DOD enhancements , settings and other helpful tips

[got chocolate milk?]

I would like to apologize to the AAMO clan, so I am sorry!

After yesterday's scrim I had my doubts about some kills, which with out thinking I "assumed" that some players weir hacking

after talking with jump, my "accusation" was not well founded.

so I was wondering for those of you(AAMO & others) that have been playing for a long time, would it be possible to share with the "noobs" (yes, i am talking about my self), your settings, enhancement apps or any information that would help.

I did see on this forum some have posted a setting here and there, how about putting them all on one post that could be labeled:

AAMO settings for dummies v1.0

or something. For a few days players could enter what they do and what they have and after all the data is collected A detail post could be done.

e.i:

DOD Setting:
PC setting:
Video setting:
sound setting:
network setting:

Legal scripts:
Crosshairs:
console commands:
hints:
tip:

I do understand that no computers and players are the same, but a GOOD general list would be a good start .

I would go has far has maybe once a week or month take 5 minutes and just do a walkthrough of a map, each week or month we could do a different map, or not!

anyway just a thought.

[profbuldge]

Yeah, there are several little things that you can do, like changing your crosshairs, adjusting rate settings, turning on quick switch, or adjusting brightness and contrast. However I think everyone will agree that the best way to improve your game is practice, practice, practice.

Many of us on AAMO have been playing DoD for several years now and some of us go back to the Beta days. We are aware of the weapons we are best at, and the tendencies of each gun (no matter how unrealistic it is <Jump >).

Likewise, knowing how a map tends to play out is an amazing leg up on an unaware opponent. As we have all found out, many walls and most doors let bullets through, knowing when and where to duck for cover is essential. Plus if you know where to set up (mg, sniper, or whatever) know how to exploit that position as well, chances are someone else will set up in that spot.

[profbuldge]

As far as the pub scrims we run on Thursdays, knowing the tendencies of the people on your team, opponent, and maneuvering as a team instead of a "run and gun" on your own helps to improve your stats as well as help you become a more rounded player.

If you're sniping, MOVE AROUND, chances are you pissed someone off with your sniping and they picked one up to get you back.


And my last tip for today, and probably the biggest tip anyone can give; Ask Questions!

ie:
How do you get up there?
How did you do that?
Where do you want me to set up?
How did you know I was there?

[JumpMasterG]

Many of us on AAMO have been playing DoD for several years now and some of us go back to the Beta days. We are aware of the weapons we are best at, and the tendencies of each gun (no matter how unrealistic it is <Jump >).

I'm sorry, after years of study, owning many of the guns in the game I'm just cursed with the reality of the weaponry!

I must constantly remind myself,"It's only a game"!

Not much I can add to Buldge's comments...

I would and have always said, learn the rifles even if you get your arse handed to you for the next six months doing so!! Learn to shoot them on the run, while ducking and dodging, what they do and do not penetrate and on what maps they do or do not penetrate, (and they do differ from map to map!)

As far as hacks and such...guys there's a level and a world of DOD above ours where there are players that I've watched and played with where all I could do was stop in mid-action and scratch my head in amazement!

Search the game, watch DOD videos, watch other players, learn patience, LISTEN to the game, know players tendencies. Cover your mates and ask for cover, learn WWII tactics, watch your ammunition, beware of just how much noise you're making. Don't make a mad rush on the opponents number one flag if it does not win you the game! The list is quite large!

Play, play, play and with guys who are better than you! You don't improve by kicking the stew out of a bunch of bots or noobs on a server frequented by beginners! Your reaction time improves when your opponents time is very fast!

Camping is a tactic that seldom wins rounds!

Don't play to see your stats climb! Learn to play correctly and it'll follow. The only stats I really look at is my team win percentage.
(OK, and grenade kills..my one vice!)

I played for nearly two years before I felt like I finally "got it", and still only consider myself a little above average.

Finally, spend millions on computers! aka "Beek's law"! My rig is old and feeble and it does make a difference. I prefer though to spend my money on jeeps, guns, halftracks, tanks and other goodies so I accept the fact that I'll always fall behind a bit.

When we get our website I plan on a page showing the "real" weapons, uniforms and gear of the WWII soldier. Possibly some live fire video. We'll see!

Jump

[Trinity]

O my word!!!
You guys and your wanting to "tweek" your games.
Yeah I have heard ppl talk about this but I have never done it. I personally think certain "tweeks" are cheats. If you cant install the game and just play then it isnt fun.
The only things I have messed with is the brightness, everything was so dark when I first started playing this game that I would get shot and never know where it came from. I also do the "stopsound" the constant airplane and rain and birds chirping on certain maps drive me insane...lol

I remember when I first started playing this, I would follow Hodgie around like a lost puppy and then when the firing would start I would duck and cover right behind him...needless to say him constantly yelling at me to not follow him so close made me start running my own way.

Like it was said before, try other guns. You may be surprised and find out that your better with a rifle then a tommy gun or vise versa.

When your in the game try and find at least one person on your team to run with. If you watch most of the time when you see one AMMO there is usually one more not to far behind them. Since the AAMO crew has been playing this game for a while now we pretty much know the style of play each other has, so its not to hard to figure out which way or where one of our team mates are heading.

And last but not least, COMMUNICATE let your team mates know where your heading, that you need back up, Beeks hiding in the corner, Trinity is sniping from that window, Hodgie is coming through the middle, sinz just hit you with a rocket by the hourse, buldge just knifed you on the second flag ect.

[Beek]

Apr 25, 2008 20:18:37 GMT -5 JumpMasterG said:

Finally, spend millions on computers! aka "Beek's law"! My rig is old and feeble and it does make a difference. I prefer though to spend my money on jeeps, guns, halftracks, tanks and other goodies so I accept the fact that I'll always fall behind a bit.

Jump

Hahaha. Actually my computer is obsolete 2.4Ghz C2D........want to buy it jump?

As far as game adjustments I am currently only using a few.
1. hud_fastswitch "1"
2. Stopsound

My rates are set at a pretty standard setting of
cl_updaterate "101"
cl_cmdrate "101"
rate "25000"

FPS setting of
fps_max "101"

Make the crosshair not grow
cl_dynamicxhair "0"

As far as the weapons, just play around with all of them. Some people prefer the rifle, some the smg. I usually start with the mp40 or bar and then switch when I need a rifle...aka Trinity is pissing me off...........

I prefer to turn peoples voices down so I can hear jump priming his nade.

oh and take a look at the stats and see how many hours Hodgie has played in the last 1.5 years and then multiply by 3 to see roughly how many hours he has played this game.

[got chocolate milk?]

Ok, sounds good. Thanks for sharing. So from what you guys have posted, all the "help" we noobs can get well we have. The one thing missing is just to play, play, play, and to try to team up with regular players to learn each others move and thinking, that's not to difficult:S
Hopefully we can try to improve and communicate and not repeat last Thursday's scrim...

Again thanks for the info guys

[gunsofnavarone]

Another item to note that hasn't been mentioned here is ping and how it effects our gameplay.

Let us assume for a few moments, you are playing on an otherwise empty server (no real humans), only bots. You will note (by pressing your tab key) that a bot has "0" ping and you have for example "23".

The bot is playing in "real time", whereas you are playing with a delay in miliseconds. What transpires is 2 things. 1) While the bot is responding in realtime, you have a delay of 23 miliseconds. 2) You have a real physical reaction time (the time for you to recognize a situation or scenario and to respond accordingly). If you are playing against a real opponent, you may note that the individual's ping is relatively close to yours. That would put you on a more "level" playing field as far as response is concerned from computer to server. But again, your physical response time could be hampered because of pure physical and/or mental exhaustion from your working that day. Or maybe you've had a beer and though you may not be drunk, it's effects may be slowing you down as well (you're relaxed and slowed down because of it).

Other situations that could effect your ping is all the information that is electronically relayed from server to your computer (the map itself and your viewpoint, the positon of all players, all the effects - background noise, fog, smoke, etc. - occuring as you play). One of the biggest things I have found while playing on a server that causes my ping to skyrocket at times is in-game voice chatter. I have gone on servers whereas my ping is around 45 (my computer's response time to the server). Once I am on that server and am receiving ALL the inbound traffic due to a slew of people constantly talking on their mic's, over each other about non-game affairs and I then incur lag. Bandwidth is now being eaten up to receive all this "garbage" chatter and screen updates are coming slower.

Now, aside from in-game voice chatter, let's presume you have that 23 ping. A particular opponent you are trying to hunt down has a ping of 45. Though we are talking miliseconds, you still have a ping advantage over the other guy of 1/2, and the inverse is true.

In the real world, I personally have a usual ping of 45 for the Taste of Death server and about 65-75 for The Lost Soldiers server (the server where we scrim). So, immediately my computer's response time is "impaired" when when we scrimmage - I now have less time to react, in some cases nearly doubled.

One of the other items to note in the discussion of the ping is the net_graph command. Though you may have a decent ping, are you actually losing data in the transfer? Do you have situations of "choke"? Choke in essence is that the server doesn't send your computer information as it may cause a "flooding" situation on your computer (there may be too much information outbound from the server - essentially what the word implies - too much information, a bottleneck is created and nothing, if very little, is sent to your computer). There is no fix for this, it is just something you have to deal with. Net_graph doesn't change anything in your settings, it is just a tool built in to provide you information about situations occuring in the network between the server and your computer.

All of these "factors" will have an effect on your game play as far as the network is concerned. Couple these factors with the teams effectiveness vs your opponents, and your team could very well be the underdog right from the beginning.

Overcoming and/or just dealing with network issues, and becoming effective teamplayers will go a long way in aiding us "regulars".

[gunsofnavarone]

Actually, I mis-spoke. As I found out there is something you CAN in fact do to offset/reduce/eliminate choke:

> What does the 'choke' value on net_graph 3 represent? What can I do to
> reduce it?

Increase the client rate with the rate command in the console, and ensure
that minrate and maxrate are set to 3000/10000 . Also ensure that the
bandwidth between the client and the server is sufficient.

(http://www.mail-archive.com/[e-mail]/msg01598.html)

[gunsofnavarone]

Here is another suggestion that may help you in your gameplay and it has nothing to do with any optimization measures you may have taken, but rather making the most of what your computer can do for you (again without optimizing any settings).

Half-Life (and Steam, CS, DoD, etc.) doesn't care about where it runs from!! This one statement is factual as I have done it a number of times. This factor alone can make a world of difference as I'll explain.

If you initially installed Steam on your C: drive, you can actually MOVE the installed folder of Steam to another drive and run it from there. How does this help? Read on....

My current folder of steam is 4.78GB. Yours may be much smaller or larger. Now consider this: The particular harddrive I have my Steam directory located on is a Maxtor Fireball 40GB IDE Hard Drive Part #: 2F040L0. The 1 (one) specification I am most concerned with is this: 5,400 rpm. This is speed in which the harddrive platters inside rotate. If I moved this to another drive where it was 7200 rpm, then my drive would now spin faster, enabling me to, theoretically, access the programs much faster. Now that we have this physical attribute noted, what can we do about it? In this instance, we DON'T wish to reduce it, but rather we want to ELIMINATE it.

The recommendation is quite simple. Get rid of the mechanical means of running the program. How? By investing approx. $33 (US), you can purchase a memory stick of 8GB, copy the folder to it, and run the program from there. Instantly, you have eliminated a step that most people have to encounter: The physical movement(s) of operating the harddrive.

You now have, in essence, an EEPROM (Electrically (or Electronically) Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory). Much like an older Atari system where you plugged a cartridge into the game console, your USB memory stick acts the same way. The only thing you have to deal with now is the computer's bus speed (essentially, how fast info moves throughout the computer itself).

By eliminating the physical mechanical movements, you have just sped up the accessing of the program.

This BTW, as shown above, isn't new. It's just rethinking the old in what is available to us today.

[gunsofnavarone]

Keep in mind that if you plan on trying the above, to change your shortcut information as well so that Windows knows where to run it from. Once you make the change and run the program, the registry settings will update itself accordingly.

[lt]

I am a purist...I do not change anything about the game...I consider it cheating...even something as simple as stopsound or turning the smoke off. I don't know, maybe it's just me. I might not be the best player ever, but atleast I know that it's my skill that people are seeing and not some crappy script. I think that's why I got so sick of doing league stuff back in the day...too many people trying to do whatever they can to "be better".

[Beek]

Apr 28, 2008 10:04:18 GMT -5 @lt said:

I am a purist...I do not change anything about the game...I consider it cheating...even something as simple as stopsound or turning the smoke off. I don't know, maybe it's just me. I might not be the best player ever, but atleast I know that it's my skill that people are seeing and not some crappy script. I think that's why I got so sick of doing league stuff back in the day...too many people trying to do whatever they can to "be better".

Hmm. If you are a purist as you say you should be playing on a 14.4 dialup account and not using broadband.

LOL JKing

[gunsofnavarone]

Please don't take this wrong, but in noting that you indicate you are a "purist", you still have settings in your setup that others may not, that distinctly give you an advantage over somebody else.

What am I talking about? Let's presume for a moment, some poor kid who's utilizing a dinosaur of a computer, who wants to get enjoyment and playtime like the rest of us, but can't afford high-speed internet is on the server with his dial-up modem. I highly doubt that the settings on your computer are such that you have equalled the playing field for the below-average person who may come on the server.

I am not trying to slam you, just pointing out that we all simply are trying to make the most of the game based upon the physical qualities that our computer offers.

This could even include the quality of the video. Software, D3D, OpenGL, etc. If you have better video than I do, and thus can make better distinctions of the physical layout of the map, then you obviously have an edge over me. This is all we are talking about here.

Any of the settings that are built-in are available to everyone else. If it's built-in, and you're not utilizing it as best as you can, then you can suffer the consequences of your inaction.

I/We am/are not condoning hacks or add-on scripts, etc. We are only concerned with what is built into Half-Life/DoD and adjust it accordingly.

As far as can be accomplished consciously, I believe map exploits should be condemned. This quite simply (for those who are not familiar with the term) is utilizing weaknesses or unintentional flaws in a map for an advantage.

[Colonel McShizzle]

My 2 cents

I can certainly understand your frustration. It drives me bananas when the AAMO's whoop us on the scrim nights and there have been times I have said to myself "this guy's gotta be hacking" but they're not. Most of the really good players just have lots of practice.

(side note: except for Scar, who's the hackinest hacker there is)

I've been playing DOD for about three years now and I'm still about an average player. The Bobberts can hand my ass to me with ease. I personally don't change any settings other than raise the gamma a bit. I like the rain and smoking tanks and whatnot. I still really dont know what "choke" is other than that it's what I'd like to do to Hodgie after he's killed me for the umpteenth time. ;D

I did find my playing improved when I got a new system this fall. Things just worked faster and smoother. Also I had a crappy old ball mouse which I got rid of. I went to my local computer shop purchased a gaming mouse called the"OCZ Equalizer". It's a gaming mouse that costs about $40 and I have been very pleased with it's performance. If anyone's looking for a new mouse I'd recommend this one.

Lastly remember like others have said it's just a game (you have to tell yourself this when you've eaten the eighth grenade from JumpmasterG in a row) if it gets you to bent out of shape have a drink. Yeehaw.

Edit: Learn the maps. The only reason my score is ever any good is because I know where to get cover, where to ambush, and where I can set my BAR up. It helps a lot.