Rail Settings

The Railgun is not just a very lethal, key weapon in Quake Live, it can also bring shiny color effects to the screen. Most players won’t care and use the default settings, but some like to tweak it just perfect to their likings.

There are two styles to the railgun, set using the cvar cg_railstyle. For the new style, which gives a very nice swirl effect around the beam, set it to 0. For the old style, a beam with disc elements in it, set it to 1.

Depending on the cg_railstyle 0/1 value, several other cvars come into play and can give extra graphical effects:

• color1 (default 2, values 1 to 7) represents the color of the beam.
• color2 (default 7, values 1 to 7) represents the color of the effect (swirl or discs).
• r_railcorewidth (default 6) represents the thickness of the beam in a rail. Applies to old (1) and new (0) style.
• r_railwidth (default 16) represents the size of the discs when cg_railstyle is set to 1.
• r_railsegmentlength (default 32) represents the length of the parts between discs when cg_railstyle is set to 1.

Also available, and applies to both styles, is the cvar cg_railtrailtime (default 400) which represents the amount of time before a railbeam (+ effect) fades out from screen. Some players like this very short to remove clutter. Others like this to be 1500 (rail reload time) so they can exactly determine when the opponent will have a new shot available on the moment the previous beam is completely faded out.

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For fun, I suggest you mess around with the values to create ultra thin with extra big discs, or swirly effects in all kinds of colors or just have massive beams that last 3 seconds (cg_railtrailtime 3000) for all players all over the map 🙂

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