An Open Letter to id Games and Quake 4 Mod Developers.
Written by Leemo and [idemise]skooder

	First of all, my name is Jeff "[id]skooder" Scudder and this open letter is being written from the perspective of a competitive player with the competitive community’s opinions in mind, along with the help of  friend and accomplice Peter "Leemo" Collins. Before we start let me note that I have been a competitive UT 1on1 player for around 3 years, and Peter has been playing competitive UT99, UT2k3, and UT2k4, and CPMA for quite some time.

	This open letter concerns what we feel should be changed or tweaked in Quake 4 to make it a better game for the CPL World Tour and competitive community.

Configurations:

	Let's face it, id software has basically granted us the ability to configure our games to our personal preference, but how is Quake 4 different from all their previous games?

Quake 4 BLOCKS several cvars (client variables) which can be extremely helpful to giving players with lower quality systems better performance, and not necessarily a graphical advantage.  Some examples are:

(Please ignore the actual variables as they are there for an idea of how the command is used.)

r_finish                   "0"  
r_useIndexBuffers          "1"
r_useVertexBuffers         "1"
r_vertexBufferMegs         "48" 
r_useStateCaching          "1"  
r_orderIndexes             "1"
r_Multisamples             "0"  
r_skipBump                 "1"  
r_skipSpecular             "1"
r_usePortals               "1"
r_useCachedDynamicModels   "1"
r_useConstantMaterials     "1"
r_useInfiniteFarZ          "1"
r_useCulling               "2"  
r_useLightCulling          "3"  
r_useTripleTextureARB      "1"
r_ignoreGLErrors           "1"
r_skipNewAmbient           "1"
r_skipPostProcess          "1"  

Most of these commands are blocked in multiplayer by default. If you are a mod developer creating a competition mod, please make note of this. Some of the more important commands are r_skipPostProcess, which gives the game the glow effect of lights, and can drastically decrease fps. Why id software decided to block these cvars is strange, considering many games have this as a built in GUI option. We recently discovered that most of these commands are blocked serverside, and can be enabled if the server allows the clients to utilize them.

A major cvar issue that most players can agree on is the bobbing and tilting when moving in Quake 4. All the bob cvars are locked so people are forced to watch incessant bobbing and tilting, not to mention that  the bobbing and tilting makes a great number of people physically ill rendering them unable to play the game they paid for. There is no good argument for locking the bobbing and tilting cvars; the claim that it’s realistic doesn’t hold up because in real life when my head moves up and down so do my eyes, something that doesn’t happen in-game. Your eyes are locked on the monitor while your character bobs up and down? It’s just not necessary.

A big debate in competitive gaming is the use of a player’s personal .cfg files in tournament play. Some players want to use their configs, others say others oppose this because they believe that it gives those players an unfair advantage that was never intended by the developers. However, we believe that this issue can be resolved by using the following methods:

a.) Create an in-game CFG editor and build it into a competition mod. The editor could help new players by explaining commands, and help advanced players with proper configuration. In addition, it could block certain commands deemed “unfair” from being used.

b.) To simplify it even more, the mod could have a series of sliders to adjust cvar values, so that even those new to computers would be able to make an effective config.

	This way there would be no more disputes as to the legitimacy of tweaked user configs, and everything will be edited-able through the in-game GUI no matter what, and the commands that id didn’t put into the GUI (FOV for example) can still be edited and saved within the GUI window.

Game Tweaks (If you disagree anywhere in this article it will probably be here.):

Some proposed ideas that are commonly debated in the competitive communities of games:

The Match Countdown Timer: In the 1v1 game mode, we agreed that the timer should countdown by minutes only, and the view of the seconds counting down to the next minute should not be viewable (CPMA Style). Because the armor respawn times for Quake 4 are very short, the prediction of armors and other powerups shouldn’t be dictated by the clock. Instead, players can time items and powerups based on when they got their previous item as opposed to counting down the seconds to a respawn. With the current armor and item respawn times, this allows 1on1's to be more dynamic and less dependant on rigid item timing, creating a different form of map control. 

Bright skins: This is pretty important as far as seeing the other players and the relation to aiming. Quake 4 makes it challenging to identify your opponent at a distance because of factors such as dark lighting and dark character models, similar to other competitive deathmatch games like UT2003/UT2004 on their release. Bright skins do not have to look like glow sticks or fireflies, but players should be able to pick the color of their enemy models, and force the models of their enemy to one particular model. Bright skins are an aid used by competitive players because they want the game to be a test of skills, not a test of spotting the opponent in the darkness. 

Hitsounds: Loudness (audible level), and change of pitch based on damage inflicted to the enemy should be player configurable.  

Readying Up: There should be an unlimited warm-up time prior to the players readying up, but this can obviously be configurable to suit the needs of public servers. When both players are ready, the match should reset once and allow a 15 second warm-up time, and then respawn both players to begin the match. This addition is important because sometimes players may forget to change a setting, or a server error could occur. 

Fully Customizable HUD: The HUD should be able to changed to whatever the player deems fitting. The current default HUD lacks a severe number of displays that are common in most competitive FPS. The most essential change to the HUD is the option to display your current weapons at all times as well as the ammo for those weapons. There is no reason this should not be in the game and I am left dumbfounded as to why they left it out in the first place. Other customizations would be placement of health, armor, and equipped weapon displays; some players like those displays small, translucent, and consolidated so they don’t obstruct vision. 

Net settings: For the sake of consolidation, this in-game GUI should have three options for rates: LAN, Cable/DSL, and “bad”. This makes it easier to switch on the fly and it’s a good reminder for when you switch from internet to LAN, vice versa.

1 on 1 Modes: A good idea would be to make a separate 1v1 game mode. The current tournament mode and DM modes are good, but those existing modes cater more to public play rather than league play. In addition to the standard 1v1 mode, there should be a Duel Arena mode in which a player starts with all weapons, full health, and full armor; this mode focuses primarily on aim as opposed to map control.

In closing…
Ultimately this in-game GUI would resemble that of UTComp and would be similar in function. The GUI would allow players to customize all aspects of their configuration while in-game, with a GUI accessible to both novices and pro’s. 

While it would be ideal for id/Raven to make this style competition mod, I don’t see this happening in reality. Instead, it will be in the hands of the communities mod makers, which has its pro’s and con’s. For this to take off, it would be great if the mod makers of the community worked together collectively and collaborated with each other for the purpose of a single competition mod, and this would also help unify the modding community, but this is of course just an ideal scenario.

On a side note, the voting, warm-up, and a few other options geared towards competitive play that id put in right off the bat are great! Nice job on listening guys. Also, the accuracy stats in-game are a plus, but there should also be stats pertaining to the amount of armor, health, and items picked up. And building on the existing accuracy statistics, the amount of shots fired should be shown next to amount of shots hit and the kills made with each weapon should be displayed.

Note from Leemo:
I’ll write a follow up on this article in the near future on game play changes that I think would make Quake 4 a better game, and many of those changes reflect distinct characteristics of CPMA. If you want to contact me I’ll usually be idling #human and #q41v1 on GameSurge IRC.

Note from [id]skooder:
Many people have been asking me and [id]td for the cfg that I made which enables picmip and a bunch of other stuff. If you want the link ask someone on IRC, but I will not give it to you as it is pretty old. I will personally be writing an article this week that encompasses every cvar and all sorts of tweaks that will help fellow quake4 gamers make their own configs, and not use someone elses. If you would like to contact me I will be idling #human on gamesurge, and #demise on EnterTheGame IRC.