🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <mrV6OXb...@news2.ingr.com>,
James McCormick <jcmc...@hiwaay.net> wrote:
>
>I have to disagree. I *did* take the time to customize Quake but I still
>don't like it in multiplayer. I'll take DoomII over Quake for multiplayer
>any day (I *do* like Quake single player much better though).
>
>Quake in multiplayer is just a total joke unless you have a local network or
>a T1 line in your home. Yes, I'm using QuakeWorld and it helps a lot, but, I
>can dial up a local buddy with DoomII and have just a nice "tight"
>deathmatch game; NO lag, NO ghosting or jumping, it works great. Quake
>doesn't come close.
>
>DoomII takes much more finess. Doing the "shotgun" dance with another player
>takes skill for it to pay off. Only the guys who *really* know how to use
>the BFG and coordinate thier moves will get the frags with it. So far, Quake
>multiplayer is just moving around and shooting. There's too much network lag
>for anything else.
>
>If you think I'm wrong, please tell me what I'm missing.


Welp, I wasn't going to jump back into this thread (you should see the huge
article I wrote & didn't send), but I was so flabbergasted by seeing a
reasonable post with actual concrete arguments `n stuff that I had to reply.
:-)

I'm not a modem user.  But from what I understand, there is a lot of
tweaking that can be done to improve your performance.  You might want to
see lagcity.stomped.com & in particular look for the "delagger" patch if you
haven't already done so.  If you have an X2 modem, there's other stuff that
might help (http://www.navpoint.com/~zephed/qx2.html).

A lot depends on your ISP.  Some ISPs are hopeless.  With others, you might
get sub-200 QuakeWorld pings even with a 28.8.  *shrug*  I think Lag City
has an ISP list with people's experiences.  If you can get down to around
200 that is not too shabby for a fun QuakeWorld game, although packet loss
is also a factor (and also really ISP-dependent).  Even though I'm one of
those evil low-pingers, I've had a lot of good QuakeWorld games with pings
around 200 (often number-of-players is an important enough criterion for me
that I'll put up with a higher ping).  Then there are people who claim to
have great QuakeWorld games with an 800 ping... I don't know what they're
smoking. :-)  But maybe it's a sort of Zen thing you get into after a while.

Anyway, if you're a little lagged you should look for games that emphasize
teamplay and higher-level goals.  Teamplay with large teams, and to some
extent complex goals, are really not possible in DooM multiplayer, so that's
one reason to give it a try.  Another is that these games that put a little
more emphasis on thinking and a little less on reflexes, reducing your ping
disadvantage.  Quake will always be a twitch game, but you can make the best
of it.

A reasonably large CTF game would fit the bill pretty well.  But IMO
TeamFortress is the best Quake variant a high-pinger can play.  There's the
teamplay thing and high-level goals (sometimes capture the flag, sometimes
not).  You can find very large games where you can get a role to play rather
than having to be the hero.  And you can select a class that has strengths
that don't depend as much on low ping.  I would guess that sniper, heavy
weapons, spy, or engineer would be good choices for a high-pinger in TF.

You might want to check it out (but be warned there's a little bit of a
learning curve).  http://www.planetquake.com/teamfortress/


--
Joel Baxter   jba...@lemur.stanford.edu   http://lemur.stanford.edu/~jbaxter/
aka lemurboy  Clan 9 From Outer Space      http://lemur.stanford.edu/clan9/