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increasing your mobility as well. This toy fires a damaging rocket at about the
same speed as a Blaster shot. Long range attacks are out of the question and
close range will end up in getting yourself blown apart, but medium range is
just right. The basic way to use the RL effectively is to not make direct
contact damage, but to use the rocket's splash damage as it explodes upon
contact with a wall, ground or ceiling. In accordance, attacking a player that
is suspended in mid-air is not a good idea, but try it a few times, as well as
firing down below after a high/rocket jump because it looks really stylish :).

You'll want to keep some space between you and your target to deter the effects
from the rocket's splash damage. Try jumping when you fire at the ground in
order to reduce any loss of health. Make sure to lead your shots, and fire
where your opponent will be, not where your opponent is currently standing. A
direct hit with a rocket dishes out 100 points of damage, plus a random number
from 0 to 20.

Remember that the RL can be used to pull off the ever-famous rocket jump. You
can pull this off by looking at the ground while moving. Jump into the air, and
the instant when you are off the ground, fire a rocket. This move will get you
into areas you need to reach more quickly, such as getting from the SSG to the
Megahealth on the map Tokay's Towers. An RJ will chip away 50 points of health,
so grab some armor and health beforehand and RJ only when necessary.


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2.9 Hyperblaster
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A repeating-fire weapon that fires projectile bolts of energy. The stream of
energy can quicky melt an enemy, but it's a bit hard to make all your shots
count at medium to long range. The up-side is that the Hyperblaster is more
efficient in terms of ammo usage and damage per bolt. Use this weapon like you
would use a Chaingun, but make sure to lead your shots a little bit if you're
at medium range or farther. If you don't plan on using the Hyperblaster, grab
it for the 50 cells it gives you to power up your BFG.

When firing a steady stream of bolts, you can slightly sweep the gun left and
right, which can give you some space to retreat while an attacker attempts to
either circumvent your stream or retreat as well. The Hyperblaster is a hard
weapon to master, but the results can be quite satisfying if you do. It's also
a great weapon to use with the quad for maximizing your damage potential. Each
bolt does 15 points of damage.


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2.10 Railgun (RG)
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The ultimate long-range weapon in Q2. This red gun can fire a slug at an
incredibly high speed, so fast that it instantly hits its target. The Railgun
is effective at nearly all ranges of combat, but more so at longer ranges since
nothing else travels as fast and far than a rail slug. It is very difficult to
become proficient at using this gun, but the basic use is to snipe targets at
long range. There is a whole slew of things that can aid you in your aiming,
including trip-wiring (waiting for your opponent to get under your crosshair
rather than placing the cursor on them), strafing to get your shot lined up
horizontally, and so on. Make sure that when you fire this baby, your shot will
count. If it doesn't, the long blue slug trail will make other players aware
of the fact that you're shooting at them. Combine this with the long delay
between shots, and you can get wasted before you know it.

You can use the Railgun offensively and defensively, and the damage and
effectiveness doesn't diminish over increasing distances. Each shot will always
deal 100 points of damage, which is enough to kill a respawned player. Make
sure to grab the 2-health stimpacks or armor shards so that you can keep your
health over that magic number. Any opposition that's attacking with a Railgun
will have to rail you at least twice to kill you (unless they switch weapons
after railing you, in which case you're most likely dead).


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2.11 BFG10K
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The good ol' Big Fucking Gun, ten thousand model. This weapon is really cool,
but in multiplayer games, most people will shun it because it's overpowered. It
can clean a room full of players, which is great for FFA. TDM games can find a
couple of uses for it, like disrupting a strong defense in Capture the Flag (I
find this rather lame, though...) or for guarding an area. The way it works is
the same as the 9K model from DOOM games: a big ball of energy is fired, and
when it hits something, it produces an explosion of plasma energy. This emits a
large area-of-effect blast and also damages anything in between the user and
the explosion with an invisible blast area. The only difference with the 10K
model is that beams of energy fly out of the ball of energy when it is floating
in the air, instantly damaging players nearby. If you'd like to know more on
the technical specs of the BFG, check out the BFG FAQ for DOOM, as it explains
it much better than I could. It's not essential information to know, but it
might help you to gain an understanding. Just keep in mind that Q2's BFG has
tracer lasers and the 3rd dimension to deal with.

Even with its destructive capabilities, the BFG can still be a tricky weapon to
use. When you fire it, there is a small warming-up period before the ball of
energy is actually launched. Make sure to prepare before hand when launching
your attack. The green ball travels quite slowly (about a player's running
speed), so aim for the walls like you would do with a Rocket Launcher. The BFG
can cause 100 to 700 points of direct damage, 100 to 300 points of invisible
flash damage, and around 50 points per second with the laser beams. Don't try
to use the quad with the BFG, as it won't work. One of the Q2 patches have
rendered this useless. It sounds cool when you fire a quad BFG though, hehe.


===============================================================================
3. Configuring your Controls
===============================================================================
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3.1 Graphics
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Before you start playing Quake 2 at all, you'll have to configure a few things.
First, let's begin with your graphics. Considering that this game was released
in 1997, I will assume that gaining a steady framerate is no difficult task to
accomplish now. All you need to know is that an FPS of 50 is decent enough, and
that you should be using the OpenGL video display, not Software Mode. This can
be changed in the Video option in the main menu.

**Can't get OpenGL to work with an ATI Radeon video card? To work around that,
you'll have to either download an enhanced graphics Q2 client like Q2MAX, or
download r1gl.dll (available at www.r1ch.net/stuff/r1gl/). Follow the
instructons contained within the documentation.**

Keep your resolution low, as targets farther away will look smaller and thus
seemingly harder to hit. 800*600 is good, but I recommend 640*480.

There are a few things you can tinker around with. The following are values
that determine how graphics are displayed. Use the console (tilde key: ~) to
alter them. If you want to turn off the palette blending for example, pull down
the console and type 'gl_polyblend 0'. To turn it back on, simply type
'gl_polyblend 1'.

gl_polyblend: The blending effect that comes into play when you get a weapon,
sustain damage, or when you grab a powerup. I recommend turning it off so that
you won't get distracted when someone hits you, and you'll be able to see under
water more clearly. By default, this is turned on.

gl_dynamic: Dynamic lighting effects from fired weapons and such. The default
setting is on.

gl_flashblend: Causes the lighting to blend into a sphere of light. Keep this
off along with gl_polyblend so that you won't see red when being hit. Default
is off.

gl_modulate: The brightness of a texture when affected by dynamic lighting.
Change this around a bit to brighten up the map and 3D model lighting. The
default setting is on 1, but you can set it higher (5 is good enough).

The best way to alter these settings is to start a level with yourself and
change them one by one. After typing a command in, though, you must type in
'vid_restart' in order to see the actual changes in game.


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3.2 Keyboard Setup
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Okie, you'll need to have comfy keyboard controls in order to play Q2. Let's
start with all the options in the Options menu. Go ahead and turn on Freelook
and Always Run, since you'll need to be able to aim anywhere at any time with
the mouse, and Always Run lets you to run always. With that out of the way,
enter the customize controls setup and change your settings. You're not done
when you exit that screen, though...now we have to re-map your weapon selection
keys. For this, I must introduce you to the command 'bind '. Even
though you've already set up your movement, jump, and crouch keys by now, I
want you to get familiar with binding keys. You might want to make some changes
in mid-game as quickly as you can, and this is faster than going to the Options
menu.

To bind the W key to move up, for example, you would type this in the console:
'bind W +forward'. These are the basic movement commands you can bind to your
keys:

+forward - move forward
+back - move backwards
+moveleft - sidestep/strafe left
+moveright - sidestep/strafe right
+moveup - jump
+movedown - crouch
use - uses/selects that item

So, if you like the popular WASD setup, you could type:
bind w +forward
bind s +back
bind a +moveleft
bind d +moveright
bind space +moveup
bind shift +movedown

Just make sure your controls are comfortable as possible. It doesn't matter if
you play with the arrow keys or not, but with the WASD setup, you'll have easy
access to other keys on your keyboard.

Now, you know how to select a weapon, right? Just hit one of those numbers on
the top row of your keyboard. Don't all those keys look so spaced apart though?
Using the 'use ' command, we can re-map all of your weapon selection keys
to closer, easily accessible keys.

With an arrow key setup, you might like these keys. Note that the KP stands for
the numberpad, which is on the right side of your keyboard.

bind kp_ins "use Railgun"
bind ctrl "use Shotgun;use Super Shotgun"
bind kp_end "use Grenade Launcher;use Rocket Launcher"
bind kp_leftarrow "use Machinegun;use Chaingun"
bind del "use Hyperblaster;use BFG10K"

It's all a matter of personal preference. You'll also note above that I used a
semicolon to separate two 'use' commands. When you're binding a key, you must
separate each individual command with a semicolon if you want that key to serve
multiple functions. So, take a look at my bind for the CTRL key for example.
When I press CTRL, the Shotgun will be selected, or the Super Shotgun if I have
it. That's not too confusing, is it? :)


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3.3 Mouse Setup
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I'm sure most outstanding players have a pricey mouse and a great mousepad to
go with it. Personally, I still play with a serial mouse (as well as 3M Precise
Mousing Surface and a fairly outdated computer, heh) and I am able to aim well
with it. It's up to you to decide whether you require a nifty optical mouse and
a smooth Everglide mouse pad. Hey, you can even get a black Everglide pad, and
I hear those things can hide dirt and grime easily...

With that out of the way, you'll need to configure your sensitivity for
optimal play. What you want is a happy medium so that you'll be able to wheel
around when someone's shooting you in the back, but just enough sensitivity so
that you can pick that sniper off from the other end of the map. To tune this,
use the mouse sensitivity slider in the Options menu, or use the command
'sensitivity ' for quicker and more specific alterations. The ideal
value is different for each computer, so tune your settings until they're just
right. Try making your changes in the middle of a DM game, so that you can
notice the differences easily. Just so you can compare, my sensitivity is 5
with my dominant right hand and 6 with my left hand (yes, I do switch. The
reason? I have no clue...). Make sure to turn off 'invert mouse' (unless you
like it like that) and 'lookstrafe.' Enable 'freelook.' This will give you
maximum control over your movements.

If you need a smoother movement with your mouse, try typing 'm_filter 1' in
the console.


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3.4 Making and Editing Config Files
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Now that you've managed to find the perfect setup, you want to make sure that
you don't have to go through this long and grueling process again, right? Well,
once you quit Quake 2, look in your Quake2\baseq2\ folder and find the file
'config.cfg'. Copy this file and rename it to something (maybe 'gunstar.cfg').
Ta-da! All of your binds, video settings, etc. are now contained within a .cfg
file. Now, all you have to do if you want to play with your settings is to type
'exec gunstar.cfg' (or whatever you named it) in the console when you start up
Q2.

A configuration file can be edited with Notepad, so if you need to make some
changes, open up that proggy and enter them manually. Remember that you can
comment on certain things by placing a double slash (//) at the end of a line.