Sombrero wrote on 2024-03-05, 07:23:

I've been using one of those standard PS/2 mouses you mentioned with my P3 system and while it's perfectly usable there sure as hell is a big difference how well I can aim with it compared to the modern USB mouse I use with my other systems.

Heh, I've been using a Logitech G403 HERO even on my retro rigs, as long as they support USB 2.0. It works out great, because all the settings are configured on my modern machine and then saved on the mouse itself via profiles. Then, all I need to do is disable mouse acceleration, and I'm good to go. Both WinME and WinXP allow for disabling acceleration:

BTW, I don't think this setting exists under Win98SE. I'm guessing it made its debut with either WinME or Win2K.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-03-05, 07:31:

BTW, I don't think this setting exists under Win98SE. I'm guessing it made its debut with either WinME or Win2K.

Add these to registry:

- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse (new key)
- MouseSpeed = 0 (string value, I use 0 with my USB mouse, 1 with my PS/2 mouse)
- MouseThreshold1 = 0 (string value)
- MouseThreshold2 = 0 (string value)

Can't use Win98SE without that, the acceleration on desktop drives me insane. Though I don't actually know does the acceleration exist while playing games though, haven't tested it. I too use a mouse with settings saved directly to it, with different DPI for different resolutions.

Sombrero wrote on 2024-03-05, 07:41:

Add these to registry:

Cheers! I'll give that a try.

Can't use Win98SE without that, the acceleration on desktop drives me insane. Though I don't actually know does the acceleration exist while playing games though, haven't tested it.

I've definitively seen it applied in 2D games like Baldur's Gate. Not sure how it works in 3D games like Unreal or Quake, since they usually have their own mouse sensitivity options. But I always disable it from the Windows Control Panel when using a gaming mouse.

nezwick wrote on 2024-03-01, 14:21:

I'm sure there is more to question or rant about, but I don't want to go on forever. Has anyone else been this shocked about how "not fun" multiplayer gaming is these days? Or is it just me and I am being a n00b or sore loser?

Some people have an innate ability for these kinds of games. Add to that 25 years of experience, a really good hardware setup and the result may very well seem supernatural.

Back in the day a buddy was so good at Quake III that it was simply no fun to play against him. He had good reflexes and basically practiced all day.

Like people here have advised you: find a casual server and stay there. Last I played any multiplayer game online was probably over a decade ago but since it was a niche mod (https://www.smokin-guns.org/) it was a very casual affair with nobody playing very seriously so it was actually a fun experience.

Echoing what everyone else is saying - the people still playing now have probably been playing for 25 years! I hop on once or twice a week and can keep up with the pack, but I've been playing FPS / Arena FPS regularly for at least 24 years now.

If you want a slightly more casual experience with UT99, there's an event called FFN - Friday Frag Nights, runs from 7PM UTC every Friday night on their own server, gets a pretty nice mix of players across the skill spectrum and can be a good laugh for an hour or two.

Lots of great replies here.

First of all, that YouTube video was very informative. I am definitely experiencing a skills gap there which feels like a huge barrier to enjoyable play. I do not have the time or desire to practice all day or game all day. I have my fill after an hour or two per week.

Clearly some of these people just have mad skills, but I do suspect some cheating. It's like some of them can see through walls and "know" when I'll be coming around a corner inside a building. Also yesterday there was some guy who I swear was somehow firing like 4 weapons at once (rockets, plasma, pulse, and ??). I was definitely no match for an aerial assault like that.

I may look into getting a better mouse and practicing aiming somewhere other than multiplayer UT. I might have a hard time explaining to my wife why I need a new $60-80 mouse when I literally have a whole box of mice already. First I will try connecting a mouse directly to the PC instead of through the KVM switch. I checked out that Logitech G403 and it seems like a good option and not too flashy looking (just too bad it's not beige!). The only issue that might arise with gaming mice is that the onboard USB ports are 1.x and not USB 2.0, so I'd need to add a PCI USB 2.0 controller card. My Shuttle AK31 board being from 2001 or 2002 should definitely have integrated USB 2.0 but somehow does not.

Another note, I am using a healthy CRT display, playing at 1024x768 @ 85Hz, so the screen lag is pretty much a non-issue. FPS seems to stay in the 50-60 range. So, not great, but it's honestly better than what I had back in the 2000s. I could try dropping down to 800x600 for a few more frames per second.

Ovenchips wrote on 2024-03-05, 11:38:

If you want a slightly more casual experience with UT99, there's an event called FFN - Friday Frag Nights, runs from 7PM UTC every Friday night on their own server, gets a pretty nice mix of players across the skill spectrum and can be a good laugh for an hour or two.

Sounds perfect! I'll check that out this Friday. Thanks for the server recommendation. I've been playing on a server called "Smoking 4 Everyone" or something like that just because it's one of the most populated servers.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-03-05, 05:11:

Git gud at dogfighting with the mouse in Frontier: Elite 2 or Frontier First Encounters, you need single pixel accuracy on deflection shots to not get blown out of the sky real quick. Then when you go to an FPS you'll be getting kicked from servers with the claim you're running an aimbot real quick. 🤣

Yes, but turning the stars off made it a lot easier to spot that pixel......

Ever see the hacks for the games, changing byte values? By the end of my playing of FFE I had a some ship you rarely saw in the game (so a pirate would never/rarely be in one), hacked to have a hull mass of one ton, highest military engine, capacity as big as possible (256 tons? 65536 tons?), meaning the hull would have been like mylar or thinner 😀 The low mass gave it a preposterous hyperspace range, and much higher acceleration and deceleration. Hundreds of shield generators, multiple plasma accelerators. I could safely jump into systems with (IIRC) Imperial Explorer pirates with 100MW lasers, and bat them away like they were nothing.

Ha, there was the pause/turret bug too: Get attacked and hit pause. Switch to turret view and the turret will still move even though the game is paused. Line up your laser, open fire and un-pause at the same time, and that was basically the end of any attacker.

nezwick wrote on 2024-03-05, 11:58:

Clearly some of these people just have mad skills, but I do suspect some cheating. It's like some of them can see through walls and "know" when I'll be coming around a corner inside a building.

While it's possible that some players are cheating, the corner thing is plausible if you're using high quality headphones and have positional audio configured properly. You can literally hear someone's steps coming from a certain direction with an Aureal Vortex 2 card using A3D 2.0, and (to a slightly lesser degree) with an X-Fi card using CMSS-3D.

Modern Unreal ports can map positional audio to OpenAL as well. That sounded pretty good the last time I tried it.

demiurge wrote on 2024-03-05, 00:52:

A whole video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-t37idOfvk

there's a few on the comparative decline of arena shooters

the reasons given all seem valid in this and others and this one did note the elite that made it essentially unplayable for the non elite

the main reason i think though is that the co-op modes in newer shooters allow for different play styles, there's such a mix of military, zombie, survival and so many environments that i think arena shooters start to look a bit samey, and then there are all the sports games, gta 5 and plenty more from other genres that take part of the attention

Yeah Quake's suffered heavy from elite rot - well particularly, this 'the way it should be played no textures no shadows everyone keel' deal and anything done about that is BAD NOT REAL QUAKE (i.e. champions) or something like it's not allowed to have graphics anymore, being the landmark technology title series it was. The casual multiplayer scene was reborn in the remasters (especially across consoles) but that's ultimately locked down short term fixes.

nezwick wrote on 2024-03-05, 12:02:

Ovenchips wrote on 2024-03-05, 11:38:

If you want a slightly more casual experience with UT99, there's an event called FFN - Friday Frag Nights, runs from 7PM UTC every Friday night on their own server, gets a pretty nice mix of players across the skill spectrum and can be a good laugh for an hour or two.

Sounds perfect! I'll check that out this Friday. Thanks for the server recommendation. I've been playing on a server called "Smoking 4 Everyone" or something like that just because it's one of the most populated servers.

No probs, you're more than welcome - if you haven't already, definitely look at https://ut99.org to get on the latest version of the community patch, and browse through the other events that people host.

progman.exe wrote on 2024-03-05, 13:09:

Yes, but turning the stars off made it a lot easier to spot that pixel...... […]
Show full quote

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-03-05, 05:11:

Git gud at dogfighting with the mouse in Frontier: Elite 2 or Frontier First Encounters, you need single pixel accuracy on deflection shots to not get blown out of the sky real quick. Then when you go to an FPS you'll be getting kicked from servers with the claim you're running an aimbot real quick. 🤣

Yes, but turning the stars off made it a lot easier to spot that pixel......

Ever see the hacks for the games, changing byte values? By the end of my playing of FFE I had a some ship you rarely saw in the game (so a pirate would never/rarely be in one), hacked to have a hull mass of one ton, highest military engine, capacity as big as possible (256 tons? 65536 tons?), meaning the hull would have been like mylar or thinner 😀 The low mass gave it a preposterous hyperspace range, and much higher acceleration and deceleration. Hundreds of shield generators, multiple plasma accelerators. I could safely jump into systems with (IIRC) Imperial Explorer pirates with 100MW lasers, and bat them away like they were nothing.

Ha, there was the pause/turret bug too: Get attacked and hit pause. Switch to turret view and the turret will still move even though the game is paused. Line up your laser, open fire and un-pause at the same time, and that was basically the end of any attacker.

Yah definitely a useful trainer mode if you download one of the cheat ships savegames, at least for the excessive amount of shield generators, but you learn to shoot quicker going down to a 4MW beam laser.

The ps2rate utility might help a bit with mouse responsiveness.

However, I tried to join an online game with my win98 machine a while back, and it insisted on downloading new assets, which took forever, and then some kind of anti-cheat library, which took even longer. That library then proceeded to corrupt my install. I restored from backup and didn't try again. Never did get into a game.

I'll try again with that Friday Frag Night thing, after taking another backup.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-03-05, 13:20:

While it's possible that some players are cheating, the corner thing is plausible if you're using high quality headphones and have positional audio configured properly. You can literally hear someone's steps coming from a certain direction with an Aureal Vortex 2 card using A3D 2.0, and (to a slightly lesser degree) with an X-Fi card using CMSS-3D.

Very interesting. Again with the "gaming technology I never bothered to learn about" and also "gaming technology I could not afford back in the day". I do have an Aureal Vortex 2 (though it's in my slower Win98 machine). The primary XP rig has an Audigy 2ZS. Use Hardware 3D Sound option is enabled on both and I do notice the sounds are much more... realistic? But I've never tried headphones or a set of surround speakers. Each machine just has a normal pair of speakers.

copper wrote on 2024-03-05, 16:18:

The ps2rate utility might help a bit with mouse responsiveness.

However, I tried to join an online game with my win98 machine a while back, and it insisted on downloading new assets, which took forever, and then some kind of anti-cheat library, which took even longer. That library then proceeded to corrupt my install. I restored from backup and didn't try again. Never did get into a game.

Ah yeah this - the downloading assets step takes forever on some of these servers and sometimes multiple attempts. I also had one completely break my install (and I did not have a backup). Also the latest patch to v469d completely bricks my install as well. I have to wonder if some of these patches are incompatible with Windows XP or older graphics cards like my x800 AGP. I gave up on trying to connect to those servers that have such substantial prerequisites.

I'll check out ps2rate.

leileilol wrote on 2024-03-05, 13:47:

'the way it should be played no textures no shadows everyone keel' deal

Another thing that is a new concept to me. I have all the quality settings cranked up as high as they will go. Playing games for me was always more about being immersed in the environment and appreciating the textures and colors and art rather than being the fastest player or the best at aiming.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-03-05, 07:31:

Heh, I've been using a Logitech G403 HERO even on my retro rigs, as long as they support USB 2.0. It works out great, because al […]
Show full quote

Sombrero wrote on 2024-03-05, 07:23:

I've been using one of those standard PS/2 mouses you mentioned with my P3 system and while it's perfectly usable there sure as hell is a big difference how well I can aim with it compared to the modern USB mouse I use with my other systems.

Heh, I've been using a Logitech G403 HERO even on my retro rigs, as long as they support USB 2.0. It works out great, because all the settings are configured on my modern machine and then saved on the mouse itself via profiles. Then, all I need to do is disable mouse acceleration, and I'm good to go. Both WinME and WinXP allow for disabling acceleration:

BTW, I don't think this setting exists under Win98SE. I'm guessing it made its debut with either WinME or Win2K.

This setting actually does not disable mouse acceleration.

subhuman@xgtx wrote on 2024-03-05, 22:36:

This setting actually does not disable mouse acceleration.

I'm referring to the smaller window on the right which says "Pointer acceleration". Disabling that has a visible effect on my G403 under WinME.

What makes you think it doesn't work?

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-03-06, 04:59:

subhuman@xgtx wrote on 2024-03-05, 22:36:

This setting actually does not disable mouse acceleration.

I'm referring to the smaller window on the right which says "Pointer acceleration". Disabling that has a visible effect on my G403 under WinME.

What makes you think it doesn't work?

Not sure what subhuman@xgtx means, but some older games do force that back on while playing least on Windows XP and beyond causing mouse acceleration. Fairly sure games like UT99, HL and Deus Ex do that.

But there is a fix for it. Also contains a .reg for WinXP even though it speaks about Win7 and up on the title.