[Art]

In case you haven't tried you hand (and wits) at this way cool 1st Person Shooter, you really should do so!

It's called Alien Arena and it is totally FREE and the graphics and game play really ROCK!

The game is based on the Quake II and III engine and also has a new graphics engine mod as well. Even
on the Easy level, the bots (if played in Single Player mode) are pretty smart and will drive a tack in you
before you can blink! There are over 30 levels, can be played as Multiplayer (online) and Single Player (against bots).

The community who all worked together on this did a super job!!

Check it out: http://red.planetarena.org/

[DaveMorton]

Being a HUGE Quake fan (I still play Q3 from time to time), I have no choice but to try it out. I'll let you know my thoughts after I frag a few bots.

[DaveMorton]

It saddens me that while the game looked great, I couldn't get it to perform well enough to enjoy it. My biggest problem was the game's inability to provide a mouse setting that I could even consider usable. With the mouse speed setting turned all the way up, and with mouse acceleration turned on (I couldn't even play with it off), I could ALMOST turn - while standing still - fast enough to be able to react to enemy fire. Almost. If I'm either walking or running, forget it. I can't move the mouse more than a couple of degrees in any direction. Oh, well. Back to Q3...

[Art]

That's odd...I spin too fast with my mouse and often spin "past" the enemy. I'm using the Logitech MK 300
Wireless Mouse and Keyboard combination which gives me a lot of freedom (hate mouse "tails" [cords]).

One thing I did was to use the WASD keys: W-UP, A-Left, S-Down / Back and D-Right instead of the
arrow keys that I'd normally use. Can't side step with the current arrow configuration. but the WASD keys
worked fine.

I Went to Level 6 but had to stop for dinner! (There ARE priorities in the world, ya know) and Food's one of them!

Otherwise, I used all the game's Default settings instead of trying to tweak things that I'm unsure of right off the bat.

YMMV

[Data]

Ahh!, the Windows XP enhanced mouse precision and acceleration problem in games.

A mouse with adjustable DPI on the fly gets over that one.



EDIT:
There is a cordless version of this mouse too, that’s the one I have. 

[DaveMorton]

Now if they only made those for us Southpaws!

[Data]

You have to be awkward don’t you GCC   

Then you will be needing something like this, but in stock and from the USA.

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/home/product/46940/razer-deathadder-left-handed-gaming-mouse-3500

[DaveMorton]

Actually, that was a joke. While I'm left-handed, and I use the mouse on the left side of my keyboard, I'm accustomed to right-handed mice, and the simpler, the better. My hands don't work as well as they used to, and more buttons equates to more hassles. Left-click for attack, right-click for alt attack/scope, center-click for the grapple, and the wheel to change weapons, and I'm good.

[Data]

Oh well

The game looks pretty good, but for a Quake head like me it has to be Quake Live these days.

Gauntlet, Impressive, Excellent, You have taken the lead.  

[DaveMorton]

I like Quake Live, too, but it doesn't have all the nifty little extras that I've collected over the years, like my Kenny model that I use , or hearing  "HOLY $H!T!" when I make a particularly good shot with the railgun.

[Data]

If you play multiplayer Quake 3 I hope you use the 125FPS tweak 

I just thought GCC we might have fragged eachother many times   

[DaveMorton]

If you've ever played against HOLD_STILL!!! (rainbow colors omitted), then you have, indeed. I usually only play insta-gib anymore; and that only rarely, since it's so hard to find a server that isn't botted. PB only does so much, it seems.

[Data]

No I don’t remember playing HOLD_STILL!!!, I played Q3 for quite a few years as ^SpoT (in black, hence the ^), thinking about it, the ping would have been too much back then to play against the USA. Still good to chat to a fellow player.

Yeah if you ran Q3 at 125FPS you could jump further, running jumping you could out pace your opponent.  And then there is the 333FPS tweak that made you jump even further, though the 333FPS was looked at as a cheat the 125FPS one was taken that everyone new about it and not considered a cheat on the servers I frequented.

Those were the days, very very good FPS and a great engine for games

[DaveMorton]

I had heard of (and use) the 125FPS tweak, and I had a good enough system that I was able to see if doubling the frame rate would net similar or (hopefully) better results. Alas, it wasn't the case. Never heard of the 333 tweak, though, which is fine, since my system wasn't quite up to that level. I think that ~260-270 was the best that I could consistently squeeze out of it back then. I haven't had the FPS displayed in so long, I couldn't tell you what it runs at now.

[Data]

One of the reasons I overclocked my PC was to increase the FPS in Q3, being an OpenGL engine the CPU speed was the limiting factor, I can remember running my old P4 at 3.8Ghz to do just that.