This post will probably address COD4 a bit more than the last one (on frag grenades), as smoking tactics are a bit more universally applicable. How long a smoke grenade lasts will vary from game to game, so take that into account when deciding if and how to implement this information.

Effects of Smoking

Yeah, it’s a bad joke. I’m going to talk about the two main effects of smoking. Of course it reduces visibility. Everyone knows that; we’ll talk a little about where to place your smokes. The other main effect I want to talk about is sound. Smoke grenades are really noisy. In America’s Army they’re probably a lot more noisy than they have a right to be. It’s important to know how to use both effects to your advantage. I’ll also wrap up by talking about a couple other effects that smoking may or may not have depending on the situation.

The Sound of Smoke

I figure I’ll start with the less obvious effect and work my way back to the more obvious one. When you play in matches and scrims this becomes an extremely important effect. One of the problems (features, if you know how to use it properly) in AA is the sound. It’s really difficult to move without being heard. The only way to do it and know it’s going to work is to get down into a prone position and slow crawl. Even then, the enemy may hear you as you go prone and come back up. Smoke grenades, while they are guaranteed to make your presence more noticeable, will tend to make you a much more difficult to hear. This is because of the loud hissing noise made by the smoke grenade in America’s Army.

My favorite times to smoke for cover of sound are in situations where I need to take an objective. Taking Primary Valve on Pipeline is an excellent example. One trick is to not smoke the objective itself, but just somewhere near it. The sound of the smoke easily covers the squeaking fo the valve. This can be applied to many maps. Anytime you need to move quietly through an area, smoke is a good idea. Remember that it does not really have to be near the area you’re trying to get through. It just has to cover it with sound.

From a team perspective, smokes can also be extremely useful for covering movement. You can use 2 or 3 smokes and move your entire squad into position without being heard. The most important thing is to get everyone to smoke designated places at the roughly same time. While the smoke is still making noise you need to make your move, so everyone needs to be ready when the smokes are being thrown. The sound can make it a lot harder for the enemy to hear, and will make them a bit jumpy, so you’ll want to be careful.

Smoking and Visibility

Smoke grenades make it hard to see. You probably already knew that. You also probably already figured out that they tend to attract enemy fire. When you smoke underpass on Hospital for the VIP to rush out, it often seems as though you’ve put up a sign that says “Fire here, the VIP will be rushing out!”. When you smoke primary valve on Pipeline grenades seem to come out of the woodworks. This is because of two reasons; a psychological reason, and a simple logical reason. The psychological reason is that smoke reduces visibility, which removes an element of knowledge from the enemy. People tend to fear what they don’t know, since they’re carrying guns they shoot at it in the hopes that they can kill whatever is in the smoke before it eats their brains.

The logical reason, is of course, that you probably intend to go where you smoked. This is especially the case when you smoke somewhere that most people intend to go (like an objective or the underpass on Hospital). Now sometimes this cannot be avoided. Not smoking the underpass when the VIP rushes out is almost suicide (unless you have people rushing across to deal with campers). However, I believe that the most useful application of the smoke grenade is not to conceal but to confuse. Let me see if I can make that make more sense.

If you know where your enemy is and where you need to get to, there’s a very good chance that he knows the same things. That is, where he is and where you need to go. Smoking the place you need to go doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, because when he sees it, he’ll just start shooting at it (and he should, always spam smoke, it’s bad for the environment). The best application of smoke in this sort of a scenario is to smoke the enemy’s position. Rather than making him unable to see you, make him unable to see anything. This gives him two options. He can either hang out in the smoke (unable to see his hand in front of his face), or he can move to a new position. Assuming he moves to a new position, that’s your opportunity to shoot him. If he does nothing, that’s your opportunity to take the objective.

This tactic tends to work better when you’re working as a team and can have other people covering you, smoking, or taking the objective themselves. It still applies in public servers and when you’re the last one left, though. Rather than smoking your position, or the position of your objective, you may want to smoke your enemy (roll him up, light one end on fire… wait, no). This tactic applies in both America’s Army and Call of Duty 4.

General Smoke Stuff

No matter what you do, always make a point to give your smoke some time to… smoke. It’s always sad when I see a team mate throw a smoke, and run out before it’s had a chance to do anything. He typically gets shot and laughed at. Additionally, cooking smokes can be useful. If you cook it long enough you can create a vertical wall of smoke in the air as the smoke goes up and comes back down. It won’t last long, but may come in handy in certain situations.

Another thing to keep in mind is that smokes behave just like frags (minus the exploding part). They have a 5 second timer, bounce like frags, and sound like frags (again, minus the exploding part). They also make people run away from them just like frags. If you choose not to cook your smoke, you may be able to convince an enemy that you’ve thrown a frag grenade at him. Please keep in mind that this effect only lasts a few seconds, and will only make your death that much more funny if it fails miserably.

As always, the most important thing to do when learning a new tactic… practice, practice, practice. Get on empty servers and throw a few smokes. Just do it responsibly. I wouldn’t want you smoking a pack a day and getting lung cancer or anything. Have fun!

I feel obligated to write this post because this trailer is so cool looking. If you’re like me and you only buy one game (or perhaps two) per year, you should probably make it this one.

I’m going to talk a little bit about grenades today. I’ll be talking a bit about all sorts of grenades, mainly America’s Army usage as it’s what I know best. In COD4 nades don’t take nearly as long to pull and throw, so it’s easier to use them effectively. In America’s Army it’s very easy to get shot while pulling, holding, or throwing a grenade. You also can’t throw them 2/3rds of a mile.

I figure I’ll start with the blowy upy grenades and work my way down. My next post will probably be on flashes. Frag grenades are extremely useful in America’s Army because they have a big blasting radius and they can get places that you might not be able to shoot. A perfect example of this is on the map ‘pipeline’, where you can grenade someone (that you might not even be able to see) while they’re taking Primary Valve. This is probably the perfect use of a frag grenade. Throwing a frag grenade into an area while the enemy can’t see you, and you don’t have to worry about being shot.

My biggest mistake when it comes to grenades (of any type) is pulling them at the wrong time. My second biggest is not cooking them long enough. I’ll tackle each of these with their own paragraph, perhaps even two. I’m not going to cover spam spots or anything like that. I’m just going to deal with practical issues and let you figure it out from there. As far as learning to spam goes, there can be no substitute for practice.

When to Nade

Since it takes so long to just throw a grenade in America’s Army (shouldering your weapon, pulling the grenade, pulling the pin, cooking it, throwing it, and bringing out your weapon again), it is very important that you are aware of your tactical situation when you decide to use one. This is a bit like reloading, I suppose. If you don’t know what’s going on around you and that you have enough cover to perform an action, you probably shouldn’t perform it. Frag grenades should really only be thrown when you have no other option.

It’s also a very good idea to have a lot of cover between you and the enemy. You need to be able to keep him from being able to fire at you long enough to get the grenade off and bring up your gun. A lot of the time I throw the grenade because the individual in question doesn’t know I’m there. Unfortunately as soon as he hears it hit, he comes running out of his cover; he then sees me with my gun down, fires, and kills me. When you’re throwing your grenade it is very important to keep in mind what it is going to make the other person do. If you cook your grenade long enough this won’t matter as much. I still like to have two obstacles between the opfor and me. One close to him so he feels like he doesn’t have to run away from me if he sees me (thus rendering the nade useless), and one close to me so that if he charges me, I can buy some time by putting it between us.

Cooking Grenades

I suppose this brings me to cooking. This is another big problem of mine. I rarely cook grenades long enough. The key is, and I always forget this, to time how long you’ve held the nade by how many times the “Live Grenade” indicator blinks. I don’t remember exactly how many times it blinks (and this can be effected significantly by lag). You’ll need to find out for yourself how long you’re comfortable cooking a grenade by getting on an empty server and practicing a bit.

Cooking your grenades obviously gives the enemy less time to run away. That’s really the whole point. Five seconds (the timer on a grenade) is entirely too long to give the enemy in most situations. Any good player can probably get out of range or to cover with time to spare. You need to judge how long you cook by the situation; more cover points may mean you need to get a bit riskier (cook longer), fewer cover points and more risk to you of being shot means you may wish to consider cooking shorter. I usually make a point to start cooking a nade as soon as I pull it, and allow the time I spend aiming to suffice as cooking… this usually isn’t long enough, but it is a start.

There are some times when you want to avoid cooking. Sometimes you can use your frag grenade as a bit of a mine. You throw it on the ground as you retreat, and hope to either blow the enemy up as he follows you, or just keep him off your six long enough to reload. These are the sorts of situations it’s best to avoid, but if you need to it can be a useful tactic. Just keep in mind that the longer a grenade is on the ground, the greater the odds of a teammate walking in and getting blown up by it.

Call of Duty 4

Nades in COD4 are completely different. Most people just use them as spam. Some of what I mentioned above may be useful, though, in learning how to use grenades. The only advice I can think of right now would be not to throw your grenade directly at the enemy. Flashes and smokes will kill him as soon as you hit him, but frags just bounce off. They may even bounce in such a way as to shield him from the blast. Throwing your grenade off to the side a bit or at your enemy’s feet can help to insure your kill.

Practice

No matter what, though, the best way to learn is just to practice. Getting on empty servers, or just loading up a map to learn how grenades work is important. You should figure out how they bounce off of different objects, how long you can cook them for safely, what the range is (about 10 meters in AA, I believe), and how long it takes you to throw them.

Have fun!

Frames Per Second

We’ll start with the basics. As many of you know, true video is a bit of a myth. Whether you’re watching a TV show, a movie, or playing a game, what you’re really seeing is a series of pictures. Our eyes/brains have something called persistence of vision. It’s what allows us to watch a series of pictures and perceive them as motion. The rate at which the pictures are shown to the viewer is called “Frames Per Second” or FPS. Real time (in theory) doesn’t work in frames. It’s more of a linear blob… things just weave together. If time does have frames, it has a very high framerate. Cameras have captured light entering the camera at over 7,000 fps. In theory the number of frames (perceivable) in time is determined by the individual perceiving or the speed of light (whichever comes first).

The Human Eye

Back in the day (possibly before Tango was born… not sure) when movies (moving pictures) were first invented, they were shown at about 5-10 frames per second. It was kind of like watching an extremely fast moving slideshow. Later, the industry standard for a long time became 24fps. The fact that no one could really see the individual frames lead everyone to believe that the limitation of the human eye was 24fps. This was blown out of the water later, although many people still hold to this belief (which is why I’m writing this). Later on, TV started using a standard of about 30fps. People didn’t really notice much of a difference (actually, TV comes in on a 60fps interlaced feed, normally… look up interlacing on wikipedia if you’re curious).

As you may know, if you’re only getting 24fps in America’s Army, you’re going to notice that everything is very choppy. This is because of the key difference between games (well, most games) and TV/Movies. If you take a screenshot (while getting 60fps) of a 203 flying across your screen you’ll get a perfect image of the can-like object flying through the sky. If you were to take a picture (in real life) of a 203 flying through the air with a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second, you might not even be able to make out the 203. It would be extremely blurry. This is because of how light hits the camera. Because during that 1/60th of a second the 203 shell is actually still moving.

In America’s Army there is no such thing as motion blur, this makes it much harder for the human eye to process the series of images as a moving stream. To get past this you need to either add motion blur (which Crysis did, thus making the game more playable at 30fps), or add frames. This is why most people like to get upwards of 40fps.

Now for the real question: How many FPS can the eye actually see? This question has been debated for a long time. You’ll see threads about it on the America’s Army forums. No one really knows what the limit is, or if there even is a limit. We know that the limit is beyond 220fps because the USAF used to test pilots by flashing an image of a plane in front of them for 1/220th of a second. The pilots would then have to identify the plane. They actually did quite well.

What does that mean? That means that if you could game at 220fps, and an enemy appeared on the screen for just one frame, you could see him and possibly even identify him. This is a gamers best friend, as having any edge they can get is very important. Of course, most systems don’t get 220fps in America’s Army, and even if they did (like my friend, Bullet’s computer) you hit one more snag.

Monitor Limitations

Monitors have a maximum number of frames per second, basically. This is called the refresh rate, and is viewable/controlable in Control Panel–>display–>settings–>advanced–>monitor (or something like that, I’m not actually in Windows as I write this post). For most LCD monitors it’s something like 60-70hz (which translates into 60-70fps). On a CRT monitor (the old clunky ones) if it’s a good monitor, running at a mid-range resolution, it can be as high as 120hz.

This means that if your video card is rendering at 554fps, it’s you’re wasting frames (and putting your video card through a lot more work than it needs to do) because you can’t see them anyway. This can actually cause tearing. Tearing is when your video card and your monitor fall out of sync, and the monitor ends up displaying half of one frame and half of another. It can be really confusing in high action moments where you’re moving around a lot. You can see an example of it here: http://www.rnrh.net/video/samsung_tearing/samsung_ln-t3242h_tearing_mad_trax_1.png (although it can often look a lot worse than that). So how do you minimize unnecessary load on your video card an eliminate video tearing? The answer is a little button in your America’s Army settings.

V-Sync

V-sync forces your video card to render frames at the refresh rate of your monitor (or half of the refresh rate of your monitor, or half of that, depending on the speed of your video card). When it’s turned on you’ll see your framerate counter lock in at somewhere around 60fps and stay there, unless you have a slow system, then it will look in at 30fps, or 15fps if even too slow to do that.

V-Sync has it’s advantages and disadvantages, of course. On the good side it keeps you from rendering extra frames and eliminates tearing. On the bad side it may force your framerate lower than you want it to go if your video card can’t keep up. What would have been 53fps becomes 30fps, and what would have been 29fps becomes 15fps (I’m pretty sure on these numbers, someone can correct me if I’m wrong). If you have a fast system, it’s definitely a good idea to turn V-Sync on. If you have a slow system, it may be better to turn it off and live with the tearing. Really it’s up to you. You might even change it from map to map. You need to either adjust your resolution, or reload the map for the changes to apply.

Conclusion

Well, this really isn’t one of those “Conclusion” type posts. I wrote it just to inform. You guys can make your own choices. If you have any questions feel free to ask. Next time someone tells you that the human eye can only see at 30fps you can send them here.

Resources

http://amo.net/NT/02-21-01FPS.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film
http://www.rnrh.net/video/samsung_tearing/
And of course… good old personal experience.

You see, when you encounter an enemy it’s best to have as many bullets as you possibly can when you start shooting. This is so that if you’re a bad shot (or you’re lagging), you don’t run out of ammo. It’s not actually possible to click someone to death. Bullets are usually the best way to kill someone. In AA if you run out of bullets you’re basically dead. In COD4 and CSS you’ve always got your pistol and if not that you’ve got your knife.

Most people know that it’s a good idea to reload after they fire even just a few shots if they have the chance. Managing ammunition seems to come naturally to most people. Obviously you get caught without bullets every once and a while, this is bound to happen. Sometimes it’s unavoidable. If you find yourself running out of ammo on a regular basis here are a few quick tips.

• If for some reason you’re not sure how many bullets you have, and you have a couple seconds… reload.
• Keep your reload key bound close to all your other keys so you can hit it quickly. “R” is usually the default and it’s a good idea.
• If you’ve only got half your mag left, and no one is shooting at you… it’s probably a good time to reload.
• If you’re sitting around waiting for something to happen, with no sign of enemies nearby… reload. You might have a full mag, but it’s better to be safe and feel silly then to hear that awful clicking noise.
• Get a feel for how quickly your weapon expends ammunition. This may involve firing it at nothing for a bit.
• Get a feel for how long it takes to reload your weapons. Weapons with more bullets usually take longer to reload.

Most of you probably don’t need that, because forgetting to reload isn’t something I see people do very often. The thing I see most often is people doing stupid things while reloading. A friend of mine was recently lamenting about how you can’t reload and open doors at the same time in America’s Army. Besides the fact that it would be completely unrealistic in real life (on most doors), I couldn’t understand why one would want to open ones self to more enemy fire while reloading.

What I see people do most is move into new and unknown areas while reloading. Some people will walk around corners, through doorways, over the tops of hills, places where there could be a dozen enemies hiding out… while reloading! I do it occasionally, and most times that I do it I end up getting shot. When you’re reloading you are in a compromised position. The enemy can shoot at you, but you can’t shoot back. Therefore, while you’re reloading it is best to avoid as much contact with enemies as is possible. Find a nice quiet corner, empty room, or piece of cover for reloading. Maybe even fall back to where you know there are teammates who can cover you (especially in matches because you know they have your 6). If you can’t do any of that it is still important that you never expose yourself to more unsecured locations while reloading.

Application

Find places to reload as you walk into rooms. Make sure you know what is already secure, and what isn’t as you go through the map. Reload often, but only when you know it is safe (or it’s absolutely necessary). If you do this, I’m pretty sure you’ll die a lot less often.

Addition

America’s Army 3 introduces two new elements. One is the ability to melee your opponent (which has already been covered above since COD4 allows the same thing), the other is not knowing exactly how many bullets you have left. Here are a couple thoughts.

It’s hard, but try to count how many bullets you fire. You won’t be accurate, most likely, but it will definitely help you to have some idea of how many rounds you’ve fired. It’s also important to know how many magazines you have and how many times you’ve reloaded. If you can’t keep count of expended rounds, try to get a feel for how long it takes to empty a mag on full auto (or burst for the M16). Doing this should just give you a better idea of how many round you’ve fired.

As far as melee goes, I’m not really sure how this is going to play out. It doesn’t kill (or incapacitate) immediately unless you’ve already injured the person (or possibly if you hit him in the back, but I’ve not played enough to know). My suggestion would be to only use it if you absolutely have to. I’d suggest getting on a server and testing out melee to see how well it works, when it works, and at what range you can do it (obviously close, but how close do you have to be?).

I’ll either update this post or make another one with more info.

Part of the difficulties we’ve all been seeing stems from the large number of training missions being run with everyone trying to save their results. This is putting a sizable strain on the Authentication servers, but we have a plan to temporarily improve this situation.

Within the next couple of hours we’ll be updating everyone’s statistics to indicate all training levels have been passed. This will allow you to enter a server and enjoy the full range of Soldier weaponry and abilities.

However, for this to have the greatest effect, we need your help…

Please do not engage in any training missions.

Doing so will defeat the purpose of what we are trying to accomplish in the short term, which is to get everyone playing. If this initiative is successful, you’ll be able to enjoy multiplayer gaming while we can work at long term solutions.

Once again, please, DO NOT engage in any training missions, but feel free to join a multiplayer server.

Also, please note that if you are kicked from a server, it’s probably due to the server being full. With so many players trying to join at the same time, the number of players in a server may not be accurate. Just try joining another server.”

Here’s the official announcement.

I figured it would be a good idea to post this here. I’ve gotten a working America’s Army 3 server up (running on Windows Server 2008 R2). As I write this it has 7 people on it and no one has complained about lag (I even asked).  It’s not honor or authorized so you don’t even need to login to play. Just open AA3, click LAN play (though logging in doesn’t hurt), and type:

open 68.45.153.28?name=YourUserName

Where “YourUserName” is your desired username. For more info see the aaotracker forums (they seem to be a little more helpful than the official ones at this point).

Concealment

This is not easy to find in games like America’s Army and CSS. Most objects in those games stop bullets. Some examples in AA would be doors, dead bodies (don’t rely on them), and sometimes crates and cardboard boxes. Generally speaking you should only use these things as cover as a last resort. Concealment is only useful before you’ve been seen. If you’re camping behind concealment as soon as your spot has been exposed, there’s no point in staying there. There’s also no point to running to concealment when you’re being shot at.

COD4 adds an interesting twist to concealment. Most surfaces in COD4 don’t completely stop bullets. This is completely awesome, in my opinion, and it’s one of the things that makes COD4 one of my favorite games. Just about any form of cover can be viewed as only being concealment to some gun. If you’re facing someone with a 9mm silenced handgun, you’re safe behind most things. Moving up to something like the G3, you’re not safe behind anything but thick walls of concrete or brick. The 50 cal sniper rifle can shoot through just about anything in COD4. Be careful what you pick as cover in this game, because it might not work as well as you think it will. Also: never hide behind cars.

One other note in COD4 is that even if you think there’s no way your gun will shoot through something, try it anyway. If you think there’s an enemy behind a wall, and you know where he is, blast away! Take 10-12 shots if you still have most of your mag left. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve killed people through walls when I thought I was just spamming.

Cover

This is a lot easier to find in games like AA and CSS. Most objects in these games stop bullets. I’m going to talk about AA specifically, because I don’t play a lot of CSS. That’s not to say that what I say won’t apply to CSS (and other games), but you readers will have to pick and choose what you keep by common sense and maybe a bit of trial and error.

In America’s Army it’s critical to get behind cover when engaging an enemy. The more of your body you can obscure the better. Combine this with some strafing or crouching, and you’re on your way to a 3 fragrate! The general rule is that if you can’t see them, they can’t see you. So if you crouch and can’t see an enemy, you know that when you’re standing he can’t see from about your solar plexis down (or even as high as your chin). Even obscuring your legs can provide a smaller target.

Leaning around corners lowers your CEM a little bit, but it can make you much harder to hit. Combine it with the crouching technique and you’ll be very difficult to hit. The general point about cover is to provide as small a target as possible. As soon as you get hit it becomes much more difficult to fire effectively/accurately. Even a hit in the legs can mean major problems for your ability to aim. Having cover for them increases your chances of surviving, staying healthy, eliminating your target.

Application

Find cover wherever you can. As you walk into rooms, identify potential points of cover. Try to move from cover/concealment to cover/concealment as much as possible. When you die, make a note of what sort of cover your enemy was and how effectively he was using it. When your enemy has cover, always try to have better cover.

Have fun! Comments always welcome.

Updates to America’s Army 3 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:

America’s Army 3

• Removed apparent lag caused by other players entering or leaving a server
• Improved start of round spawn issues
• Resolved problem with training results not saving
• Improved communication with Authentication server
• Eliminated freezing up when moving from one training mission to another
• Cleared up hesitation during training missions
• Significantly reduce number of authentication transactions between player and Authentication server
• Solved achievements save and display problems
• Improved Login communication with Authentication server
• Improved player statistics tracking for better accuracy
• Improved overall performance

Edit

After installing the patch things just kinda got worse. I checked the AA3 forums and there are issues with preloaded versions being hotfixed. I just deleted local game content and I’m trying to install again. America’s Army always makes for such a fun install process.

Another Edit

Well, I deleted local game content, reinstalled, and I still get kicked when I try to join servers. I also crash every time I try to load MOS training. It seems like the hotfix did basically nothing.

This is an introductory post to the world of tactics. I’m hoping that writing here will improve my game play, and that it will also improve yours. Tactics aren’t something I think about that much, except in matches and such. Before we get to the technical aspects such as cover fire, room clearing procedures, squad behaviour, etc. I think we should cover basic common sense. There are some things that we all tend to do that we really need to work on. I’m going to cover them in the next few tactical posts. Right now I’d like to talk about “stopping”.

This one isn’t one I have a lot of problems with because I’m used to multi-tasking. In gaming they say that as soon as you stop moving, you’re dead. This is basically true. Now, I don’t mean that finding a good spot and camping there is a horrible thing to do. When you’re on defence it’s basically necessary. What I’m talking about is people moving along fat, dumb, and happy, when all of the sudden you see an enemy! You jump for joy in your mind and pull up your scope to shoot him. In the process you completely forget to keep moving. Your character stops dead in his tracks, with or without decent cover, you scope in, get your aim just right, and before you know it you’ve been shot. It could be by your target, or it could be by someone else. The problem was what you did when you saw the enemy. You stopped. As soon as you stop you become a stationary target. Stationary targets are SO much easier to hit. They shouldn’t be, but lag makes moving targets much more difficult to hit.

When you watch the good players (with 45 kills inside of 10 rounds of Hospital.. those guys) one thing you’ll note is that they’re always moving. Even if they’re camping, when they have a target they continue to move. Usually the first thing they do is find a reasonable amount of cover. The closest thing to them that’ll stop bullets: cars, walls, crates, friendlies, etc. They find their cover and they move in and out of it a lot. They may bunny hop, crouch tech, or just plain strafe… but they keep moving. I know a lot of people stop because it makes it easier to shoot… this is true, but it also makes it much easier to get shot. If you’re looking for some things to practice, or just some application, try starting out with strafing while firing. I like to find random walls during mission planning and just unload a mag or two into them while moving back and forth, left and right, and even crouching up and down. It makes you a lot harder to hit, and will probably help you live longer.

The next tactics post will probably focus more specifically on cover; specifically in games where it’s most valuable, but I’ll also mention COD4. Comments are always welcome!