is that from this position you can see behind them and they can see behind you. Not only that, but if someone does come out quickly; they can shoot without blasting you in the head. They have a full 360 degree firing arc over your head and you are protected by their body. Not always possible… but usually it is and it is the ideal position for protecting each other.
7. Take turns and play nice. Unless you’re somewhere relatively safe, like back in spawn… take turns bandaging. If you are hurt and so are they. Heal them while they guard and vice versa. The problem is that while you medic, you put your gun away and it takes about a second for you to complete that action and pull the gun back out. That’s about a second too long if someone whips around a corner with barrels blazing. If one person has their weapon ready and is guarding, the chance of returning fire and surviving is much higher. If nothing else… you are more likely to only lose one person instead of two. In a team game, this can mean winning or losing.
8. Listen for the call. If you hear the “I need a medic”… take a look at your minimap. The position of the radio call will flash on the map. If you are close to them, try to reach them. It’s not always feasible if you are half the map apart, and that’s the luck of the draw. Look for the caduceus (what the heck is that? oh… that’s the name of that snakey doctor symbol thingy) over their head in game… they’re the one that called for help. Some people are afraid of the doctor. If someone is running away from you over and over… let them go. They might not want help or maybe they see an enemy you don’t. I have a custom radio call I made for “medic on the way” that says “I’m trying to get to you, fall back and cover Me”. If you’re using ventrilo / teamspeak / mumble / whatever, calling out “Hey, I’m behind you _____” works pretty well too so a teammate knows you’re there to med them and fall back.
9. Strike and fade. The medic is a ninja. I don’t wear kevlar because I need to move fast. I can swoop in, medic, and swoop out without slowing down or taking fire. I’ll even tap the bandage button as I am power sliding past someone on My way to drop a grenade off somewhere. It’s about a bullet in the arm worth of healing. One more hit they can survive and I haven’t even slowed down.
10. Loose lips sink ships. Don’t give away sniper positions. This goes back to being aware, but while a sniper might be hurt and deep behind enemy lines… the last thing they want is for you to give away their position with loud bandaging or waving a laser around. Take into account what is going on and make a judgment call. Low health is better than no health.

That’s it for now… part 2 will talk about what to do if you are the one that is wounded and being mediced.

1. Set a clear objective

At the beginning of your gaming session, set an objective for yourself to be acomplished at the end of the same session. Set the objective that you feel more comfortable with. It shouldn’t be “WIN” or “PWN EVERYONE” since they are too generic and you will forget them soon. Set a more specific objective like “Get at least 15 headshots” or “Kill 5 opponents with the DE” or “Kill 5 opponents with the Grenades” and so on. This objective will work as a milestone for your mind and will help you being more focused.

2. Eliminate distractions

Sometimes getting a kill is a matter of a fraction of a second. If you get distracted by something you can’t just go back to the game. If you stop for writing something you will need at least 10 or 15 seconds to get mentally back to the game. Try to eliminate as much sources of distractions as possible. For example:

• Set up your HUD correctly.
  If chat messages are distracting you, disable them. At least in important matches. The net graph also can be a source of distraction, along with the data from the hits and so on.
• Play with earphones.
  Earphones can give you a huge boost in concentration, especially if they have noise cancelling. They will help you getting into the game and being more reactive to sounds.
• Set up your playing zone
  You can’t think about getting frags and not hitting the table lamp with the mouse at the same time. Make order. You have to be comfortable and effective at the same time. Instead of yelling to the old 486 mouse, why not getting a new one?

3. Give yourself a deadline

Run against something. Usually I use the timelimit of the map. In that 15 minutes I must accomplish my objective. Don’t fight against your opponents. Fight against the timer. This will help you in two ways:

• It will make you more focused on your objective.
• It will raise a sense of urgency in you, wich will increase your will for success.

4. Think

At the beginning you have to think. You have to write some schemes into your brain. Like the first time you played Turnpike. You didn’t have a clue on where to go or which were the best spots for your Sr-8. Then it became natural for you. Also you have to overwrite some bad schemes that you have already set. For example maybe you’re not circle jumping in the correct way. When you face an opponent, think counciously on what to do. Give a quick command to your brain: “Headshot”. Then your brain and body will focus on getting the headshot. If you give yourself the command “OMG I hope he doesn’t PWN me” you won’t go that far.

5. Don’t think

This might sound awkward. But as you play you must concentrate on thinking less and acting more.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.
- Bruce Lee

You must free yourself from patterns. Find unusal spots. React according to what is your enemy doing. Be ready to adapt and react. If your enemy is far away consider dropping your LR-300 and pick up the SR-8 from the ground in front of you.

6. Take Breaks

Sometimes you just need a break to be more effective. Feel free to rest when you like. If you are facing an important match incoming (like a league final), just take a rest and be calm. Get there with your mind fresh and ready.

7. Be calm, no negative thinking

If you are nervous, if you think that things are not going as they are supposed to, if someone is annoying you just be calm and relax. Negative thinking like “I’m not hitting anything” or “He’s just going to frag me” will not get you that far. Sometimes player are not just lucky. Sometimes they just will to succeed. Feel free to take a break and be optimistic on your results.
So what do you think? Do you think that this tips can help you? Tell us in the comments. Also, do you have any particular experience? Tell us!