Quake Champions
Guide To The QC Universe
This is a one-stop guide to help a friend who is new or has tried to play but is having problems, and there is some stuff for experienced users, so please share. Anything newly discovered will be added in the future. Anything that gets updated will be noted with a date. If you have something to add or find an error please feel free to contact me.
Last Updated Jan 11 2019
Quick Links
Changelog
Jan 11 2019
SLI Performance Correction Using nVidia InspectorHow to induce vomiting on The Longest Yardbattlepass exp chartDec 19 2018
added quake pro's mouse setups google sheetAug 15 2018
fixed nVidia profile inspector linkAug 12 2018 (yes im alive)
added visual studio / vcredist corruption workaroundsFeb 22 2018
updated colorblind supportadded reshade tutorialFeb 22 2018
updated batch file for qc high priorityFeb 17 2018
added hitboxes visual examples and explanationsadded strafe jumping tutorial by frothyomenFeb 05 2018
updated frame capping & cpu usagearchived original cpu usageadded anti aliasing smoothing enemy movementFeb 03 2018
updated sorlag painkiller movementJan 13 2018
added nVidia Freestyle & Colorblind supportJan 2 2018
added elo rank chartadded sorlag painkiller movementadded crosshair in any game in #gaming guidesremoved settings i useNov 19 2017
updated links to keel klesk death knightNov 11 2017
reordered entriesarchived netcode analysis videoupdated delete appdata every patch noteupdated batch file add set affinity optionadded dropped & inconsistent frames (severe, every user)Nov 9 2017
added ensuring baseline performance with yakumoadded data center ip addresses for trace routing plus infoNov 5 2017
added batch file to automatically launch qc and set to high priority with "do it yourself" codeadded all settings I useNov 3 2017
added getting started with esdf movement keysadded slash movementadded upcoming championsNov 2 2017
added resolution scale & stretchadded sorlag & anarki movementEnsuring Baseline Performance With Yakumo (qc community manager)
nVidia Quake Champions GPU Profile
In your Nvidia Control Panel -> Manage 3D settings -> Program Settings, QuakeChampions.exe and set:
Pre-rendered frames 1 or 2 (test for personal preference, 1 gives the lowest possible input lag, 2 may be smoother)
Refresh rate - highest available (when changing from desktop resolution, games don't always choose the highest refresh rate. this will make sure it does)
Threaded optimization on or off (test as this is system specific, on usually gives better frame rate, off has been know to cure a severe input lag issue on some systems)
Clean Graphics Drivers
AMD and Nvidia users should consider using Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) in Windows Safe Mode to wipe your graphics drivers completely removing all traces of past installs, and then install the latest from nvidia.com or amd.com (not opting to accept cookies may cause scrolling the page to fail)
Update Operating System
Check Windows (Start) button -> Settings -> Updates and Security (windows update on older systems) and hit 'check for updates', ensure you have all updates installed.
Consider upgrading to Windows 10 v1709 "Fall Creators Update" especially if currently using Win10 v1703 "Creators Update" as that version has specific stuttering bugs in many games which Microsoft has addressed with this new version (source).
You can force an upgrade, download an ISO or build a USB memory stick to upgrade or install clean via https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10.
After install it is recommended to then follow the instructions above in the Clean Drivers section to DDU wipe and then install the latest GPU drivers, as windows updates often install driver versions that cause major problems for games.
There is a user compiled list of known changes in the Fall Creators Update more comprehensive than the Microsoft changelog here
*Yakumo's Disclaimer*
Driver and software updates, Windows updates and the use of uninstall tools are taken entirely at the users own risk, and subject to the disclaimers of the driver, update or uninstall tool authors. Should any problems occur with the process the support of the tool or update's author should be sought.
Pro's Mice Configuration Database
nVidia Profile Inspector
Disable Ambient Occlusion
Disabling Ambient Occlusion gave me a slight boost and a small reduction in micro-stuttering for me atleast. Here's how.
Type Quake Champions in the Profiles box
Find the following three settings and change them using the drop-down arrow.
Click Apply changes at the top right, close, and that's it.
Fully Disable Anti-Aliasing
Default right now is "low" not off and turning it off in nVidia control panel keeps reseting, but this way stays.
Overdriven PICMIP
As close as you can get to overriding the texture quality limitation for low GPU memory quantity. The screenshot is texture quality medium. It has a very mild pixelation to it, but the marble walls and weapon reflections look great. I haven't tried any higher values like -5.0000 or 0xFFFFFFFF , have fun.
Update: -1.0000 is sufficient and doesn't make things shiny.
Partial PICMIP
Full picmip is a bit much so I found a happy medium so you could still see pickups etc.
Full PICMIP
You have to manually enter 0x00000078, to reset click the little nVidia logo all the way to the right of that row.
nVidia Inspector Other Suggested Settings
SLI Performance Correction Using nVidia Inspector
A few have confirmed the following enables SLI for Quake Champions. You should see an immediate boost in Frames Per Second. If not, try different SLI Compatibility Bits options. This is the setting that essentially "enables" the SLI
First "enable" SLI using SLI Compatibility Bits in the first section
Next, "Set" the options for it to look for and use.
that's it.
Installing ReShade & Using Colorblind Support🌈
Download ReShade and double click to run.
Click the large box to select QuakeChampions.exe located in:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\quakechampions\client\bin\pc
It should auto select DirectX 10+, if not do so.
When asked to download presets click yes.
For Colorblind Only, When the popup for each effect is listed, de-select everything but Daltonize. All others just click ok
Once presets are downloaded, close the app and launch the game, presets will load on startup and during resolution changes.
Press Shift+F2 to open the menu of effects and hit continue to use the app.
You will need to create your first profile using the + button and giving it a name.
Press continue again and finish, Now you can start enabling features with the checkboxes.
You can adjust each preset in the section below that and download more from their forum. For Colorblind Only, in the second panel select which type of color impairment that is needed, it should apply immediately.
IMPORTANT: When you are finished with your changes go over to the settings tab and change from configuration mode to performance mode and set a hotkey toggle to quickly turn the effects on and off. Doing so will lock in the current configuration and significantly reduce the performance impact.
You can download the configuration.ini file I used in the pic here and place it in the same directory as the QuakeChampions.exe. You might want to turn off tiltshift and bloom for it to be playable.
To Uninstall
Navigate to the QuakeChampions.exe @ C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\quakechampions\client\bin\pc
Delete the following files.
dxgi.ini
dxgi.log
dxgi.dll
d3d9.ini
d3d9.dll
Frame Capping & CPU Usage
Whats happening
The engine is currently "fighting itself" while trying to produce as many frames as possible. It's also dropping frames severely on every system. Even if you limit the frame rate it will jump above the cap. To create some headroom and let the CPU breathe, a few things need to be done.
Ucapped fps 8 player deathmatch
What you need to do
In order to combat this issue you have to do a few things:
Set Quake Champions process priority to high via task manager. (.bat file available down a few sections)
Learn how to cap your frame rate
Open Resource Monitor in Task Manager to view all CPU cores
Start Capping your frame rate down in increments of 10 while in a 4v4 until Core Usage drops (picture 3)
The idea is to prevent your CPU cores from being at the usage shown in picture 1. By reducing your frame rate, you have now created headroom for your CPU to process the mass amount of packets, snapshots, and data being sent to you and uploaded by you.
Proof of concept
Screenshots were taken in a single 4 vs 4 game.
Uncapped FPS cpu usage, 110 fps
Capped FPS cpu usage, 60 fps. Interesting, no change.
Capped FPS cpu usage, 50fps
Now you can see a significant decrease in CPU usage finally at 50 fps. This means I’ve hit my sweet spot at 60 fps shown in the middle picture. Personally I was unsatisfied at 60 so I pushed it to 75 and it's a good compromise. Keep in mind this is with my specs, not yours. You are going to have to do this on your own, which is why I did not specify fps values below. The only lag I get now is the first 15 seconds of a map start, then it goes away. You need to find your perfect balance between frame rate and max cpu usage, sorry.
Run Quake Champions in High Priority in Steam Batch File (.bat)
I've written a small batch file you can place anywhere and run it. It'll launch QC through steam, count to 30, then set the priority to high, then close. Here is the code if you don't feel safe downloading it.
NOTE don't press any key to continue, let the timer run out
start steam://rungameid/611500
@echo Launching Quake Champions
@echo Setting High Priority in [30 seconds]
timeout /t 30 /nobreak
wmic process where name="QuakeChampions.exe" CALL setpriority "high priority"
QuakeChampions.zipWays to cap your framerate
Msi Afterburner Rivatuner (realtime adjustments, easiest method), enter a value under framerate limit
Through steam, right click qc, properties, set launch options, add/edit
--set /Config/CONFIG/maxFpsValue 999
Through QClauncher (bethesda launcher alternative, known to cause lag in-game), add QClauncher as a non-steam game then right click it, properties, set launch options, add/edit
-maxfps=999
Additionally you can set affinity by adding one of the following at the end of the batch file. You can learn more about the bitmask to disable any combination or core you want here.
To disable cpu0 on a 4 core system add...
powershell $Process = Get-Process QuakeChampions; $Process.ProcessorAffinity=14
To disable cpu0 on an 6 core system add...
powershell $Process = Get-Process QuakeChampions; $Process.ProcessorAffinity=62
To disable cpu0 on an 8 core system add...
powershell $Process = Get-Process QuakeChampions; $Process.ProcessorAffinity=254
Dropped & Inconsistent Frames
Quake in its current state no matter what the framerate is dropping frames severely as shown below. You can test yourself using fraps, running a benchmark while you play, then analyzing the data afterward.
Low end system ucapped fps 8 player deathmatch
7600k nvidia 1080 160fps cap 8 player deathmatch
Quakelive 125fps cap
Poor Fluctuating Frametimes & Analysis Spreadsheet
Lowest possible frametimes in conjunction with frames per second. You can add frametimes to the on screen display (OSD) of Afterburners Rivatuner. See where your frametimes are to compare against this chart to see how busy your cpu is.
300fps = 3.3ms
250fps = 4ms
200fps = 5ms
150fps = 6.7ms
125fps = 8ms
90fps = 11.1ms Weapon fire rates used to be affected starting here, click here to read about it
75fps = 13.3ms
60fps = 16.7ms
40fps = 25ms
30fps = 33.3ms
Deleting Appdata Every Game Update
Is recommended at this point. Old appdata has been known to cause conflicts with QC updates. By deleting it has alleviated a lot of players issues.
Open Run and paste each of the following in, it will open each folder, delete everything inside them
%LocalAppData%\Saber
%LocalAppData%\Saber Interactive
%LocalAppData%\id Software\Quake Champions
NOTE: this will erase your binds and settings if you are using bethesda launcher. if you are using steam, everything is cloud sync'd except mouse settings. Them shits are in video.cfg for some reason.
Data Center IP Addresses For Trace Routing & Router Flood Protection
Due to the issues people have been having with the Nov 9th patch, I've grabbed all the IP's for each Data Center for users to do a trace route(or some other method I don't know). It seems about 20% of people are experiencing some pretty substantial network lag to random servers. One guy lives in VA and pings 140 to VA, one guy can't even move properly in his regular dallas server. I've experienced floating, not being able to move at all, and very bad hiccups. I've figured out which servers are doing that for me and do not check them off anymore.
Also, back in the beta, some users alleviated issues by disabling flood protection in their router. But I doubt it will work this time since update rate is no longer tied to FPS, but you can try... just make sure you turn it back on if it didn't work or a later date since its your routers ddos protection(your not going to get ddos'd relax, you just turn it back on if it happens)
To run a trace route and see your connection hops
Open the command prompt and type
tracert i.p.address.below
press enter and wait
Due to the use of ?Azure? & AWS you might not be able to fully reach the server everytime, but you'll get the second to last hop which should be in the same building as the server(I don't see why it would be anywhere else), followed by a Request timed out, but let it finish the 30 hops.
Data Center IP's as of Nov 9 2017
Ports were always 48800 to 48803
I picked two random data centers and connected several times to make sure IP addresses didn't change.
With trace route, your looking for inconsistencies in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th column at each hop. They should, in theory, all be the same time in ms, if there is a significant fluctuation, theirs the problem. To quickly learn how to read it, click here.
You may also want to run the test several times per IP as issues are mostly intermittent.
If you know another method to run some tests, please let me know and I will add it.
Anti Aliasing Player Smoothing
Toxic has suggested running a small amount of AA (Medium) has proven to smooth enemy player movement and animations. Before I added this to the guide I gave the information to a several people and the majority agreed. I'm assuming since AA is rendered last, it's creating a small buffering window.
Resolution Scale & Aspect Ratio Info
Resolution Scaling META
The way id/saber have done resolution scaling in QC is brilliant. It only effects the 3d rendering not HUD elements or menu UI. So the current META with a lot of players right now is using native resolution (monitor default) combined with anywhere from 50% to 75% resolution scale to gain some nice performance, especially with player rubberbanding. Personally I've gone down to 25% with 140 ping and it runs VERY smooth, its a bit extreme but if that's how you have to play so be-it.
Running Stretched
Running 4:3 Aspect Ratio is another common practice with players, especially cs:go. On a widescreen monitor it stretches the game and technically makes player models wider and easier to see and track. myztro | dooi uses 4:3 1280x960 @ 129fov which equals out to roughly 117fov. So don't forget to adjust your fov accordingly and mouse sensitivity is going to feel different as well.
"Details" Setting in Video Options
Tessellation on geometry. Compare low and ultra when looking at the rocks on burial chamber, for instance.
Example:
High Precision Event Timer (HPET)
Deferred procedure calls (DPC(s) Latency) (usually in bios) allow programs to queue actions to be done quickly in the processor scheduler, and they hang the whole computer until they get processed.
For example, drawing a video frame on a screen needs to be done as soon as the data is ready and the frame time is reached. This is all done in fractions of a second and isn't noticed by many people but actually effects the following...
When you click the mouse till the action actually happens on the screen.
Where the network data tells your PC they're location and when it actually happens visually which can be inaccurate.
What your monitor is showing you isn't really happening in real time, hence leading shots in older games. Same thing but in a different way.
Disabling HPET allows an unrestricted input output to occur and results in a very raw and extremely responsive connection between you and your machine. It also removes a ton of micro-stuttering and screen tearing. You can disable HPET by visiting the Disable High Precision Event Timer page.
Nagle's algorithm & Congestion Control Provider
Nagle's algorithm is a means of improving the efficiency of TCP/IP networks by reducing the number of packets that need to be sent over the network. By disabling this feature in Windows you will see a performance increase in anything network related including gaming. You can disable by going to the Disable Nagle Algorithm Page.
Add-on Congestion Control Provider: Compound TCP (CTCP) is a Microsoft algorithm that was introduced in Windows Vista and all following Windows Editions. It is designed to aggressively adjust the sender's congestion window to optimize TCP for connections with large bandwidth-delay products. You can enable this feature by going to the Improve Network Throughput page. Only for win7 & 8. They are considering enabling it in win10.
Bypassing Bethesda.net Launcher (known to cause lag) with QCLauncher
Running the bethesda.net launcher has been known to cause issues for some users. (its a modified version of the chrome web browser)
Windows 10 Game Mode
There is a new feature in Windows 10 that reduces background app usage, system resources, tasks, and dumb shit like Windows updating in the middle of your game that causes you to die. I recommend turning it on for every game you play. The gamebar is a bit buggy still, but if you hop in window mode once, press Window key + G the windows game bar will popup (if you haven't disabled it).
Click settings
Check use game mode for this game
Close, Restart the game, go back to fullscreen, and it will always set game mode when you launch quake champions
Rank ELO/SR Chart
Battlepass EXP Chart
Hitboxes Explained
Hit boxes are comprised of two meshes, Spheres and Capsules. Spheres make up the head and joints of players. Capsules make up the torso, appendages, and also used as filler to fill the leg gap on some players, ie: connecting both feet together. Weapons are not included as a target area.
Light Champions
Light champions sport a moderately padded target area roughly the size of a medium champions static or standing still target area.
NOTE: I made the Anarki because I was unsatisfied with the Dev screenshot provided to the public.
Medium Champions
Medium champions sport a mildly padded target area.
Heavy Champions
Heavy champions are pretty much exactly the same size as the player with slight padding in random areas.
Strafing Tutorial
It's been difficult to find a proper strafe tutorial that covers everything. Luckily I found one by FrothyOmen.
Sorlag & Anarki & Slash Movement Info
Slash Movement Info
Using a keyboard key for slash has proven to be quite difficult, most people are using their mouse thumb button instead. So if you have been wondering how people are moving so well, that is most likely why.
Sorlag & Anarki Movement Info
Alot of people still don't know this about sorlag and anarki, you don't have to keep hitting jump for them in QC, you can just hold jump, they have auto-jumping enabled. Also, if you didn't already know, most quake players use right click to jump incase you were wondering how people strafe/move around so well. ESDF movement keys are also becoming more popular than WASD because ESDF uses natural typing hand placement.
Sorlag Hidden Painkiller Movement
Sorlag currently has a hidden physics ability similar to Painkiller's(i would use a vo0 video but the qualities are bad). You can achieve it by hold +Forward, Crouch, & Jump at the same time. To change directions quickly in the video below, in mid-jump do a 180 with your mouse while letting go of +Forward, Crouch, and Jump. Once your mouse has completed the 180, quickly hold +Forward, Crouch, & Jump again. You can also get a boost in any direction while in the air similar to clutch by releasing the keys, point where you want to go, then hold all three again. If you find it difficult to hold the keys, check the Getting Started with ESDF Movement Binds below.
Original Link for fullscreen and link to stream HERE
How to puke with Mike
Getting Started With ESDF Movement Keys
If you read the above and want to try ESDF for movement, these are the default binds from quake 3 promode (cpma) with consideration of Quake Champions
You can also join the ESDF Steam Group
List Of Upcoming Champions
Audio files exist for the following Champions. Some links are speculative.
Athena -released Oct 11 2018
Death Knight -released Aug 2018
Ingrid
Keel -released Dec 14 2017
Keen
Strogg -released Apr 26 2018
Unumrey
Eisen -released Nov 17 2018