Input

Select Setup, Controls.

Mouse speed. Moving this slider to the Right can improve mouse responsiveness although may make more accurate movement awkward due to the extra responsiveness. I’d recommend leaving this set to the default position unless you find your mouse to be very slow to react to input.

Smooth mouse. Set this to On to enable mouse filtering. This will average out mouse movements resulting in much smoother scrolling. Selecting Off will disable mouse filtering.

Invert mouse. Tick this to invert the x-axis for the mouse. This means pulling back (towards you) on the mouse will result in looking up & vice versa.

Free look. Set this to On to enable the use the mouse for aiming. Setting this to Off will force you to press the Mouselook key if you wish to use the mouse for this purpose.

Joystick. Set this to On if you intend to use a Joystick to play the game, however mouse & keyboard is the best way to play Quake 3. It will improve performance slightly if you select Off as well. Useful if you're on a low spec machine.

Open your Config file & Add/Edit the following settings as appropriate.

sensitivity "x". Setting this to higher values will improve mouse responsiveness although will make more accurate movement awkward due to the extra responsiveness. I’d recommend leaving this set to the default value unless you find your mouse to be very slow to react to input.

cl_freelook "x". Set this to 1 to enable the use the mouse for aiming. Setting x to 0 will force you to press the Mouselook key if you wish to use the mouse for this purpose.

cl_mouseAccel "x". You can use this setting to set whether or not your pointer moves at a faster rate during periods of faster tracking. Personally I’d recommend leaving this set to 0. Although, try increasing this value should you find it of any use.

m_filter “x”. Set x to 1 to enable mouse filtering. This will average out mouse movements resulting in much smoother scrolling. A setting of 0 disables the filter. I’d high recommend enabling this.

in_joystick "x". You won’t be using a joystick to play Quake 3 so set x to 0. If you are, set it to 1. Mouse & keyboard is by far the better way to play though, performance can be improved marginally by setting this to 0 also.

in_mouse "x". Set x to 1 to enable mouse support. If for some reason you aren’t using a mouse then set this to 0.

r_finish “x”. Setting x to 1 may eliminate lag from input devices (such as keyboard/mouse) at the cost of a few FPS. The default is 0 so only change it to 1 if you experience any controller lag. This ensures proper timing.

If you are using a mouse (Which most of you will be) you can find out how to further tweak that device in our Mouse tweak guide.

Conclusion

Your Quake 3 (Team) Arena gaming experience should now be greatly improved with better visuals & audio & minimal performance loss. Netplay should hopefully be improved also. This guide may be updated when new patches become available. Email me if you have any questions/comments/suggestions.

A Printable version of this article can be found here.

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