After a half-year break from Q3, All*randlock saw the opportunity to get back in the game - with a vengeance! Duelling with a confident style payed off with a handsome 4th place. Luckily he had some time to chat with me, to extend the interview we started at QLAN.

You might be new to some followers of the Q3 scene, and to them, suddenly, here you are, beating some serious players! Do you have some background information, like previous achievement and so on?

Well, lots of people know I play a lot online, and I guess that's where they know me from. When it comes to LANs and such, I guess the latest was DreamHack, where I finished third after losing against fox.

Does Allstars play actively right now?

No, we have no TDM lineup, so... Only me and Z4muZ are active, and only in 1v1s.

Will you attend QuakeCon, like All*Aim did last year?

If I have time and money, I will. Dunno what Z4muZ will do, but I guess he thinks the same way. Because we have no intentions of quitting playing.

You had a break before QLAN?

Yeah, I was inactive for a little over 5 months because I had no good connection. After 3 months of waiting, finally my ADSL arrived.

I live in Bonnahöla [Sticksville], so... but we're getting broadband in August. Oh well. How did you prepare before this competition?

hehe :> Well, I was starting from scratch and trying to get started, and it was slow going. Then when I knew I was going to QLAN, I started playing a little more serious, really trying hard against good players, to get used to hard resistance. And to really practice the stuff that had to be solid in competitions.

You mean getting the aim percentages up there? Nahh?

No, I mean reactions, timing, etc. Aim comes when the other stuff is solid. If I play online and +forward, chasing, aiming great with the RL, that doesn't mean I aim well running from Prozac on QLAN. That's two different situations, and it's the last that has to be practiced before a competition, so you're used to it.

True, many elite players have 20-30% aim distributed over all the weapons, it all depends on if you play with a style that needs spamming.

Yeah, exactly, you spam and do safe things. A good example is when you spam LG into the t2 teleport. Several ammo packs go in there each game.

What do you think about online tourneys, they've been popping up frequently lately, feels kind of like a "revival"?

It's nice that they're held, but most of them are not so serious, mostly for fun tourneys I mean. Gamingeye holds a couple now and then, but there's too many (small) tourneys, and there are never any prizes. For you to really play serious there has to be prizes.

Yeah, it's true you see better and closer fights when there are prizes involved.

Online tourneys are different in that respect, so you can't really form an opinion of the players skills. Also, there's the ping involved. Invite tours are a bit more serious though.

Okay, now that you've done well in this tourney, what's your next goal? Any plans?

Hmm, I'll go to QLAN 2, if there is one [rumored to be held later this summer], and I'm seriously thinking of going to Lan-Europa and QuakeCon.

Tell us more about Lan-Europa for those who haven't heard anything about it.

It's held in Strasbourg, France, July 25-27. It's not really a LAN, it's a bunch of competitions in Q3, CS, UT2K3, WC3 etc... I think it's both 1v1 and TDM, but I'm not sure.

Okay. Now to move on to config questions, since that's my "angle" ... How do you feel about individual settings for each weapon? Is it a good thing, or does it cause to not aim consistently? I mean FOV-sens-crosshairs.

I change FOV for rail and shaft, and I switch crosshairs with each weapon. Sens is the same for all though. It all has to do with what you're used to. Take gopher for example, who could learn to play with his controls just like that, in a day or so? :D

Yeah, but would it pay off to change sens/fov/crosshairs with each weapon to get a few % better shaft or rail?

It's all individual. For some it may apply, but for me it's best with the same sens and accel. That way you get individual aim styles. My style is: twitch with the RL, slow with the rail and lock with the shaft. My (low) accel makes that possible, then I don't have to change sens between weapons.

Sounds about right, I tried an accel of 0.1, and funnily enough, the same sens worked in ANY fov, even zoom! But I thought it was bad for my rockets.

In the very beginning everybody made their own controls, and then Thresh started the WASD thing, Lakerman took after him, and then the whole world used WASD :>

But don't many players use WASD because they got used to it from the [Q3] default cfg?

No I'm talking about ancient QW times. The Q3 default cfg was created from that.

Yeah, I seem to remember the default in QW was zx pl or something like that?

Can't remember. Didn't play QW all that much.

Are you very dependant on your specific cfg or are you like some friends who can pick up any cfg and play with it? I'm not just talking binds here. And let's not mix gopher's cfg into this, I think. :P

If I'm playing seriously I have to have my cfg, naturally. But I wasn't dropped as a child so I can play with others :P

You put several binds on mousebuttons. What's the advantage of that? I used to have weapon binds on the mouse but I thought it got in the way of aiming, so now I have only fire and jump, and weapon binds back by the strafe keys.

Well, for me it's good. I want them on the mouse in order not to break my strafe pattern. You can miss a lot of rails if you have to change your strafe pattern to switch weapons.

Yeah, I have rail on my little finger for just that reason :P

But I changed to the MX500, and it's not config-friendly.

Because of the crap button support in the Logitech drivers?

Yeah, some drivers fix the buttons, but the sens goes mad. Used to have RL, SG and RG on the mouse, but all that's left now is RL. And zoom.

Here I promise to give him a tip on how to force MX500 to use Explorer 3.0 drivers to get 5 (7) buttons to work without affecting the sens, but surely it's been up on several forums so I won't bother you with it.

You're one of those guys who change your config constantly? :D

Yeah, but now I've decided not to change much more, trying to play with the settings I have now. I guess small things could be tweaked though.

Tell me more about your config decisions.

Just find what it is that FEELS good, that way you hold together in competitions against good players.

Is it worth a little worse aim, even, if the config is comfy and easy to play with? Or is it worth enduring an unconfortable sens (i.e., lifting the mouse to turn @ low sens values) to get the aim for each weapon perfect?

If the cfg is comfortable and easy, you plant rails and rockets in stressed situations. If, let's say, you lower your rail sens, sure, you get a little better precision when aiming, but the thing is: you don't have time to aim in stressed situations, you have to aim automatically, you hit a flick-rail, jump off and spam some rails.

Well, it can be comfortable playing with high FOV, you feel less stressed, but your rail aim is suddenly not so hot. Or it can be hard to find a sens to plant difficult jump without effort that is ALSO good for aiming, a little conflict there?

Finding your sens is always a problem :> For me it's so simple, you try a sens, jerk your wrist, 180 degrees = feeling.

Take accel for example, it's great for turning around and send off a rocket, but it's difficult to plant jumps. Some use the "measure the pad" method...

We all do it differently. :>

I see you use an Ingo pad... [A free, promotional, bumpy plastic mat that is sadly out of print :( ] Hehe, they *own* for Dual Optical and the MX mice! But you don't have your pad to your right?

No, I have to have it centered before the screen, otherwise my movement isn't symmetrical.[/b][q]I tried that, it felt like you didn't run out of mat space as often. Didn't have enough space for my keyboard then, but now I might try it again since I got my mini keyboard.

Speaking about sitting positions, you thought it was important in order to own, but it wasn't worth it to bring your "own" chair? (every possible pun intended ;)

Well, bringing your own chair isn't necessarily getting the same sitting position [as at home]. The table affects it, the room you have and the height. It's the relationship between table and chair that counts, and it's not certain bringing your own chair will fix that.

Headphones: How could you hear anything in the 1v1 games? There were a lot of TDM teams shouting order and such... (flashes innocent Bambi eyes ;)

If very focusing when I'm playing at a competition, so my game is all I see and hear. You can see on the pictures how sick I look when I play :> I don't think at all about what goes on around me.

Heh, saw some pictures, haven't found you yet ;) Do you have isolated headphones though?

I borrowed a pair of cheaper Sennheiser for QLAN. They isolated pretty well, but you heard people talking. I use a pretty cheap set at home, Kenwood KPM 510 = sucks. But if I'd buy new ones it would probably be Sennheiser HD570, I wanna hear what happens around me. For TDM, and for not having to take them off to talk to people. :D Or when you play soft games or listen to music.

But you didn't play in the TDM here?

No, but I'm thinking about finding a TDM section, just gotta watch out, if I play too much I'll get tired of it.

Snus?

Nope. But usually lots of cokes... :D

What's the thing you're most satisfied/dissatisfied with your experience at QLAN? Match- and event-wise?

Hmm. QLAN itself was good I think, 2 spec rooms large and with comfy sofas. Think it was a little tough that the 1v1 and the TDM interfered all the time. About my games... I regret I had no "spirit" left against fox at the end, had played 7 sweaty games just before... so I was simply a bit tired of it. Which feels tough, considering I was 1 place from prize money. But otherwise I think I played pretty well, I was confident in my game and didn't get nervous. Many say I'm an aggressive player. One example is against Toxic on dm6. I only lead by 1 frag but I don't run away, but attack him. That's because I know I won't lose a fight when I have more armor/health. So I got him, and he rushed again. Same thing against prozac on dm6, I don't run, like if22/cooller.

Yeah, I watched it. Prozac made a serious mistake, shot a rocket in the ground by the RL, and fell into your shaft :1.

Yep, that's when opportunity knocks... ;> Though prozac got 7 MHs on dm6, probably would have won anyway :>

Now, how about that tattoo? [A 25-cm Q3-esque logo with elongated "III" runs down his upper arm] Did some special event lead up to that, or thinking like "q3 foreveer..!"?

Hehe... Well, I didn't want to put a normal Q3-logo there, which would feel corny in a couple of years.

Heh, possibly ;P

So I chose to make a modified version of it, that at the same time would look like a regular Ink tatto. Mostly, I was having a tattoo, and the Q3 logo is cool :D

Enough said. A good a reason as any :P

Rumors say you playtest maps for id software...

Yeah, that's correct.

Will you do testing for q4? Do you know enough about q4 to know if it's worth focusing on for you?

It all depends on how far off the release is. Q4 builds on the Doom 3 engine, so Doom 3 will be released first, and that feels at least a year off... I don't know at all what my situation is that far into the future.

Speaking of other games, is there any chance there will be a UT2K3 tattoo on the other arm? :PP

No, that chance is non-existant. I'm not at all right for UT2K3, and I've argued against UT2K3 before.

Finally, any shoutouts?

"Props to my coach elakast!"