>>215
Go ahead and please post, and it doesn't matter if you need to make multiple posts.

Alright, why not!

This is stuff everyone in TF2, whether competitive, pubber, casual or serious should read and use. These settings will make your life 10x easier and improve your game tenfold if you aren’t already using them, I promise you.


Table of Contents

Options
Multiplayer Options
FOV
Improving your FPS
Useful binds
Custom HUDs
Extra Links

1) Open up TF2, and go into Options. It’s at the bottom right of the current startup screen.

Keyboard: I’d leave your keyboard as is, unless you prefer to use any keys other than wsad for movement (perhaps if you’re lefthanded) and some people like to move their ‘Call Medic’ bind to a different button, but I’m perfectly fine leaving it at e.

Mouse: No mouse acceleration. Turn that off. We’ll talk about mouse sensitivity later, since it’s something highly individual, but there are some rules of thumb.

Video: I, as well as a lot of other competitive players, like to run the game in a window. Running the game in a window is easy because it lets you tab between the game, a chat client/IRC, and a talk client like Mumble or Vent easily; but it’s only really necessary if you’ll be using these things. It’s up to you to fullscreen or not, but remember that windowing a game may give you worse fps and lag your game more if you have a lower quality computer. Your computer uses more effort to render it all, you know. This is the first part of my launch options for the game: -windowed -w 1700 -h 930 This sets the size of the window I will have in window mode. The window is slightly smaller than my screen, which is 1920x1080. By the way, using a 16:9 Widescreen aspect ratio if you can will give you a definite advantage since you’ll be able to see more.

Voice: Enable it, and boost the volume to be comfortably loud enough so you can hear voice over top of the game noise. Listening is important.

Multiplayer: Use a nice crosshair that isn’t red or blue so it doesn’t mingle with the colours of your targets. Crosshair is a personal choice up to you but I find the default crosshair to be pretty useless. I use a lime green crosshair type one.

2) Now go into Multiplayer Options and check these:


Combat Options: Automatically reload weapons when not firing, play a hit sound every time you injure an enemy, display damage done as text over your target, remember the active weapon between lives.

Class Specific Options: Spy: Enable concise disguise menu, Medic: Display a marker over the player you are healing, Medic: Injured Teammates Automatically Call Out (Bolding this because this is CRUCIAL if you are going to be a medic player! I have mine set right in the middle so my teammates will call when they are at half health.)

Hud Options: Enable Minimal HUD

Performance Options: Disable weather effects. The sunlight on Granary and the snow on Viaduct is pretty, but you don’t need it. It only eats up your fps.

Miscellaneous Options: These are pretty much up to you as well, but ones I think you should really have are Draw Viewmodels and Suicide After Changing Player Class and Automatically Respawn After Loadout Changes in Respawn Zones.

3) Okay. Now that you’ve got that sorted, let’s talk about FOV. FOV is ‘Field of View’, the extent of the map that you can actually see. By default FOV is set at 75. There is also Viewmodel FOV. Essentially the same stuff only applies to how much of your viewmodel you see. So it changes the size of your viewmodel. Viewmdel FOV is by default set at 54.

This is default FOV. (Pictured) GROSS.

If you use 75 an 54. Cut that shit out. Cut that shit out right now.

Simply increasing both of these FOVs will help you. You’ll see more, hear more, know more. More area to look in and less need to sweep your mouse about wildly in order to see.

This is me with FOV 70 on. Look at the scope of my vision.

And this is me at FOV 95 or somewhere around there. HOLY WOW LOOK HOW MUCH MORE I CAN SEE!

Now as you can see, I screwed with viewmodel FOV up there too. But here, let me show you viewmodel FOV in some screenshots.

This is viewmodel fov 75.

This is viewmodel fov 95. I kind of alternate between 90 and 95.

This is viewmodel fov 110 HOLY- Yeah, you can turn it up this far if you want to, but notice that your viewmodel gets pushed towards the center. You probably don’t want a thing floating too close to your crosshair, so be careful. Erm, sorry for the Steam stuff. Too lazy to re-capture this.

Viewmodel FOV: Pull up the console using the tilde ~ key. Input ‘viewmodel fov [number]’. Numbers between 85 and 100 are the most commonly used, depending on your screen. Anything lower than that will block off too much of your screen and anything higher than that might be disadvantageous because it pushes your viewmodel to the center of your screen.

FOV: In your launch options, add -fov_desired 90. Done. You will always have 90 FOV from now on. OR you can put it in your class script as ‘fov_desired 90’. Or put it in the console. Or pull the slider up to 90 fov in the Advanced Video Options. Use an FOV between 90 and 100 that you’re comfortable with.

You’ll thank me for this. I cringe every time I see someone playing at 75.

4) Improving your FPS. How many times have I heard ‘Well I’m bad at TF2 because my computer sucks.’ If you actually want to be decent at a game, I’m afraid you’ll need a decent computer with a decent graphics card, good monitor and processor. But if your computer is kinda ~meh~ there are a few things you can do to help.

Disable weather effects.
Disable sprays.
Get an FPS config. Google 'Chris' FPS configs' there's some good ones. Seriously help yourself to one if you have problems with lag.
Turn off background programs when you play TF2. Sign out of MSN and Skype and disable your antivirus. Close Photoshop and Youtube and whatever you have open that you don’t need.
If you use custom models or something funky for some reason (like rainbow Pyro flames or the Female Medic model) take those off.

5) Useful Binds. You might wanna read the TF2Wiki article on TF2 Scripting, (if you want to write a full class config or script, but I won’t be covering that since I’ve never written a full one - if you google class configs or TF2 scripts, you will find a bunch of free ones to try out and use) but these are just a couple useful binds you can put in your console to instantly make things easy for you!

Class Change Binds:

bind 1 “join_class scout”
bind 2 “join_class sniper”
bind 3 “join_class soldier”
bind 4 “join_class medic”
bind 5 “join_class demoman”
bind 6 “join_class heavyweapons”
bind 7 “join_class pyro”
bind 8 “join_class engineer”
bind 9 “join_class spy”

Putting this in a config or in your console will make each key along the top correspond to joining a class. There are already binds on each of these keys, and you’ll have to clear them in the Keyboard options before inputting these. I have 1-5 set as the 6v6 classes I play most regularly, and 6-9 set as the classes I play least often. They keys furthest from the hand I have on WASD are the classes I play very rarely. Read the article on scripting; you can also bind these class changes to a numpad if you have one. Binding class changes to keys instead of manually changing classes using Valve’s screen saves times and allows you to switch through spawns quickly as your team advances or retreats. Speed is the key here.

Kill Bind:

Useful for cycling spawns, changing spawn locations on maps that have notoriously terrible spawn patterns (like Granary), and of course offing yourself in Humiliation so the other team doesn’t take you alive.

bind j kill
or, bind j explode (depending whether you want to explode or just die)

I recommend placing the kill bind a good distance away from where your hands maneuver near wasd/your class change keys so you don’t hit it accidentally!!

Medics, Spies and Engineers often benefit the most from setting up a config and a whole bunch of binds, since these classes involve a lot of multitasking and in the Spy and Engineer’s cases, scrolling through a whole lot of menus that take up your screen and practically blind you while you’re selecting.

6) Custom HUDs

Face it. The default HUD sucks. It’s sparse and not very informative and blocky and gets in the way. You might have noticed from the screenshots before, I use a custom HUD! My screen is very nice and clean and I can see a lot of things! This is my HUD with Tab pressed down. Same information as the Default HUD, just cleaned up and shoved where it won’t interfere.

Here:

This is a quick list of some of the best TF2 HUDs available. Some of these might not be updated anymore, so you gotta google them yourself and see.

This is the HUD I use, m0rehud: http://m0re.nocrits.com/

Other good HUD quick links: http://code.google.com/p/communitytf2hud/, http://code.google.com/p/toastyhudtf2/. You’ll probably have to try quite a few of these HUDs before you find one you are comfortable with. If you have the skill, you could also make one yourself! It’s advanced scripting work, though.

7) Important Links

Here’s some articles/links/sites that will help you at every level of TF2.

Chance’s Quake Bible- http://www.myeg.net/article/article_detail.php?article_id=281 - Yes, I do realize this is the QUAKE Bible and it’s about Quake. However, it’s not Quake exclusive; it’s simply good gamer philosophy that will change your outlook on what exactly it is to be good at a game, and how to improve by simply changing your mindset. This is the #1 read I recommend to all new players.

CommunityFortress- http://communityfortress.com/ - CommFT sort of bridges the gap between pub and competitive play, but even if you don’t intend to play competitively, this website offers a lot of tutorials, videos and news updates that are worth watching to simply observe good players at work.

TF2Tactics Youtube Channel- http://www.youtube.com/user/tf2tactics/videos?view=u - TF2 tactics. What it sounds like, really. They seem to have removed some videos and their blog is down, but if you search TF2Tactics on Youtube you’ll get a lot of results. Good videos to watch.

A collection of HUDS, Scripts, and Configs- http://commforums.com/collection-huds-scripts-configs-t3805.html?t=3805 - A post on CommFT that really relates to all I said above, check it out!!

MGE/ESEA Guide to Competitive TF2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mLaPNbHQx0c

I think that’s mostly it.

This was the most boring part of the guide. Thank you.

WOW those captchas nearly killed me. I'm sorry for the giganto long posts, but I hope this helps out.

I like this! Very practical, technical advice - and advice not often given. I think there are some parts that could be fleshed out a bit more, especially about sensitivity and turning it down, down, down if you're looking to play a hitscan class.

I personally like to use frankenhud (http://steamcommunity.com/groups/frankenhud) which is not so much oriented towards comp but looks really, really good. In fact, Valve employees use frankenhud. Fancy that. It is a huge step up over the normal hud anyway, and features things like a gigantic ubercharge bar so you can see it nice n' clear.

Also consider getting P-REC (http://orangad.com.ua/) to automatically record matches played in tournament mode, so you can review a match after it's done and of course, cut together a sweet frag video.

You should really mention that you can turn off view models altogether, which is really the best choice for medic, scout, and possibly soldier if you're comfortable with the rocket launcher.

>>236
Yeah, they can, but I wouldn't recommend it for beginners, which is what this guide's aimed at to start with. I'm a fairly advanced medic and I have viewmodels still on, it helps me out sorta.

>>232
Yeah, I'll make a separate post about mouse sens at a later date I think, though in the end it is so highly personal there's only so much advice I can offer.

And frankenhud, yes good.

Very nice guide, thanks a ton!

One thing for me though is that I simply can't play at 75 field of view. I tried, but it gave me headaches for no good reason.
Can I still be a decent comp player?

>>238

Well, 90 fov is what you want, for both viewmodel and worldview, is that what you meant?

I mean, I guess you could still practice really hard and be decent even with low fov, but you'll really be at a constant disadvantage and will need more comms than the average person. Every comp player I know has a 90 fov.

You could maybe try easing yourself into 90 fov by setting it on for 5 minutes then putting it back, slowly increasing the time it's on, perhaps? You might need to get used to it gradually.

If you can't, I can understand. My hands shake really badly so I can't play scout, because I'm much to twitchy to aim calmly. Doomed to medicandsoldier4lyf

>>239
I think I'll try going with a compromise and use FOV 80 and see what happens. Thanks for the encouragement! I know I'm just starting out and got a shitton to learn, but I'm trying my damndest to become a decent comp player.

Ok, stupid question incoming: How do you guys turn in the game?
Do you move your mouse in one long sweep or have to lift the mouse in small jerks to be able to look behind you?
I use the second method and it's frustrating when it takes too long to turn around in time to prevent getting back or sidestabbed.
Do I just need more mouse space and probably a bigger mousepad? Or is there something in the options that would help my turning speed?

>>271
I move my mouse in 5-6 inch sweeps before lifting it (12 inches for a 180 degree turn.) You should probably be moving your mouse faster. Tons of pro scouts use a whole bunch of inches and manage to turn around as fast as anyone. Upping your sensitivity isn't worth the damage it'll do to your tracking ability, especially if you play an aiming class. Keep in mind that TF2 has lag compensation, so even if you turn around - if the stab looks good to the spy then you are going to get stabbed no matter what.

>>271

I use a rollerball. No space investment, hasn't let me down in 3 years.

>>271

I use a mouse with adjustable DPI so i can change it whenever I need to. If you get one, assign dpi changing to a macro so you can change it in an instant.

In case you are wondering, my particular mouse is a Razer Naga Epic, and i set dpi changing to one of the top buttons and the mousewheel.