how to win at deathmatches

if you've ever played a 3-d shooter of any kind, such as doom, quake, hexen, or even star wars dark forces, you've probably heard of deathmatches if not played a few. if you have played a few and are quite good then go away and play your games. if you have never deathmatched before and would like to, or if you have and really suck at it, i have a few tips to help bring in the frags.

scenario: you've beaten doom2 on nightmare level without saving in a few short hours, blowing away mindless pieces of object code with your superior health and equipment and the advantage of a brain. you can get right through it with no cheat codes, tapping away at the arrow keys with your right hand and holding down the control key with your left, walking gracefully through piles of blood-spattered and lifeless sprites to fire a few rockets into the unseen and impaled head of john romero (spoiler, sorry). now that your such a hot doom marine, you think you'll dial up one of your buddies and deathmatch. he's deathmatched a bit and gained some experience and knowledge and looks a bit different when he plays, though you'd never know because you're a computer nerd and never leave the room. and guess what, your buddy is no shotgun sergeant, and you discover that you really suck at deathmatch. he comes out of nowhere over and over, fragging you with a succession of rockets coming at you much faster that a human being could possibly hit the control key, spinning circles around you faster than the arrow keys allow, and dodging your fire with much more ease than the two keystroke alt+-> rhythm. is he cheating? no, you can't cheat in deathmatch. not easily anyway. this is most likely how he did it:

the default configuration of controls sucks. it sucks. i mean it really sucks. and if you use it, you suck, no way around it. here's a much better configuration that doesn't suck:
w-walk forward
s-walk backward
a-strafe left
d-strafe right
space-use
left shift-run
wait! where's my shooting key and how do i turn? what's wrong with you, stupid stupid person who says i suck?, you might ask. the answer is in the mouse.
the mouse is the ultimate steering wheel in 3d games. it's as accurate as you could ever be and very, very fast compared to the keyboard for turning. once you get used to steering with the mouse, turn the senitivity up as high as you possibly can. turn it up on the mouse driver itself if you really want some turning power. with a flick of the wrist, you can do a 180 with the mouse, where with the keyboard that would take a painfully long time. and in these days of point-and-click, using the mousebuttons to fire feels like the most natural thing to do. for most accurate shooting, the best idea is to get pointed in the right direction with the mouse, and since your enemy is moving and you ALWAYS should be moving as well, do the fine aiming with the strafe buttons and you'll find it a bit easier to keep your bearings and you won't get hit as much.

always run. there is never a time in a deathmatch game when you shouldn't be running as opposed to walking. if you are playing a game that gives you the option to always run without having to use a special key to do so, use that option. otherwise, hold down the shift key at all times, no matter what. tape it down if you have to. i've gotten into the habit so much that even on games that have constant run i still hold it down unless i have the shift key bound to some other command (it makes for lightning-quick force use in dark forces after you've gotten in the habit of always holding it down). and in games where the up-down mouse axis walks, sometimes you can get some extra speed to your run by pushing with it a bit as you run with the keyboard. i discovered this by accident in a game of doom i when i subconciously pushed the mouse as i ran and was accused of cheating because i was outrunning people who were shift running. take every legal advantage.

in many games weapons which fire projectiles as opposed to those which scan damage with delay for distance (the plasma rifle in doom fires a projectile; the pistol, shotgun, and chaingun scan for damage.), the projectiles will hit in a more rapid succession if you run toward the target as you fire. this of course makes them harder to dodge and sometimes, depending on the physics of the game and the weapon itself, causes them to do more damage. and use explosive weapons at long range, as you will be less accurate, and tighter guns at closer range, and you will be able to hit more and they won't kill you as well.

it also helps if you know where the enemy is (as stupid as this sounds). use the sound of the game to find him turn your speakers all the way up or use headphones. turn the music down if there is any. also look around a lot. you don't want to be shot in the back. rely on both senses and not just one or the other.

and if you don't mind having a few pixels of your view taken away, if the game has the option of crosshairs, use them. they help your aim so, so much. as long as no one considers it cheating, there is a program called red dot for doom which gives weapons a laser sight. this helped my game so much at the cost of one pixel of the entire screen. many crosshairs take away a bit more of the view, but all you really need to know is where the enemy is and not usually what is written across his shirt, and the extra aiming power is almost always worth it.

one final important note: know your maps! you can get all the best weapons and powerups before everyone else if you know where they are! it also helps to know where players spawn at the beginning of the game and after dying so you can find them quickly before they get too much stuff. figure out the routes all the experienced people take and set up ambushes. run around in the dark without bumping into walls and memorize secret areas and don't tell anyone else about them. if you make your own maps you are at a great advantage, but i'm covering that in another tutorial. one counterpoint as well on that note: don't look like you have too many advantages or no one will want to fight with you. make each kill look either lucky or good enough to impress people and make them want to come back. make them think they've just about got you and squeeze by. if you can type really fast, talk when you're safe. talking to people makes them wonder about you and it also distracts them to give you another advantage.

that should be enough to get you off your feet. if you don't win a few now, there's no saving you. frag away.