Monday, February 23, 2004
A varied weekend
Last week I didn’t play much, as I was the man about the house, tidying up the garage so I could see its floor, trying to fix the gas fire without killing us all, etc. But I managed to get a few frags in at the weekend.
One highlight was playing baseq3. Each time I try to play this game, I am so terribly crap that I wonder why I bother. Then, after about 15 minutes, I get into it and manage to splat a few victims, but I feel as if they only need to hit me with one bullet to kill me, while it takes me about 6 rockets in the face to even hurt them. I find that really frustrating, especially when they are all hogging the powerups and healths, leaving me an even easier target.
Still, it was great fun on some of the W3 maps with a bunch of other guys, including one called w00t w00t! When I hit my bind which says “w00t, wicked shot!” w00t w00t thought I was talking to him! LOL!
The back to my fave – Insta-Unlagged. The thing I like insta so much is that it’s no-nonsense point and shoot. No fannying about with how much health you have, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I love baseQ3, but I’m not a student with endless amounts of spare time to learn the nuances that make you a real winner. I need a quick fix when I get in from work, then another one later in the evening after the other half has made me sit infront of some lame home improvements TV programme. If she falls asleep on the sofa then I can get a good couple of hours fragsession. “Oh, darling, you fell asleep and looked so cute I didn’t wanna wake you”. Yeah right, time to rail some ass!
I also bumped into 4.2>Jobber, this time with yet another alias: Waz. He’s not the most popular player, but given a bit of encouragement he can be quite good fun. The main problem is that he’s just damn good and not so much into the banter that the Nasties are famous for. Therefore it can be a bit disheartening getting spawnfragged about 10 times in a row. It makes you feel a bit serious, and that’s not what we want. So I just chose an “indoors” map and managed to give him quite a challenge. For once.
Last week I didn’t play much, as I was the man about the house, tidying up the garage so I could see its floor, trying to fix the gas fire without killing us all, etc. But I managed to get a few frags in at the weekend.
One highlight was playing baseq3. Each time I try to play this game, I am so terribly crap that I wonder why I bother. Then, after about 15 minutes, I get into it and manage to splat a few victims, but I feel as if they only need to hit me with one bullet to kill me, while it takes me about 6 rockets in the face to even hurt them. I find that really frustrating, especially when they are all hogging the powerups and healths, leaving me an even easier target.
Still, it was great fun on some of the W3 maps with a bunch of other guys, including one called w00t w00t! When I hit my bind which says “w00t, wicked shot!” w00t w00t thought I was talking to him! LOL!
The back to my fave – Insta-Unlagged. The thing I like insta so much is that it’s no-nonsense point and shoot. No fannying about with how much health you have, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I love baseQ3, but I’m not a student with endless amounts of spare time to learn the nuances that make you a real winner. I need a quick fix when I get in from work, then another one later in the evening after the other half has made me sit infront of some lame home improvements TV programme. If she falls asleep on the sofa then I can get a good couple of hours fragsession. “Oh, darling, you fell asleep and looked so cute I didn’t wanna wake you”. Yeah right, time to rail some ass!
I also bumped into 4.2>Jobber, this time with yet another alias: Waz. He’s not the most popular player, but given a bit of encouragement he can be quite good fun. The main problem is that he’s just damn good and not so much into the banter that the Nasties are famous for. Therefore it can be a bit disheartening getting spawnfragged about 10 times in a row. It makes you feel a bit serious, and that’s not what we want. So I just chose an “indoors” map and managed to give him quite a challenge. For once.
Monday, February 16, 2004
SkillZ development
The past week or so I have bumped into a load of people trying out different tricks and movements with their characters. I had always thought this was a bit of a waste of time, as I usually wanna just go around shooting people. But I’ve noticed that the more you can do these “trick” moves, the better and more versatile your gameplay can be.
I have tried a few tricks in the past and, as you expect, I generally make a right plonker of myself by ending up in “the wrong place” or “bursting into flames” – you know the score, after all I’m a Gimp.
But when you join a server, sometimes you really have to settle in with the mood of the people on there. A few mornings ago I saw BanzaiBaby, z00m and a P4F member on a trick map, which I quickly downloaded and joined. They were practising strafe jumping over poles (a bit like the ones Eddie Murphy has to walk over in The Golden Child, only harder), and all sorts of other stuff. The map was clearly built purely for practising moves, and it was bloody difficult.
This P4F geezer had speed, accuracy, ability, and it was quite simply a joy to watch. Although I had a vague idea about it, I didn’t really know what strafe jumping was until then. That evening, I saw Hoodlum on dm17 railjumping all the way across to the far end rail platform. Things like that must take ages to figure out, but once learnt I’m sure it improves your level of ability considerably.
And I reckon that’s where I’ve gotta be to even stand a chance of getting “good”. Hey, I can whip out a witty bind for any given situation, but my player control sucks; half the time I get stuck trying to go round a simple goddamn corner. Time to go and play on some trick maps methinks - on my own of course, so there’s no-one to laugh at me!
The past week or so I have bumped into a load of people trying out different tricks and movements with their characters. I had always thought this was a bit of a waste of time, as I usually wanna just go around shooting people. But I’ve noticed that the more you can do these “trick” moves, the better and more versatile your gameplay can be.
I have tried a few tricks in the past and, as you expect, I generally make a right plonker of myself by ending up in “the wrong place” or “bursting into flames” – you know the score, after all I’m a Gimp.
But when you join a server, sometimes you really have to settle in with the mood of the people on there. A few mornings ago I saw BanzaiBaby, z00m and a P4F member on a trick map, which I quickly downloaded and joined. They were practising strafe jumping over poles (a bit like the ones Eddie Murphy has to walk over in The Golden Child, only harder), and all sorts of other stuff. The map was clearly built purely for practising moves, and it was bloody difficult.
This P4F geezer had speed, accuracy, ability, and it was quite simply a joy to watch. Although I had a vague idea about it, I didn’t really know what strafe jumping was until then. That evening, I saw Hoodlum on dm17 railjumping all the way across to the far end rail platform. Things like that must take ages to figure out, but once learnt I’m sure it improves your level of ability considerably.
And I reckon that’s where I’ve gotta be to even stand a chance of getting “good”. Hey, I can whip out a witty bind for any given situation, but my player control sucks; half the time I get stuck trying to go round a simple goddamn corner. Time to go and play on some trick maps methinks - on my own of course, so there’s no-one to laugh at me!
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Neeeeeeah! What’s up, Doc?
These last few days I’ve been having a right laugh. Jeff sent round a player skin of a rabbit last week, and I added it to my PC at the weekend. Usually modified skins are rather basic and don’t really represent their intended character very well, but this one is different. It really looks like a cartoon bunny, and when it moves it hops around rapidly like a real rabbit.
In fact it’s bloody difficult to play because it’s so damn funny watching other rabbits hopping around with a railgun. And if you are confronted by a strafing bunny there’s no way you’re gonna win. That cute little head with the apprehensive eyes, cocked neck, asymmetrical ears and slightly sad mouth make you feel sorry for it as it cheekily jumps from side to side and - BAM you’re dead, sucker!
Even Doc, I mean Jeff, the weal waskerly wabbit hunter, has twubble twying to wail dat wabbit’s fwuffy tail.
What we need is a mod for other players to see your skin without having to download it separately. That way we’d have all our opponents in hysterics and we’d win easily as they roll on the floor laughing.
That’s All Folks!
These last few days I’ve been having a right laugh. Jeff sent round a player skin of a rabbit last week, and I added it to my PC at the weekend. Usually modified skins are rather basic and don’t really represent their intended character very well, but this one is different. It really looks like a cartoon bunny, and when it moves it hops around rapidly like a real rabbit.
In fact it’s bloody difficult to play because it’s so damn funny watching other rabbits hopping around with a railgun. And if you are confronted by a strafing bunny there’s no way you’re gonna win. That cute little head with the apprehensive eyes, cocked neck, asymmetrical ears and slightly sad mouth make you feel sorry for it as it cheekily jumps from side to side and - BAM you’re dead, sucker!
Even Doc, I mean Jeff, the weal waskerly wabbit hunter, has twubble twying to wail dat wabbit’s fwuffy tail.
What we need is a mod for other players to see your skin without having to download it separately. That way we’d have all our opponents in hysterics and we’d win easily as they roll on the floor laughing.
That’s All Folks!
Monday, February 09, 2004
World Rankings
A few months ago, when I first entered the fold of the Nasties, I was told of a website you could go to in order to find out how you ranked against the other players around the world. This is at www.csports.net.
Of course, I had only just become a Nasty, so the system saw that I was a noob and placed me at about 4,000th place, which was near the bottom of the pile and quite frankly was about what I was expecting. As I am by no means a “competitive” player I kinda ignored it until a few weeks ago I looked again and saw that I was at 40th place. 40th in the world? Me, a trigger-happy pot-shot Gimp? NO WAY!
I decided to look to see who was at the top – you could have knocked me down with a feather: The top 10 was half-full of Nasties. I know there are many players who are better than any of us, so I decided to check out how Csports figures out these rankings.
Suddenly all became clear: the system continually pings q3 servers and reports on players’ names, score, and gametype. It figures out an algorithm based on the time spent on the server and the scores of the players at each snapshot. This is where it is flawed. In this case, if I were to play all day and all night for a couple of days I would easily get to number 1.
So, knowing that it was fundamentally flawed I didn’t look at it again until just now. I am in 7th place today! And get this: there are 10 Nasties in the top 14! We clearly play tooooo much :-)
I have decided that the csports ranking isn’t a ranking of who the best players are. I know I am not even in the top 1000 players in reality. What it is, is a yardstick of who the most important players are in the Q3 world. The Nasty Clan is very well known and plays a lot. Other people know they can outplay us, and we don’t try to hide the fact that we really suck at the game. But the other players enjoy our company and know that we’ll treat them fairly and have a good laugh. So our frequent visits to many servers are noticed by Csports, hence the high rankings.
It would be great if Csports can read our binds and rank us on players’ enjoyment. Then we’d all be Number 1 :-)
A few months ago, when I first entered the fold of the Nasties, I was told of a website you could go to in order to find out how you ranked against the other players around the world. This is at www.csports.net.
Of course, I had only just become a Nasty, so the system saw that I was a noob and placed me at about 4,000th place, which was near the bottom of the pile and quite frankly was about what I was expecting. As I am by no means a “competitive” player I kinda ignored it until a few weeks ago I looked again and saw that I was at 40th place. 40th in the world? Me, a trigger-happy pot-shot Gimp? NO WAY!
I decided to look to see who was at the top – you could have knocked me down with a feather: The top 10 was half-full of Nasties. I know there are many players who are better than any of us, so I decided to check out how Csports figures out these rankings.
Suddenly all became clear: the system continually pings q3 servers and reports on players’ names, score, and gametype. It figures out an algorithm based on the time spent on the server and the scores of the players at each snapshot. This is where it is flawed. In this case, if I were to play all day and all night for a couple of days I would easily get to number 1.
So, knowing that it was fundamentally flawed I didn’t look at it again until just now. I am in 7th place today! And get this: there are 10 Nasties in the top 14! We clearly play tooooo much :-)
I have decided that the csports ranking isn’t a ranking of who the best players are. I know I am not even in the top 1000 players in reality. What it is, is a yardstick of who the most important players are in the Q3 world. The Nasty Clan is very well known and plays a lot. Other people know they can outplay us, and we don’t try to hide the fact that we really suck at the game. But the other players enjoy our company and know that we’ll treat them fairly and have a good laugh. So our frequent visits to many servers are noticed by Csports, hence the high rankings.
It would be great if Csports can read our binds and rank us on players’ enjoyment. Then we’d all be Number 1 :-)
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
Teaching an old dog new tricks
Well I’m not THAT old, but I couldn’t think of a snappy title, so there you go.
I oozed out of bed at 6am this morning and slumped downstairs to my glass of freshly squeezed nothing. So I opened a carton of orange juice and had some of that instead. My tongue could now move, and that meant I could try opening my eyes. Success! I have been told that I stick my tongue out when I and concentrating hard (such as playing Q3!), so now that it was working, I could use my eyes and as a bonus my hands were also working, I was fully equipped for a morning’s frag session.
I switched on my screen and saw 2 players on my server. At this hour? Oh, alright then, I’ll join in. It was Lirbig and another player (sorry forgot your name), and they were on Deva Station. I haven’t seen that map since I first ever played Q3, so I had trouble finding them. Anyhoot, they were in the area with the bouncepad which has a fog of death beneath it. They were jumping into the fog of death and not getting killed! How?
Here’s how: if you bind two keys close to one another, e.g. “g” and “h” to com_maxfps 1 and com_maxfps 125 you jump. Then, before you land in the fog, hit g, wait two seconds, and then hit h. You will find yourself walking around on the floor of the foggy pit. Brilliant! Hours of fun, but it’s probably cheating. Not that you could camp in the fog, as everyone else in there will be dead!
Another trick using this technique is a really high railjump. Aim your rail at the ground, hit g, shoot, then hit h and you’ll be REALLY high up.
And so to work…
Well I’m not THAT old, but I couldn’t think of a snappy title, so there you go.
I oozed out of bed at 6am this morning and slumped downstairs to my glass of freshly squeezed nothing. So I opened a carton of orange juice and had some of that instead. My tongue could now move, and that meant I could try opening my eyes. Success! I have been told that I stick my tongue out when I and concentrating hard (such as playing Q3!), so now that it was working, I could use my eyes and as a bonus my hands were also working, I was fully equipped for a morning’s frag session.
I switched on my screen and saw 2 players on my server. At this hour? Oh, alright then, I’ll join in. It was Lirbig and another player (sorry forgot your name), and they were on Deva Station. I haven’t seen that map since I first ever played Q3, so I had trouble finding them. Anyhoot, they were in the area with the bouncepad which has a fog of death beneath it. They were jumping into the fog of death and not getting killed! How?
Here’s how: if you bind two keys close to one another, e.g. “g” and “h” to com_maxfps 1 and com_maxfps 125 you jump. Then, before you land in the fog, hit g, wait two seconds, and then hit h. You will find yourself walking around on the floor of the foggy pit. Brilliant! Hours of fun, but it’s probably cheating. Not that you could camp in the fog, as everyone else in there will be dead!
Another trick using this technique is a really high railjump. Aim your rail at the ground, hit g, shoot, then hit h and you’ll be REALLY high up.
And so to work…
Votes
A lot can be said in favour of allowing votes on a server. Using the /callvote command, players can change the fraglimit, timelimit, insta-weapon, map, kick the Nasty a-hole, etc. But there’s one thing that really gets annoying: My server is a FFA server. I set it up as FFA, because that’s what I wanted. Now, it seems that there is a group of people going around changing it to Team Deatmatch.
And who are these dirty repulsive infidels? Why, The HTP clan. They are a nice bunch and great fun to play with. In fact at the weekend, when I joined my server to play, they even had the cheek to ask if they could use MY server as THEIR tryout ground for recruiting new clan members. Cheeky bastards! Anyway, as I’m such a thoroughly Nasty chap, I let them do it. But they still change it to that damn TDM.
The thing is, I think voting should be allowed on my server, as I have a load of custom maps that people like to play on. If I could just remove the facility to vote for gametype, that would be great. Suggestions welcome… anyone…?
A lot can be said in favour of allowing votes on a server. Using the /callvote command, players can change the fraglimit, timelimit, insta-weapon, map, kick the Nasty a-hole, etc. But there’s one thing that really gets annoying: My server is a FFA server. I set it up as FFA, because that’s what I wanted. Now, it seems that there is a group of people going around changing it to Team Deatmatch.
And who are these dirty repulsive infidels? Why, The HTP clan. They are a nice bunch and great fun to play with. In fact at the weekend, when I joined my server to play, they even had the cheek to ask if they could use MY server as THEIR tryout ground for recruiting new clan members. Cheeky bastards! Anyway, as I’m such a thoroughly Nasty chap, I let them do it. But they still change it to that damn TDM.
The thing is, I think voting should be allowed on my server, as I have a load of custom maps that people like to play on. If I could just remove the facility to vote for gametype, that would be great. Suggestions welcome… anyone…?
