First Things First: Setting Up
Raw skills are only part of becoming the best of the best. No matter how many people try to tell you that you can play just as good on a crusty old P75; it's not true. The setup you use is extremely important. A good target for the budget-conscious (and that's pretty much all of us) is getting a pretty solid 45 fps in an 800x600 timedemo. To see what you're getting at the moment; bring down the console by hitting ~ and type:
timedemo 1
map demo1.dm2
This will run through the first demo as fast as your computer can handle and give you a number in Frames Per Second (FPS). If you're running an older version of Quake II you'll also have to type timedemo 0 before playing normally again. Generally, the higher your resolution is set at, the lower your framerate will be.
In order to compress this section I'll simply give a sample configuration to use as a guide: A PII-266 with 64Mb
of RAM and a Voodoo II should yield around 45 fps in 800x600. That's plenty for most things; but if you want more
you're going to be paying PII-450 rates which aren't very pleasant at all. The alternative is to grab a Celeron
300A, some PC100 RAM and an Abit BH6 mainboard and overclock to 450MHz (ensure the room temperature remains relatively
cool for this). A Celeron 300A has a very good chance of running stable at 450MHz; just use one of the many online
guides available at places like
Tom's Hardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/ and
AnandTech: http://www.anandtech.com/.
With a single Voodoo 2 you'll be up in the late 60's and with two you're going to be approaching 100 frames per second in 800x600, and the opportunity to have quite a nice framerate in 1024x768.
With the computer itself out of the way, the next important thing is your mouse - here you have two options. One
- for the budget users - is using either a Microsoft or Logitech PS/2 mouse, and upping the sample rate to 200Hz
using the program 'ps2rate'
- (Juha Kujala of Qizmo http://qizmo.sci.fi/fame is the creator).
Two - for the hardcore Quake II player where money is no object - is a USB Microsoft or Logitech mouse. A USB mouse, whilst the sample rate is only 135Hz; offers superior performance to that of the PS/2 mouse as it is using an increased sample rate through hardware rather than software emulation (as the increase of the sample rate of a PS/2 mouse comes from). Expect to pay more for the USB mouse though, especially in Australia. Note if you already have a perfectly good MS or Logitech serial mouse and do not wish to part with the money for another; a serial plug to PS/2 port converter, I'm told, works just fine with ps2rate.
Moving on now from the mouse itself to the mouse pad - this part's easy; hands down you get a 3M Precise Mousing Surface. These babies are the best things that ever happened to mice. Be warned, however; that there are currently three types of these pads - the difference is in the appearance of the surface; however one seems to be a bad egg. Avoid the type that consists of a black and purple design with white specks - these get very sticky very fast. Instead opt for either the grey version, or a 'watery' design. These offer infinitely better resistance to stickiness - I am reliably told that with one of these two types you can blow on a mouse gently and watch it slide along the pad.
Speakers are the next important consideration for the ultimate Quake II experience. Those tiny little tweeters that came with your computer just don't do Quake II justice; and bass helps a Quake II duel immensely. If you don't use a subwoofer; you will have great difficulty in hearing the hum from your own railgun let alone someone else's... and you may not even be aware of the fact that the BFG also emits a bassy hum. I strongly recommend a 3-piece speaker set - even if you're on a tight budget this can be purchased reasonably cheaply; but the Altec Lansing ACS48 20W/40W set going for around $270 seem to be the best bet for price/performance. Once you are equipped with a decent sub system, grab the Q2 Bass Pak basspak2.exe (follow the instructions for installation contained in the readme.txt file - check out Steve 'Stretch' Edwards' site here http://www.infiniteplanes.net/ for updates aswell as similar paks for other games) which replaces most of the Quake II sounds with ones of a much lower frequency. This does wonders for your game, and allows one to quite easily discern an opponent in an adjacent room sneaking up on you with the railgun.
IMHO, a big monitor - while definitely increasing the general Quake II experience, and also giving your aim a boost - is just too much money to spend on Quake II. But if a 17" is only a couple of hundred dollars extra if you are purchasing another system; I'd recommend going for it.
Now that the computer itself is out of the way, let's move on to the actual controls. First up, if you haven't already; create a custom config file for yourself by opening Notepad and saving a blank file as YOURNAME.cfg (make sure you set the file type to '*.* All Files' so Notepad doesn't append a .txt extension). Into this file you will enter commands that define what keys you press to move, shoot, jump, etc. aswell as preferences for your video card and just about everything else you can imagine. To use it, edit the properties for your Quake II shortcut and add a "+ exec YOURNAME.cfg" (sans quotes) to the end of the command line. The system is pretty easy to use - all you have to remember is that each command goes into the file on a seperate line, and appear just as if they were typed into the Quake II console. I won't go into details about the syntax; you should be able to pick it all up by having a look at my own personal config file - s8n_cfg.cfg and choose to save the file to use the config as-is (save it to your \quake2\baseq2\ folder).
I'd suggest copying the config file's contents into your own, and just changing what you want. Basically you want to firstly USE THE MOUSE - it, or a trackball or equivalent device is the ONLY way to play seriously. If you are still using the keyboard only; either switch or don't expect to be able to do half the things described in the rest of this guide. The arrangement is; you use the mouse to turn left and right and look up and down, and the keyboard to move forward/backwards and strafe left and right. Most people use the left mouse button to fire, and the right to jump however many prefer to move forward with the right mouse button or have the jump button on the keyboard to prevent accidentally moving the mouse while jumping. Most people have a WASD configuration - that is; W moves forwards, A strafes left, S moves back and D strafes right.
Personally I prefer to use RDFG instead as it gives me more keys surrounding them to bind to other functions. The most important of these 'other functions' is weapon switching - you'll never be able to hit the 9 key for the railgun quick enough in the heat of a battle, for example so you'll want all your weapons surrounding your movement keys. As you'll see by my config file; the main ones are E for railgun and T for rocket launcher. You'll also notice a few occasions where I bind two weapons to the one key - this simple script selects the best weapon of the two when I hit the key, or, if I am holding one of the two weapons it will switch to the other. Simple and effective. Zoom is also very important for those long-range rails and is accomplished by setting up an alias to change the field of view (FOV) in and out again. Note I use a default FOV of 120 (as opposed to the normal 90) because it gives me a wider view without sacrificing too much detail - I highly suggest you try this, too as it will give you the edge in battle. Last thing to note is that the spacebar is set to +speed - this actually reverses the "always run" option of cl_run 1 and makes me walk when held down - as you may know; walking in a straight line makes your footsteps silent. This is a very important tool in 1-on-1 deathmatch.
With all of that out of the way; there are also a few things you can do if you play Quake II over the internet; especially over a slow dial-up connection. If you're using a 56K modem of less, the first thing you want to do is set your cl_maxfps variable to about 31. This caps your framerate at 31 fps hence making Quake II send less data to the server, directly resulting in a lower ping and less packet loss. Also, go through the menu system to Multiplayer|Player Setup and adjust the Connection Speed setting to match your connection as closely as possible - this sets a command called 'rate' which determines how much data is sent and received to prevent packet loss. Play around with this setting manually to determine what suits you best. Ensure you put both of these commands into your personal config file so they're executed every time you play. HOWEVER - a lot of the tricks described in this guide are difficult to complete with cl_maxfps capped at 31; so I'd recommend creating an alias in your config rather than just sticking in the RATE command - something like
alias LOWFPS "cl_maxfps 31"
alias HIGHFPS "cl_maxfps 140"
...to ensure you can perform the tricks when not playing on the 'net.