This wiki is archived and useful information is being migrated to the main bzflag.org website

Different Mouse Settings

From BZFlagWiki
Revision as of 18:40, 26 February 2007 by SpazzyMcGee (Talk | contribs) (Removed referances to 'I')

Jump to: navigation, search

The cursor movement controls the Tank which is controlled by the operating system the game runs on. The driver are giving different setup possibilities. This article covers some parts of those.

Overview

The acceleration of your tank is controlled by moving the cursor in the little box on the HUD. This determines how fast the cursor is moving on the screen.


Different Mousebox Sizes

Mousebox size Pro Cons
Big Mousebox Driver has a more precise control over the tank. Good for climbing on buildings and avoiding to fall down from buildings. The cursor needs longer to travel around the whole box. That leads to the tank accelerating slower into the next direction => you can dodge the bullets hardly or not at all.
Little Mousebox Enables the tank to react faster. It can dodge bullets easier. Easier to fall down from buildings.
Middle Mousebox Size A bit precision and reaction speed. Can be used to dodge bullets good. Falling down from buildings is something that does not happen often. You get neither the absolute control nor the best reaction time.

Different Cursor Settings

Cursor movement Pro Cons Good Mousebox in combination
Fast Cursor Very good to dodge bullets. Risky to drive around on buildings. Big or middle mousebox. Only use a small mousebox if you don't jump often.
Slow Cursor Good for doing complicated jumps. Hard to dodge incomming bullets. Small or middle mousebox. A big mousebox is suicide!
Middle Cursor Speed Can be used to dodge much incomming bullets. Driving on buildings is not dangerous. Occasionally you can't dodge or fall down from a building. Big, middle and small mouseboxes can be used.

Platform differences

Cursor Speed

Speed is a linear factor added to your cursor movement. The cursor is constantly faster/slower.

Cursor Acceleration

Acceleration is a multiplier to your cursor movement. High impact to cursor movement when moving the mouse fast, slow impact when moving the mouse slower.

"I'm on Mac OS X - Others seem to have an advantage"

The only real advantage they have is the agility flag, that is because on other platforms mouse drivers use speed instead of acceleration. The resulting change is that they Find it easier to drive a straight line and then jump with the agility flag so that they can escape easier. With mouse acceleration you gain some other advantages against the player with mouse speed, like you will always be able to react quicker than them and can move more precisely when you move your cursor slower.

Macs use mouse acceleration because it is better than mouse speed - a lot of people say it is strange simply because they are not used to it. Driving on the different platforms is really a rather big difference.

All that talk about acceleration and speed may sound strange to you - with drivers like SteerMouse and USBOverdrive you can quickly get a feeling for the difference.

A good mousepad (more important than the mouse itself!) and a nice mouse change a lot but the cost needs to be considered.