Topics

1

General / Could Not Connect To Steam Network?

« on: May 06, 2004, 01:43:55 AM »

Error:Steam error:  SteamMountFilesystem(4294516113,3,0x221fbe0=,0x221fcf0) failed with error 1: Failed to get valid content ticket


Function trace:
CFileSystem_Steam::Mount()



Erk, help? Must... shoot... thangs.

2

General / Basic Kharaa Strategy

« on: May 03, 2004, 02:30:59 PM »

Oh noes, its another long-winded SaltzBad blurb

Yes it is. For those that still haven't noticed when and why I do these, its not because I have a huge burning desire to do so - although they are fun, and hopefully a few previously unenlightened people will suddenly become more of a contribuition to their team, the main reason is I have time and no ability to play NS right now

Okay, so what is the standard way of achieving Alien victory?

Aliens, unlike Marines, actually have to worry less about their opponents ressources - as long as Alien expansion itself remains healthy, and mostly tends towards the 2nd Hive, no amount of Marine tech will ever overpower it. Limiting marine expansion is more of an add-on - depending on chamber and team abilitys, it allows you to keep them at 1/2 nodes, to just chew down some nodes and draw manpower/ressources away from offense or to simply slow down their rate of tech. It is however not a priority.

Prioritys for aliens are the following Hives, Ressource Nodes and threatening locations. While the first 2 are obvious, the third simply means any location that allows easy access to the first 2 - it means you're best off quelling any offensive marine movement at its roots, before they get favorable positions. For example, while you might not have a ressourcenode in cargo on ns_tanith, you'd be an idiot to let them walk in there and threaten the possible hive location. In turn, the easiest way to defend the Hive location is to kill them before they enter cargo. Marines have a very easy time defending an open area - but taking it against opposition is challenging.

What does this mean for the Skulk earlygame?

The most common mistake in alien earlygames is to rush marine spawn, or rush their first 2 nodes. If you overpower marines by a ton, sure it will work - but similiar skill provided, you can expect mass Skulk deaths - filling up the spawn queue, and letting marines walk into vital places unopposed.

Instead, do the following :
- Realize which points need to be defended, and see if your team agrees (or simply point it out to them)
- If you see any of them undefended, walk over there to make sure no marines are approaching. Call for help if they are.
- If you are not busy on the defense, meaning an area is clear, inch forward and parasite building/gaurding marines in other areas of the map. Every few parasites or slight injuries, go back to heal. This will give you a sizeable advantage in defense, and really get on marines nerves :p
- Keep an eye on the map, what your team is doing and anticipate what marines are most likely doing. Remember, if an area is completely open/ungaurded odds are good the Commander will take advantage of this. Even if it means alot of running back and forth, its worthwhile checking spots out your team is missing.
- When possible, don't fight alone. While its not good for 2 Skulks to attempt biting the same target, it is always good to provide marines with 2 or more targets. Even if you're able to make it towards the marines alone, remember that unless you kill every damn one of them they can still walk in on the area you needed to defend. Especially against marines with reasonable tactics, you'll almost always need 2 Skulks or more. In an ideal teamplay situation, you'll have a gang of rampaging Skulks to come rundown any marine groups attempting to make a move. Much better than the common scenario of 8 Skulks slaughtered 1by1.

What does this mean for the earlygame Gorge?
Here, most of all, we'll have to expand on the ressource system a bit. Theres a whole host of common misconceptions about it - from the reluctance of de- and re-gorging to putting up RTs late, silly "instagorges" at the start of the game or the myth of the useful permagorge. Don't be fooled : too many Gorges do as much if not more damage to your team than too many lifeforms. Marines will not politely wait till the 12th minute to commence kicking your ass - they'll move out immediately, and theres little you can do to stop them from taking the ~3 closest nodes to marine spawn.

This means, more than ~4 nodes in the earlygame is worthless - (plus/minus one depending on the map and gamesize). Nodes outside Hives or their proximity are very, very likely to go down - and don't even try to blame it on your team. They have no reason to let you put the additional strain of defending something halfway across the map and even in a marine friendly position on them - it is after all, a secondary priority to a Hive. So the hives you get determine the nodes you put down - 1 node outside the primary hive, 1 inside the secondary and 1 outside the secondary.

Now that we've got the location settled, lets go about the timing. Its vital that you drop nodes immediately - a delayed node in the earlygame will mean delayed Fades and Hives. So going Skulking before placing your node is like giving the marines free RTs - you're lessening the time pressure on marines, letting them tech up more before they're forced to attack you (if they want to live, that is). So, go Gorge, drop the Node, and reskulk.

Why reskulk? We've already covered that - because defending that 2nd Hive and everything necessary to safely hold it is the main goal of the earlygame. Its the most common cause of Alien losses - half the team 'waiting' for RT/OC/Chamber res because they're such an economical Gorge, and in the meantime losing the 2nd Hive location. If you're one of the 3-4 Gorges that planted an RT, then your res don't matter now. Move on - your main job after that is to defend, not build. The peoples whose ressources matter are the other 50% of the team, who are getting res from your RTs added to their starting 25 to get Chambers, Hives and Fades as early as possible.

While permagorging is possible, theres little to no loss in not staying Gorge - you'll get some of those res back via RFK anyway, and when in doubt its always better to be a Skulk and help the team than be a Gorge staring at a wall. When things are highly organized, and noone is staying Gorge (luckily enough), ask your team if you really, really want to perma - one perma Gorge during the game is okay. But thats the problem, it has to stay a maximum of one - or you'll end up not having enough Skulks anywhere, and going down that quick road to 'ze lewz' again. And lots of gleeful marines spawncamping the hell out of you. Weeee.

*snip* Gotta cut short here and go home.

3

General / Lerkflight Costing No Energy

« on: April 23, 2004, 05:09:24 PM »

Woah. Just plain woah.

4

General / The Truth About Upgrades

« on: April 21, 2004, 02:59:45 AM »

The concept of upgrading

An upgrade is an item researched in the arms lab (this little rant will not touch non-arms lab upgrades, which cannot be quantified as easily) - it takes effect after its research time (60/90/120) has expired. The price for any upgrade is paid at the start of research.

The upgrade types

Damage upgrades :
Add 10% damage to any weapon used, excluding welder and knife. Does include hand grenades and mines. Does not include turrets of any type, siege or sentry.

Armor upgrades :
Adds 20 armor (45/65/85) to the starting and maximum armor values of a marine. Can be updated in the field, but the marine will retain his relative amount of armor (meaning a marine with 5% armor will still have 5% of his maximum armor).

Catalyst packs :
Are considered a level 1 upgrade for research times and costs. Cost an additional 4 res per drop in the field. Their effect is to enhance the speed of any action a marine performs - welding, building, running, shooting. With the exception (!) of reloading.

The logic of the "must upgrade" doctrine

To just put myself into the position of the devils advocate for a moment, let me explain the thought process found behind common consensus among most players. It is said that upgrades are effectively very cheap, because the cost is a medium-sized one-time fee exclusively and after that comes free on every respawn.

It is said hence if marines respawn 80 times with an upgrade that cost 40 ressources, they've paid a mere 0.5 ressources per spawn - or in other words, gotten an advantage very cheap.

What then, is wrong with this?

Its amusing really, to say the least, to see a whole slew of otherwise likely intelligent people make a mistake you commonly see in elementary schools, while solving word problems. To answer the entirely wrong question - nobody asked how cheap an upgrade can become in an infinite game, but how cost-efficient it actually is taking every conceivable factor into account.

To make it a bit easier to see, lets look at the efficiency of a weapons3 rush. You begin upgrading Weapons 1 at 1:30 (You've researched Armor1 before, because you're not a complete moron). Weapons 2 at 2:30, Weapons 3 at 4:00 and have completed your research at 6:00. You've spent 90 ressources on these upgrades, including a major chunk of spending at the most critical time, 4:00.

An average game will last another 6 minutes, and its probably fair to say your team averages ~5 deaths/minute. So out of weapons 3 alone, you paid ~1.3 ressources per spawn. This is not counting that upgrading to weapons 3 likely gave you no tangible advantage that late in the game. This might not seem like too much, but bear in mind these are optimistic calculations for upgraders - and already we've got a 250% increase in actual cost of upgrades over what common consensus would like to tell us.

Is that all?

Oh no. The fun has just started. Now we've settled that games are not infinite, and even if this were a game of boring statistics upgrades would not be the end all of commanding. The actual counter-incentives to getting upgrades are yet to come.

Time of spending

We all know starting ressources are not unlimited - and the start of the game comes with alot of time-intensive researching options (AA, MT), ressource-hungry expansion and the necessity for infrastructure (IPs, Armslab, Observatory or even turrets [Haha, just kidding.]).

So as a necessary evil, I for example cannot afford to deny aliens restowers better with 2 shotguns, because armor1 is fairly mandatory for my marines. Doesn't seem too harsh so far. But lets assume you've got Armor1 and Weapons1, the most attractive upgrades as far as cost/research times go - and want to upgrade to Weapons2. Those 3 ressources spread amongst an optimistic 5 RTs took 30 seconds to get - this might not seem like much, but at this point it is 20% of the game. Upgrading now can put off for example a PG network, an advanced armory or 3 shotguns - all for receiving the upgrade precisely at the 4 minute mark.

This is again a common mistake. A light machinegun does not give a damn that its upgrading, it will only deal the damage of its current level. Hence marines are still fighting the games deciding battles with W1/A1, and finally fighting Fades with level 2 LMGs while you upgrade to L3 weapons. They could on the other hand be using W1/A1 Shotguns from 2:30 on and not just owning up the early game but barely noticing the lack of an extra 1.7 pellet damage. Which leads us to our next point.

What effect they really have

Not enough people are currently aware that while in theory, adding 20% more damage to all my marines would make them 20% more effective, that isn't close to true. The effectiveness lies solely in the way damage is dealt, not in the height of the damage - an LMG retains its CQB weaknesses at level 0 and level 3, and a Shotgun has its tremendous contact damage at level 0 or 3.

Moreover, the majority of non-structural targets that you will end up fighting in a match of Natural Selection tend to be Skulks. A damage upgrade does not help connect bullets with a Skulk, it just lowers the required amount by up to 2. Here a table taken from the nonoobs.com damage calculator, on how many bullets it takes to kill a Skulk :

Level 0 LMG - 9 - 10 - 10
Level 1 LMG - 9 - 9 - 10
Level 2 LMG - 8 - 8 - 9
Level 3 LMG - 7 - 8 - 8


The additional numbers are the bullets required for multiple-hive Skulks. Nevermind that you might as well throw your LMG in the trash in that case, because they'll be leaping, Xenoing and using Celerity, but its still nice to know. More importantly, notice how Weapons 1 has no effect to talk of on Skulk vs Marine encounters. In other words, its exclusively a prerequisite.

A bit simpler now, the effect of armor, in Skulkbites required to kill a marine and his leftover HP before the fatal bite.

Level 0 - 2 (75 HP)
Level 1 - 3 (40 HP)
Level 2 - 4 (5 HP)
Level 3 - 4 (44HP [32HP 6AP])

The case here is a bit different than with Weapons, where upgrading below 2 is distinctly unattractive unless you're using shotguns or better. Armor1 is definitely the most attractive upgrade - leaving your marine with his fair share of hitpoints after being bitten twice. Upgrading beyond that becomes a bit cumbersome - Armor2 in competitive play with friendlyfire will seem a dubios advantage, seeing as how you survive the additional bite with a mere 5 hitpoints. Going all the way to Armor3 not just takes the majority of the game, but costs a chunk.

With that in mind, making a decision in favor of upgrades becomes alot harder to justify. Yes, all your marines will have a slight statistical bonus 2 minutes later if you upgrade to weapons 3 - the alternative being to hand out a squad of 4 shotguns, research motion tracking, advanced armory or any other of these options at the deciding point of the game.

We just have to face it after a while, that the goal here is not to plan for drawn out turtling matches in which you'll be able to cost-efficiently exploit your upgrades. The objective is primarily to kill alien hives, and secondarily ressource nozzles, chambers and aliens themselves - and upgrading does not go very far to aiding that objective. Prioritizing it will even hinder that, and hence lead to mostly turtling matches - which in turn, re-assures the user of todays common consensus that his strategy paid off, when in fact it was his downfall.

Good game. :rolleyes:

5

General / For Bob

« on: April 06, 2004, 12:34:35 PM »

A question about mice

Does the type of driver I use seriously affect the performance of my wireless mouse? Should the DPI or anything matter in everyday gaming? I'm using Microsoft PS2 mouse drivers for my Logitech MX300 right now, and when upping sensitivity in HL I get the problem that there seems to be a minimum amount of movement any turn makes (becoming bigger the higher the sensitivity).

Naturally I'd assume its the limit of my dexterity, but the size of that minimal movement seems oddly regular, leading me to believe it might be a technical issue. Any hints? Should I install different drivers for any reason?

6

General / For Plaguebearer

« on: April 06, 2004, 08:44:07 AM »

On Alien teamplay

First of all, I can understand why you have a problem with me trying to get some coordination out of an Alien team regularly - trying to see that we don't over-gorge, get enough DCs and RTs and what not. Of course everyone has their own oppinion of what should be done and what not, and their being no CC for aliens makes this a bit messy. Quite honestly if people don't feel like playing along with me they don't have to - theres nothing I can do anyway.

They're just suggestions, and if people feel like playing as a bit of a more coherent team then thats cool, and most rounds become alot more fun. It doesn't mean we'll win every round - but even losing is more satisfying when its not an endless  'spawn, jump chomp jump jump chomp, die' cycle.

And if you have reasonable suggestions on what to do differently, theres no need to be dramatic about it. We can try it, theres plenty of rounds to do so.

On building more than ~4 RTs

Okay, lets say we have something like yesterday, 7 people on our team. We gathered a total of 4 ressourcenodes, meaning 3 people Gorged at the start of the round. Everyone Gorging is obviously putting themselves down to 0 res. That leaves 4 people, 2 of which will need to do Hives and chambers (and remember, cooperation isn't perfect - in public play, some people don't want to putup either). The remainder is two people, assuming both of them do their roles (where again, in public play odds are high he'll either never spend his res or putup OCs somewhere) to go for early Fades/Lerks, an essential to containing any good team like the ones yesterday.

This model should give you one ressource point every ~7 seconds, or Fadeing without any kills in ~175 seconds, aka 3 minutes. Obviously, against competent marine teams ressource towers will go down - but then, you should be getting some kills as well, getting you to 50 res in well under 4 minutes, for Hives and Fades. Chambers come 10 res earlier.

Lets assume for a change, 6 people put down RTs instead of 3 (that would be Server M2, Cold Turn, Hamasaki, AE35, Eastern and Gorges in our example). That leaves a maximum of 1 person for either early lifeform, chambers or hive (assuming again he did so, and remembering that things on publics don't go perfectly). So, if everything goes perfectly after 3 minutes your whole team should have 50 res, right? (Double the income, 50 instead of 25 res in 3 minutes)

And heres the problem. You yourself will probably admit that its simply not likely that every RT will hold - a few will go down simply because so many people Gorge at the start of the game, leaving the marines free to go wherever they like for a minute. Next comes the time required of your team to setup this many RTs - you can argue for re-skulking and not blindly/immediately dropping all those towers, but again that adds even more time until your ressources start poring in.

So in the end, you'll have one guy going Fade a bit faster than normal, and 6 guys probably being screwed out of res. You can hardly tell me this is better than the situation we had in that game, where 2 guys go fairly early fade (admittedly we sucked ass), and 2 more spend big on chambers and hive, with another 3 with around ~30ish res for rebuilding RTs or filling other roles the team needs at the time (Lerk, OCs, Chambers etc.).

Gorge simply does not = teamplay. A good mix of lifeforms and structures does though - and look at any alien win against competent marines to prove this. I think you were around on ns_tanith where aliens had only 3 RTs and 2 OCs up to 6 minutes into the game and dominated with them. Just the game before they did the polar opposite, with 6 Gorges and got raped in every possible way - my cute widdle marines got the drop on 2 Gorges in the act, and 3 more finished RTs before the 4 minute mark. The setback was so large that we saw no lifeform until 8 minutes, at which point we were overteched to the point of a Fade just being a laugh (Heavy Armor). The game ended with a simple walk-in on their only hive (they had one building too, but that never made it very far) at 11 minutes.

So Saltz, why do you want to win so badly?

Honestly, I don't care so much for winning, and as said above if anyone doesn't want to play a bit mock-competitively as a team, they don't have to. But, lets face it - losing as an Alien sucks. Its just plain not fun being an unupgraded Skulk vs supertechrines - nothing you can do, and almost no effect you can have alone. Spawn, be a walking target and die. I simply don't enjoy spending my time that way, end of story - and teamplay is what turns this all around. A rush of unupgraded Skulks is so much more fun than spawning one by one and dying to the campers outside the Hive, even when it fails horribly. Working with your team and complementing eachothers abilitys is much more satisfying than just trying to masturbate to your own skill.

Sure this all doesn't happen naturally on a pub, and feels a bit out of place even. But hey, isn't teamwork what NS was all about?

7

General / How To Suck As A Lerk

« on: March 29, 2004, 12:30:57 PM »

Before anyone doubts the utility of this document, this is merely a product of my egotrip-tastic enjoyment of the Lerk. Likely there is no useful information contained herein, and you may just laugh at me.

1. 3.0 Lerk flight

Lets first get the basics out of the way. Lerk flight currently has 3 effective modes :
Propulsion -
Works only forward and upwards, not backwards or in any strafe direction. Costs energy - about 2-3 consecutive flaps will get you towards maximum speed, where either an artificial maxspeed or drag stops you. No idea what it is.

Glide -
While holding the Jump key, you will keep most of your momentum - the higher your initial speed, the more momentum you will loose when gliding (simulated drag). Hence its either used when topspeed isn't absolutely necessary, or regenerating energy at low speeds - its still faster, safer and more fun than walking.

Freefall -
Release the jump key and don't hit it anymore, and you fly the same way a Skulk does - via screwmeister 2000 HL physics that should let you strafeturn et cetera. Just good to know that this is a viable alternative to gliding the last few meters to the target, where you might have to touch down anyway.


Note that the most common way to drop out of flight is by smacking a solid object infront of you - marine, alien or static, it doesn't matter. Any part of the Lerk bounding box that latches onto anything will instantly drop you - in which case you want to aim up at 45-80 degrees and flap again. Be aware of spots with bugged entitys that might not be visible (Tanith satcom weldable, Origin laser drilling) and of course.. stairs.

2. Evading with a Lerk

The easiest thing to use a Lerk for is to hang back and Spore anything that moves for your teammates. Its mildly irritating for the Marines, and thats about it. It can however in keyspots provide vital delays - usually at a higher risk though, because unlike by hanging back and sporing the same spot over and over you're going to get shot at.

First thing is to make sure your Sensitivity is high enough to turn 180/360 fast and flap the hell out of there. Next, you need a basic plan - unlike a Skulk, the main way to survive probably isn't to kill all marines in sight, but to always plan your aproach and escape.

//too specific
So if for example Aliens in ns_ayumi have Pressure Control, and Hamasaki is going up. Marines are building up in Cold Turn, and have AE35. You're trying to attack Cold Turn. It would now be silly to sit with your back turned towards either AE35 (Eastern Entrance), or to flee in that direction. Instead, you'd want to approach cold turn from either the Hamasaki or Pressure side, and whenever a Marine starts pointing a gun at you, turn, flee, regen and come back. Its important that you don't wait for him to fire and gauge your damage - lerks die fast.
//

For those that don't know the map, in a nutshell : Know where you'd like to run roughly ahead of time, and make reasonably sure you won't run into more marines there. Once you get Hive 2 and Celerity, this becomes less important and harder to do - still try to play around with the map and find all those nice little escape routes. The Hive1 Lerk needs them - alot.

From there on, support Lerking is simple. Fire Spores into the mass, run when they shoot at you. Rinse, repeat.

Notes :
- Glide against the top of any unobstructed ceiling, leaves you with more momentum and an uncomftorable spot to aim at
- Keep looking/listening around for marines you fly past, don't turn around in their line of sight though, makes you very easy to blast out of the sky.
- Just to repeat it, stay UP. The floor has so many disadvantages to an evading Lerk, its just painful - teammates will knock you onto the ground, small ground structures will stop you and changes in elevation can immediately ground you too.
- Use 2/3 flap bursts and glide. Try to keep it a regular rythm, even under fire - allows for more uptime due to having more leftover adrenaline. And you might not always have that much after sporing.
- Experiment with a secondary jump key that you can push faster, even at the expense of a bit of strafing. It helped my lerk speed alot.

3. Killing stuff, or trying

Okay, so the first to chapters here were fairly crappy. Now lets try to kill things with a Lerk. The rules really stay the same - figure out the way in and out as thoroughly as possible. Remember all the rules from evading.

Usually, when trying to attack something, you want to scout it out first for that very reason. Because you have to know what you're up against, and how you're going to pull it off. Otherwise every engagement comes down to luck. So say for example you were in the same scenario on ns_ayumi as before, but this time you were the first person to hear "Ressource Tower is under Attack". You fly near Cold Turn, preferably from the Hamas side (where you have the ramp down to escape), peak in and fly through if you need to take a closer look. If you're not even shot at or noticed, you can often just swoop in and take a first one down - the more you're shot at, the more you might want to consider not going in there after all, or waiting til some Skulk backup is near.

Scouting all over the place is really 80% of getting some decent Lerk kills - nothing like cherrypicking those marines while they're fighting Skulks, or distracting marines while Skulks chomp them to death. Or finding that poor little loner that never even gets a chance to turn around. It also allows you to easily keep otherwise impractical spots clear - say veil northloop. Keep looking around, informing your team and going in for those absolutely skilless kills :p

Once you decide to actually stick around and duke it out, its fairly simple. Try to get a high spot to get a good view of who you're going to attack, try to attack from around corners or otherwise leave very little warning/approach towards your victims - Lerks die almost as easily as Skulks if you let them get that fire in, but they can more easily access any place on the map. Don't forget, you can for example hover in a vertical cutout while marines walk past and then fall down on them.

Once attacking, theres 3 basic ways of doing it :
Drop down -
Easiest, just drop out of flight near him and chomp. Good for doing some damage when you're fairly sure he won't notice. Allows for a pretty easy escape if you have some Adren left.

Joust -
Similiar to dropping down, but you try to overshoot him and have as much momentum as possible - if he uses Knockback to his advantage, you should be closer to him. If he just sidesteps a bit (usually still getting hit), you can just charge at him again with a new jump and 2 flaps. Keep going at him with alot of speed and keep him off balance, 1-2 bites per joust. This will often kill the guy before he gets his bearings.

Its not too great if he has friends, as they'll have easy shots - but pretty useful for short attacks or picking off good loners. Good aim is half as dangerous if he's just confused as all hell.

Glide -
The hardest, and most rewarding. The problem with glide attacking for more than one bite is, if you don't match knockback, your glidespeed and your hits together right, he'll either get a bit of time to shoot at you (if you're too slow), or more often you'll just drop out of the air (if you're too fast). Generally, the glide is very useful though - and can also be done as a single-bite, where its alot easier.

Just approach an upper body part of your target marine, get a bite in and veer off. Be sure to not approach straight, avoid his gun level if possible and try to not have them look at you while in the approach. Remember, especially once Marines are teched, only luck stands between a Lerk and instant death if he lets them get a bead on.

Notes :
- Use lots of temporary cover, like objects to put between you and the firer. Keep moving, keep people confused and don't be shy to use excessive evasives - thats what the Lerks good at after all.
- Don't be afraid to pull out occasionally when you have doubts, things didn't go as planned or more people showed up than you invited to your little party. Pulling out too early barely costs any time, pulling out too late is usually fatal.
- Feel free to mix any of the 2 basic manuevers, evading and attacking. You can bait marines into going for you by sporing, you can wear them out by evasively flying around them several times before attacking.
- Not mentioned anywhere else, as this is a Hive1 or Hive2/Cel Lerk based text is Umbra. Its useful for any Lerk build, but remember its limitations - it costs a good bit of adren, its not nearly bulletproof and takes away most elements of surprise. Preferrably use it as support for others, when attacking HAs or to tank-up tight hallways/vents. Don't kid yourself into being able to take on large weaponry in groups with it. And Adrenaline Lerks are unattractive for that reason - it doesn't make for great tanking in all but a few places, and Celerity is pretty powerful.
- Focus makes 1-hit glide approaches much more powerful, even vs HA. You can pick apart an entire train easily with the right terrain (Cel/Regen assumed).

4. Summary

SaltzBad is slacking off on monday again. He also is really proud of his ability to run from/drive mad anything or anyone that poses a serious threat. All applaud him.

8

Media / Transparent Background?

« on: March 27, 2004, 05:03:47 AM »

Can anyone pull that off for this .gif?

9

General / Gimme Script Hax Plz Kthx

« on: March 23, 2004, 11:21:24 PM »

Okay, I've had a few problems with trying to do this in the past, so heres what I'm trying to configure somehow in HL :

1. 3 binds for Weapon2
When I go into config and set a 3rd bind to weapon2, it erases one - usually the '2'. I only use it for comming, but thats the problem - I'd like that to remain. On a second that, I'm an idiot - its off to the config.cfg I go, durr.

2. Double-ammo drop
Its really annoying that i have to hit e-a twice although I never see a good reason to drop someone a single pack of ammo (since most people call for ammo when they have less than 1 full clip anyway, and giving them new ammo each clip is dumb). Is there a way to get 2 ammo packs to drop at a time?

3. Jump+forward
I've tried all the plus and minus combinations here, but somehow whenever I attempt to bind that (even via alias), it doesn't work. Is this part of the scriptblocking that disallows semicolons ?

10

General / A Question To Our 'special' Customers...

« on: March 19, 2004, 02:28:11 PM »

What is it that makes 'IRIMPORTANTGIMMESTUFF's half-empty LMG clip so much more important that he needs to spam every radio command 15 times than his teams med and ammo? Is he going to take down 3 hives in a row and 2 Onos with his ammo, or does he bring world peace with it?

What makes the ressource nozzle of 'OMGCOMMURIDJIT' so much more interesting than his teammate at the hive node, who that very moment would be very grateful for help against those 3 Skulks rushing at him? Is there something I'm missing that requires extreme skill about putting up ressource nodes so that only the best of the best can do it and its not enough having one guy going around capping them while the rest keep the aliens busy?

What does 'WPNUPGRADEWTFBBQ' know about the upgrade system that I don't - do the allcaps he's using increase their effectiveness, or is it the knifing of the commchair thats the magical component? Do those 0.0 bullets more that you have to shoot at a Skulk between level 1 and 0 upgrades constitute an license to suck ass?

Thats my ranting for now. I could go on, but this library comp is kicking me off in 1 minute.

11

General / Good Mice?

« on: March 18, 2004, 07:45:27 AM »

Thinking of shopping for a new mouse today. Anyone got suggestions? Good logitech MX-something maybe? (Preferrably cheap, relatively light etc)

12

General / Is There A Point To Armor3?

« on: March 16, 2004, 11:36:09 AM »

Or in short "link me to the damage simulator". I'm just wondering - both Armor2 and 3 take 4 Skulk bites (300/220), 3 Fade swipes (240/220), 4 Lerk bites (240/220) and 3 Onos gores (270/220).

That leaves a change only for Fades (4 swipes - 320/270) and Lerks (5 bites, 300/270), at the cost of 40 res and alot of research time. Armor1 and 2 on the other hand pay off alot nicer, both adding a Skulk bite (the most common type). So in summary :

Armor1 -
+1 Skulk bite
+1 Fade
+1 Onos

Armor2 -
+1 Skulk
+1 Lerk

Armor 3 -
+1 Fade
+1 Lerk


So, meh. Especially the research time is a big party pooper to resist that one extra Fade swipe. Any Fades care to comment? :p

13

General / The Infamous Sound-problem

« on: March 11, 2004, 07:55:31 AM »

Heres the problem : 9 out of 10 times, the first attack - usually seemingly linked to the sound playing of either a Skulk or Marine will freeze my screen for a split second. Sure, thats not too rough if you're a Marine - half the Skulks are dead before that happens. But as an Alium, it sucks large posterior and disorientates poor little me.

My question is : Does anyone else have similiar problems, and if so have they fixed them/how ?

Setup :
Athlon XP 2000+
512 MB RAM
GF4 MX (don't laugh, it should be enough)
and some onboard soundcard


Right, now I'll be off to test if its as noticable in spectator mode or other mods. Yay.

Edit : Also, I'm still unclear - which bloody setting for gl_dither works better and what the hell does it do? This may not be a tech support forum, but I'm desperate :p