Mouse Sensitivity and Condition
 

 

Mouse Sensitivity

 For the beginning player, I recommend setting a mouse sensitivity which, when you move your mouse from one side to the other on a normally-sized mouse pad, at a moderate rate of speed, the player turns fully around one time to one and a half times. This is for both aiming and motion sickness reasons (which can and does happen, and should eventually stop as the player advances.)

I recommend adjusting the sensitivity in your mouse driver software first, setting that up so that the mouse sensitivity adjustment in Doom2 is within a range that adjusts correctly in the options menu. If this is not possible, you can turn up the mouse sensitivity beyond what the options menu can adjust by editing the default.cfg file, making the first "mouse sensitivity" value as high as you need to. This has a side effect, though, that whenever you are in-game and you attempt to bring up the Options menu, Doom2 crashes and quits to DOS.

There is a lot more involved in setting mouse sensitivity and accelleration for intermediate and advanced players. Most people will end up at some point raising their mouse sensitivity or accelleration higher than is described above, but that is discussed in the corresponding later sections.
 
 

Take note: A few mice cannot be used effectively in Doom2 Deathmatch

I saw a mouse a few years ago (a certain design of Microsoft mouse incidently) that could not be used for Doom unless the player tended to set his mouse sensitivity uncommonly high. When you moved the mouse quickly across the mouse pad, the mouse did not seem able to transmit that fast action to the PC. A fast swipe of the mouse resulted in a slower movement of the player. Not all Microsoft mice do this, but this particular type did. You should verify that your mouse doesen't clearly do this, it was a very obvious problem when I saw it.
 
 

Mouse Health and Condition

 The last consideration to discuss is the health of the mouse you are using. The rollers inside of mice build up what I call "Mouse Crud." You have to clean this crud off, or your control will have problems. I have seen even one tiny speck of crud make a mouse catch intermittantly.

Other things that I have seen affect control adversely are: Dirty mouse balls <G>, a mouse ball with a crumb of something stuck on it, dirty mouse pad, mousepad with a few  crumbs on it, the kind of mouse pad not working well with specific mouseball, worn-out shrunken mouseball, and worn-out mouse. The worn-out mouseball and mouse had the unique symptom that the mouse worked fine turning right but stuck when turning left. If you are interested in why...this was because the laterally-positioned roller was on the left hand side of the mouse, and moving the mouse to the left caused the ball to move slightly to the right in the worn-out mouse, making the ball lose contact with the  roller. Moving the mouse the other way, to the right, caused the mouseball to move slightly to the left, up against the roller, and it therefore turned the roller ok.

BOTTOM LINE IS: Pay attention to how your mouse is handling, and when you notice problems, fix them.

 And by the way...never use alcohol to clean a mouse ball. It shrinks and ruins it. It works great on the rollers though.

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