Bill Spencer

CUBE guide

about, getting started, editing, links, autoexecs

CUBE information

Cube is a free first person shooter game by Aardappel aka Wouter van Oortmerssen. This game turns away from the trend towards complexity and is formed around a "tiny" game engine. While features are somewhat limited, visual quality is very good. A particular feature is easy editing of user maps as a result of this simplicity. The editor is built-in to the game and coop editing is even possible.

Cube requires Windows, Linux, macOSX, linuxppc, solaris, or freebsd OSs, and 3D video hardware with OpenGL support. System requirements are moderate to low... about minimum: Celeron 366 (Win98), TNT graphics; minimum RAM is said to be 64 MB.
--- Versions: ---
8/05. "Final" version. 5/22/04. More mapmodels, improved monster animation, new maps, more!
12/23/03. (+server updates) entity lighting, bridges, jumppads. 10-16-02. (+minor update 10-20-02, linux +10-24). Visible HUD guns, savegame, new framerate-independent physics and features. The visible guns greatly improve the sensation. May require high watersubdiv setting (16-64) on low spec machines. 6-24-02. First with current SP monsters. 1-02. first with SP.

Getting Started guide (Windows)

1. Get Cube (Info). The file is in a tar.gz format which may be decompressed with recent Winzip, quickzip, or 7-zip (the latter are free). Extract the download using the "Use folder names" option (typically default) into a convienient location (e.g. C:\\Local Disk). This will create a folder "cube" there, look in it and you should now see files and folders. Note: you may need to add a folder "savegames" in the cube folder (if not present already) in order to save a singleplayer game.

2. Three files in the Cube folder are of particular interest:

cube.bat -- starts Cube
readme.html -- manual
autoexec.cfg -- settings (most can be set in-game but this file must be edited for the changes to be saved)

3. The game now comes set up for 1024x768 resolution. To change this, edit cube.bat in Notepad, changing the numbers to some other standard resolution. You can also create a shortcut on your desktop to cube.bat, in which case the resolution can be changed in the command line of the shortcut (Properties>Program "Cmd line" box add for example " -w800 -h600").

4. Important default controls are: mouse -- look, mouse button 1 -- fire, mouse2 and space -- jump, arrows -- move, 0-4 -- weapons, and E -- edit mode. That last is important, avoid pressing E when normally playing a game. If you do, press E again to exit edit mode, but some things will be affected unless you restart or loadgame.

In addition, the supplied autoexec.cfg includes WASD move keys and mode-map command aliases such as SP, FFA, etc.

Edit autoexec.cfg using Notepad to change these settings (you probably should make a renamed copy first). If you prefer, you may download my .cfg's below, to use as replacement or as a source of cut and paste. NEW 8/05: configuration done in-game, or input via autoexec, is saved in config.cfg.

5. When ready, double click on cube.bat to start!

6. ESC, arrows and ENTER control the menus and ~ (below ESC) activates the console for direct commands. The console provides auto-complete with TAB and downarrow backs through previous commands.

7. Problems: If you get unusually low frame rate, try setting your Windows desktop to 16 bit color and the desired Cube resolution and/or updating your video drivers. See also Cube forum, fmod.org (sound), and linuxgames.com (Linux, do search).

CUBE Editing

Grab some cubes with the mouse.
Just like a cursor.

Crank up and down the floor and
ceiling with hotkeys. Or make a wall.

Textures are also selected with hotkeys.

Cube makes basic 3D mapping as simple as working a word processor. Entities -- monsters, lights, etc. -- are added using menus or the console. The manual is fairly comprehensive; Death Illustrated also includes a nice tutorial, and additional tutorials may be found on mapper's sites. My Editing Tips page.

AUTOEXEC Files and information

I offer the following .cfg's for use as replacement or as a source of ideas. These are also commented in sections for ease of customization. They are for the latest release version but should also work with earlier releases.

Features common to both:
- Mouse adjustment using - and + (actually "=" ) keys. Try setting sensitivity to 0 to invert (this is deliberately made not easy to do accidently).
- Mousewheel zoom with sensitivity compensation (otherwise the mouse is too sensitive at high zoom). Pressing the mousewheel button toggles between a normal "preffov" (preset) and the altered zoom (FOV from 10 to 120).
- Many editing enhancements. All entities and tags may be inserted using the mousewheel, as well as the normal mousewheel editing.
- Combination keys, which allows the best located keys to be used for different functions depending on game or edit mode.
- Improved commenting, more weapons keys and better secondary weapons on keys 1-4.
- Edittoggle is moved to reduce chance of accidental activation. X is restored to the original default (delent).

The pack includes three versions:
WASDweap: most similar to original config, but enhanced. Ingame, mousewheel is weapons, except press Q to zoom.
WASDzoom: ingame, mousewheel is dedicated to zoom. Q becomes a weapon control. Also, some settings changed to taste.
ASDzoom: my minimal finger movement config. Mouse2 is forward.
NOTE: due to the addition of "sensitivityscale" and the way 8/05 Cube saves config, you'll need to increase mouse sensitivity (msens) by times 10.

Download: spentron_autx.zip

Notes:

For the mousewheel button to work, it must be mapped at the desktop to the default function (autoscroll). It may be desirable to set up applications-specific mouse settings in your mouse software if you normally use different settings (also, specialized mouse setups may be undesirable, for example I normally have a left side button as "restore window" which is irritating when gaming).

My cfg's use a high mouse sensitivity in Cube. If this is reduced a lot, mouse sensitivity compensation during zoom will become imprecise, so it may be desirable to reduce sensitivity at the desktop.

Cube's weapons selection function is different than almost any other game. All weapons keys toggle between the two best weapons with ammo -- where "best" may be changed for the particular key. For example, the default weapons select are the keys 0 and 1-4; the selection will be the weapon of the same number followed by the "best" alternate highest numbered weapon, but never the same weapon twice in a row (note rifle, oddly, is #4). Cube's arrangment has the advantage that weapon select keys for specific situations may easily defined, and also assumes the eye is faster than the hand.

For standard configs, the edittoggle key may be removed by binding any other function to it. Example: bind E weapon .