Communicating

Communications is the most important part of your config, after all, what's the point in playing against humans if you never talk to each other - you might as well be playing against bots.

Create a file in your config folder and call it comm.cfg, in here goes everything that involves getting a message across to your fellow players.

Open the file and type:

//Communications Binds

DeathMatch Comms

The most essential communication command is:

messagemode

Bind this to the key of your choice, then when you want to talk simply press the key and type what you want to say, then press return and it will broadcast your message to all the players.

A useful feature of Q2 is that if you have some message that you use often, you can bind them so that they will be sent with a single key press rather than you having to type them over and over again. To do this we use the say command:

bind l "say LOL"

Then when I press l, the message 'LOL' (Laugh Out Loud) will automatically be broadcast.

Basically you should fill this file with whatever comm binds you think you'll use, a few suggestions are:

bind f2 "say Hello"
bind f3 "say Bye Bye"
bind h "say :o)"
bind d "say D'OH"

TeamPlay Comms

Just like marriage the key to a successful team is communication, setting up comms for teamplay follows the same basic structure as above with a couple of differences:

messagemode2

That command will work the same way as messagemode above but the message will be broadcast only to your team, this allows you to make plans without the enemy knowing about it until it's too late.
As above it's helpful to be able to send a common message quickly, this is even more important in team games so that your team can be kept informed of events in the game, to do this we use the say_team command:

bind n "say_team Negative"

Action also has the ability to send radio messages in the form of pre-recorded wave files, these files are included in the pak0.pak file that's part of the initial AQ2 installation, to use them in your config you bind a key in the following way:

bind f7 "radioteam taking_f; say_team I need backup"

As you can see the ; has been used to seperate the radio command from a text message, this is useful as it lets your team know who sent the message and gives a visual confirmation.
The following table shows the radio files available and what your team will hear if you use them.

You can bind these using the radioteam command as shown above. It's also possible to use more than one radio sound in the same bind by using the wait command, for example:

bind kp_5 "radioteam go;wait;radioteam go;wait;radioteam go;say_team GO! GO! GO!"

There must be a wait command between each radio sound or they will not play correctly, wait tells Q2 that it must finish the first command before executing the second one.

There is one more tool at your disposal for telling your team what's going on - the % indicators.
You can use the %H variable in a bind to tell your teammates your current health:

bind f12 "radioteam reportin;say_team I'm alive with %H health"

So if I had 54 health when I press F12 my team will hear the Reporting In sound and be told that I'm alive with 54 health.
NB: It is vital that the letter after % be a capital letter, if it's not it won't work.

The following variables can be used:

Now that you've been through the guide you should have an understanding of how configs work and be able to experiment on your own, if there's anything you didn't understand or anything you think should be added to this guide, don't hesitate to let me know.

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