Good map to learn on?

[madcrow]

As much as I love Quake, I suck at it pretty badly. Are there any good SP maps with a decent difficulty curve that's good as a way for a crappy player to train or should I just jump into the official maps on "hard" to toughen up?

[scar3crow]

Are you looking to improve just your general skills or specific ones?

Fall Cleaning by Scragbait is a nice tight level, that spawns in waves of monsters and may help to "toughen you up", has some good combinations such as fiends and vores, and flocks of scrags.

http://www.quaddicted.com/component/...tails/gid,345/

At worst, its a fun quick map, though the lighting isnt nearly as fun as it could be (the house is TOO well lit if you ask me).

[sielwolf]

...or should I just jump into the official maps on "hard" to toughen up?

yes, if you havenīt played them yet do that (where have you been ? )

And I like the DMSP Mod a lot, gives you the same intensity as dm with sp monsters.

[Spirit]

should I just jump into the official maps on "hard" to toughen up?

Why not?

Just get some recent (let's say from 2000 - today) maps by the func_msg people. Most of them really care about the quality of their maps and thus provide good balanced skilllevels.

[madcrow]

yes, if you havenīt played them yet do that (where have you been ? )

And I like the DMSP Mod a lot, gives you the same intensity as dm with sp monsters.

I've played them on Easy and Normal, just never on hard...

[scar3crow]

You wanna toughen up though... this may have altered weapons and enemies, but deathmatch mode 7 in DPmod is basically DMSP, only... hard. The enemies do scalular damage based on difficulty settings (on skill 2 or 3 the ogre's grenades are just as potent as yours) and if you hate yourself, because Sajt hates you, you could play on skill 4 which he coded where enemies are cloaked when not attacking.

[madcrow]

DMSP seems like just the thing... Actually, it reminds me a lot of the freeware game Cube...

[=peg=]

if u want to practice for multiplayer dm.. u can allways play frogbot.. and u dont even need to be connected to the net to do so.. froggy is a fierce opponent if u set it to the highest skill level and will give u a good workout

[Lardarse]

DMSP seems like just the thing... Actually, it reminds me a lot of the freeware game Cube...

That's because the same person (Aardappel - and no, I'm not going to attempt spelling his real name) is responsible for both the original idea of DMSP (many have extended the idea, but he was the first) and Cube (and Cube 2 aka Sauerbraten - both of these have a DMSP mode as well)

[L3ftisM]

I agree...frogbot on DM6 is great. I don't have time to upload this and make it accessible right now, but someone should make a nifty installer??? hehee
Frogbot DM6, start out with weak skillz bot... add to skill of bot as your skills inprove...
it works wonders for your aim and strafing...

laterz

if u want to practice for multiplayer dm.. u can allways play frogbot.. and u dont even need to be connected to the net to do so.. froggy is a fierce opponent if u set it to the highest skill level and will give u a good workout

[golden_boy]

Well...

I'd suggest that you stop saving. Just start a singleplayer game in vanilla Quake and play without using the save function (i.e. try to not die.)

If you can play through ep. 1 and 2 on Normal without saving, without dying then you are pretty good. Next do it on Hard. Gradually get faster.

Find a sort of routine, whatever you like, be it 100% runs or just visiting all secrets, or "simple" runs where you try to survive.

Try to develop shortcuts (jumping), follow set routes, practise damage jumping (rocket, grenade, and monster boost), to develop better movement. Try to conserve ammo (have better aim.)

Toughen up? Hmm, can you play through ep. 1-3 on Hard without dying? Would that be tough enough?

Other things to do:

Download and try some speedmaps. They're short, but often brutal.

Adamantine Cruelty is a map that probably helped me get better. Pretty drawn-out linear crawling, but there's something about monster and item placement that is challenging, while still being accessible for intermediate players. (The first room contains a secret that makes it a bit smoother.)

Playing bots (or dmsp2) is OK, however that's not single player. dmsp is actually better, because ammo and health don't respawn, so you will have to conserve both.

I'm no expert Quaker either. This is just what I do.

Watch speedruns. Try to copy some of their routes and jumps.

[sielwolf]

You wanna toughen up though... this may have altered weapons and enemies, but deathmatch mode 7 in DPmod is basically DMSP, only... hard. The enemies do scalular damage based on difficulty settings (on skill 2 or 3 the ogre's grenades are just as potent as yours) and if you hate yourself, because Sajt hates you, you could play on skill 4 which he coded where enemies are cloaked when not attacking.

sounds very very interesting, how do you run that, "deathmatch 7" in console ?

Also, some great tips there golden_boy, yes not saving in sp and playing dmsp improved my skills a lot.

[scar3crow]

Yeah just do deathmatch 7 in console, give yourself a time or frag limit (set it at 500 or 1000 or more for frags). At skill 2 I believe is when the enemies grenades such are equal to yours, and at 3 theyre more potent, iirc, and at 4 theyre cloaked.

There are other values to increase or decrease number of enemies spawned at a time as well, and you can also change the scale of their base damage or health for that level, but once again I cannot recall the cvars (when we play coop with LordHavoc he usually triples their health and at least doubles their damage).

Dpdm2, though hardly a beautiful map, is fun with it, but many deathmatch maps play well with it also. Beware the deathknights.

[golden_boy]

Is there a difference between a player's grenade and an ogre's, damage-wise, in vanilla single player? Just curious... I always thought they did the same damage?

You don't want a grenade in the face in any case :-)

[scar3crow]

void() OgreGrenadeExplode =
{
	T_RadiusDamage (self, self.owner, 40, world);
	sound (self, CHAN_VOICE, "weapons/r_exp3.wav", 1, ATTN_NORM);

void() GrenadeExplode =
{
	T_RadiusDamage (self, self.owner, 120, world);

Only different by 300% =)

That and in DPmod most of the projectile aiming enemies lead their shots. He intentionally made the ogres a bit worse in more recent versions though cause they were mortar-esque snipers from hell before hand.