360Hz monitor 333FPS/Hz factor for Quake 3(idtech3) engines

[Futuretech]

Note: Academic discussion about quirks of Quake 3 engined games that has quirks with high frame rates, that players can tune for. Mainly of interest to Quake 3 engine users.

Hello everyone. I don't plan on posting any information on a 360Hz monitor as you have specific threads on that and my information is anything but specific. This is information for Quake 3 engine users who seem to forget why we need higher refresh rates reaching at least 333Hz but at least 250Hz or at least 125Hz for magic number matching on Q3A engine. Albeit other magic numbers do have some benefits of certain things in regards to framerate and packet programming. Albeit I'll leave this only to 125, 250, and 333 and why these three numbers pop up more than any other magic number found in Quake engine.

idtech3 or Quake 3 or Q3A engine was probably one of the most popular DX9 engines available and to this day many still play old games or use the idtech3 base like Call of Duty or Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory(F2P popular among older computer users). Shame Counter-strike wasn't ported to the superior Quake 3 engine since Counter-strike is an awful game with an awful engine sticking with the Quake 2 engine. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened to CS if Q3 engine was used instead. Maybe I would have liked the game more and stayed playing it longer alas it still stuck with a highly modded quake 2 engine and an awful conversation at that.(And yes if your wondering I can explain many reasons why Counter-strike sucks, this isn't a rant, an actual tremendous amount of information as to why the game is awful. Probably a good 15-30 minute read as to why it is bad.)

First let me point out there are magic numbers the three most prominent numbers found among Quake 3 engine is 125, 250, and 333 FPS. Some might state the cl_maxpackets maxes out at 125 thus 125 is perfect number but there are benefits to going higher at specific intervals albeit some servers kick rarely if ever ban for having higher FPS than 250. There are some paranoid people who believe computers should perform less and give less benefit of higher FPS. I've even seen some servers kick for over 125. Most of these benefits are found better in the Call of Duty series or more specifically normal shooters. Quake 3 Arena basically it helps but since the game is more equalized in terms of armor and weapon damage it helps not by a huge amount as it requires a good player but non-the less it helps.

Some might have studied 400/500FPS at 400 and 500 FPS you become heavier(I believe you run slightly slower as well) on Q3A engine thus you can fall down and suffer damage or death from heights that supposedly do little to no damage.

Another magic number at the high end is 15,000, if I recall correctly. Apparently at 15K it multiplies the dynamic lights and while it doesn't perform lag it slows the time of the engine. People have stated other magic numbers are available at even higher intervals but apparently at 15K or so the game engine lags not the game itself the game runs fine but the amount of dynamic lights multiplies and performs some sort of time dilation oddly enough again as mentioned the game runs fine.

The big three magic numbers found most commonly on power users is 125, 250, and 333 FPS. At these framerates the engine optimizes the character in a strange way by benefiting them in many ways.

• 125, 250, and 333 benefits:
  
  1. Higher jumping both vertically forward/backward/sideways and horizontally up/down. Less advantages in Quake 3 since you jump a lot but more for ground shooters. Funny enough back in CoD4 Backlot at 250/333 you can jump out of the map not even needing to do a rocket jump with RPG so you can camp the back unaccessible part of the map albeit you will run out of ammo and might need to suicide to return back to the playfield. Albeit on a personal note if you play Opfor with M240 and a few nades you can dominate the map by nade spam strat, flashbang, shooting M240 and controlling Marines especially using the two machine gun nests found on the buildings. I've gone as high as about nearing 100 kills before the match is over even on extended map times for some servers who mess with the time. Also to be pointed out this strategy needs radar UAV map showing as you will mess with the spawn and can spawn camp once in a while. It's kinda like Shipment you do a farming domination match on Shipment and can control the spawns by spawn camping and flipping spawns. In Backlot the game spawn flips to Opfor location for Marines so they can break the stalemate and push Opfor out of the way through backspawning. Just some advice from the old days playing CoD4 and noticing you need to keep your eyes peeled for backspawning that the game does due to developer feedback on spawning. It's basically a method to reduce spawn camping or domination and make domination more competitive albeit it's a silly feature and might bother some players who rely on spawn camping to dominate the map especially Pubstars or people who have highend equipment are good and use lower sensitivities to win matches. Or especially old Wolf:ET players who rely on spawn camping to dominate the game. Like playing Axis in Oasis camping them with MG34 then switching to Mortar and mortar spamming the allied spawn camp. As long as your team controls any stragglers that might escape you pretty much have the best Oasis strategy especially as axis pushes into the building hallway and underground well as well as the central cave.
  
  2. Improved Hit registration: Yeah 125, 250, and 333 especially 333 allows you to hit better and improves the detection of hitpackets of Quake 3 engine also makes use of projectiles so both hitscan weapons and projectiles improve their hit detection.
  
  3. Improved Hit avoidance: You can avoid being hit better and thus you register less on other people. Even if they use cl_snaps 30 to increase the server frame sending/receiving from 20FPS to 30FPS. It's just makes you dodge more even surprisingly more to some people. I believe some people have been told directly about "bullshit" shots from high FPS dodgers using 125, 250, or 333FPS. I'd wager to state this benefits more CoD players and Wolf:ET players rather than say Quake 3 Arena. There are benefits don't get me wrong but Q3A is so fast paced that the improvements are more behind the scene, subtle really albeit the benefit is there.
  
  4. Silent running: Every 3rd footstep is masked completely doesn't register at only 333FPS. So you'd be surprised at some headphone/speaker users who go "Why do you walk or run so weird you only register a few steps". Kinda similar to the Panther XL controller which uses an analog flightstick to analog control the character. In Quake 3 you control the hips so the character moves funny, people literally see the character move in odd ways rather than normal keyboard run. This also applies to both Joystick-mouse and Joystick-trackball(rarity hardly anyone plays like this since good trackballs aren't made for gaming) players. The Panther XL uses a trackball on the left and the joystick on the right.
  
  5. Faster gun shooting: Since 125, 250, and 333 at 100% directly interferes with the engine in magic numbers the benefit is faster rate of fire. Surprisingly some people can pick up on the action and ask why your shooting so fast that doesn't make sense. Even though in Quake engine higher FPS equals faster shooting as the shooting is calculated more buffered into the frame rate. The specific 125, 250, and 333 FPS makes for specific benefits for faster shooting. Basically every increase in FPS increases fire rate to a normalcy of higher output but 125, 250, and 333 do so at a slightly noticeable higher amount. Particularly with their benefits to hit detection since those specific numbers mess with hitreg on your part.

There are probably other benefits but these seem the most common on the Internet. Albeit since most people don't do their research people ask why when there could have been a good website explaining said benefits and not needing to waste bandwidth of a forum in asking why would I want to play at 125, 250, and or 333FPS and people who return to old quake engine games could benefit from the information in using a superior computer than those found among those games back in the early-mid 2000s.

Also this requires 100% 125, 250, or 333. So if your computer is good enough and maxes out the game make sure it's outputting those framerates a lot of people might get it in their own private server but when playing public their FPS tanks. I'm sure some of you guys probably get thousands of FPS on old quake 3 engines so that ensures you got all three minimum, average, and maximum framerate set at 125, 250, 333 or any other magic number 100% of the time.

I should also point out Quake 2 might have some magic numbers available but they don't do what Quake 3 does. This is probably one of the reasons why Quake 3 is the standard when it comes to these magic numbers in comparison to the older quake 1 and 2 engines.

http://esreality.com/post/2501374/com-maxfps-250/ A link of someone with reasonable information who did their research about 125, 250, and 333 FPS. Mostly concerned with jumping but funny enough mentions other attributes as I mentioned.

Another website mentioning the magic numbers https://www.crossfire.nu/tutorials/26/b ... connection

He states the 333FPS dodging/unhittability is more for RTCW but I would not be surprised if it's still around for Wolf:ET, CoD series, and Quake 3 Arena the progenitor game.

Anyways I hope this helps some people understand why we need 360Hz monitors to sync up with 333FPS/Hz albeit if syncing technologies work in the sense of using the maxed out refresh rate then you can 333FPS and sync to 360Hz and have a 0.23 milisecond improvement over 333Hz.

[hleV]

Shame Counter-strike wasn't ported to the superior Quake 3 engine since Counter-strike is an awful game with an awful engine sticking with the Quake 2 engine. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened to CS if Q3 engine was used instead. Maybe I would have liked the game more and stayed playing it longer alas it still stuck with a highly modded quake 2 engine and an awful conversation at that.(And yes if your wondering I can explain many reasons why Counter-strike sucks, this isn't a rant, an actual tremendous amount of information as to why the game is awful. Probably a good 15-30 minute read as to why it is bad.)

You bash CS engine, but you could easily rename this thread to "15-30 minute read as to why Q3 engine is bad", and it'd be true. Imagine playing at 360FPS and having worse hitreg than someone locked at 125, 250 or 333FPS; on top of that, the hitreg is even worse against those specific players and their every 3rd step is silent, lmao.

[Futuretech]

You bash CS engine, but you could easily rename this thread to "15-30 minute read as to why Q3 engine is bad", and it'd be true. Imagine playing at 360FPS and having worse hitreg than someone locked at 125, 250 or 333FPS; on top of that, the hitreg is even worse against those specific players and their every 3rd step is silent, lmao.

See this is why many years ago I stopped posting at various forums I visited particularly back when I used to visit geekhack.org(keyboard site). It seems I state something and others twist it up. I knew signing up to this forum was a mistake apparently my messages induce some sort of angered reply from people and thus I get bashed. Well done good sir another proof that I shouldn't be posting on any forums whatsoever like I said "I pretty much stopped posting at various forums due to this". I'm actually surprised my response triggers you so much. It's just a quirky understanding of a game engine it's not a magic recipe to win non-stop and be a pubstar or pro gamer or whatever rank you wish to accomplish. It's an assistive measurement not exactly a insta-win.

The fact you said the Q3 engine is worse isn't a reason to bash it. As a matter of fact I praise the Q3 engine for being very good.

If you'd like I can reply as to why counter-strike is a horrible game even reading blogs as far back as from the former Yahoo Geocities particularly one blog of a multi-gamer who played not just a lot of FPS games but also preferred playing MilSims like Operation Flashpoint, if I recall he even played Infiltration 2.9 mod for UT99 probably one of the progenitors of advanced gaming concepts for realism games like the free-vectorized aiming system.

Even if somehow these framerates give desirable advantages it does require skill to play the game. Good computer, good monitor, lower sensitivities, sound equipment etc.etc. It's certainly not 125, 250, or 333 and you wreck face. Think of it like this websites high refresh rate monitors they increase the capacity but don't give bonus that is so unfair you dominate so much it's overpowered. Again it requires a good player all these technologies placed on this website reduce the chances of failure and increase the capacity to play better.

Again up to the player and their equipment and particularly their skills.

[Chief Blur Buster]

Fascinating background knowledge of Quake 3 Arena "quirks".

But.... Such topics can be somewhat of a powderkeg -- given the "unfair advantage" angle people say;

What's important to focus the intent of this topic thread;

Talking about game-specific quirks is really interesting, though it has to be prefaced with caveats -- that it is generally not recommended programming practice for newer games to have quirks that works with specific refresh rate magic numbers.

On one hand it's a legacy game to have advantages milked out of with a lot of hardware-configuration easter-eggs, which may be fun for a subsegment of the high-Hz audience. On the other hand, it's an unfair non-level playing field that affects others which can create other forum members to resent the practice. The great thing is that it's all documentable and publicly posted online for everyone to take advantage of, at least, so everyone has access to the information generally. And there are other games that generate more level playing fields, for audiences not interested in milking the easter egg advantages of a legacy engine. It's a fun hobby for those who enjoy the tuning, while an annoyance to others who bemoan at inconsistencies.

(Rheoretical questions: Do we put the label of a "serious flaw"? Or do we just impartially discuss them as "fun noteworthy quirks"? But let's put labels aside at the moment)

I know you said CS (uses the Quake 2 engine) instead of CS:GO (uses the Source engine) but people are certainly fiercely defensive of their favourite games. Likewise for Quake 3 Arena. Respect for the games other people play, in the spirit of #1 Blur Busters Forums Rule of "Be Nice".

So saying that caveat, it's still an interesting worthy discussion, though the tone has to be nuanced to keep context clear. Blanket terms usually bait debate around here, so describing the flaws/quirks/etc is better than blanket terms since not much discussion is put into CS flaw/quirks. Impartiality generally wins the day on both sides, since people are touchy about "Using Game X to Bash Game Y". We'll focus on Game X quirk's for now.

I've now moved this thread to the Input Latency forum area (more technical, and much of this is closely related enough to latency). Originally this topic was posted in General Forum, so moving to an area where there is more technical discussion. This forum is full of masses + full of technical people across the whole gamut. So sometimes it's hard to pigeonhole topics in specific areas since I don't want to create too many low-traffic topic areas of Blur Busters too quickly (a possible Gaming area is coming later) -- but for now, let's see if keeping this thread in Latency invites some nuanced talk.

Back to discussion.

[hleV]

A few things:

• I am definitely, hundred percent NOT angry.
• I have no interest in Q3 or CS.
• I don't disagree that CS engine is bad or worse than Q3.

Now with that out of the way; the "quirks" you wrote about literally provide you with unfair advantage. They would be considered cheats if Q3 was a decent eSports title, and patched right away if the devs cared.

What amused me greatly was how you write about these quirks with such a passion, trash-talking another game engine while providing perfectly valid points for why Q3 is terrible. And the fact that those "quirks" are not an instant win button somehow justifies it all? Faster shooting speed, silent steps and hit unregs are fine in a competitive game? C'mon. Even if literally every player went with 125/250/333FPS, it'd still be ridiculous.

This is a fine discussion topic, but the way you presented it made me think of you as a hypocrite.

[Futuretech]

...patched right away if the devs cared...

I don't recall how long people had known about this but the devs already knew and probably didn't care as it was a non-issue. It's pretty much frame-rate dependent physics as it's known. Same with Unreal Tournament '99, they had to patch the game for high Ghz multi-core processers as the game speed up as the time of the game was linked to the Hertz output of the CPU. So the devs had to patch high Hertz CPUs to eliminate this negative thing. Think Atari on modern computers the games are CPU dependent and run based on the CPU so a Ghz microprocessor would drive the game at crazy speeds.

As a matter of fact the devs of the Q3A patched the 50ms command found among Q3A. This is one of the reasons why Quake 3 became faster-paced still especially as the devs approved of the Promod found among eSports usage of Quake 3. This one of the greatest patches I believe it was done sometime in late 2001 or early 2002 right around Promod popping up.

Apparently, there was a command in Quake 3, that created a base 50ms latency to everything. So everything was 50ms later even ping wise, it's 50ms base + ping amount. Once one of the devs, Aarchon, found the command he rewrote it or plainly eliminated and created a faster-paced game among it. For example when the 50ms bug was patched out, Aerowalk, became even more faster-paced than before and people were in general playing better as well as the pro gamers who gained much more advantage from their skill-base.

I'm not bashing Counter-Strike as a bad game in principle it's a classic small-scale tactical game. I'm just saying I'm sick and tired of hearing people complain about hitreg with forum posts dating back to 2000/2001 about the same issue. Even people stating once WON was eliminated and everything moved to Steam the game became worse due to Steam integration. There's also a group of people who believe there's a conspiracy to make Counter-Strike worse so people buy newer Counter-Strikes by introducing shadow or hidden updates to the game to make it undesirable for people to play older versions and move to newer versions.

I just want to play Counter-Strike and not have hitreg issues. Which I had, not sure if it's my computer. I know that smoke grenades in Counter-Strike use an old method of calculation and can bog down modern CPUs since it uses so much resources. So for some people if there is a smoke spam you can lag the game for everyone as originally the method for Counter-Strike 1.6 was an odd CPU calculation method that in modern times can even lag modern computers.

So in essence I'm not sure if it's ME and my equipment or the game engine itself. I know the Quake 2 engine isn't bad, it's good. But whatever the CS developers did to make the engine really messed with something. This is one of the reasons why I prefer Call of Duty at least the older ones due to the better hitreg except for the 1,500 unit limit of bullets and on top of that the great collision mesh hit detection. Call of Duty doesn't use hitboxes per say, it uses them as hit allocators. But rather it uses the mesh of the character for hit detection purposes the hitboxes are just there for calculation purposes. It's like Doom 3, it used a per-pixel hit detection system, until it was patched out due to lag from the CPUs of it's era. A few mods have recreated the per-pixel hit detection like the 5.56 mod and returned to a far superior hit detection system than even collision mesh.

I don't want to experience a situation whereby I empty a mag dump of 5.56 or 7.62 and somehow the enemy is still alive. It boggles the mind that in counter-strike someone can miss so much. Even at point blank ranges or even overkill for intermediate cartridge ranges. Hell like the Geocities blog guy said "The assault rifles in real life would be overkill, the SMGs would be perfect in all scenarios" or like he stated about shotguns "I don't understand how I can fire a full shot at point blank range into a person and not drop them, even pointing the shotgun behind me and firing should hit him." Same thing happened to him with the Deagle "How can I empty a mag of assault rifle ammunition and then have the person jump around to face me and fire a single pistol round and kill me". Somehow the Goldsrc/Source engines handles latency and other things in a very convoluted matter. I've never seen so many people talk about hitreg and hit detection issues so much for one game. Hell there's entire forums dedicated to fixing these issues people have.

It's just Counter-Strike has some non-sensical comical levels of unrealism. I just would like to play the game without these issues popping up as it happened to me quite often particularly as playing custom maps and playing on very large maps but even on the classic developer maps found in the package things happened. That's why I left playing CS and gave up on the game years ago. I had fun playing 1.6 especially certain attributes with the stun mechanism of the bullets but in the end both Source and 1.6 gave me a real headache when it came to hitreg. Again NOT SURE if it's my end or the end of the game. Either way like I said "I just gave up on fixing the situation".

[Slender]

fps_max 340