| I. Introduction | ||
| II. The inner workings of Quake | ||
| III. Vocabulary | ||
| IV. Strategy | ||
| V. Ways to practice | ||
| VI. Client Settings | ||
| A. Video settings | ||
| B. Other settings | ||
| C. Binds | ||
| 1. General | ||
| 2. Team Deathmatch | ||
| 3. CTF | ||
| VII. The good server settings | ||
| VIII. Code from the Quake 3 community | ||
| A. Mods | ||
| B. Maps | ||
| C. Utilities | ||
| IX. How to Get Your Girlfriend to Play Quake 3 | ||
| X. Hopes for Quake 4 or another game in the future | ||
| XI. Websites to watch |
Quake tends to demand a lot of concentration and energy. If you don’t feel like playing some day you’ll probably lose. There is always someone out there who isn’t better than you overall, but who is more motivated on that day and can beat you. Try not to get bent out of shape when you lose. It’s much better to lose badly to someone who is playing well than to beat someone while playing worse than you usually do.
This guide starts from the ground up. It’s long, but none of it is pointless. These strategies are written to be understandable to anyone of any age or skill level. Some of them are very basic, and some of them are very advanced. But even the most seasoned Quaker uses all of these strategies. Quake’s theme, quickness, and long community following have made it an ultra-competitive game. This guide was written to boost new players enough so that they won’t quit after being beaten badly.
Stairs make people lose their footing. It is much harder to dodge while on stairs because the player is losing contact with the ground in between the steps. It is also harder to aim on the stairs since you can’t know exactly when your feet will be touching the ground. If your opponent is on stairs you’ve probably got the dominant position. Slopes don’t have any loss of footing and no disadvantages.
Momentum jumping: the farther you drop before you land the more potential speed you can gain by strafe jumping as you hit the ground. This is how the command com_maxfps can speed up your strafe jumping. Com_maxfps can make your character jump a few percent higher. That is if you tweak it for your particular hardware, graphics settings, and ping. Once you jump higher you land harder and can jump faster. Working values can range from 80 to 150. To test if you are jumping as high as possible, go to q3dm13 and try to jump from the yellow armor up to the mega health. Adjust your com_maxfps setting until you make it. To make jumps like this up onto high ledges by the way, it is best to point exactly at the wall you’re jumping up. Even pointing a little bit down helps sometimes because it changes the frame rate.
Strafe jumping is tough to do at the highest speed possible. Most of the strafe jumping speed you are probably already getting. But there is a circle strafe jump element that will increase your speed significantly. It’s hard to explain. Watching demos let’s you to see the technique. It’s basically turning while jumping. To test if you are doing it well, go to q3dm9 and see if you can jump across gap beneath the mega health in one jump. If you strafe jump without moving the mouse at all that’s just a regular strafe jump. If you strafe jump and move the mouse to gain even more speed that’s a circle strafe jump. The first jump of a string of circle strafe jumps is best done with about 40 to 90 degrees of horizontal turn. The rest of the jumps afterward must be done with less turn. I estimate about 20 to 30 degrees of turn per jump. Horizontal turn is the only direction of turn that matters.
Wall running increased your speed in Quake 1 and Quake 2 dramatically. In Quake 3 it still exists but is only a negligible boost in speed. To wall run just run forward and parallel to a wall while pushing a sideways key to hold yourself against the wall. The only time I use it is when I don’t want to make the noise of jumping or when there’s something overhead stopping me from jumping.
The maximum life you can lose from a rocket jump is 50 points. The reason is that splash damage due to your own weapons is always half of what it would do to an opponent. 100 is the maximum rocket splash damage to an opponent. The amount of life a rocket jump takes can be less than 50 though depending on the exact timing of the rocket jump. Also, if you don't need as much height you can aim a little bit higher than straight down. This will make you do a backwards or sideways rocket jump which does less damage and lands you on your target sooner. A sideways rocket jump is essentially a backwards rocket jump only you run more sideways before doing it. The explosion still gives you the same direction of push backwards though. Examples include getting up to the red armor in ztn3dm1 and in q3dm13 from the mega health up to the higher floor. After practice you’ll prefer to do more backwards and sideways rocket jumps than normal ones in your games. You can rocket jump off the floor and then again off a vertical flat wall to gain additional height. This is very tough to do.
The guns appear to fire from fictional places in your hand so they are a little bit incorrect, it doesn't matter except sometimes it looks like your shot went through a wall a little bit. That's not an error because that was only the visuals, not the actual place the game put the shot. The real place the guns shoot from is in the center of your screen, not somewhere below it or to one side.
Characters in Quake 3 appear to be all different shapes and sizes. Some are tall like Anarki and some are wide like Tank Jr. But no matter what model someone uses they are always equally easy to hit. The actual “hit box,” as it’s called, is the same size and shape for everyone. The only problem is that we can’t see what that hit box is or exactly where it fits onto the model we’re looking at. It turns out that the hit box is a simple elongated cube. This means that targets actually change width when they turn left and right. By doing some geometry it can be seen that if someone is shot at a 45-degree angle they are a 41 percent wider target than if they are shot at no angle. This may make you want to re-examine your dodging techniques and the bonus of surprise-attacking someone. The exact hit box dimensions are 7x4x4 and when ducked are 5x4x4. The only difference between models is how easy they are to see, how loud their sounds are, and how distinguishable their pain sounds are between different levels of health (see pain sounds below).
All the weapons’ projectiles are points with no width. Even though rockets, grenades, and plasma balls look really big, they aren’t any easier to hit with than any other weapon. The shotgun really does have spread to its pellets and so does the machine gun, but still each bullet is a single point with no radius.
All of your weapons push your opponent, even a weapon as weak as the machine gun in team death match mode. The amount of push is proportional to the amount of damage inflicted for each gun. Push is not compatible between weapons though. And I know a direct 100 damage hit from a rocket launcher doesn’t push someone as much as 50 splash damage from a rocket. But within each weapon and type of damage, the amount of push is proportional to the amount of damage inflicted. There is no push without damage being inflicted and vice versa (except when team damage is off or if they are wearing a battle suit). The closer an explosion is to someone (without exploding directly on them) the more splash damage it will do and the more it will push. Quad triples all damages and all pushes. The maximum push limit is artificially programmed to be the force caused by 200 damage. So a quad rail, for example, does 300 damage but only 200 damage worth of push. It's a fixed limit not a down-scaling multiplier.
There are 4 different pain sounds for each model in Quake. Whenever someone gets hurt at all one of these sounds plays. The one that is played depends on the level of health that someone is left with. Their amount of armor is not taken into consideration. The divisions are: 1-25, 25-49, 50-74, 75-200. You only have to learn the pain sounds for one or two models. There’s a command called cg_forcemodel that will make all the models in the game the same model that you are. But it’s better to learn them for all the models so you don’t have to use cg_forcemodel and can tell each person apart. The pain sounds are probably the most important things you can memorize!
| Weapon damage numbers: | |
| Gauntlet: | 50 per punch |
| Machine gun: | 7 in FFA, 1on1, and CTF, 5 in team play |
| Shotgun: | 10 per pellet, 11 pellets per shell |
| Plasma gun: | 20 per cell |
| Lightning gun: | 8 per cell |
| Rail gun: | 100 per shot |
| Grenade launcher: | 100 per shot if direct, splash maximum is 100 |
| Rocket launcher: | 100 per shot if direct, splash maximum is 100 |
| BFG: | 100 per shot if direct, splash maximum is 100 |
Quad triples all damages.
Haste divides reload times by 1.3. That makes them reload 77 percent faster. (Haste also makes you move 30 percent faster.)
The grenade splash radius is exactly 20 percent bigger than the rocket splash radius.
Armor absorbs two-thirds of the damage you take and the rest will be deducted from your health. We can learn a couple important things from this fact. Be careful about rocket jumping if you have less than 17 health no matter how much armor you have. Another is it can help to be able to multiply health by three quickly if you think health will run out before armor will. If an opponent is about to die and they pick up a red armor, simply multiply what you guess their health to be by three and take that much damage off them.
Splash damage still goes thru corners even though the 1.27g patch took out splash damage through walls and floors. It can still creep around corners even though the rocket doesn’t explode around the corner.
Acid and Lava- the deeper you are the more it hurts. A period is roughly 3/4ths of a second.
A puddle of acid with no depth takes off 10 per period.
One inch deep in acid takes off 20 per period.
If your whole body is in acid it takes off 30 per period.
A puddle of lava with no depth takes off 30 per period.
One inch deep in lava takes off 60 per period.
If your whole body is in lava it takes off 90 per period.
Each successive period takes off double even if you jump in between sometimes. Usually jumping makes it only take off singly though.
Falling damage is a function of downward speed. If you are blasted downward you will take more damage no matter how far you have fallen. The maximum falling damage you can take is 10 health. It is doubled if you are crouching, and lessened if you land in water. Landing in a puddle of water halves the damage, landing in 1-inch-deep water quarters the damage, and landing in water over your head cushions the damage entirely. The highest rocket jump will take off 5 health when you land.
Drowning damage is related to time under water. Drowning damage is not absorbed at all by one’s armor.
| Seconds | Damage | Total Damage |
| 11 | 0 | 0 |
| 12 | 4 | 4 |
| 13 | 6 | 10 |
| 14 | 8 | 18 |
| 15 | 10 | 28 |
| 16 | 12 | 40 |
| 17 | 14 | 54 |
| 18 | 15 | 69 |
| 19 | 15 | 84 |
| 20 | all are 15 afterward | 99 |
The battle suit power up has several properties. It prevents all forms of splash damage. It prevents all damage from falling, acid, lava, and drowning. Under water the seconds don’t start counting until after the suit has worn off so don’t worry about drowning until well after the suit has worn off.
The regeneration power up gives you either 15 or 5 health per second for 30 seconds. If you have less than 100 health, it will add 15 health per second. If you have more than 100 health, it will add 5 health per second.
Be aware of the wind sound when items spawn. All items make the same sound when they spawn. It sounds like quickly swinging something through the air for just an instant. It is very quiet, but it lets you turn your back on items and still know exactly when they spawn.
| Item spawn times in seconds: | |
| All weapons | 5 normally; 30 in team dm; 15 on pro- maps |
| All armors and armor shards | 25 |
| All healths | 35 |
| All ammo boxes | 40 |
| All holdable power ups | 60 |
| All major power ups | 120 |
All times may be overridden by each map author, but there are very few maps with altered item spawn times. Times can even be set to random by a map author. The initial major power up spawn time is random sometime in between 30-60 seconds. If playing against someone who is very good, your best opportunity is to get the first quad. Now that you know the battlefield you can learn the fundamental strategic concepts.
This vocabulary is intended to be light-hearted yet useful. The terms work like short hand so you can communicate with your friends quickly during a game or elsewhere without having to type a lot. They are perfect for someone writing commentary of important matches for websites. This list meant to be include names for all the main elements of strategy in Quake. If you’re concerned about these ideas while you play, you know you’re on the right track.
Aggressor’s advantage- fighting someone before they are ready to fight you. The advantage is also having more than 100 health and 100 armor because you haven’t waited for it to count down. This can be the advantage of surprise as well.
Aiming ahead of someone- aiming where you expect them to be (usually with the rail gun) and for consistency not moving your mouse and just clicking when they walk into your crosshair. This is not shooting ahead of them. It has nothing to do with leading or accounting for ping. This technique is not only for long range sniping! It is as useful at the closest ranges as it is from far away!
Ambushing- waiting quietly behind a corner for someone to come past the corner. You sacrifice item control for a little while to possibly get a surprise shot at an opponent’s back. In 1on1 this can slow the pace of the game down considerably if your opponent finds out you like to ambush.
The bait & switch- switching weapons to a machine gun, a gauntlet, an empty weapon, or a weapon the opponent has little use for right before being fragged. This is very hard to do since you have to leave enough time to get the next weapon out completely before dying. This is most useful in team death match, followed by 1 on 1, followed by FFA. It’s most easily done when you find yourself trapped behind a corner with very little health. This skill takes a long time to get good at, since not timing it right has some bad consequences.
Baiting- letting someone have the item so you can hit them when they get it. This is deliberately choosing to not pick up the item when you can and waiting for them to come and get it.
Battle aka engagement- a close contact where there is a lot of quick interaction between 2 or more players. Close contact is considered roughly within range of the lightning gun.
Being stacked- having nearly 200 health and nearly 200 armor. Stacked also refers to having nearly 100 health and 200 armor on maps that don't have a mega health.
Blocking- when you hear an enemy about to kill another person you can get in between them. This is done in BOTH team play mode and FFA mode. In FFA mode, it's done when you need kills badly and have a lot of health. If it is hard to find people to kill, you will find yourself needing to do this a lot. This blocks shots with your body, diverts the players attention onto you, and screen the two players from each other. Now you have the chance to get both kills if you have enough life and good weapons.
Bounce lead- aim rockets or grenades to miss intentionally a little to an opponent’s left or right so their aim is stunned in the opposite direction. This is done when you don't know exactly where they will be so you need to stun them quick to save your health and then go for more damage on the your next shot. It’s a shot you let off very quickly and don’t worry if it hits far from them because you know it will jolt their view anyway. Bounce leads are usually done when an opponent drops down on top of you and you don’t know which side of you they’re going to fall off onto. They are also done frequently in rocket versus rocket battles when you have been “out-synced.”
Butting heads- The battle that ensues when two people meet at one of the most valuable items on the map. This usually happens 1 to 5 seconds before the item spawns.
Catapulting- when a teammate shoots another teammate in the back to speed them up. This is only done when friendly fire is off.
Cess- concentrating on aiming the machine gun since it is the only weapon you have. The added concentration on aiming the machine gun makes it an effective weapon. This term is used mostly in team play when 2 or 3 people on the same team rush a single room with only machine guns. The term is also used when someone is reverse spawn fragged.
Cleaning up- switching to a weapon that is more reliable at taking off a little bit of health in order to take off just a little bit of health. The lightning gun is the best one of these. The rail gun is the worst one of these. The shotgun and machine gun are also popular clean up weapons.
Clogging their gun- when an opponent has a rocket launcher, grenade launcher, or BFG sacrificing yourself so when they shoot you they'll either have to take splash damage or have to switch to a less effective weapon. This is simply entails getting as close as you can to them.
Corner lead- shoot to one side of a person several times so that they will have to dodge in the opposite direction and corner themselves or be forced to eat the shots. For their best interest they should have eaten a shot instead. A more general term for this is herding.
Crossing the streams- two or more people shooting someone with the lightning gun just like in Ghostbusters.
Crucifying- holding the fire button down before the next rail shot is available to be shot and hitting the shot. This is done to get off the shot as soon as possible, saving every millisecond. This can be done in 3 circumstances: 1) right after a previous rail shot and the gun is reloading, 2) while switching weapons to the rail gun, or 3) before stepping on more rail slugs when you were out of them.
Dancing aka hanging around- staying in a battle for one of two reasons even though you will not win the battle in terms of damage inflicted. 1) wasting their ammo or 2) wasting their time so you can re-spawn and have some items to pick up or so that you can flee and get to an item that you are closer to when it spawns soon.
Denial- shooting yourself with splash damage so you can pick up more shards or healths to keep them from your opponent(s). This is actually a very good tactic to use most of the time.
Dogfight- a battle between two people while both are airborne.
Disabling- 99 percent exclusive to CTF mode, this is only taking some damage off an opponent and letting them proceed (into your own base 90 percent of the time). This way you don’t waste your time, ammo, and armor on killing them since you know they are not a threat. You get to continue onward with your own task.
Drawing a line on someone- the lightning gun never leaves the person. Especially on someone in the air. You’ll see a nice continuous line of red blood on them and they’ll lose a hell of a lot of health. This is a major complement to give someone. It takes incredible aim to do this.
Faking distraction- hurting yourself in FFA so someone will come closer to attack you. Done with plasma gun, rocket launcher, or grenade launcher. You can also miss shots as well to sound like being in a battle with someone else. The point is to sound occupied with someone else.
Far lead- aiming a rocket so as to bring an opponent closer to you or to bring them in past a narrow point on the map.
Firing blind- looking around a corner or below a ledge a second time and firing instantly at a place on the map without looking to see if they are where you are aiming or not. They may be completely gone, but you believe the benefits outweigh the costs. One thing that can be done to make this shot more reliable is to not move the mouse at all in between the first and second looks. Only the feet need to be moved sometimes.
Flick shot- hitting a rail or shotgun shot whereby you move your mouse from one place to their body instantly firing in the same motion.
Footwork aiming- using footwork to increase aiming accuracy. Works with any weapon but especially the rail and lightning gun. For rail and shotgun it adds consistency but decreases response time. For lightning gun, machine gun, and plasma gun it is different than for the other weapons. The way it works for these three weapons is you try to move in the same direction as the opponent is moving (left or right only). You assume they are moving circularly to you (perpendicular to the direction you would be aiming if you were pointing exactly at them) since this is the most common dodge tactic (called circle strafing). This allows your velocities to be identical and if you ARE aiming at them exactly, every shot hits its target one after the next in very rapid succession. This is so successful because it turns the tide of the battle more quickly than the loser can predict so they can't change to evasive tactics in time to save themselves. You’ll be missing entirely before your feet get your crosshair to the place you want to be aiming but as soon as you get there and walk in the correct direction they get hit with every lightning or plasma ammo in a row. That’s what turns the tide so quickly. That’s not the only advantage of this aiming though. It is also more accurate than not using your feet to aim. Normal aim works on a steadier, more average pace for lack of a better expression. If you only need to take off a very tiny bit of health, just move your crosshair all around them.
Forcing the issue aka pressuring someone- making a person rise to the occasion at your discretion. Trying to win by choosing the EXACT time of a key battle. This is the "aggressor's advantage." In games where there are many possible outcomes during the match that take effort to predict, the aggressor's advantage is best.
It has become popular to continuously force the issue for an entire match to tire out an opponent. Regulation matches are always 15 or 20 minutes. That’s a long time to maintain intense concentration so some people try to pack as much action into the match as they can. This tactic is done by people who think they are the better player and don’t want the match to be a lucky upset.
Giving stilts- a double air rail from below with the first one contributing to the opponent’s hang time.
Glancing- using the edge of your field of view to look instead of moving your mouse more and disrupting your frame of reference for aiming.
Going kamikaze- being reckless due to having to claw your way back from a deficit in a short time. Sometimes one or more of your lives have to be sacrificed in order to create an opportunity for you to tie the game. Going kamikaze can be attacking so as to distract or hurt an enemy and being willing to die to do it. This is almost entirely done in CTF. But is also done in team death match to get quad and die so the other team can’t use it.
Grenade jab- using the grenade launcher instead of rocket spam in order to save on rockets. This is usually done when the opponent is expecting you to fire another rocket.
Hider's advantage- choosing the place of a key battle but not the time. The opponent doesn't have much certainty about where to find you. The hider relies on already having planned out their own actions in detail and well into the future. The aggressor can’t plan to such an extent since the location of the battle is not definite.
Hot potato- a direct grenade hit.
Keeping the upper hand- playing more defensively and not taking risks in order to use the pressure of having the lead in a match. This is not stalling, but is close. The difference in scores is typically small. Keeping the upper hand takes on added meaning in 1 on 1 play. It can be staying at one part of a map that has armor and ammo and not leaving; just defending when other valuable items aren’t spawning. If keeping the upper hand works for more than about a couple minutes, the map is considered stallable and therefore a poor choice for competitive matches.
Land mines- grenades laid where someone may teleport to.
Life- health and armor combined, except the armor that would be left on someone if they died. If you have 25 health and 125 armor, you don’t have 225 life. Instead you have 75 life because you’ll die with 50 armor left over.
Making someone dance- firing toward someone to disrupt their aim even though you know you probably won't hit a significant amount of the shots fired. It’s one thing to have to dodge and aim at the same time. It’s even harder though to have to dodge things that are already coming at you and aim at the same time.
Matrix dodging aka sucking in your gut- turning to face projectiles as they barely miss you to the left or right. This moves a corner of your hit box away from the shot. This tactic takes advantage of the cubic shape of your hit box. It is a rare spectacle.
Momentum jump- a strafe jump with extra velocity since it was done while hitting the ground after a fall.
Mugging- waiting around a corner with the gauntlet ready. This is usually done while fleeing from an opponent.
Near lead- aiming a rocket so as to bounce someone away from you.
Pacing one’s self- not forcing yourself to make difficult plays in quick succession. 1) Resting in between so that you can retain/regain your composure, or 2) Giving yourself time to preview by visualizing what winning the next battle will entail. This way you have a plan and maybe a contingency plan, and your opponent may not have had the time to prepare for the battle. Rest times may vary between 1 second and several minutes in the most extreme case. The median rest time is about 10 seconds. The time is lowest in FFA, higher in team play, highest in 1 on 1. With fewer people the time is higher. Pacing comes into play when you are exerting yourself absolutely as much as possible.
Patriot missile- a direct rocket hit on an airborne opponent.
Patriot potato- a direct grenade hit on an airborne opponent.
Peon- a person who just spawned. They are obviously weak and an easy frag to score. Peons are weaker in team play mode since the machine gun damage is reduced from seven to five.
Plasma climb- climbing walls with the plasma gun. It’s done by facing a wall and getting up against it. Then aiming down at where the wall meets the floor. If you press and hold the fire button down when you jump you’ll gradually climb the wall.
Playing possum- voluntarily taking some of the splash damage from an opponent’s spam rockets and grenades so that your opponent will think you have less life than you do and decide to attack you. The trick is to just barely get within the splash radius of these weapons so you only take about 5 health off. If they don’t see how far away you were when the shot explodes they will usually assume it hit closer to you than it really did.
Pre-spawn raping- firing at vacant spawn points in case someone spawns there.
Reactor's advantage- choosing the place of a key battle but not the time. Awareness must somehow remain heightened and fatigue dealt with. The opponent knows where you are. In games that are slower than Quake there is no disadvantage to being a reactor. The only challenge is to be calm and aware before every match.
Recon shot- a spam shot done to see if someone is there. The beep lets you know if they are there. These are most often long shots that you don’t watch and don’t even stay around for.
Reverse lead- to shoot where someone will be if they reverse their velocity. It's a counter move of a counter move. You look like a real dummy when you use this on someone who is playing Quake for the first time and never even thinks to dodge because then you completely miss. At long range you can clearly see when someone tries this tactic.
Reverse spawn frag- when a person frags another but doesn’t have much life left over there’s a chance for the loser of the battle to reverse spawn frag the winner. It’s completely random luck. The irony is that if the loser of the first battle kills the winner the lucky loser now has a head start on getting items. Reverse spawn frags are pretty rare, but the influence a peon has when he re-spawns after a close battle is not as rare. The person who got the frag first may have to give up control of the map in order to get health/armor even if he isn’t reverse spawn fragged. This is good reason for map authors to make spawn points that are all poor. Most battles occur near valuable items. Put the spawn points away from those items and there won’t be as many reverse spawn frags. Reverse spawn frags can really make people mad. They are frustrating and just plain wrong. But the first battle actually was close and the winner does have a better weapon so they can probably put some damage on the peon. Reverse spawn frags are more of an issue in 1 on 1 games, although they do matter in team death match and CTF as well. In 1 on 1 more attention paid to them will prevent a lot of them. In FFA they aren’t much of an issue because two people trading a kill both ways is still more productive than not scoring any frags at all in that time period. In crowded FFA games, people are always spawning near you anyways.
Road blocks- spam that is to block a passageway from being traversed.
Rocket running- rocket jumping at a low angle to the ground to gain speed not height. This is usually done with the battle suit on when you have rockets to spare.
Scanning- rushing into a room that has more than a screen’s worth of places where an opponent could be. The perfect example of this is coming out of a teleporter. A very quick look around the room is necessary. There are several ways to scan depending on the situation. You can do a quick flick to aim at the exact place where you think the opponent probably is. You can do a flick all the way to the right or left extreme where he could be to check the side you think they probably are. Follow this with a slide of your aim around to the other side. It’s tougher when you teleport into a room where someone could be anywhere around you, 360 degrees. Some people scan left then slide around to their right and then check their back third. Another option is to delay a millisecond and aim at the first sound you hear. People don’t scan only left or only right for a complete 360 degrees, since the sound of someone will be heard before a full 360 degrees can be looked at. You can note someone’s scanning pattern and adjust to it later in the game. Don’t rely on taking advantage of someone’s scanning pattern and don’t put much energy into it since it doesn’t always pay off. Just try to note it a few times in a row, and if they get really predictable with it, take advantage of it.
Scattering- rocket jumping to evade being hit. This is best done to get over the opponent’s head, to get behind an object quickly, or as a rocket run.
Screening- using the plasma gun, lightning gun, rocket launcher, or any other weapon more to reduce the opponents vision than to inflict damage.
Slash shooting- hitting a shotgun or rail shot whereby you move your mouse from one place to a place past their body in one motion and firing in between. It is sort of like a baseball swing.
Sneaker's advantage- walking instead of running when rounding corners that the opponent may be around so that you retain full aggressor's advantage. The difference is the lack of footstep sounds.
Spam- a general guess shot at an opponent that you can't see or just throwing extra ammo into high traffic areas of a map. People may be there or not, but the shooter doesn’t know. It's not aimed so much at people but at a place on the map.
Spawn raping- fragging a player who never had time to have any effect on the game in their short lifespan. Spawn raping is also a long-term strategy that is characterized by going to certain places on the map that are near many spawn points.
Splash damage- damage taken from a rocket, grenade, BFG round, or even a plasma ball when not directly contacted by the projectile.
Squaring off- facing someone during a battle to make yourself a smaller target. There are very few instances when matrix dodging is preferred over squaring off. This tactic takes advantage of the cubic shape of your hit box.
Stalling- wasting time when you have the lead. There are very complicated stalling techniques for each map and various situations on each map. Near the end of close matches, this is done frequently in 1 on 1 and occasionally done in team death match but never done in FFA. The most extreme form of stalling is not re-spawning until the game automatically forces you to. The default value for g_forcerespawn is 20 seconds. This value is commonly lessened in tournaments and leagues.
Standing someone up- intentionally waiting next to a spawned valuable item instead of picking it up so that you can pick it up later than your opponent thinks you will. This is done when the opponent is too far away to hear when you pick the item up. If your opponent tries to get the item next time around, they will have to wait at the item for the extra time that you delayed. This can give you time to spam grenades at them or walk to set up an ambush around a corner. They are pretty much in the hot seat while they are waiting for that item to spawn. You’ll be able to try to hit them with more shots while they dodge around the place where the item spawns.
Stealing frag(s)- in FFA mode, choosing to get into the battle only after the battle has already started between other people.
Stick & move- shoot a little and break off contact to go a different route without waiting at the place you shot them at all. They don't know if you stayed or left.
Suckering- using a less appropriate weapon to get the opponent to come to you. Maybe they don't know you have a better weapon. Maybe they know but don't think you can switch weapons fast enough.
Sucker punching- waiting on the outside of a teleporter with your gauntlet on. The opponent has absolutely no way to avoid the hit if he goes through.
Swerving- battling up close with an opponent and suddenly side-stepping to their left or right and then instantly shooting. This let’s you dodge an opponent and make him a bigger target since they aren’t pointing directly at you. This tactic takes advantage of the right angles on an opponent’s hit box.
Syncing items- delaying getting an item to sync it with the next spawn times of other items. Example: you don’t want to “rocket run” from one armor to another armor because you’ll have to “rocket run” the next time too. Another example: delaying an important item so it will spawn at the same time as another important item so your opponent will be forced to choose between which one he wants to get next time they spawn. This is a way to “keep the upper hand.” This latter example is called “un-syncing items” (even though you are actually giving the items the same future spawn time).
Syncing shots- timing your shots so that they are immediately before your opponent will shoot so they either miss their shot or have to delay their shot. Syncing shots can cause them to miss either because of the explosion moving their character perpendicular to the direction they are aiming (like a bounce lead does) or because of the artificial movement of their view programmed into Quake 3 when they are hit. The artificial movement portion doesn't actually move where they are really aiming but does move their crosshair and whole view. Good players deliberately ignore this artificial movement when they can foresee you are employing this tactic. They’ll shoot despite where their crosshair appears to be pointing. Syncing shots dramatically increases the chances of winning seemingly equal battles especially when the syncing person is using the rocket launcher. People who aren't experts don't know how you can win so many battles in a row and tend to complain that they are off their game when you do this to them a lot. This tactic is one of the major things that helps Quake continue to be a fun game and preserves Quake's uniqueness with respect to other games. Syncing shots deals both with reload times of weapons and with weapon switching times. Syncing not only deals with jolting the aim of the person but jolting their body's position so their aim is off target. For example, if you rail someone right before they shoot a rocket at your feet, their rocket will land in front of you by a little bit. The synchronizing has saved you some damage. On an extended note, the splash damage will move you away from your opponent making your rail gun a more appropriate weapon for the battle.
Tilting your head- turning your view horizontally solely for the purpose of hearing which side of you a person is on. This amplifies the difference of the stereo sound in your headphones. A special case is when someone is either directly behind you or in front of you. The sound is exactly the same so you must tilt your head to determine which side of you they are on.
Time giver- spam that an opponent will hear and have to refrain from coming through a narrow place on the map. This is usually done more to slow someone down rather than to stop them entirely.
Throw lead- aim rockets or grenades to miss intentionally a little bit so an opponent falls over a ledge.
Trading places- picking a fight when you probably will lose in terms of damage in order to flee toward a valuable item that will spawn soon. If you damage them more than you get hurt or even kill them that’s a bonus.
Tripping- finishing someone off with a rocket when they are so close they could clog your gun. This is a difficult technique that involves shooting to either side of them and a little bit behind them so that you don’t explode your rocket too close to you (or on their body which is too close to you). This is only done when they have very little life left. This is a risky maneuver, and it can really backfire on you if you miss. Remember that self splash damage is halved so your rocket can take off a maximum of 50 life from you.
Turtle- shoot a little and break off contact as if to go a different route but stay just out of view. The opponent doesn’t know if you stayed or left. One or two jumps can add to their indecision. Either that or some footstep sounds may help.
Using dominant position- picking to fight when the geometry of the map favors you. THIS DEPENDS ON THE WEAPON YOU AND YOUR OPPONENT HAVE SELECTED and even on the other weapons you and your opponent have in your arsenals as well. Your position is dominant typically when you have the higher ground, but this is the simplest case. If you have the machine gun and the other person has the lightning gun, you have dominant position when far away. Playing Rocket Arena really makes you good at using dominant position and knowing what positions are more dominant. This is one of the most complicated things in Quake.
Wall pin- aiming a rocket so as to bounce an opponent into a wall where they can't dodge in as many directions and you have a wall to splash damage them if you miss their body directly on the next shot.
Winning the station game- varying your location in rooms and near the outsides of teleporters. Rooms and the outside ends of teleporters I call stations. You don’t want to be found on the same side of the teleporter every time someone sees you. The goal is to locate yourself as randomly as possible. But also to pick where they won’t think you are. At the same time you must remember that going to a different position than last time they saw you at that station has an advantage: they haven’t responded to you in that place before so they will be less accurate because that response is not as “warmed up” for them. Scanning versus stationing is like a miniature game within Quake.
The top 10 reasons most people aren’t playing as well as they can:
I purposely did not put “10. Not having good reflexes.” on the list. The quick reflexes come after playing for a while. There’s nothing these people are doing wrong except not playing enough the past few days. So now Quake seems really basic and all you have to do is make sure you do these nine things correctly and you’ll improve dramatically. Well you’ll improve dramatically, but Quake 3 isn’t as simple as a game of playground tag.
Warming up and being as warm as your opponents is of absolute importance. You must be as familiar with the map as your opponents are. Every time you enter a game remember that everyone else has the advantage because they are familiar with the map and all it’s angles. They’re reflexes are going to beat yours at first until you get used to the map again. They know that some armors aren’t going to spawn for a while because they just heard them get taken, etc. This usually takes me a full 5 minutes. It can take longer but usually doesn’t take less. You can’t let yourself get hurried by anyone beating you. You can’t let yourself get angry by someone beating you. I lose the first few minutes of nearly every game I play. Don’t fight it; just let it go. The next map will be fairer for you. The less you play per week the longer it will take to warm up. It may take as long as 25 minutes.
Know all the spawn points of players on the maps. These are very important. In Half Life I had a single key bound to kill myself, then look down, then spray a decal. I would just press it multiple times until all the spawn points had decals on them. This let me walk around and see where all of them were. Spawn points don’t only have a location they also have a direction. Keep this direction in mind as well. The benefits of being very very familiar with all the spawn points are very important.
Ducking is immediate and takes no time to do and undo. It can be used momentarily to make your self absorb less shotgun pellets. It’s tough to time well enough to be useful though. Even once you’re good at it, it must be used very sparingly to not be predictable to an opponent.
Keep these possibilities on the top of your memory while you use a corner or an opponent plays from around a corner:
These six possibilities seem very, very basic. They are. You already knew all of them. The reason I put them in here is that if you pay attention to what your opponent does each time you fight them around a corner, you’ll be able to predict them very well. Also if you are able to keep track of your own actions around corners, you can mix them up to seem more unpredictable to an opponent.
Picture your opponent’s perspective. Remember what you thought the odds of hitting someone in your position from theirs was when you were there. Think of how you look as a target. How easy are you to hit with the weapons they are trying to use? It’s like being able to glance over at someone else’s screen while playing them. Play the odds.
Remembering how different opponents play is helpful. The things to remember are: dodging patterns they've used, accuracies with different weapons, how good they are at certain key shots, what weapons they like to use more, how fast they are at switching weapons, which of them are playing the best, etc. Most other things about them aren't important. Taking extra considerations into mind will have you playing their style of Quake and therefore losing. You need to keep your mind on your own goals so you don't forget how you plan to win. Concentrate too much on figuring them out and you'll lose.
Know what time quad will run out so you can stop retreating at that instant. Just add the 30 seconds to your timer when you hear someone pick it up. Once you play more you can even get good at adding seconds to that time when someone dies with quad and it’s laying there on the ground. The more precise you time it the better. All this seems so trivial to some people. Why go all out and try to be so competitive at a game? Are all these tiny tedious things worth it? Don’t they make the game less enjoyable? You don’t have to do it to be competitive and win all the time. Knowing when certain events are going to happen enhances the fun of the game. For example, knowing exactly when someone’s quad is going to run out while watching them fight someone else, let’s you do some crazy stuff.
It’s all about prediction. I’m not just saying this because I’ve heard it before. I’m saying this because I’ve experienced how important it is to winning games. People don’t realize how much you can predict. Most of that is due to people not realizing that prediction doesn’t always have to be a certainty. And a lot of it is also due to people not realizing that prediction isn’t always arriving at one answer. If you can just narrow down some of the possibilities, then you’ve gotten better.
You must think longer and longer in advance to time items well and truly play Quake. This may be what Thresh's (the most dominant Quake 1 and 2 player) trademark was. What details can you fill in? Will you have enough health to make an attempt at the mega health the next time it spawns? The sooner you answer these questions the better prepared you will be. Think about how much damage you will have to absorb yourself to kill someone. Think about how much damage you can give and still achieve the win of the match. Think about which items you will be able to pick up while you flee from an enemy. Test yourself, try to predict exactly when someone will die so you don’t waste ammo and time. The best Quake players predict these things better than their competition.
Long-term Strategy for Each Game Type
FFA:
The starting game: This is a mad rush for a weapon. If the game has few players, you may choose to get an armor or other valuable item before getting a weapon. The starting game in FFA is shortest when there are a lot of players in the game. It can even be as short as five seconds.
The middle game: Your aim is going f***ing wild, shooting people one right after the other in rapid succession. Too many people; only one crosshair. If there are more than about 8 people in the map, you may have to resort to just controlling the weapon closest to where you spawn. This can get very repetitious. I recommend servers use a player limit of about seven depending on how large the map is and how many items it has on it. If the map is crowded, hopefully you will be able to get 2 or 3 kills before you die each time. And hopefully you will chase a few people away from the weapon thus delaying them from getting frags. Check who the top few players are as the match progresses. Don’t give them any breaks.
The end game: This begins when the leader is slowing down and saving his energy for future games. To slow down properly emphasize item control over rapid frags. Let more people flee and don’t die for frags. If you can get valuable items on the map, you’re preventing other people from going on big streaks. Only do this if you have a very large lead.
1 on 1:
The starting game: Finding out where your opponent spawned is the highest priority at first. Go through your pre-planned route corresponding to your spawn point and your opponent’s spawn point. You want to have a plan for this part of the game depending on where both of you spawn. The starting game ends when all the valuable items on the map are taken once and you both have the most useful items for that map. The starting game can also end when all the valuable items are taken once and someone has gotten a kill. Keep your eyes open most at the start of the game. You may be able to gain a lot of leverage against even the best players at this time.
The middle game: This is where you both are put to the test. Work some magic.
The end game: This is defined by when stalling begins. This can happen as early as 5 minutes left in the game on certain stallable maps. Stalling patterns can be very complicated. It can include being chased in an endless loop. It can include waiting on one side of a teleporter until the opponent comes. It can include ambushing. It almost always includes waiting as long as possible to re-spawn after being killed.
Team Deathmatch:
The starting game: The starting game is hard to define in team play. It’s mostly a scramble when no one knows where their teammates or their opponents are. It’s very random.
The middle game: This is when everybody is concentrated and working hard. Usually the team who gets quad the most times wins. The ultimate battle in Quake occurs when quad spawns in team death match.
The end game: This is also defined by the beginning of stalling. This comes much later in team play than other modes of play. Usually there is no stalling unless the score is very close with only one minute left in play. Stalling in team death match is different from stalling in 1 on 1. Stalling in team death match almost always includes all the team members gathering together at a defensible place on the map.
CTF:
The starting game: Usually players spawn in their own base, but it depends on the map. Either a team will try a quick attack on the opponent’s flag or try to get a get power up first.
The middle game: CTF has different goals and sub-goals than other game types. In CTF the ultimate goal is to capture, but a side goal is to control the power ups. Things like blocking for teammates and save items for teammates can have more organization in CTF. It's very complex.
The end game: This begins when one team has a lead and starts to play extra defense. Some teams like to keep the pressure on with their offense as a good defense so they may do this instead no matter if they lead by a little or a lot.
A sport like college wrestling or baseball or any other real life sport is a thousand times more complex than Quake as a sport but Quake does have the glory of having a very equal playing field -- physiological limitations are taken out of the equation that finds the winner. Only mental differences remain. This is better because mental differences are "closer" to our identities than physical differences are. In virtual sports, effort plays a bigger role in deciding the winners. However in traditional sporting events, thought plays only a portion of the role.
Quake is different than a game like chess though. Statistics and memory are not used as much to win. But rather the current state of mind during intense short periods is tested (a 15 minute game in a tournament or an important battle in a game). Of course this is all very arguable, but nonetheless it gives Quake a bit more respect than it currently gets as a kids’ video game.
All these strategies merge together the more you play. Go through periods of trying too hard alternating with periods of not caring at all. Go through periods of trying so hard that it makes you lose games because you focused to much on one thing. Then go through games lazily just typing to people about whatever you want. Some time if you’re lucky you’ll get in a situation where you want to beat someone and then play aggressively and calmly at the same time. I thought Quake was really cool when I first got it, but knowing more about it has only added to my amazement and enjoyment of it. As you’ll see, even aiming well merges seamlessly with strategy.
To Get Great Aim
Before improving your aiming skills, there are some concrete things you can easily change. First of all, you don’t want a mouse that has dirty rollers inside. Second of all, you don’t want a mouse pad that is rough or sticky. It’s hard to tell if the mouse pad you’ve gotten used to is too rough or sticky. To test it just put a finger on only one side of the mouse and try to push it the tiniest amount possible. If it takes a hard push to get it going then you need a new mouse pad. If the mouse tends to skip a few millimeters and go farther than you want it to go, you need a new mouse pad. Plastic mouse pads have this trait the worst. Getting a smooth mouse pad can relieve a lot of headaches. Thirdly, the teflon mouse feet can become rough after a lot of use. Once they are rough they act just as bad as a sticky mouse pad. The mouse needs to feel like it is sliding on ice. It’s worth trading your old mouse to a friend for a newer one. Fatal1ty and Thresh, unarguably the best Quake players ever, buy new mice for every single tournament they enter so the feet will be smooth again. Lastly, there is a program that will increase the rate at which your mouse communicates with your computer. PS2Rate Plus will make your view smoother when you move your mouse. You can even notice the effect on your cursor in Windows. If you have a USB mouse your rate is not adjustable. The default rate for a USB port mouse is 100 or 135. Either of which is plenty. If you want to get more out of a USB port mouse you can use a cheap plug that converts the USB plug to fit into a PS2 port. I’ve used this program since before Quake 3 came out, and I am positive that unless you have a USB port mouse you need this program. www.tweakfiles.com/misc/ps2rateplus.html Now you can start on the mental side of aiming.
Footwork aiming is much more reliable than aiming purely with the mouse. Footwork aiming complements aiming with the mouse. It is done when you aim very close but not quite on the person. That’s when you engage footwork aiming. This is something that I didn’t believe in until I saw other people doing it on a LAN in Quake 2 beating me down unmercifully. I now know it’s worthwhile to give up some of the dodging your feet give you in order to help your mouse aim a little.
Aiming before you round a few certain corners of a map is a skill to develop. This is not keeping your aim on someone as if you can see them through the wall with a wall hack. This is aiming so that when you move your feet sideways around the corner, THEN you will then be pointing at them. This simply requires memorization of what the map looks like. This is like firing blind except you don’t even look the first time, you already have memorized the place(s) that people usually are, in the upcoming room. This kind of aiming is useful in just a few places on each map.
Slash aiming is like moving your mouse through an opponent and clicking on him when he passes your crosshair. It works a lot like “aiming ahead of someone,” only it’s harder since the velocity of the crosshair moving is added to the opponent’s velocity. I will have to explain this better when I figure out how to. It looks like you’re using some sort of aim bot when you do it. It’s like it works because you don’t have to think about when to stop your hand on the opponent, you only have to think about when to click on him.
In flick shooting, the aiming and the shooting is the same step. Flick shooting is a dangerous thing. Computers, mice, and especially the internet aren’t reliable enough to make the best flick shooter in the world the best Quake player. Even on a LAN the best players having their best games have only hit about 60% of their rail shots (against similarly skilled competition). The simplest way to rail is to flick rail. It is the heart of aiming. If someone is good at flick railing, they are usually good aimers with any weapon (unless they try flick shots too often). It takes the most concentration of any type of aiming despite its simplicity. What can help is to know your “reliable flick rail radius” for a given game. How big of a flick can you make to reliably rail someone? This lets you know how warmed up you are on a given day. Flick rails can be greater than 90 degrees! The person doesn’t have to be in your field of view to flick rail them. Sometimes if you can limit the range of choices behind you enough (for instance knowing someone is in a narrow doorway behind you) you can flick rail 160 degrees without being lucky. Having a lot of frames per second matters tremendously when flick railing.
Raise your crosshair after every fired rocket to have a better chance at hitting the opponent in mid-air on the following shot. The closer your rocket gets to their feet, the more you can assume about their bounce trajectory and the more accurately you can move your crosshair into position.
The assumption that people will dodge an entire body length or maybe just dodge a significant amount helps you aim a lot. People tend to dodge enough to get their body out of the way of a shot directed right at them whether there is a shot coming at them or not. I guess that’s half a body-length if they assume the shot is headed exactly at their center, but my point is: people don’t usually dodge a tiny amount left or right. It would be insignificant. It’s only done for faking. If you don’t think they are going to fake you, then you can wait for them to just start to move in a direction and then assume they’ll keep going in that direction. For the rail gun, since it’s such as damaging weapon per hit, you can wait until you're ready for them to change directions and rail them when you're ready. This whole case of assuming they’ll continue moving extends to an important case: jumping. When someone jumps it’s much easier to hit them. When you’ve played a lot the past few days and your reactions are on, you can hit them almost every time they jump just before they land. They just can’t change direction enough in mid-air.
This next paragraph covers some difficult ideas to describe. These are some rather intimate ideas on a way to “short-cut aiming” for lack of a better description. Aiming is about the range of where your opponent could be and how it corresponds to your aiming angle. This is range as in vertical and horizontal range, not the distance an opponent is away from you. You've got to restrict (in your mind) the range of possible places a player can be at a given moment. This allows you to aim in that area before you round the corner. You should mentally map that area onto the mouse pad so your fingers can adjust minutely only in that range. Doorways are ranges. Hallway widths are ranges. A half-second radius around an armor is a range. Etc. See the picture of something happening in your head before you actually get to see it. This lets you narrow the range, think of which are most probable, and plan farther into the future. When you hear a jump pad, SEE the player’s height off of it as they soar even though they are behind a wall. This lets you round the corner and shoot instantly. You only have to glance at their horizontal position. You’ll find your crosshair is almost on them already. Turn corner, wrist flick, and they’re hit in a tenth of a second… throwing their aim off and even making them think of their backup plan more quickly than they thought they would have to. All this stuff really does pay off.
When you see someone it can be useful to automatically aim at them with the maximum lead required to hit them. The maximum lead would be the lead required to hit them if they were strafe jumping as fast as they can perpendicular to the direction you are facing. After that, move your crosshair toward them from there with a flick if the lead needs to be less by the time you get your crosshair in position. It’s aiming in two steps. You can do the first step before you round a corner if you are very familiar with that location of the map. You guess which location around a corner the opponent will be and slide your aim from there until your aim will hit them. I make it into two steps like that because you can get into a good rhythm that way. After the first step your aim is close enough to them to possibly flick shot if wanted and your aim is restricted along the line they are traveling in. Much of the time aiming should be like drawing in a paint program. Even aiming can be standardized and regulated so that you become very reliable and very clear-headed. You won’t have to wonder why you miss when you miss. Once you start seeing things clearly and plainly you can predict farther into the future. Sometimes you’ll be able to tell that your next rail is certainly going to hit and kill the opponent before you shoot it and will be able to think of what you’re going to do after the shot.
Where to aim for each weapon:
Gauntlet: anywhere, ducking before making contact is about the only special technique
Rail gun: neck
Shotgun: center of player
Machine gun: center of player
Plasma gun: neck
Lightning gun: neck
Rocket launcher: neck because if you aim at their center they will jump over it toward you and you will get shot while you reload. If they are too far away to be hit directly, aim for their feet. If you aim for their feet and they jump it in any direction the rocket will still land close enough to them to damage and jolt them.
Grenade launcher: neck
BFG: neck or feet, similar to the rocket launcher
I choose the neck and not the head in order to give you some room for error. You don’t ever want to aim over their head. If they start to jump, a neck shot is high enough to still hit them. I choose their center because those weapons have spread. We want most of the spread bullets to hit the target so we aim at their center. It actually takes a little more care to aim with the shotgun and machine gun rather than the rail gun and lightning gun because you have to jerk your aim up suddenly when they jump or some of the spread bullets will miss.
1) Play commentator of demos and matches. Make sure the players can't hear you. Don't type commentary because that's much too slow. Use the vocabulary words on my list to make it easier. Practicing this way will help you gain long-term strategy. It will help you know what strategies win matches. It will help your prediction of game events. It will help you keep track of everything happening in the map. It will give you a feel for the pace of Quake -- how many quads spawn per match, how many times someone will usually need to traverse a certain path per match, etc.
2) Just watch demos of the best players. Also, watching demos of yourself from someone else’s point of view helps a lot. If you think about how much time you’ve spent playing Quake, watching demos isn’t very time-consuming. You will need the OSP mod to view demos. If the players are invisible, the mod must be run first before playing the demo.
3) Run backwards through levels. Do your best not to get stuck on anything. Your main concern is how fast you can flee while shooting at the enemy. Can you pick up items without looking at them? Can you strafe jump sideways and backwards through the level? Can you stay far enough away from the walls to avoid some splash damage from them (without looking at the walls)?
4) Play in slow motion. You can adjust timescale to values less than one to lower the speed of the entire game. This lets you get better at being efficient in your movement and being calmer while you play. Maybe lowering it by one half would be a good start.
5) Play in god mode with bots and rockets. Bots don't react to you so it's a fantastic way to practice your rail aim. They aren't dodging you personally like real people do. They don’t take your playing style into consideration when they dodge like real people sometimes do. They aren't trying to fake you out; they are dodging in some pre-programmed way or a random way. Furthermore bots don't learn as you play them. Once you know their patterns, you can be sure of where they will be. Try to get your aim as certain as your knowledge of where they are is. Keep trying until you can hit them every time in certain situations, certain key shots. I have a file called wcpractice.cfg that I use. It binds keys to god mode, gives me tons of weapons and ammo with a key press, and has keys to give me power ups. It also adjusts the timescale (see number 4). There’s a map called q3arenax which is good for practicing aim. It’s pretty much just a flat floor.
6) “Practice starts”. Set the frag limit to one in 1on1 play or set the time limit to 1 minute in FFA or in team play. Every map has it’s own “start”. Being good at starts on one map doesn’t mean you’ll be good at starts on a different map. It’s pretty much only done a few days before a competition.
7) Practice common scenarios on the popular maps. You can play like it's horse and redo the same scenario back and forth seeing who can win each one more. A scenario is done to learn how to play a certain map better. Scenarios are usually practiced once more general lessons have been learned. It is usually done a few days before a competition.
8) Shoot the map. This is another low-stress way to improve your game. So many people get too nervous and shaky when playing Quake. This will help you get a sense for pacing yourself so you can build up the speed of your play as you feel more comfortable. Just run through the map collecting armors while picking points on the map to shoot. Note the difference between your shot and your intended target and move on.
9) Shadow play. It’s like shadow boxing. Play an empty map making sure to time the armors perfectly. Shoot at an invisible enemy along the way. Play whole matches this way.
10) When there’s a lull in the action in a match or before matches practice switching your crosshair from different targets back and forth instantly. The targets can be doorways that an enemy might come out of and you don't know which. It keeps your aim warmed up. Another way to keep your eyes active so you don’t get your aim cold is to move around from side to side or in small circles. It just moves your perspective around and keeps your screen changing so you don’t feel yourself starting to tire. Once you slow down you won’t be able to speed yourself back up in the right way. Once you sigh or think “hey now I bet I have enough of a lead to play defensively”, your aim and timing will be off. I’ve seen it happen to even the best players in tournaments a million times.
11) Play rail-only servers. This is probably the best way to improve your aim. I'd do this after you can comfortably rail bots on your own computer. Even after your rail aim is great, rail only servers are great to practice on every few days to keep your aim warmed up. Especially good for the day before a match you want to win.
12) Play less skilled players and play mostly in games with few players. You don’t get better when you are re-spawning frequently. You get better when you have many weapons in your arsenal to choose from. You get better when you get to pursue long battles. To do that you need other players that aren’t going to get the armors every time. You get better when you have time to relax and think about the parts of the game that aren’t immediately confronting you. If you want to learn the tactics of the great players then just watch demos of them. Good players will find you eventually, don’t torture yourself by thinking the more I play with them the more I’ll play like them.
As you can see, in most of these practice methods the emphasis is on what you are doing and not about adjusting to what an opponent is doing. Adjusting to an opponent should come after a whole lot of experience playing and shouldn’t be relied on. Once you get better than I am you may want to seek out servers that the top players play on. Once you’re that good, playing people who aren’t as good as you won’t help your game. You may want to start playing for the challenge of winning. But even if you become the best Quake 3 player, you’re still going to lack motivation for Quake 3 some days and will be beaten fairly. Quake 3 takes a lot of concentration and energy if you play to win. It’s alright not to play to win if that’s what you enjoy.
To change any setting in Quake 3 all you have to do is hit the `~ key which brings down what is called the console. The console will take up the entire top half of your screen. It’s a text-based interface that lets you either type in a command or change a variable. If you want to see what value a variable is set to without changing it simply type the name of the variable. It shows the current value and the default value. The console has a feature that lets you type the first letter few letters of any command or variable and automatically complete the command or variable’s name by hitting the TAB key. There are well over a hundred commands and variables so all of them are not listed. In fact most of them aren’t needed to be changed no matter how picky someone is – they were just made to ease the development of Quake 3 by the programmers. A slash must precede anything typed in the console. Slashes are not necessary in .cfg files however. The only other difference between the format of a .cfg file and the console is that the word “set” must precede any variable. Don’t name your permanent .cfg file config.cfg since that is a file that Quake 3 changes every time you run Quake. Some of these commands need to be followed by a name or numerical value.
ALT-ENTER- toggles window mode. Hold ALT and hit ENTER. ALT-TAB works with some video cards to minimize Quake 3.
PAGE UP- goes up one line in the console.
PAGE DOWN- goes down one line in the console.
CTRL-HOME- goes to the bottom of the console instantly.
CTRL-END- goes to the top of the console instantly.
UP- brings back the last entries you typed.
bind- this assigns an action to a key.
callvote fraglimit- changes the frag limit.
callvote g_gametype- 0 is FFA. 1 is 1on1 mode. 2 is single player tier mode. 3 is team death match. 4 is CTF.
callvote kick- kicks a player of your choice.
callvote map- changes map to a map that you choose.
callvote map_restart- restarts the map or restarts the timelimit, fraglimit, and scores for the map. This is great for starting a game fairly. By default people with faster computers get into the game before others, but this command will have everyone spawn in at the same time. Some changes don’t take effect until the map has been restarted (g_gametype for instance).
callvote nextmap- changes to the next map in the server’s map rotation list.
callvote timelimit- changes the time limit in minutes.
cg_drawgun - turn this off to get more frames per second and see more of your field of view. You can see the icon at the bottom of your screen to know which weapon you have selected so showing your weapon is not necessary.
cg_drawteamoverlay- this is a valuable command for team play. It doesn’t appear in any other mode of play except team death match and CTF. It give the location, health amount, armor amount, weapon being used, and amount of ammo for the weapon being used for every person on your team.
cg_drawtimer- this one is important for timing items. With this off it’s impossible to time items. You can also time a few other things with this like when a power up of an enemy will run out and exactly when a match is going to end.
cg_lagometer- This keeps a graph of your ping and your packet loss on screen. Can’t live without it.
exec- this is how you load a .cfg file. There is a limit to how long a .cfg file can be and still have Quake 3 read all the way to the end of it. To get around this problem you can exec a second .cfg file from inside the first one.
devmap- this enables cheat mode. It’s the alternative to the map command. If you load a map with this command you will be able to adjust things like timescale and do other things like enable moving thru walls and giving yourself items for free.
reconnect- typing this is faster than reconnecting to a server any other way.
record- enter the filename of a demo you want to record after this command. Recording demos reduces your frames per second a little bit so if you can, have a spectator record the demo through your point of view. You must set g_synchronousclients to 1 before recording and then set it back to zero immediately after starting the recording. This is a client variable. It doesn’t matter what the server has this set to.
sensitivity- keep it nice and low. If it’s too low, it’ll be obvious. I see 100 times more people with a sensitivity that is too high than too low.
timedemo- This is for testing how many frames per second you are getting. Some people just use the cg_drawfps command but it is not a reliable measure. Timedemo averages your frames from the cg_drawfps command over a long period of time for a standard demo. Either demo001 or demo002 are the two standard demos everyone uses to test their frames per second. If you get 70 frames per second or less, you seriously need to get a new computer. If you get under 100 frames per second, your computer is hurting your gameplay. The best computers and graphic cards nowadays get up to about 300 frames per second which is absolutely fantastic to see. Even when you’re up over 300 frames more is still better.
timescale- not only changes the speed of time on a server or single player game, it acts like slow motion and fast-forward while watching demos.
vid_restart- some video settings don’t take effect until you have done this command.
See my WhiteCloud.cfg file for more.
The professional gamer configuration:
Cash tournaments have been around since Quake 1. But since then the prize money has steadily gotten bigger. Nowadays there are tournaments giving away $100,000 per tournament. These are happening mostly in the US but also many in Europe and Asia. Some are even in Australia and South America. There is a community of players trying to become professionals. Over time they have found out the best setup for playing Quake 3 in competitions.
They all use the keyboard and mouse, never trackballs, never joysticks. Ninety-five percent use a low sensitivity at least for the lightning gun. They use r_picmip 5 to increase visibility. Using r_picmip 5 is kind of a dramatic measure. It takes all the aesthetic appeal out of Quake. I don’t recommend using it.
Why lower your video detail settings?
1) Less camouflage. It’ll be easier to recognize people.
2) More frames per second. This is the most important one. Not only will it be easier to see what’s going on, but you won’t have tiny pauses in action-packed battles.
3) Less clutter in between you and enemies. Weapons will create less screening effect.
Popular Team play Chat Binds
Quad carrier is dead.
I need the item.- If I need an item that is right next to them I will click my use item button quickly to let them know not to get it. This gives off an audible clicking sound.
Item available here!
Primary Yellow Armor, Secondary Yellow Armor, Red Armor, or Mega Health has just been taken.
Two or three enemies here!
Popular Capture the Flag Chat Binds
Incoming enemy via route 1, 2, 3, or 4 etc.
Enemy flag carrier is here!
Attacking location X now.
I'm about to die with the flag.
Opponent is about to die with the flag.
Base secure.
Base overrun.
Path X is safe.
Path X is not safe.
Other Popular Binds
kill- This works great for when you're falling to your death. Every second really does matter so hit kill and spawn back in as soon as possible. Even the most competitive players have not yet explored the full possibilities of using kill. It may be beneficial to kill yourself in 1on1 matches in certain situations. These situations would involve a lucky re-spawn close to a key item on the map.
quit- exits Quake instantly
vote yes
vote no
say Nice one
say Thanks
say gg
say :)
say Yes
say No
The official 1on1 maps: q3tourney2, q3dm6, q3dm13, cpm1a, ztn3tourney1, pro-q3tourney2, pro-q3tourney4, pro-q3dm6, pro-q3dm13
Q3tourney4 was discontinued as a competition map when the 1.27 patch took out splash damage through walls and floors. The patch made it into a highly campable map.
The official team death match maps: q3dm6, q3dm7, q3dm12, q3dm14, cpm4
The official FFA maps: q3dm7, q3dm12
The official CTF tournament maps: q3ctf1, q3ctf2, q3ctf3, dboxctf2a, q3wctf1, q3wctf2, q3wctf3, q3wcp1, q3wcp3, q3wcp4, q3wcp5, q3wcp6, q3wcp7, wnoise (almost all of these can be downloaded at www.threewave.com)
Why is it preferred to have team damage on? Having the ability to damage your own team members changes the way the game is played entirely. It reduces spam very much. It allows for more skill to develop. For people who don’t play for the love of competition team damage is best left off though. Especially on public servers where people don’t care as much about their teammates. With team damage left off the teammates get to hang around more closely to each other which is fun.
Why is quad not liked in 1on1? It puts too much emphasis on the time the quad spawns. The rest of the game isn't nearly as important. A four frag lead can be easy to get when you have quad and a four frag lead can be enough to stall for 10 minutes on some maps.
Why are no power ups liked in 1on1? The teleporter teleports you to a random location. The randomness is not desirable in competition. We want all that happens in the game to be able to be controlled by the players. They are too powerful for 1on1. People can stall for long periods in most 1on1 maps. So a lead in the beginning can mean a certain win depending on how stallable the map is.
Why is the BFG hated? It unbalances the game. It takes up way too much of the game. It is completely absent in all leagues, including Rocket Arena 3, CTF, team death match, free for all, and 1on1.
Why didn’t the Team Arena expansion disk catch on? It has lower frame rates. There aren’t many maps that support it. Too few people bought it so there are not many people to play it with.
Mods that change the physics and damage values of Quake almost always turn out to be fun only for a short while. Quake has been beta tested more than any other game in history. The programmers kept in touch with the community while they developed it. They invited well-known gamers to their office to give their opinions on the gameplay. By gameplay I mean the choices that comprise playing the game, short term, long-term, and even reflexes. The gameplay of a game is the control you are able to exert on the software and the virtual world it creates. The more control, the better and the more things to control at once, the better. The more continuous and logical the control is also makes the game better. The beta testing of Quake 3 was even done before the idea for Quake 3 was thought of! Quake 1 and Quake 2 were the testing grounds not to mention its predecessors made by id software like the Doom Series and Castle Wolfenstein.
The mods that change the physics, damage values, reload times, and weapon switch times don't do them in a well thought-out manner. They don't consider what will make sense on a grand scale. Instead they only consider what would be fun to watch happen. The makers of these mods usually don't let the public test them for a very long period before finalizing the mod’s details.
A mod that actually does change a lot of the game’s essence but is still good (great) is Challenge Pro Mode http://www.promode.org/. It been extensively tested and patched. Tournaments have been run for it, and a lot of the big names in Quake play this mod. It’s Quake 3 with aspects of Quake 1 and Quake 2 added in. What is most noticeable is its much faster pace. There are also many other changes to the gameplay. All the changes have been done to appeal to the ultra-hardcore Quaker who loves competition.
Good mods that don't change the essence of Quake 3 and have replay value:
With Bankshot you can only damage someone if you bank your shot off a wall first. All the old weapons reflect off of walls. It’s very simple yet very fun and addictive. The Bankshot mod does not need to be downloaded by clients connecting to the server. www.majorkong.com/bankshot.html
In Freeze Tag the only thing changed is that people become frozen when you frag them. They can be thawed by teammates who stand by them for several seconds. The team whose members are all frozen first is the loser. Freeze Tag does not need to be downloaded by clients connecting to the server, but there are benefits if they do download it. www.planetquake.com/freeze/
In Head Hunters the only thing changed is the scoring plus a couple minor isolated additions to the game. The reason it is so fun is that you collect your foes’ blown-off heads and return them to randomly placed alters for points. Previously collected heads can be stolen from other people. The mod doesn’t require any special maps. It can be played FFA or as teams. The amount of prediction that pays off in a 3 or 4 person head hunters game is incredible. I have yet to see a more addictive mod than this one. http://tarot.telefragged.com/
The OSP mod is the most comprehensive and powerful mod for any game ever. Its documentation has to be read to be believed. It doesn’t change the essence of Quake 3, but it has options to if you tell it to. It’s purpose is to make official matches run smoothly, to give players a LOT very smart features (that don’t effect gameplay at all), and to give server administrators a lot of very smart customization features. If you run a server and don’t want to change the essence of the original Quake 3 on it, this is by far the best choice to help you run it. www.orangesmoothieproductions.org
Rocket Arena barely made it on here because it's a camp fest. I definitely do not recommend it for competition at all, even though it’s popularity has somehow gotten it a few online leagues. It really does have a huge number of fantastic maps and I highly recommend playing it if you are not good at controlling items yet. www.planetquake.com/servers/arena/
Good Custom Maps
You don’t need a guide to tell you what maps are fun to play… for a week. Yes, space maps really are fun for a little while. Pad maps are fun for even longer than a little while. But they don’t have the balance, the depth, and the unsolvability of certain other maps.
Here are maps that I’ve played games on that I recommend for each game type. I spent a lot of time considering which maps should make this list and which categories they qualify for. Some maps fall into multiple categories. There are few maps that I think are large enough and have enough items in them to play 4 on 4. There are many more maps to add when I get time to play on more of them. Hopefully some of these maps will start being played in leagues and tournaments.
FFA:
antilogic
auh3dm1
auh3dm2
bal3dm1
bal3dm3
bal3dm4
blpalace
charondm1
charon3dm4
corbe_q3dm1
cpm2
cpm4
cpm13
cpm14
delirium
devdm3
dmmq3dm1
dmmq3dm3
dmmq3dm4
dmmq3dm6
eadm8
fff
fr3dm1
geit3dm1
gs3dm4b
hell
ikzdm1
jaxdm5
jnydm4
js_tourney1
kaos
kitdm8
lae3dm1
lae3dm2
lun3dm2
lun3dm3
marsv1
mkexp
mktech
monolith
mrcq3t3
nedsword
nemesis
overkill
nphq3dm1
q3monsto4
q3zdm1
rcq3dm1
riscq3dm2
saiko_tourney1
sdm6
senndm2
shortcircuit
spwn3dm2
survivor
stei8a
teqtrny2
thunda3dm2
tpalace
wwq3dm1
yog3dm2
yog3dm4
ztn3dm1
ztn3dm2
1 on 1:
charon3dm4
cpm1a
cpm12 aka hub3dm1 aka hub3tourney1
devdm3
gs3dm4b
mrcq3t3
saiko_tourney1
shortcircuit if the power ups are disabled
spwn3dm2
ztn3tourney1
2 on 2:
bal3dm1
bal3dm4
charondm1
charon3dm4
cpm2
cpm13
delirium
dmmq3dm3
dmmq3dm4
eadm8
fff
fr3dm1
gs3dm4b
jnydm4
lae3dm1
lae3dm2
lun3dm2
lun3dm3
kaos
kitdm8
mktech
mrcq3t3
overkill
q3monsto4
rcq3dm1
shortcircuit
stei8a
survivor
teqtrny2
tpalace
wwq3dm1
yog3dm2
yog3dm4
ztn3dm1
3 on 3:
antilogic
auh3dm1
bal3dm3
blpalace
corbe_q3dm1
cpm4
cpm14
dmmq3dm1
dmmq3dm4
dmmq3dm6
geit3dm1
ikzdm1
jaxdm5
js_tourney1
hell
kaos
marsv1
mkexp
monolith
nedsword
nemesis
q3zdm1
rcq3dm1
riscq3dm2
sdm6
senndm2
stei8a
thunda3dm2
4 on 4:
cpm4
dmmq3dm1
dmmq3dm6 if you disallow the BFG
CTF:
dboxctf2a
q3wctf1
q3wctf2
q3wctf3
q3wcp1
q3wcp3
q3wcp4
q3wcp5
q3wcp6
q3wcp7
wnoise
Must-Get Quake Utilities
The in-game browser that browses servers is very basic and doesn't ping accurately enough. Gamespy does this and has a lot of other very useful features. www.gamespy.com
Geek Play converts demos between different versions of Quake 3, and lets you simply double click on a demo file in Windows to play it.
http://www.geekboys.org/geekplay/
Quake 3 Bot Designer. I don’t know where to find it, but I have a copy.
It’s designed by someone named Cricel, cricel472@hotmail.com. I’ve designed several bots with this that are good for practicing with. They are the .pk3 files that came with this guide. One only uses grenades, one only uses rockets, one only uses plasma, one only uses gauntlet, one always charges you, and one always runs away. The first three have perfect aim with their favorite weapon. You can get used to dodging with these bots. The gauntlet one is great for being able to just concentrate on your aiming.
NOTE: All .pk3 files are simply .zip files, so set your Winzip to handle .pk3 files as if they were .zips. It’s easy to do.
It’s what every gamer wants to know. Instead of having to take your headphones off constantly to hear her nagging, you could have a built in training dummy. Besides it’s much easier to get her to give you head while you play Quake if she doesn’t despise the game.
Ok enough joking! I’m completely serious about this. Totally unprovoked, say this to her: “I know I play this game a lot, and I was wondering if maybe I could get you to play. That way we could do something together, and I could talk with you about what I see going on during the games. It would be a great way to get some interactive quality time in. We’d be like a pilot and co-pilot kind of team.” :) Then tell her it’s not like any other game there is. Then tell her why you enjoy playing it and how you have so much control over the game with the mouse. And go on from there.
Start her playing against bots only for at least a few weeks. Internet lag and players who dominate can make games against people unenjoyable.
Constantly let her know how much you like just watching her play. It really is fun to watch.
Remember: Any good boyfriend times two or three items for her while she plays. You get practice too.
Turn the graphics and sound details up a little bit. And make her a .cfg file that has the detail up.
Bind a few funny chat keys for her. People will start to reply back to her. All ladies love to chat.
Give her a woman’s alias so people will talk to her.
Bind a key to toggle her alias. In case she gets harassed she can change her name to a manly name like Sepultura or something.
It helps a lot if you take turns with her every five or ten minutes. It keeps it exciting, doesn’t tire her out, and doesn’t make her bored if you want to play.
Have a tiltable head or some other sort of height sound discrimination.
A plain graphics mode without eye candy which also doesn't look absolutely weird like r_picmip 5 does. It should look plain and clear with high frames per second.
Real hit boxes on player models!!! If somebody has a big horn sticking way out of their head and you shoot the tip, it better hurt them. If I see another shot that looks like it went right through Tank Jr.’s gut I’m going to break something.
A variable that if set to on by the server doesn’t let you know how much health and armor your opponent has. Pain sounds wouldn’t relate to health level either.
More hand to hand combat moves! Each can have it’s own advantages and disadvantages. Even 3 moves would add so much more to the game.
More bodily and facial expressions. Being able to point your arm at predefined locations on a map would be great. Point at Red Armor or keep pointing at enemy that you had in your sights a second ago if they’re still in your field of view. If they go out of your field of view then your arm stays still. Be able to say stuff into a microphone and have it sound like it's IN the level coming from your character's location. More cheers and taunts. Make up your own cheers or dances using a program that saves them.
Better bot AI. It’s so easy to make bots that time the items and strafe jump but only the mod makers do it. Why? If it takes up too much CPU power then make a dedicated bot client that can connect to your listen server over a network.
MORE KINDS OF WEAPONS. Add in a forked path gun. Add in a gun that shoots in a cast net path. Add in a gun that stays in someone for 3 seconds and then detonates and the whole time has a wire that is connected to you. Add in a gun with more than one crosshair that would shoot through all of them at the same time. Sticky trails like glue that slows people down. An option to shoot your gun in the opposite direction as your crosshair. i.e. behind you. But you wouldn’t have to look backward because the gun would be able to shoot out of both ends of it’s barrel. It could offer some very creative shots and a whole new skill to develop. A gun that's bad side is that it has a laser scope attached to it so everyone knows where you are pointing it. Air grenades to blow things around including yourself without making damage. Guns that destroy items on the map. Guns that grab items on the map. Gunfire that bounces off of walls, but always NORMAL to the surface! Gunfire that always slides along walls! Gunfire that leaves a floor or wall hot for 1 second so you can’t touch it.
More kinds of items. A magnetic shoes power up so you can walk on walls and or ceilings like in Alien versus Predator. Maybe just a sticky shoes power up so you can walk on steeper slopes for a little while, not have as much inertia (dodge better), and not slip in oil. A rear view mirror key that places a little mirror on your screen. X-ray vision power up. Slick trails like oil that makes it hard for people to stop. An item called a camera that you can throw around corners to see what’s there. An item called a microphone that you can leave places and listen through.
AN EASY TO UNDERSTAND AND USE MENU SYSTEM THAT CONTAINS ALL THE VARIABLES FOR CLIENTS AND SERVERS! With an explanation of all the variables! What a headache Quake 1, 2 and 3 have been without this!
Hire Rhea of Orange Smoothie Productions (the OSP mod, etc.) and of Team Abuse.
More realistic physics would be nice but is as high on my list as all the other hopes.
www.fileplanet.com -- they’ve had every Quake related file I’ve ever wanted.
www.planetquake.com -- code from the community news, updated frequently.
www.cached.net -- the latest demos, competitive Quake news, updated very frequently, simply the best.
www.xsreality.com -- the latest demos, competitive Quake news, covers Europe mostly.
www.cyberfight.ru -- be sure to click on the “ENG” button to get it to appear in English, the latest demos, competitive Quake news, covers Asia and Europe mostly.
www.challenge-world.com -- competitive Quake news, follows major leagues, a large network of worldwide sites.
www.esports-live.com -- competitive Quake news, follows major leagues.
www.shackes.com -- some news and commentary.
www.base42.tv/ -- has giant movies describing Quake strategy, exciting and very well done.
Credits
I’d like to thank all my friends at Fragmart http://fragmart.hopto.org for encouraging me and helping me out with this guide. Pope John Paul XIII runs the best server in the country. Thanks for all the fun! Eightoeight and my dad get thanks for making the stylish logo at the top. Thanks goes out to Cache and Spezzer for commenting on the guide and giving it publicity. A major thanks goes to arQon for voluntarily adding some very unique things to version 1.8 of the guide. He just volunteered his kindness without me even asking. Thank you Torilicious, for helping me with the “How to Get Your Girlfriend to Play Quake 3” section. Thanks goes to Michael Wuest aka ]Pm[Lynx for most of the new CTF content in the guide.
©Michael Chiaverini