This site has relocated to https://teaskittle.neocities.org/

Long time no see...

Hello everyone, as the band Staind has said: "It's been a while, since I first saw you.." This delay has been due to the fact that I pretty much dropped playing Quake Champions and began focusing on other things in life, primarily programing and focusing on my computer science courses. I want this blog to start focusing on those things instead, although I will still talk about games from time to time. I have had some older programs which I have written that I would like to share with you, instead of them just being lonely on my flash drive.

First I would like to link my Gitlab account, which I no longer use. All that is on there is my Debian dotfiles and the internet start page which I use. To be honest I don't do enough programming to justify having a git account(not to forget that I only program by myself). Because of this I barely used git so I had no need to pay for a subscription to it. So here is that page: https://gitlab.com/TeaSkittle

I also would like to share a simple text adventure I spent some time working on in python. There is a simple cli version(game.py) and an ncurses version(main.py). The ncurses functions a bit weird, but I am not interested in working on the project anymore so it will not be fixed. To play that version use the number keys and enter to select your commands, the cli version functions with text. Here is the game: The Cabin

I hope you enjoy the game, but it is rather simple, I am now working on a more proper text adventure in C which has actual parsing, I will post it here when it is complete. Hopefully this time won't be as long of a wait.

cm/360 calculator

Hi there everyone! So after all of this nonsense I have done with improving my aim, one of the things I decided to do was write a simple python script to calculate your centimeter per 360 in Quake. There are better options out there, but I wanted to write one I could use offline(the code is there if you would like to use it offline as well). Its a rather crude and text based program, but I mainly just wanted to practice my python skills. I hope you find this useful, cheers!

Press the play button start, also you can move the script up to see the program a little better.
Also here is a link to a spreadsheet showing top players cm/360, a good reference: 
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTexLm9MUWV3yqpzW7mDK_Ytkh0KcJNsZSNteIwY1Bqw_XrAD2HxE-swtPpDvyCYCnunmnNqrNdKSsf/pubhtml#

Download the calculator here: cm/360

Let's Talk about aim, part 2:

So after a few weeks of playing with mouse acceleration(see my previous post about this), I decided to go back to using no mouse acceleration in Quake. I decided to try this because my aim was, well inconsistent with acceleration. I liked the logical ideals behind acceleration(i.e. being able to track well, and also being able to flick on command), but it really threw off my muscle memory at times. I started to find it is really quite difficult to calculate on the fly both the distance your mouse needs to move to land a precise shot, and also factor in the speed at which you do this. One thing to note here is that I was using a low sensitivity at 41.5cm/360 with a lower acceleration rate, so the acceleration wasn't even that much and it was enough to throw off my muscle memory. These are the setting I was using:

dpi = 800
In-Game Sensitivity = 1.25
Sensitivity = 1
Acceleration = 0.0175
Sensitivity Cap = 1.4
Offset = 1.5
Power = 2
Pre-ScaleX = 1
Pre-ScaleY = 1
Post-ScaleX = 1
Post-ScaleY = 1
AngleAdjustment = 0
AngleSnapping = 0
SpeedCap = 0
FancyOutput = 0

Compared to a lot of players I have seen who use acceleration, this is quite low. So I began experimenting and started out at 1.25 sensitivity and raised it over time. As of writing this post I am using:

dpi = 800
In-Game Sensitivity =  1.5
No Acceleration

After using these settings for a while I found it to be more consistent than using acceleration. But this is just for me, I think acceleration is great for certain players, but we all have different preferences, hands, grip styles, and play styles. For some acceleration is wonderful, for others it may just not be the shoe that fits. With doing a lot of this testing I played many games of instagib, here is a clip of me playing with these current settings that I am quite happy with.

Hope my experimenting helps you in your Quake journey, cheers.

Let's talk about aim

Hi everyone! So one of the first things that I really wanted to get down in Quake Champions, or any FPS for that matter, is my aim. But this is way harder than it sounds, as getting your settings just right can be complicated and take some time. So like many newcomers, I decided to look at the settings and configurations of the pros. I ended up finding this spreadsheet via Reddit:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Xen7wvBiIqZtLwsDuWzjB55QyCtZYQA9pcesxf09NQc/edit#gid=0

One things I concluded after looking at this was that there is not one shoes that fits all. Everyone is different. But a few things did peak my curiosity. Firstly only three of them use a fov higher than 120, and only two of them have one lower than 110. Interesting, so a good sweet spot is somewhere between 110 and 120. I assume that is where a good balance of aim and awareness meet. The second thing I noticed is only 6 of them have a dpi higher than 1000. This inst too surprising as higher dpi tends to be a marketing ploy more than something that has major impact of your performance. Anything higher than 1600 is rather ridiculous. And lastly 6 of them use mouse acceleration. Wait what?

Ya, if you do some research into the older quake games it was very common for high level players to use mouse acceleration. I did a simple search on Reddit and found some good opinions of mouse acceleration.

https://www.reddit.com/r/QuakeLive/comments/5xhgev/why_mouse_accel/

I won't go into much detail but here are the basics:

Pros:

• Ability to do fast flick shots, or 180 degree turns 
• Can have low sensitivity for tracking with lighting gun, with high acceleration to flick
• Can be insanely customized to find the perfect sensitivity
• Can play well without having to use a massive mouse-pad

Cons:

• More difficult to be consistent
• Steep learning curve
• Can take a while to set up the perfect mouse settings 
• Can be complicated with setting up at LANs 

I think these are all things worth considering if you are debating on trying mouse acceleration, and if you do decide to try it I highly recommend using the software and driver created by both Povohat and Kovaak. Here is a video showing the software:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmY1OTacEzA

You can download it here as well:

http://mouseaccel.blogspot.com/2015/12/new-method-for-mouse-acceleration.html

I highly recommenced at least giving it a try for a few hours or a few days, I did and honestly it ended up being tremendously helpful to my game. Last night I played a TDM where I got 11 impressive medals, my rail was terrible before I got these settings down. That completely changed my previous notions of mouse acceleration.

Welcome to Tea & Skittles

Hi and welcome to my blog! My name is Travis(a.k.a. TeaSkittle), I am a plain and simple geek that is going down the adventure of learning about computers. Right now my obsession is with the game Quake Champions and this blog is going to be focused a lot on my journey of learning the game at a competitive e-Sports oriented level. The game is old school and is riddled with veterans of the game's mechanics who have 10 plus years of experience; I am trying to get to that level, let's see if I can.