1 Topic by yemDX

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Topic: Low Sensitivity vs. High Sensitivity

While browsing the forums of another game at 2 in the morning instead of doing a paper that was due in 6 hours, I came across this thread and found the image it uses to describe why low sensitivity is better to be really nice and so I thought I'd post it here and explain it with more Teeworlds-related terms. The original image is here: image here

I've redrawn this to be related to Teeworlds and simplified:

http://puu.sh/5AH5k.png

You are the blue guy holding the enemy flag, and you wanna shoot down the red guy. Let's say your mouse speed, in this example, is for every micrometer you move your mouse, the cursor moves 1 pixel.  Let's call this a mouse sensitivity of 1.

Now, you decide that it requires too much physical movement to aim there, so you decide to raise your sensitivity to 2 pixels per micrometer, a mouse sensitivity of 2. What you effectively do is this:

http://puu.sh/5AH5P.png

Since you move 2 pixels each micrometer, it's like there's half the width and height of pixels instead of the full amount. You skip over a pixel every time you move. Now, let's go deeper:

http://puu.sh/5AH6d.png

As you can see, it becomes increasingly difficult to aim at the angle you need to the more you increase your sensitivity. This is, obviously, a bad thing, especially for a game like Teeworlds, where accuracy is important.

Just thought I'd post this as I don't think there's ever been a thread like this. Please feel free to argue.

Ex-King of Teeworlds

2 Reply by Dune

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Re: Low Sensitivity vs. High Sensitivity

I don't see anything useful that was not already obvious. Besides, Windows users have an acceleration feature enabled by default.

Not Luck, Just Magic.

3 Reply by Magnet

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Re: Low Sensitivity vs. High Sensitivity

Your argument seems flawed, since in the images you use you halve the size of the screenshot everytime. There is a factor of 2 between 1 and 2, but as you increase sens, you don't have the same ratio, while your argument makes it look like it. Between 2 and 3 the factor is already 1.5, then 1.33, etc. So using your argument, the "window size" shouldn't be decreased as fast at all.. and actually it would have been better to just write which pseudo-sens you use for each screenshot.

Your argument would work if you explicitly stated the mouse sens used in your example are 1, 2, 4, 8, 16.


In Teeworlds, the "mouse sens" setting (inp_mousesens) is divided by 100 then multiplied to the relative mouse movements you make. E.g having 100 mouse sens means = no change to the default speed. Lower sens will reduce the mouse movement, and higher than 100 increase. For instance I use a sens of 177 which means my movement is multiplied by 1.77 (and not by 2^176..)

Also your argument is a bit weird. In the last screenshot it's very hard to aim because it's so small you don't see anything. If your hand is steady you can still direct the mouse in the right general direction, but you are obviously right that with high sens you lose precision. With high sens you can aim in the right general direction but a small movement you make by mistake will set your aim off, whereas if you have low sens you might have to move your hand more to aim, but that means a small movement won't alter it.

The common experience in TW is that low sens = good aim (requires precision) while high sens = good movement (requires fast moving of the hook). I believe everyone has to find their own sweet spot in between to have the right trade-off. Aiming good is important, but so is aiming fast, and so is keeping a good posture and not moving the mouse/hand excessively while playing.

4 Reply by Broken (edited by Broken 2013-12-04 01:49:45)

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Re: Low Sensitivity vs. High Sensitivity

Agree with both responses. Pretty sure this post was meant as a troll.

5 Reply by yemDX (edited by yemDX 2013-12-04 02:17:22)

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Re: Low Sensitivity vs. High Sensitivity

Broken wrote:

But yea, sens is how fast the circle moves, not how big the circle is, as the distance between two points will depend on where in the circle the aimer is, and how many pixels it moves.

The aimer is always in the center of the circle, it's how TW works, unless you are using dynamic camera.

Broken wrote:

But again, pixel precision isn't always the most important thing.

You're right, but when there is more pixels to aim at, the higher chance of hitting them.


Magnet wrote:

Your argument seems flawed, since in the images you use you halve the size of the screenshot everytime.

No, the size isn't halved, it's 1/4 the size (half of the width and half of the height) although I think this may just be your wrong vocabulary choice. Read on for explanation of why they are halved instead of the proper amounts (if going by increments of 1)

Magnet wrote:

bla bla don't wanna quote it all you know what i'm quoting

Well, I think you are misunderstand the images, these numbers aren't really related to Teeworlds-sensitivity, they are just a sensitivity measure I came up with, I'm not exactly sure what Teeworlds does for its sensitivity measurement.

No, the sens numbers of 1, 2, 4, etc would not make sense in this context because I already defined the word "sensitivity" in my post, how many pixels you move per micrometer. And thus the numbers 1, 2, 3, etc make perfect sense. These are not Teeworlds sensitivity measurements, these are my own defined units just for this example.

The screen size shrinking works perfectly for this example as well. Say you have a 50x50 resolution game and my already defined (how many pixels you move per micrometer) sensitivity is 1, 1 pixel per micrometer. 50x50 = 2500 pixels and none are skipped over. Increase your sensitivity to move two pixels every micrometer, and now you skip over a pixel every time you move your mouse. This reduces your effective area of aiming to 1/4 the original (hence the size decrease to 1/4 the size)

However the last images are not what they actually should be but are just a demonstration of what happens as you increase your sensitivity, i just reduced the size by 1/4 each time, although if you go by increments of 1 it actually is not nearly as drastic as in that image but is once again just a demonstration in case it flew over anyone's heads that that is what happens when you increase your sens more

This post isn't meant to show some new-found amazing concrete proof that low sens > high sens, this is very obvious, but it is not obvious to every player and some still don't understand this. It is in "Discussions" and not in another section for a reason, though, so I am open to people who disagree (which is really no one in the thread so far)

Ex-King of Teeworlds

6 Reply by Magnet

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Re: Low Sensitivity vs. High Sensitivity

yemDX wrote:

No, the size isn't halved, it's 1/4 the size (half of the width and half of the height) although I think this may just be your wrong vocabulary choice.

This is called halving, as in 50% of the original size. The new surface is 1/4, but the image is still halved. I'm afraid you may be confusing image size and surface.

7 Reply by lolnameless (edited by lolnameless 2013-12-05 14:58:29)

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Re: Low Sensitivity vs. High Sensitivity

I have little idea on what Yem is talking about, but one little flaw on aiming is that if you aim mostly by intuition instead of pointing target exactly (i think that's what everyone does), the pointer is better angular than positional(as in coordinate of rectangle).

The problem when you tune down sensitivity(or speed of pointer..) is that it uncovers positional aiming. The larger the speed of pointer is, the more angular the aim is.

Magnet wrote:

The common experience in TW is that low sens = good aim (requires precision) while high sens = good movement (requires fast moving of the hook). I believe everyone has to find their own sweet spot in between to have the right trade-off. Aiming good is important, but so is aiming fast, and so is keeping a good posture and not moving the mouse/hand excessively while playing.

I think that the difference(or trade-off) is insignificant. I have no comment on mouse settings, I think aiming with high mousesen and that of low mousesen are just two things.

But, if your settings/style doesn't preserve enough precision, you get nothing.

The best run is often made by players with good precision (even in high speed) and sometimes so precise that each hook helps maintain highspeed in fluidity and they often finish in minimal hooks possible.