Quake Tutorial – Part 1 – Settings & Configs

Settings & Configuration:

Here I’m going to give details on what settings I personally use and what I think are the best settings to use in Quake Live, hopefully by now everyone should be using their own configuration files and gone past the urge of using a Professional Players config in the hope that it’ll miraculously improve them within minutes of using this config, so here is a brief introduction and the first of many Tutorials I’m going to bringing to this site and here are the settings in which I would recommend or what I use personally, but as you know it’s all down to personal preference and you can just take my settings to tweak them to satisfy your individual needs.

Configs and settings should all be down to personal preference and personalization, which showcases an individual’s ability in knowing what works for him without the need of having to use someone else’s in the attempt or hope of becoming a better player, so firsty these basic yet useful settings should come in handy in creating your own config.
Firstly i’ll show you what settings I use and then we’ll go from there in adjusting the settings accordingly or in fact what each setting may or may not do.

As you can see from the screenshot provided I use quite a darkish gamma, bright crosshair (just a simple cross with a dot in the middle.) low graphic settings, a hint of intensity, which is adjusted slightly and gun model up with a basic hud which is provided within Quake Live. The following settings I use are:

r_mapoverbrightbits “1″
r_intensity “1.2″ (Just a hint to increase the darkish gamma I use to highlight certain areas of maps.)
r_overbrightbits “1″
r_gamma “1.7″ (This seems quite high you may think, but as some people adjust their Mapoverbrightbits and Overbrightbits, keeping them on a 1 requires my gamma to be higher than usual to still maintain a darkish gamma but of which is still clear and enhances the enemy model to become more visible in games.)
r_mode “9″ (800 x 600) – (Seems to be the native res that most gamers play in, especially if you’re on a CRT and running at 120hz, then this is the best to play at. But if you use an LCD or a TFT then I’d recommend a higher res which is native to that specific monitor for the best performance, with setting the monitor at it’s best whether it be 60hz or 75hz, my com_maxfps setting will add to this later on.)
r_vertexlight “1″
r_picmip “4″ (I use to use “1″, very high detail because psychologically I felt as if I could move faster and neutralise my aggressive play style, but in Quake Live that style doesn’t always work, so using a higher picmip allows me to slow my game down a bit, but also to make the maps I play on more visible and easier to track and aim at opponents, it also makes the game feel smoother.)
r_dynamiclight “0″
r_simplemipmaps “1″
r_fullbright “0″

With the darker gamma settings that I use, I then choose to have my enemy model visible and bright, so it’s easier to see, track and hit and the following settings for that is, along with a screenshot to see how visible it actually is.

cg_enemyUpperColor “0×408000FF” (All can be changed to suit your preferences, if green isn’t for you.)
cg_enemyLowerColor “0×408000FF”
cg_enemyHeadColor “0×408000FF”
cg_enemyColor “iiii”

Again the colour of your enemymodel can be totally up to you what it is, maybe you prefer white or red then simply change the colour to suit you by using a RGB graph, getting the code and implementing it into your cg_enemy commands.

There’s big talks about HUD’s and which are the best to use and to customize your own, but me personally I don’t use modified HUD’s, I use the basic that is available to all within the game. But some prefer to have it more visible, or ammo placements else where on the screen and bigger timers, but that’s more to do with personal preferences and if you’d like to know more about HUD’s then you can contact me at aaronanton@vizari.co.uk, but as I don’t use one, we’ll move onto something else.

Okay, the next main thing to cover before you start going onto servers and fragging your friends is the internet settings, and here are the following settings I would recommend for the ultimate performance with online play.

rate “25000″
cl_maxpackets “100″ (Some choose to use 125, maximum setting.)
snaps “30″
cg_smoothClients “1″
pb_sleep “500″ (This seems to help with the punkbuster updates and installation process, having it at 500 I believe increases the speed of getting rid of those slight jitters or jerks you may experience when first getting on the server.)
com_maxfps “125″ (Basic default setting really for any Quake game apart from Quake 4, 125 is the highest and best fps to run the game at, for ultimate speed and performance. But pointing back to the monitors and hz settings then if you’re on an LCD or a TFT you could try setting your FPS to 75 to match the hz of your monitor this could enhance the monitors performance and removing a bit of those glitches or tears in the screen you may experience on an LCD/TFT monitor.)

The maxpackets and snaps again can be altered to influence the ping, increasing one and decreasing the other will show either a drop in your ping, or an increase, which aren’t really that accurate, best to have them either at default with high rate for maximum performance, but again this down to personal preference or sometimes just psychological preference in believing that having it set to one number can in fact help you perform better, which goes for most settings really.

So there you have it the first of many to come and I hope it comes to some sort of use to you as gamers or future Quake players, this will be the first of many to come and if you have questions or think I have missed certain things out that you feel are important then just either email me at aaronanton@vizari.co.uk or leave a post with your question and I’ll get back to you as soon as.