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.

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.urbanterrorhd.info/sot/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!

It’s important to define what bad hits is. Bad hits is when you are doing everything right (aiming well, shooting in bursts to keep recoil down, moving intelligently), but for some reason that isn’t working as well as normal. You’re struggling to land successive hits on opponents who aren’t any better than your normal opponents. This is most evident in clan matches when you swap servers and suddenly you can’t hit anything. No one is quite sure what causes this, but the fact remains there are servers on which people just plain can’t hit well. This guide is an action plan for what to do when you encounter bad hits.

Check your connection

Pull down the console and type /cg_lagometer 1. This enables the net graph, which is a visual representation of your connection quality. Ideally, it will look like this:

If it looks similar to any of the following, there’s a problem.

– mild antiwarp

– severe antiwarp

– moderately fluctuating ping

– heavy packet loss

– delayed client-side packets

For a more indepth look at the above images, refer to the following page:
http://www.getlegitanddip.com/dailynade/lagometer.htm

Plan of Action – Observation

If your netgraph looks fine, there are some things you can try.

Check your aim
Are you actually aiming at the enemy? Thoroughly assess how you’re aiming. Is your crosshair on the enemy consistently, or are you only occasionally aimed at your enemy? Try extra hard for a few minutes to make a conscious effort to aim well. Although you may not normally have to do this, some servers seem to require a little extra aiming effort to get acceptable hits. Watch your crosshair, not the enemy.

Check your shooting
Are you shooting properly? Is your cone of spread consistently small enough to ensure reliable hits? If you’re spamming, you’re not going to be getting hits. In addition to aiming well, try taking extra care while shooting to see if your hits pick up.

Ensure you are using good network settings
Set your rate to 25000 (/rate 25000). Set your maxpackets to 42 (/cl_maxpackets 42). As you saw in the above selection of netgraph images, a low rate can cause data sent to the server to be delayed. Increasing your max packets means there is less of an impact if a packet is delayed.

Consider the skill of your opponents
Are you playing unusually good opponents? I never write a server off as hitting bad unless I know the skill level of my opponents. Veteran players will move more intelligently, thus requiring better aim to track. Of course if you’re in a clan match and suddenly you can’t hit anything after a server switch, you can be pretty sure it’s nothing to do with your opponents’ skill are doing.;) Watch how your opponents play, and if they’re doing things that make it hard to aim at them. Intelligent use of cover, jumping, crouching, and sliding all make it much harder to get a bead on your target.

Give yourself a mental and physical once-over
Are you stressed? Tired? Angry? Emotions have physical manifestations. Anxiety makes you shaky and jumpy. Anger makes you reckless and short tempered. Being sleep deprived makes your reaction times slower. Physical exhaustion makes your reactions and movements slower and sometimes shaky. Unless you’re rested and relaxed, you’re not going to be playing at top form. Take a good look at yourself and decide whether you’re physically and mentally in the zone. If not, gtfo and take a break!

Plan of Action – Execution

So you’re doing everything right and you’re still hitting like garbage. Now it’s time to try to do something about it!

LEAVE
Vote with your feet. Find a new server. No sense playing on a lousy server, not getting proper hits, and as a result, not having any fun. This is a game, games are about fun. Of course if you’re in an organized clan match, you can’t just up and leave! In a match, try not to whine about hits too much; it brings morale down.

Switch to a different role
In my experience, the SR8 does not suffer from bad hits like the automatics, probably because less data is required to be processed for one bullet every few seconds. In some cases you may be able to contribute to your team more with the SR8, even if you are fulfilling the same position as you were with the auto. It’s generally a good idea to have an automatic when on offense in CTF, but if you can kill more reliably with the SR8, that switch may help. Switching to a defensive role where you can take cover and have a positional advantage can also help because you have more time to kill an enemy.

Switch guns
Instead of an LR, try an M4, AK103, or G36. The different spread patterns might mitigate the bad hits, or the higher damage of the AK103 might make it easier to kill enemies with less hits.

Flank
Instead of facing enemies head on, flank around and shoot them in the back. The surprise advantage should give you enough time to finish them off.

Think positively
Don’t keep blaming bad hits for everything. You’ve established hits aren’t good, so put that out of your mind and work on being an asset to your team. Keep focusing on aiming well and shooting well, and you may find at the end of the round, although you didn’t play as good as you know you can, you at least contributed to your team. Constantly focusing on the bad hits will just make you angry and in turn make you play even worse.

Conclusion

I hope I’ve made it clear that although many servers do have bad hit detection, players share a big part of the blame too. Keep aiming well, make sure your network settings are optimal, and play to maximize your positional advantage and the time you have to kill enemies. Basically, don’t keep doing what you’re doing, because it’s not working. Switch it up. And remember, it’s just a game!

Introduction

I will be examining how various graphical configurations affect framerate on my old computer which was purchased in November 2003. I replaced it over a year and a half ago, but I still keep it around precisely for stuff like this. Pretty much any computer built for $500-700 USD in the past 2-3 years will outperform it with ease. However, prebuilt machines from large manufacturers like Dell or HP often will have proprietary components or just plain wacky configurations which cause them to perform much poorer than their price suggests. If you’re in the old PC or lowend prebuilt boat, this guide should help you improve your gaming experience. I will provide a list of cvars which have an effect on framerate, as well as an already completed graphics config file which you can load from the console.

I may as well spoil it right now, and tell you that there is practically no difference between a high quality configuration and a quickly done low quality configuration. The only noticeable difference (and it’s significant) can be obtained by turning down/off a lot of hidden options through cvars. You can skip the whole article and go straight to the bottom if you just want the config file. The next three sections may be boring/too technical/both.

Urban Terror Graphics

Urban Terror, especially at low resolutions (1024×768 and under), is an example of a CPU bound game. That is, on your average system, in the average in game situation, the CPU will be the limiting factor in getting a higher framerate. The CPU is unable to render its portion of the work any faster, while the GPU (graphics processing unit; found on your video card) can perform all its tasks as fast as the CPU, and then some. In other words, the GPU is waiting for the CPU. This is because Urban Terror’s graphics are quite easy to render in comparison to the physics, player positions, sound, network data, etc. However, this may not always be the case. Many computers, mostly lowend prebuilts, have very weak graphics cards as they are intended for office work. Look at any big box store and you will find quad core CPUs alongside onboard graphics. What is being rendered at a particular moment is, however, the decisive element in determining what component is being “bottlenecked.” A high number of player models on screen, a wide open area on a detailed map, smoke grenades, and a large number of objects (shells, boxes, dropped guns, flags, etc.) on screen, all have a very significant impact on the graphics cards’ ability to render the scene quickly. Conversely, sitting in an enclosed area with few props and no other players on screen will result in the graphics card barely breaking a sweat, while the CPU is still working hard to calculate unseen players’ positions, crunch network data, render sound, etc.

Urban Terror has a hard cap of 125 fps, though the cap can be set lower. Your framerate will not exceed 125 fps. This is due to how the Quake III Engine’s netcode works – it is tied directly to client framerate. The goal of any player should be to get their framerate as STEADY as possible. Reaching 125 fps is all well and good, but it is detrimental to gameplay if as soon as an enemy comes on screen, the framerate plummets to 60. Although a constant framerate of 60 fps might be very playable, the DROP from 125 to 60 fps is extremely noticeable and will make it hard to play, as changes in framerate affect how smoothly the game is seen, aiming, movement (there will be a noticeable delay in input response time if you have FPS drops), and even ping. You have to therefore consider not just maximum frame rate, but minimum frame rate as well. This is what you want to bring up. The difference in an intense firefight between 20 fps and 45 fps is huge, especially if that means a drop of only 15 fps (60 capped dropping to 45) as opposed to 60 fps (uncapped, but running at 80, dropping to 20).

Benchmarks – Hardware Discussion

I will benchmark various configurations and record the results in a chart. The test system will be an Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton core) @ 1.83 ghz (stock speed), 1024 MB DDR333, and an ATI 9600XT 256MB graphics card. For a second set of benchmark runs, the FSB will be underclocked from 166 mhz to 100mhz, resulting in an effective 1.1 ghz for the CPU, and the RAM running at DDR200 rates. A 1.1 ghz Athlon XP would be roughly equivalent to a “1200+” performance rating, when considering the Barton’s 512 kb of L2 cache. A final, third run will be done at 2.2 ghz, equivalent to a 3200+ performance rating. A 3200+ Athlon XP performs on par with a 2.8 ghz Pentium 4.

Benchmarks – Methodology

I am testing 5 graphics configurations.

800×600 stock is simply the default configuration generated by Urban Terror if no configuration file is present. 800×600 is the default resolution.
1024×768 stock is the same configuration, except with the resolution bumped up to 1024×768.
800×600 low is the stock config, but with all the applicable options in the “graphics” tab under the Setup button at the main menu set to their lowest quality setting.
1024×768 high uses Nexu’s movie config file, which is tuned for optimal visual quality.
640×480 very low is a config file I made and turned every visual option to its lowest quality (best performance) setting (generally this means disabled:P). In addition, sound options were set to low quality. On a system with a dedicated sound card, sound quality level will not impact framerate. However, most people have onboard sound, which means the CPU does most of the sound processing work.

I tested each configuration using /timedemo 1 and then replaying a demo of a 6v6 match on Algiers CTF. The demo is approximately 35 minutes long. It contains many firefights, as that is the nature of Algiers, especially against a strong opponent. Smoke grenades are used for approximately one minute. Timedemo records the average framerate of a demo that is played back. Unfortunately minimum FPS is not displayed, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make educated guesses.:) I reloaded Urban Terror between each run. I also deleted all the configuration files in the q3ut4 directory, to allow Urban Terror to regenerate them each run. When a premade config was used, I named it autoexec.cfg, which forces Urban Terror to load cvars from it first, before relying on automatically generated values from q3config.cfg (which are used if a cvar is not present in the autoexec file). A clean install of XP SP3 was installed before testing began.

Benchmarks – Results

FPS testing @ 1830 mhz

Not much difference between the 1024×768 high quality config, and 800×600 with all graphics menu options turned down. In fact it’s a difference of only 7 fps. That’s only 10% worse FPS running with high quality textures and mipmapping (mipmapping determines when a low quality distance texture is swapped for a high quality up close texture; a low quality mipmap setting swaps the textures more abruptly and at closer distances). The difference between 1024×768 stock and 800×600 stock (besides 306,432 pixels less being rendered each frame) is 0.4 fps. However, my special ultra-low quality configuration yielded an astonishing 91.6 fps. That’s almost 20 more fps than the stock configuration! This difference will be seen the most in graphically intense situations, as it is obvious from the other 4 tests that Urban Terror on an Athlon XP 2500+ and 9600XT is CPU bound most of the time. By dropping the graphics quality to extremely low levels, those situations where the graphics card is the bottleneck, become fewer and less intense. It’s better to have a CPU bound game, as in Urban Terror, the CPU’s work load is nearly constant.

FPS testing @ 1100 mhz

The same results are present with only 1100 mhz. Although even the ultra low quality config can’t squeeze an average of 60 fps out of the system, 56.4 fps is better than the 45 fps achieved by the bottom 3 configurations (the high quality config pulling in ~10% less at 40.6 fps). 11 fps may not seem like much, but like I said at the beginning, getting those minimum FPS values up is what we’re after. Most certainly firefights where the FPS was dropping to less than 20 fps, were running at 30-40 fps with the low quality config.

FPS testing @ 2200 mhz

Well, we almost hit 125 fps. The low quality config managed 114.6 FPS average, which means that in many situations, it was running at 125 fps. Intense scenes likely ran around 70-80 FPS. I shelved the 800×600 “low” run, as it was pointless. Instead I did a 1280×1024 run with stock settings…and got the same FPS as 1024×768 stock. That’s great news, as UrT can be run at a 19” LCD’s native resolution at the same speed as 1024×768. Of course to almost completely eliminate the GPU as a bottleneck, you still need to run at super low settings. This 3^rd run is conclusive evidence that UrT is mostly CPU bound, at least on this system. The difference between 1100 mhz and 2200 mhz is literally 100%. And when the CPU is overclocked by ~20%, the results go up around 20%.

CVAR Listening and Breakdown

I’ll list every cvar I changed for my “ultra low” config, write a brief bit of text about it, and give it a rating with regard to how important it is to gameplay (0-5). I am leaving out commands which are by default set to the lowest quality setting and can’t be changed via the menu, since it’s pretty much impossible to change them during routine tweaking. If someone asks me to, though, I’ll make a list of every graphical command that can be changed and try to explain them. I’m also leaving out cvars which are locked by the engine (such as r_vertexlighting). Let’s start with the r_ (renderer) cvars.

r_picmip
Range: 0-2
Default: 1
Recommended: 2

This IS the texture quality cvar. Higher values render blurrier textures. 0 corresponds to High in the menu, 1 to Normal, and 2 to Low. There is a “very low” (3) option in the menu, but this does not work in game, and will be set to the default of 1 if you use it.

Importance: 0 – in fact, many good players will set this to a low value because blurrier textures enhance player model visibility.

r_texturemode
Accepted values: GL_NEAREST, GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_NEAREST, GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST, GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_LINEAR, GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR
Default: GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST
Recommended: Maximum FPS, gl_nearest. Otherwise stick to default.

If you’re scratching your head over the values, you’re not alone. gl_linear_mipmap_linear is the best quality, if your video card supports trilinear filtering (it does). gl_nearest is extremely bad quality (so bad in fact the textures are always pixilated and blocky regardless of how close you are) and creates noticeable shimmering and flickering as you get closer to a texture, but I think it’s one of the biggest FPS boosters in my low quality config. gl_nearest_mipmap_nearest is slightly better looking than gl_nearest, but not enough to improve the flickering. So if you want maximum FPS, go for gl_nearest.

Importance: 4 – the low quality ones are headache inducing. I am one of those people who make their graphics ugly in order to increase visibility, but this is just too far. I would only use this if you are in dire need of more frames per second.

r_ext_max_anisotropy
Accepted values: 0-16?
Default: 2
Recommended: 0

To be honest, I’m not sure if this actually matters, as r_ext_texture_filter_anisotropic would logically need to be set to 1 for anisotropy to be active, and it’s by default 0. Most people force anisotropy on via their graphics card’s control panel anyway, if they want to use anisotropic filtering (anisotropic filtering works in conjunction with mipmapping, and causes high quality textures to be used out to an even farther distance). Regardless, there’s no point having this at 2, just in case. Anisotropic filtering is a huge performance hog, especially on low end/older graphics cards.

Importance: 0 – there’s almost no visual difference between even 16x AF and AF disabled, so why take a possible performance hit?

r_ext_multitexture
Accepted values: 0/1
Default: 1
Recommended: 0

Multitexturing makes textures look better at a performance hit for old cards, so why on earth would we leave it on?!

Importance: 0

com_blood
Accepted values: 0/1
Default: 1
Recommended: 1

Although blood can hurt your FPS, especially in a big firefight, blood trails are just too much of a tactical advantage. Well, not if you’re playing TDM. If you play mostly TS and CTF, leave blood on. Otherwise you can turn it off and you probably won’t play any worse.

Importance: 5 – for TS and CTF.
1 – for TDM and FFA

r_stencilbits
Accepted values: 0/8/16
Default: 8
Recommended: 0

This controls the hardware stencil buffer. A stencil buffer can be used to make higher quality shadows and reflections. Shadows already look terrible in Urban Terror, so obviously this doesn’t do a whole lot. Some old video cards don’t even have a stencil buffer, necessitating this be set to “0” in some cases.

Importance: 0

r_roundImagesDown
Accepted values: 0-???
Default: 1
Recommended: 2

I’m not completely sure this even does anything, but you can change the value, and the value will stick (unlike some other commands where the cvar isn’t locked, but the value you set won’t stick). I notice no visual difference between 1 and 4. May as well be safe, I guess.

Importance: 0 – I don’t believe this actually works, so play it safe and set it to 2.

r_detailtextures
Accepted values: 0/1
Default: 1
Recommended: 0

No visual quality difference, again. May as well set it to 0, just in case.

Importance: 0

r_ext_compressed_textures
Accepted values: 0/1
Default: 0
Recommended: 1

Compresses textures, which alleviates bus congestion between the motherboard and the graphics card. In reality, no card will saturate its bus, as the video card industry moved to PCI-e 16x before cards could overwhelm the AGP 8x bus. It may have other effects, though, so set it to 1. There is no visual quality loss.

Importance: 0

r_texturebits
Accepted values: 0/16/32
Default: 32
Recommended: 16

Setting this to 0 will use your desktop’s color depth setting, which is most likely at 32 bit. I believe a 24 bit desktop setting will be interpreted as a 16 bit setting, as Quake III does not support 24 bit color. Don’t leave it up to chance, though – set this to 16.

Importance: 0

r_colorbits
Accepted values: 0/16/32
Default: 32
Recommended: 16

Same as above.

r_mode
Accepted values: 3-9, -1
Default: 4
Recommended: depends

This is the resolution. 3 is 640×480, 4 is 800×600, 5 and 6 are 1024×768, and 8 is 1280×1024. There are more preset resolutions, but those are the most common. -1 allows for a custom resolution using r_customheight and r_customwidth. If you are running a CRT (tube) monitor, you can use any resolution the monitor supports. LCD monitors, however, only look best at their maximum (native) resolution. Lower resolutions on an LCD will be interpolated, and look blurry and boxy. If you are going to use an LCD at a non-native resolution, at least make sure you keep the resolution in proportion to the native resolution. For example, a 19” non-widescreen monitor has a native resolution of 1280×1024. An acceptable non-native resolution, quality-wise, might be 800×640, as both are 62.5% of the native width and height, respectively. Another solution is to use windowed mode (r_fullscreen 0), which allows lower resolutions to be run on an LCD without interpolation. The tradeoff is that the image will not will the screen, and will instead be confined to a small window. This is mostly important for those with weak graphics cards, as my tests revealed resolution has practically no effect on frame rate with the 9600XT.

Importance: 3 – A blocky, interpolated resolution can make it hard to see the action. It’s not too bad, but it’s still worse than the native resolution. If you have a CRT, it doesn’t matter at all as long as you use a 4:3 resolution (take the first number and divide it by the second; if you get 1.3333… you have a 4:3 resolution) for a standard CRT, and a 16:9 resolution for a widescreen CRT (they’re very rare). Lower resolutions on a CRT also allow for a higher refresh rate to be run, reducing eye strain.

r_displayrefresh
Accepted values: 60-85
Default: 60
Recommended: 70-75

This setting is ONLY for CRT users. Refresh rate does not apply to LCD or plasma displays. Everything that proceeds in this paragraph is irrelevant for LCD/plasma displays. The refresh rate for a CRT is how many times per second the screen is redrawn. This is independent on the framerate of the game, as the video card’s RAMDAC is designed to take any framerate and output it at the refresh rate the monitor/software is asking for. However, you can “see” more frames per second with a higher refresh rate. It’s debatable whether you can actually tell the difference between 60 hz and 75 hz (or “fps”) on a monitor, as human eyes don’t work in FPS. The goal of FPS tweaking is to make the game run smoother with regards to enemies not warping around, and having control inputs respond consistently. Anyway, the refresh rate should be around 70-75 hz, as that’s when the flicker disappears for most lighting environments and for most people. In a dark room, you can get away with a lower refresh rate and not see flicker. Most people will see very minimal flicker at 75 hz, and few people can see flicker at 85 hz looking straight on at the monitor. Your peripheral vision has a higher flicker threshold, so if you look at your monitor from the corner of your eye, it might flicker even though it doesn’t when you look straight at it. Higher refresh rates (85hz+) degrade image quality slightly, and besides, many monitors can only run fast refresh rates (75 hz+) at lower resolutions. Few monitors can do over 60 hz at their maximum resolution; that’s the difference between premium monitors like the Sony Trinitrons, and regular CRTs. Make sure the value you set here is supported by your monitor at the resolution you are using!

Importance: 0 – higher refresh rate reduces headache, but won’t really help your game play (besides making it easier to focus on the screen). But it won’t hurt your gameplay in the least. LCD users will not benefit from this setting at all.

cg_sfxMuzzleFlash
Accepted values: 1
Default: 1
Recommended: 1

This is the muzzle flash from guns. The big bright flash when you shoot. It’s really annoying, but there’s a reason many people leave it on – muzzle flashes from other players’ guns are useful. I really don’t think this has any noticeable impact on FPS since most cards handle one or two extra static lights just fine.

Importance: 4 – useful in many situations where you can’t see any enemy but you’ll see the flash of light when they shoot. It’s also very useful when shooting at people through smoke without night vision, as you can still see muzzle flashes.

cg_brassTime / cg_sfxbrasstime
Accepted values: 0-20000
Default: 5000
Recommended: 0

Time in ms for shell casing to stay on the ground. Utterly worthless for gameplay as you can’t even see them at a distance, but they’ll be rendered anyway. Not sure which cvar is active, so set ‘em both to 0.

Importance: 0 – nobody has ever made a kill based off shell casings giving away a position.

g_removeBodyTime
Accepted values: 0-???
Default: 300
Recommended: 300

Just thought I’d put this in here. This does NOTHING, as bodies stay as long as someone is dead, and disappear when they respawn. Unfortunate, as all those corpses have the same number of polygons as a living player. But they’ll be gone quickly anyway.

cg_gunsize
Accepted values: 0/1
Default: 0
Recommended: 1

Smaller gun = less polygons to render. Plus the big gun blocks a ton of screen.

Importance: 0 – in fact it should be -5, as having the big gun is a disadvantage both FPS and gameplay-wise.

cg_drawHands
Accepted values: 0/1
Default: 1
Recommended: 1, unless your FPS is really bad

This controls whether the gun is drawn or not. Obviously no gun means a lot less polygons being rendered, meaning more FPS! However, many players find it difficult to play without the gun being drawn. If you’re one of those players, there’s no point making the game less laggy if you can’t play when you’re all through!

Important: 4 – if you play better with the gun drawn, leave this at 1. Otherwise you can gain a bit of FPS by disabling it.

cg_sfxSurfaceImpacts
Accepted values: 0/1
Default: 1
Recommended: 0

Draws smoke on bullet impacts. This also controls the rendering of sparks when hitting a helmet, as well as the majority of the blood spray from a bullet impact on exposed flesh. If you rely on these effects to know when you hit someone, I recommend leaving this value at 1. If, however, you rely on another method of feedback, you should disable this cvar as it it quite a graphically-intensive process to render smoke.

Importance: 3 – but it depends if you even notice the blood spray and sparks when you hit another player.

cg_sfxParticles
Accepted values: 0/1
Default: 1
Recommended: 0

Draws sparks in addition to smoke on bullet impacts. Again, useless.

Importance: 0

cg_sfxShowDamage
Accepted values: 0/1
Default: 1
Recommended: 0

When players get shot, their skin changes to reflect the damage they received. No point loading even more textures! I personally never pay attention to the damage skins (as they’re called), as it takes too long to look at someone and decide how many times I need to shoot them. Just shoot until it’s dead.

Importance: 0

cg_visiblebleeding
Accepted values: 0/1
Default: 1
Recommended: 0

Even more useless than the above. Makes people visibly bleed when they’re shot. This has even less use than damage skins, if possible. This does not affect blood trails. Blood is one of the biggest hits to FPS, and it’s even worse in a big firefight.

Importance: 0

s_loadas8bit
Accepted values: 0/1
Default: 0
Recommended: 1

If you have onboard sound, 8 bit sound files can give a bit of FPS boost as the CPU has an easier time rendering lower bitrate files. It might sound noticeably worse, but sound in UrT isn’t very good to begin with.

Importance: 2 – only applies with onboard sound, and even then some might rather the default 16 bit sound files.

s_khz
Accepted values: 11/22
Default: 22
Recommended: 11

Lower quality sound as less of the spectrum is processed. Again, only applies for onboard sound, as a sound card is more than capable of running with all of Urban Terror’s sound quality options maxed.

Importance: 2

Finally:
If you change a /r_ setting and it says the setting will not be applied until you restart, do /vid_restart. You can enter a bunch of commands and then do one vid_restart to save time.
If you change a /s_ setting and it says the same thing, do /snd_restart.
It is, however, much easier to edit your configuration file directly. Go to your Urban Terror directory. Go to q3ut4 folder. Copy and paste “q3config.” Rename it to autoexec (autoexec.cfg if extensions are visible). Open it with Wordpad and search for the variables you want to edit. Save when you’re done. Next time you load Urban Terror, the settings will automatically be applied!

Conclusion

Another long article! I hope this will help you tweak your Urban Terror for maximum efficiency. UrT scales extremely well with CPU speed according to my results. I expect if I could overclock further, I’d see even better performance. Unfortunately Athlon XPs don’t overclock very well; once you have to start adding vCORE, they’re running out of steam, and I had to increase core voltage by 0.1 volts. And I don’t really have a good way to cool the CPU either, though I accidentally did all the stock and underclocked runs with the fan unplugged, and never had stability issues. Anyway, it becomes less and less of an issue as Urban Terror becomes older and older. Systems that can run the game smoothly with maximum detail can be had for less than $700 USD. I don’t want to offer upgrade advice, as this article is already way too long, but you can find out which part is slowing your frame rates down with a simple test. Record a demo on a decently crowded server (12-18 people). Run it with /timedemo 1. On the first run set your graphics to low quality settings (low resolution, low detail, etc.). On the second run, set everything as high as you can. If the frame rate does not drop much on the second run, your CPU is the bottleneck. But as I demonstrated in this guy, you can gain as much as 25 FPS over a “low quality” configuration by going beyond the graphics menu.

Here is the completed configuration file.

http://www.getlegitanddip.com/dailynade/lowgfx.cfg

Instructions are inside; open with Notepad or a similar text editor.

Here is a graphics card hierarchy which shows which cards are roughly equal in performance to each other:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2362-6.html

Newer isn’t always faster. The 9600XT is near the bottom middle, though it IS 6 years old!

Summary

• The Minimap
• The Team Overlay
• The Top Right
• Gun and Crosshair Stuff
• Chat Settings
• Miscellaneus Stuff

The Minimap

Your minimap is extremely important in team games, as it lets you know the position of your teammates, as well as the map objectives (flags and bomb sites). Furthermore, it gives you a perfect overhead view of the map, which aids in navigation. Therefore, tweaking your minimap is vital to playing well.

cg_mappos
Range: 0-11 (0 disables display of the map)
Default: 1

This cvar controls the position of the map on your screen. There are 11 positions (0 disables the map) to choose from. The following link shows you an image of the 11 positions highlighted.

Map Position

Some of these will overlap with other objects on the HUD. Position 3 overlaps with chat. Position 1 overlaps with hit and kill messages. Position 6 overlaps with the team overlay. Position 11 overlaps with the crosshair and your central view.

I do not recommend position 11, as it obscures your view, and there is no need to have the map so visible. Position 5 is good, as it obscures nothing useful, and in fact blocks less of your view than the other 10 positions. Keep in mind that the minimap will appear behind all text elements on the HUD. Therefore, in position 1, 3, and 6, the hit messages, chat messages, and team overlay, respectively, appear on top of the map. However, it does impair the readability of those elements, and thus may be distracting. The map will also be harder to interpret with text on top of it. Regardless, I also recommend position 1, as it has served me well. The map is not usually set large enough to interfere with the hit messages (the important bits of those messages are at the end). If you want to use the team overlay (which will be discussed soon), position 7 and 8 may be good, as all the team information will be on the right of the screen. You can use any position you want; these are merely my recommendations. Use what allows you to easily read the map with minimal impairment of your in game view.

cg_mapsize
Range: 0-512 (0 disables display of the map)
Default: 150

This cvar scales the size of the map. Practical range is about 70-200. A small map takes up less screen space, but it becomes harder to tell where a teammate is, as the arrow size becomes disproportionate. It is possible to change the arrow size, but there is a practical limit to how small you can get the arrows. I recommend using the default value. I personally use 125, which is a bit smaller than the default of 150. There’s no particular reason for this, it’s just something I’ve used for a long time.

cg_mapalpha
Range: 0-1 (incremental values)
Default: 0.7

This cvar controls the transparency of the map. 1 is opaque, 0 is transparent. 0 will remove the map completely, but leave arrows and flags visible. I recommend the default value, as it is a good mix between being able to see the details of the map, while also not making the map difficult to see through. If you have your map in a position where visibility is either a concern or not an issue (such as position 5), you may want to adjust transparency accordingly. A higher map size may be accompanied by a lower alpha value. See the following link for a comparison between 0, 0.7, and 1.

Map Alpha

cg_arrowscale
Range: 0.1-???
Default: 3

This cvar controls how large the arrows are in relation to the map. The arrow size will scale with the map, and remain in proportion. However, with a larger map, the arrows may seem too large. There does not seem to be a limit on this value, and indeed you can have the arrows fill the entire screen. Practical range is about 1-3. I’ve always used 2, because I find 3 is too big. Your own arrow will be larger than your teammates’ arrows, which is where this complaint stems from. At arrowscale 3, your arrow can obscure teammates’ arrows. However, it’s all preference, and if you want to find your position quickly on the map, a larger arrow size can be helpful. The flags and the medic icons do not change when you alter arrowscale, so even if you have very small arrows, you can still see medics and flags easily. On some maps, such as Eagle, the map scale is extremely distorted, and arrows will be much, much smaller than on normal maps. Some maps have the opposite problem. Therefore, you may find yourself change your arrowscale value occasionally.

cg_maptoggle
Range: 0/1
Default: 1

Simply enables or disables the map. As stated above, disabling the map can be accomplished with other cvars, but this is the official way. Advanced players can incorporate this value into scripts or binds to create a “hold to view” map, similar to the Battlefield series of games. However, I strongly recommend always having the map on, as it is one of your best tools for team games.

The Team Overlay

The team overlay displays team mates, enemies, scores, armband colors, and numbers alive. It is essentially the score tab condensed into an ever-present widget in the bottom right corner of your screen. As with the minimap, what it displays is controlled with several cvars. Unsurprisingly, the team overlay doesn’t function in FFA.:)

cg_drawteamoverlay
Range: 0-3
Default: 1

0 is off.
1 displays the full rosters of each time.
2 displays only your team’s roster and a simple counter for how many enemies are alive.
3 displays a player counter for BOTH teams, and only your name is shown for your team’s roster.

If you want to use the overlay, I recommend using either 2 or 3. 3 is the best, as it is the smallest and easiest to read (especially for large pubs). 2, however, can be useful in matches as you may want to know which of your teammates are alive. Personally I do not use the overlay, and prefer to take a glance at the score page whenever I am curious as to how many enemies and teammates are alive. I find the overlay distracting and not overly beneficial to my style of play. However, many other players DO find the team overlay useful, one of the reasons being it removes the need for a key bound to displaying the score page.

cg_drawteamoverlayscores
Range: 0/1
Default: 1

This toggles the display of scores next to names in the team overlay. I advise turning this off as knowing scores is useless in game. Furthermore, some players may find seeing their score constantly is detrimental to their gameplay, as they focus on their score too much. Finally, having scores off shrinks the size of the overlay a tiny bit. Put simply, there is no gameplay-related reason to have scores displayed on the overlay.

The Top Right

The top right of the screen is home to several items: FPS/ping, team scores, the timer, and the wave respawn delay.

cg_drawteamscores
Range: 0/1
Default: 1

Controls the display of the team scores. Quite honestly, there’s no reason to turn this off. It’s always important to know the score of the teams, as tactics will alter depending on how many rounds there are to “play” with, and how many rounds are left to be played. In CTF, the bars flash when a team’s flag is not safe in its base.

cg_drawfps
Range: 0-2
Default: 1

This setting toggles the display of the FPS and ping meter. 0 will disable both the FPS display and the ping display. Setting this to 1 causes the framerate counter to be updated once every second or so. Setting it to 2 will update the counter much more quickly. The ping display updates at the same rate regardless of the setting. I recommend setting this to 1. I like knowing what ping I’m getting in a server, and if it’s steady or not. This influences my decision on whether to stay in the server or not. I also like to know my FPS, because if I’m getting lower than normal FPS, I know to reboot my machine. However, in some situations, it may be detrimental to your gameplay to have this item enabled. For example, in a match, if you’re getting a lousy ping or are playing on a map which is difficult for your system to render in a timely manner, there’s nothing you can do about that! Focusing on the bad stats displayed here will only hurt your ability to play.

cg_drawtimer
Range: 0/1
Default: 1

This toggles the display of the in game clock. As with the team scores, there’s no reason to have this off. It’s always good to know how much time is left in the game, as well as in the round (if you’re playing a round-based gametype). This cvar also controls the display of wave respawn delays. Most European CTF servers run with wave respawn on, while North American servers tend to not use wave respawns. But it’s not like this matters, since you’re leaving the timer on…right?!

cg_lagometer
Range: 0/1
Default: 1

The lagometer, or net graph, is a complex subject which would take pages to explain. Suffice to say, it is a graphical representation of your connection quality. It can be useful for diagnostic purposes, but as with the ping/FPS display, it can play a negative effect on your psychological game. Furthermore, it’s just plain distracting! Unless you are troubleshooting your connection, keep this off.

Gun and Crosshair Stuff

Of course there are going to be plenty of cvars dealing with your gun and crosshair!

cg_drawhands
Range: 0/1
Default: 1

Despite its name, this cvar controls the display of your gun. The obvious advantage to not drawing your gun on screen is that you gain a lot of your field of view back. The disadvantage, however, is you don’t know what gun you have without paying close attention to cycling your weapons or reading the text in the bottom right. Many players, including myself, also feel weird playing without the gun. I feel the advantage of not drawing the gun is too minor, as most maps are designed so that as long as you keep your gun pointed at head level, you won’t be obscuring any area an enemy could potentially be hiding. Furthermore, it’s not like an enemy will just pop into a blindspot; you will have sufficient warning to adjust your aim accordingly to see your target. There are two more advantages, however! The first is no muzzle flash. The muzzle flash can be potentially crippling in close combat, as your view of the enemy will be obscured by large flashes of light. These situations are quite rare, and can be solved by a silencer, but it is one of the primary reasons cited by players for choosing to not draw the gun. The other advantage is a very small boost in framerate on older hardware, as the gun is fairly complex to render. Again, though, I think there are better ways around this problem than disabling the gun from being displayed. Dropping the resolution down a notch or lowering the detail level will have a much bigger affect on FPS than the gun. For most players, I recommend keeping this cvar at the default value of 1, though I do suggest everyone try playing without the gun for a few maps just to see if it improves/worsens gameplay.

cg_gunsize
Range: 0/1
Default: 0

Despite what I said above, I think the default gun size is much too large. Luckily there’s a cvar to change that! Setting cg_gunsize to 1 will make the gun smaller by a noticeable amount, which gives back some of the visual field. There’s really no reason to use 0, unless you really like the gun models!

cg_hudweaponinfo
Range: 0-2
Default: 0

This cvar controls the ammo information in the bottom right. 0 displays the bullets left in your current magazine, an icon of a magazine, and how many magazines you have left. 1 displays your weapon’s name but removes the icon. 2 adds the icon back and keeps the weapon name. I recommend using 0, as it’s not really important to know what your gun’s name is (you’ll learn them by sight quickly!), unless you are playing without the gun displayed. In that case I recommend using 2, as the removal of the magazine icon just looks weird.:P

cg_drawcrosshair
Range: 0-13
Default: 11

What crosshair do you want to use? First off, 0 disables the display of your crosshair. I’m not going to go over every single crosshair and list its pros and cons, since that is beyond the scope of this guide. I will, however, recommend a few.

7 is the one I use. It’s a cross shape with a dot in the middle. The arms of the cross move outward when firing the gun to indicate spread. Its size makes it easy to find compared to the oft-recommended dots, but the dot in the middle still allows for pinpoint shooting. The spread indicator, meanwhile, keeps your spamming in check.

11 is a large cross with a dot in the middle. The arms are much longer than with 7. It’s perhaps a good beginner’s crosshair as it shows spread and is easy to see. 10 is identical except it has no dot. 9 is identical to 10 except its reaction to spread is much smaller in magnitude. 12 is identical to 11 but has no top arm.

13 is the recommended dot crosshair. It does not show spread and is 2×2 pixels in size regardless of the value of cg_crosshairsize. Very small but this is claimed by many to make aiming easier. I don’t recommend it for a newcomer, as you should learn about spread first. For advanced players, however, it may be beneficial. I personally tried the dot for several weeks and initially thought it helped my aim, but upon switching back to 7, I found out this was probably just a random effect I observed the first day I tried it. I believe most other players in top clans use the dot, however.

cg_crosshairsize
Range: 10 – ???
Default: 20

Controls the size of your crosshair. Does not apply to crosshair 13. I like the default of 20. The scalar (meaning they have only one size at which they are displayed without inter/extrapolation) crosshairs will scale in both dimensions, which results in some pretty messed up looking crosshairs at higher values. Vector crosshairs (which can be reproduced at any size without distortion and inter/extrapolation) are limited in how big they can get, but will only expand in the intended dimensions. Crosshair 10, for example, is a vector crosshair and only the arms change in length. 7 is a scalar crosshair, and the arms and dot will expand vertically and horizontally. This isn’t really important, because you really shouldn’t use a bigger crosshair size. If you want a big crosshair, use 10 or 11. If you want a small crosshair, use the dot. If you want a medium crosshair, use 7. If you’re on a really big monitor you might want to increase the value slightly, but otherwise, I don’t see any benefit to changing this value.

cg_drawcrosshairnames
Range: 0/1
Default: 1

Draws your teammate’s name and health next to the crosshair when you aim at them. Very useful! Do not turn off!

cg_crosshairnamestype
Range: 0-3
Default: 3

This cvar controls where the above information appears relative to the crosshair or player model. 0 disables the display of said information. 1 draws it above the player’s head in a fixed location. 2 draws it below the crosshair in a fixed location. 3 draws it above the crosshair in a fixed location. 4 draws it in the bottom left of the screen, in small text, in a fixed location. The health bar is replaced with text.

cg_crosshairnamessize
Range: 0-1
Default: 0.3

This controls the size of the teammate information. 0 is off, 0.1 is very small, 0.3 is default, and above that it starts to get very large. I like the default value of 0.3 and see no reason to change it. This does not affect the size of the text with cg_crosshairnamestype 4.

cg_crosshairrgb
Range: <0-1> <0-1> <0-1> <0-1>
Default: “1 1 1 1”

This controls the color of the crosshair. There are 4 values. The first 3 are RGB (red green blue), and the last is the transparency. There are 16777216 possible colors. This is known as 8 bit color. We will ignore transparenc, since it’s not important for the crosshair (you want a solid crosshair). So keep the 4^th value at 1. Remember to use quotes, as we are dealing with spaces in the value!

“ 1 1 1 1” is white. “1 0 0 1” is red. “0 1 0 1” is green. “1 0 1 1” is purple. See how it works yet? 0 is no color, and 1 is full color. “0 0 0 1” is black, and “1 1 1 1” is white. You are mixing 3 colors to produce one final color. It gets a bit trickier when you want to go beyond 1’s and 0’s. There are 256 increments for each value, so we’re going to be dealing with decimals. If you have an 8 bit color number (for example 124 189 72, which is an olive-y color), you have to change it into a decimal value. What you do is divide each number by 256. That’s it! Now you’ve got your color for the crosshair. Our example color would become 0.48 0.74 0.28 if we round it to 2 decimal places. Enter cg_crosshairrgb “0.48 0.74 0.28 1” and you get an olivey color crosshair.

Here is a color chart if you’re like me and learned about colors by mixing paint. Red + green = yellow wtf? Well red and green LIGHT make yellow, and that’s what game programmers consider.

http://www.web-source.net/216_color_chart.htm

cg_crosshairfriendrgb
Range: <0-1> <0-1> <0-1> <0-1>
Default: “1 0 0 1”

Same as above, except it controls the crosshair color when you aim at teammates.

cg_scopergb
Range: <0-1> <0-1> <0-1> <0-1>
Default: “0 0 0 1”

Same rules as above, again. Scope color when not aimed at teammates.

Cg_scopefriendrgb
Range: <0-1> <0-1> <0-1> <0-1>
Default: “1 0 0 1”

Same as above. Scope color when you aim at teammates.

cg_scopering
Range: 0/1
Default: 1

Draws a ring around the center of your scope which indicates how much movement penalty you have with the SR8. When you are not perfectly still, your shots will be inaccurate. Quite inaccurate if you’re moving a lot or jumping. When you’re jumping, there is a double ring to indicate your shot will be way off. I don’t see much use for this, since I know not to move a lot when I’m sniping. It’s not a difficult concept to train yourself in. There’s no advantage to knowing how inaccurate your shot will be, because it will be quite inaccurate if you’re moving for more than a few milliseconds, and extremely inaccurate if you’re jumping. However, a beginning sniper might want this so they can see instantly how inaccurate their shot will be.

cg_scopesr8
Range: 0-3
Default: 0

Similar to cg_drawcrosshair, except for your SR8. 0 is a small colored cross in the middle, with the arms being solid black. 1 is the same as 0, except the arms are slightly shorter but also colored. 2 is like 1 without a top arm, and the remaining 3 arms do not meet in the center. The center of the crosshair is blank. 3 is a simple colored dot. I use 1, but 3 is also good. 2 is quite difficult to use in my opinion, but is similar to many other games’ sniper scopes. 0 and 1 are essentially interchangeable, as the only difference is purely cosmetic.

cg_scopeg36
Range: 0-3
Default: 0

Same as above, but for G36.

cg_scopepsg
Range: 0-3
Default: 0

Same as above, but for PSG1.

Chat Settings

Distraction or entertainment? Whatever it is, there are enough bloody settings!

cg_chatheight
Range: 0-28
Default: 4

Controls how many lines of chat will be displayed at once. I believe it’s based on resolution, but 28 seems to be the maximum for the few resolutions I tried. Practical range is about 2-7 anyway. Higher values cause the top of the chat area to be raised, because chat is not allowed to run into the health meter. It will, however, overlap with the weapon messages if you have the value too high. 0 disables the display of messages, but not the message beep. I like the default value of 4.

cg_chattime
Range: 0-???
Default: 4000

How long, in milliseconds, each message remains in the chat area. 0 disables the display of messages, but not the beep. I recommend keeping this at the default value, because you can always read old messages in the console.

cg_msgheight
Range: 0-8
Default: 4

Same as the chat height, but this is for the hit/kill/death messages in the top left. Setting this to 0 disables the display of messages. For some reason setting this to 0 and then to another value, leaves the messages disabled (so don’t experiment around with this!) until you reload the map. Not sure why. Not that you should set this to 0, because it’s very important! I like the default value once again.

cg_msgtime
Range: 0-???
Default: 4000

Same as the chat time, but for the hit/kill/death messages. Suffers from the same bug as cg_msgheight, so don’t set it to 0. 4000 is a good value for this.

cg_teamchatsonly
Range: 0/1
Default: 0

Disables “mm1” (or global chat), and only allows “mm2” (team chat) to be displayed. This also affects the console, so you will not see ANY global chat. This is useful for pubs where there are a bunch of people spamming retarded crap. Also good in matches if you can’t control yourself from responding to the other team’s trash talking. Does not prevent the sending of global chat, however. If you want to disable chat while also disabling the chat beep, set this to 1 and then set cg_chatheight to 0.

cg_novoicechats
Range: 0/1
Default: 0

Controls whether or not you hear the sounds when someone uses a radio message. Setting it to 1 is good if there are radio spammers on your team and you’re sick of hearing “GET OUR FLAG BACK.” For some reason “cg_novoicetext” is non-functional.

cg_standardchat
Range: 0/1
Default: 0

Standard chat is what Quake III Arena uses. Chat messages are combined with the kill/death/hit messages in the top left. Everything is printed in white and in a different font. It’s a style choice, but this is pretty ugly, not to mention clustered. Although you gain a bit of visual field back by combining the two message areas into one, chat messages become lost very easily in the sea of hit messages. O f course the chat is not exactly useful in a pub (stupid spam) or a match (VOIP is used instead), but then you could just turn off the chat area with cg_chatheight 0. So this really comes down to whether you prefer the bland styling of cg_standardchat 1 over the colorful cg_standardchat 0. Obviously I don’t.;)

cg_showbullethits
Range: 0-2
Default: 2

Controls the display of hits in the top left message area. 0 disables hits being shown (you only see kill and death messages). 1 displays hits. 2 displays hits and how much damage each hit caused. I can spout off how much each weapon does to each body part, but I still play with this set to 2. If you use the SPAS, you definitely need this at 2, because that way you can laugh at how random the damage is. 4%…68%…4%… Setting this to 0 isn’t necessarily bad, since it doesn’t really matter where you hit someone; you have to shoot them again if they’re not dead! Getting feedback on where you’re shooting at is a good way of improving your aim, though.

Miscellaneous Stuff

This stuff doesn’t really belong to a specific category.

cg_speedo
Range: 0/1
Default: 0

Shows your speed in the bottom right corner. The speed is measured in Quake Units per second. A player model is 72 Quake Units high. The default “running” speed is 220 qu/s. Sprinting is 340 qu/s. 700-1000 qu/s is a reasonable speed when circle jumping. There are 4 numbers on the speedometer: instantaneous XY, XY max, instantaneous XYZ, XYZ max. XY is your on the horizontal plane, with XYZ also includes the vertical plane (jumping/falling). The number on the left is your instantaneous speed (current speed), while the number in parentheses is your maximum attained speed during the session. The session is reset when the map changes or when you toggle the speedometer off and then on again. The session begins when you enable the speedometer. The speedo is important in jump maps, because some jumps are only possible with a minimum XY speed. I don’t use the speedo in regular games or matches, but if I happened to be working on my jumping technique, I certainly would.;)

cg_fov
Range: 90-110
Default: 90

Perhaps the most controversial cvar discussed here. You’ll hear many differing opinions on this, but here’s how I see it. 90 is best for seeing targets easily. 110 is best for increasing your visual field. Values above 90 will “pack” more of the game onto your screen. Higher values make everything besides your static HUD elements smaller, including your gun. The crosshair doesn’t change size. Player models, map models, buildings, structures, etc. become smaller with the tradeoff being you can see more at once. 110 gives you the best visual field, but again, things are quite a bit smaller. You are trading aiming ability for visual awareness. I personally use 100, because I don’t feel I play as well as 110. 90 is just too big for me and limits my visual field too much for my taste. I recommend playing around with this value until you find a value that allows you to aim well but also gives you good vision. There’s nothing wrong with dropping to 90 when you’re playing a limited position (such as defending the pillars on Turnpike) in order to benefit from easier to aim at players. There’s no right or wrong value, but I don’t recommend sticking it on 110 without ever trying a lower value like105 or 100. For the record, 100 doesn’t feel like it’s limiting my ability to spot enemies.

For reference purposes, here is my HUD in game:

Don Hud

(Obviously I just jumped in the server for a second; I certainly would not allow a 1:24 score!)