Official Infantry FAQ
Table of Contents
01) Introduction
02) Infantry Online
03) Keyboard Configuration
04) Getting into the Game
05) In-Game Options
06) Chat Functions
07) Playing the Game
08) Game Interface
09) Suggestion Box
10) In-Game Commands
11) Glossary
12) Quick FAQ
13) Credits
This was written to assist new and existing players on the functions of game play.
01) Introduction For other sources of in-game assistance, take a look at the other files in the Help menu. Explore them, you’ll probably find the answer to your questions. The purpose of this guide is to get your feet wet BEFORE you play the game. If you’re not sure of something, you can refer back here, or to any of the other help files, for more information. I can’t stress enough the necessity of actually READING through this; I know how much some people dislike reading, but you won’t learn anything from this if you don’t read it. The obligatory plea for nice behavior: please try and act civilized, pretty please, for the best of everyone. 
02) Infantry Online The Official Infantry forum page is at http://forums.station.sony.com/stat….m?forum_id=150 a member of the Sony Online Entertainment Network. When you first run the game, it will be run of the Station Launch Pad Login. From here you, if you haven’t made an account, you would have to do so through SOE. By clicking on “Create Station Account” it will send you to a page where in minutes you can have a Station Account. When signing in you will have the options to play Infantry online, Tanarus, or Cosmic Rift. (This Guide only applies to Infantry and most of Cosmic Rift.) When choosing one, it will bring up the Station Pass User Agreement and Software License, which in order to play you would have to accept the license after reading.
Now for some basic configuration things, before you play. Under “View”, there are a few options. “View > Options” changes how many graphic rotations are made when you turn. I’d suggest turning it to 64 unless your computer has less than 64mb of RAM and doesn’t handle the game well. Under “Advanced Options” there are various graphical things you can play around with to see how performance is affected. Some day we’ll convince Jeff to explain exactly what they do. 
I personally have Show Frame rate, Render in the Background, and Skip Splash/Music on. The final option is Key Configuration. I’ll get to that later, it has its own section. As far as the Resolution is concerned, just play around and see how much of a trade off you want to make for fps versus screen real estate.
03) Keyboard Configuration As far as I am concerned, having a superior keyboard configuration compared to your enemy can make the difference between life and death. If you have access to all the necessary buttons easier and faster, all the better, right? That means you’ve got to perfect the old-school Subspace-hybrid controls to fit your tastes. Now, I realize many people are fine with the default, and so be it. But this is for those who like screwing with defaults. There are a few fundamentals I aim for:
- You have to be able to strafe left or right and use any of your normal directional controls at the same time and with ease. This allows you to circle-strafe.
- The majority of your weapon usage keys must be accessible WHILE using condition A.
- Due to the nature of current keyboards, certain areas of keys cannot be pressed at the same time as certain other areas of keys… not unless you want both keys to function at the same time, at least.
You’ve got to perfect your controls to be comfortable and at the same time make sure that when you go forward and press fire at the same time, you don’t stop moving and nothing fires. To get the most from your keyboard, consider laying it out giving each hand as much space as possible, then going from there. Perhaps, right hand over the Keypad, and left hand over the left side of the keyboard.
Now that you’ve read all that nonsense, I’m going to reveal Un0me’s Owning Controls which have brought me much fame 
. Arrows up, down, left, and right are as so. F and D are left and right strafe. R,E,W,Q,T,G,V,B,C,X,Z,Home (most cases as DS),F8 (most cases to warp), and F5-F7(Usually for Armor sorts). The only down side to this is that you must use the “Enter to send messages” option… press enter to open a message window, enter to send the message after typing it.
04) Getting into the Game
Assuming you’re new, you must have an active alias on your account before entering the game or the server won’t allow you to enter until you do or make one that’s available. It’s a good idea to click the “Refresh Zone List” button every once in a while, so you don’t miss any new zones. On right Left side is your ping to each zone server, in the middle is the Location or zone, and on the right is the amount of “Players” in each zone at that time. Click “Enter Zone” when you are ready to play. If at any time you’re playing in the zone, and the server goes down, DON’T FREAK! They take down zones sometimes to do various things, more often that not the downtime is on purpose, and won’t last very long.
05) In-Game Options Let’s take a quick peek at the options, we’ll play soon
Charts
- Score Online Players: This will show the scores of anyone online in the arena you are in.
- Score Current Session: This will show the stats of those online in the arena during the session they are still in.
- Score Current Game: This will show the stats of those online in the arena during the current game.
- Score Previous Game: This will show the stats of those online in the arena who played in the previous game.
- Score Top 100: This will show the stats of the Top 100 In the zone based on Points.
- Score History: This will show the Score History of a player daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly in the zone.
- Players Profile Chart: This will show the profiles of the players online in the arena, shows things as Squads, Team, Main Vehicle, Experience, Cash, and Rank.
- Lag Chart: This Chart shows the lag info as if you were doing ?lag on each player online in the arena.
- Chat Channel Chart: This shows each player in any of your chats, which channel, which zone, which arena, and how long they have been online in that current session.
- Squad Online Chart: This shows each squad member who is online, which zone they are in, arena, and minutes they have been online in the current session.
Game Functions
- Skills: This is where you choose your Skill(s) if the current zone supports this option. Used for RPG-type zones where you choose your character type, character skills, etc. Your chosen skill can determine your characters strength, agility, etc.
- Store: Here is where you buy things, duh! Depending on how the zone is configured, you may need to be in a store-area, usually in the back of your base, to buy things. Depending on your SKILL(S), you may or may not be able to use some purchased items.
- Squad: Open this baby up to create a new squad, extend an invitation or revoke an invitation for a player to join your squad. Also allows you to accept and reject a squad invitation, and leave your current squad.
- Edit Banner: This new option allows you to be able to wear a banner near your name. You will either have to have someone send you one, where you would have to be in banner mode (meaning you have to have the edit banner window open) and receive a banner from a friend. You can also save a banner outside of the game which will have to be 18×12 pixels, in your Program Files>Sony>Infantry folder.
- Team: This is basically your Team Management Button. This allows you to create a Team (In the zone which allows you to create Private Teams), Join a team (That isn’t full, and if a private team, you will need to provide a password.), and Team Info which allows you to see whose on each team, and how many flags they have if its a flagging zone, or Crowns they have if its a KOTH zone.
- Change Arena: This will bring up the list of public arenas; Click to join one.
- Create Arena: This allows you to create an arena. If you want to create a private one, for only you and friends, be sure to put the # sign in front of your arena. Ex: #Friends for the arena not to show under the Change Arena List.
- Change Zones: This list will bring up all the zones that are currently up, allowing you to switch zones without going to the game menu.
- View Map: Does the same thing as F3 (default key), or clicking on the mini-map at the bottom right; it brings up your full screen radar.
- Join Game/Spectate: Toggles you between Spectator and non-spectator modes. Same as F12.
Options
- Font Options: Font sizes of every different area in the game. I have all of them at Small, 1024×768 res.
- Message Options: Toggles for various things such as filtering team, public, or kill messages, as well as the “Lum has entered/left” messages.
- Resolution: Here’s where you change your resolution inside the game.
- Graphic Options: Here’s where you will be able to change the graphic settings in game.
- Fake Alpha Blending: Turning this on changes things like the pretty smoke effects from “pretty and blended” to “ugly and uglier”. It’ll improve game speed in most cases.
- View Adjust Speed: This option allows you to change the speed of the screen movement to where you’re looking when you turn your character.
- View Adjust Percent: Changing this decides on how far back your character will stay in your screen. Change it to 0% if you want to sit in the middle like subspace, or to 100% if you hate seeing stuff behind you.
- Rotation Ramp-Up: If you want your characters turning (rotation) to accelerate to the maximum slower, increase this option.
- View Line of Sight (LOS): Changes your LOS to Stopped (Only on when you’re not moving), Always (Always on), and Never (Never on).
- View LOS Blended: Turned on it enables Alpha Blending of the LOS fog. It’s SUPER slow on and essentially no visual difference, so, for the love of god, leave this option off!
- Obscuring Wall Display: This changes how walls react when you go up to one and face it. I suggest Fake-Blended cause it’s fast and lets you see things covered by walls, without making the entire wall disappear (like the other options).
- Show Clock: Shows the clock.
- Show Frame Rate: Shows the fps in the top right corner.
- Sound Options: Shows the sound volume, and other settings for volume control
Misc. Options: Have the options to turn the “Tip of the Day” On or Off, and change things as your view adjust speed (how fast the window follows your turns) and View Adjust Percent (How far ahead the monitor views where you are facing).
Help (These can also change from zone to zone)
- Call for Help: This will give a call for a moderator to assist you.
- Basic Concepts: Basic Guide for newbie’s. Read it
- Messaging System: Explains how the various ways of communications work. I’ll elaborate on them later.
- Infantry CTF FAQ: FAQ for those needing help concerning the Capture the Flag aspect of Infantry.
- Moderator Rule Guidelines: This is the basic rules the moderators follow and punish for. It gives information on what to do and what not to do, and what punishments will follow if such rules are broken.
- Moderator List: This is the list of the current Smods, and Mods available to help you in the game.
- Gambit’s Command Listing: A basic list of most the commands available in game.
- Universal News: Just news noted throughout some of Infantry’s History.
- Release Notes: All the updates and such since the beginning of infantry v0.0
06) Chat Functions
To talk to other people in the public chat, simply type your message and press enter. If you have the “Enter to send messages” option checked, you have to press enter first, then enter again.
Remember those yellow guys that you can’t kill? They’re on your team. To send a message to them, just type ‘ or // before your message. For example, I could say
“Sup people… ready to smash some faces?”
And that would become yellow, and only go to the people on my team. If you want to find out what team you’re on, just type in the ?team command, and to change teams, just type ?team TEAM_NAME_HERE:TEAM_PASSWORD_HERE
To send a private message to only one person in the arena, you can do it a few ways. You could right-click on their name and select “Private Message”, or you could select their name in the Player Box and type / before your message, OR, my favorite, you just put a : before and after their name, then the message. Private messages are effective though ALL Infantry zones, so you can message your friend in Titan to come get some CTF in Twin Peaks. Sound confusing? It’s not
Un0me:Hey man, you’re me and I’m you… and I’m talking to myself, and… never mind.
That’ll send the message to that person only. When you’re in a private conversation with someone, the quick and easy way to reply is to press ::, which will bring up the name of the person who last sent a private message to you.
And easy way to remain in contact with your friends is to join a common “Chat Channel” This can be done by simply typing ?chat CHAT_NAME. To talk on the chats, you type ;MESSAGE. Typing ?chat will list all the people on your chat. Chats, like private messages, function throughout all the Infantry zones and Cosmic Rift. To have multiple chats, type ?chat CHAT1, CHAT2, CHAT3, etc.
chat lommy, winners, 123, coo
This would join chat “loomy”, “winners” “, “123″, and the fourth and final chat, “coo”. To talk on your other secondary chats, simply put the chat number between the semi-colons, for example:
:2: Whuzzup, winners?
Chatting with Squad Mates is just as easy. Type # then your message, then just Press Enter. All your fellow squad mates (type ?squad to see them all) will get it.
07) Playing the Game
- When you get in, play around; get a feel for the game. And keep your opinions open; don’t forget, almost everything can be changed to suit different preferences in zones later on. Before you run out there and get smashed, here are a few quick tips for you to consider.
- Move around when you fight; taking 10 hits successively may kill you, while 10 hits stretched over a long period of time gives your energy time to recharge. This can prevent any permanent damage to your health.
- Use your Zoom feature. It allows you to see things within your LOS very far ahead of you. Shift + Home and Shift + End are the default keys.
- Be conscious of the delay of switching between weapons; it takes time to go from a Machine Gun to a Pistol then back; that delay could cost you your life.
- Watch your ammo supply; there’s nothing worse than carving a hole through an enemy base, only to be stuck there with no ammo and no support.
- If you’re playing on a team-play map, i.e. CTF, try and play as a team. Figure out a plan. An organized team can defeat an unorganized team, even if the organized team is short on players.
- The team is bigger than any one man; if it takes your suicide to break through a patch of mines to their flag, DO IT!
- Watch out for cloakers; you don’t want to be caught off guard by one silly cloaker mine or grenade.
- Check out the Store to see what’s there; there might be a repel grenade to destroy all those annoying mines, or an anti-cloak pack to see those pesky cloakers.
- The top-half line of your targeting reticule is where your weapons actually travel, not the bottom line. The part of a characters body that you can hit is a square in the middle of their body, no matter which way they’re turned, or which way you fire at them. The graphics are trivial, the actual part you can HIT is just this square that moves around… so aim for the imaginary square
- WATCH YOUR BACK; with Line of Sight, you can be snuck up on from behind without ever seeing it. Either check your flanks, or travel with a friend who can spot your six.
08 )Game Interface
The in-game interface is divided into three chunks: the game window (where you play), the chat/info window on the bottom (where the game chat is), and the whole inventory area on the right.
When you’re in the Store or Skills section, information about the selected item/skill is displayed in the “Info” section, which replaces your chat window. You can toggle between the two by clicking on the “Chat” or “Info” button at the top-left of the window.
At the top-right section of your screen is the Player window. The number of players and their names are shown here. Yellow names are on your team, white are not. Right clicking on a name gives you several options; you can Private Message them, look at their info, Ignore, Ignore Summon (allows you to ignore their summon attempts if you don’t want them summoning you), Mark/Unmark (marks people on the players list, moving them to the top of the list. This will also make the players appear a little bigger on radar.) Or spectate them if you’re in spec mode.
Below the Player section is the Inventory area. Here is where your weapons and other items are stored. You can right click on things in your inventory to access their options. This allows you to assign it to a particular key, read its info, or drop a certain number of them on the ground. Items are classified in order of their type by color and placement; Yellow signifies things like armor. Green means traditional weapons, and white is ammo. If something’s color (except ammo) is darkened, that means you don’t possess the skills to use it.
An easier way to navigate the Inventory and Player areas is to use the keyboard. Pressing F2 switches between the player list and the inventory. Now you can use your PageUp and PageDown keys to scroll through the contents of the active window. Pressing the Space key (default) will do the same thing to the selected item as right clicking on it would. But for this to work you have to make sure you’re not facing any ammo, flags, etc, in the game, or pressing Space will bring up the options for what you’re facing instead of what’s in your inventory. When the right-click/space window comes up, you can press the shortcut key for each option. For example, selecting ammo the pressing “Space + A” will drop all the ammo.
Below the inventory area is your weight. Next to that is your… lets call it “Max Load Percentage”. As long as this stays below 0%, you’re not bogged down with stuff to the point of walking slower. As soon as you pass the 0% mark though, you’ll continue to get slower. The best way to travel is to stock up on as much stuff as you can without breaching the 0% mark by more than 5%.
Next; Energy, Health, and Unit bars. They show how much of each type you have left. In most cases, your energy partially acts like armor as well as the fuel for energy-based weapons. It usually recharges fairly quickly, unlike the Health or Unit bars. When you run out of health you DIE. If you’re in a vehicle such as a Tank or a Jetpack, the Unit bar shows how much life it has left.
At the very bottom-right corner of the screen is your mini-map or radar. The little blinking dot in the center is you. Other yellow dots are friendly people, and red dots are enemy units. Clicking on it or pressing Insert brings up the full map. This shows you the full map construction, but not the locations of anything past your characters LOS. However, depending on the settings, you may be able to see what your teammates are seeing on their radar. Pressing the little “G” at the bottom right corner of the full map turns on the mapping grid. It’s useful, I’d suggest having it on.
And finally, you can resize the chat window by clicking on the top border and dragging up or down. To make the chat window up most of the screen (great when you’re chatting in spec), press ~BF4~B. Pressing Shift + PageUp / PageDown scrolls through the chat history. A little tip for people using the “Press enter to send messages” option: If you’re stuck in the “Info” section of the Chat window, pressing Enter + Enter gets you back to the chat area without clicking on its button.
09) Suggestion Box
Most suggestions are made about the map, settings, or the game itself. Most of the time all you have to do is go to the message boards and post your suggestion; chances are whomever it concerns will read it and take it into consideration. Try and suggest things that will be productive for the game as a whole. Giving a reason for your suggestion other than “its way more fun” can also help. You can post messages at http://forums.station.sony.com/stat….m?forum_id=150
10) In-Game Commands
To view an Updated version of the Commands List, go to “Gambit’s Command Listings” by pressing “F1″ and clicking on the name
11) Glossary
- LOS: Line of Sight. This is the concept of only being able to SEE what is actually visible to you, as if the game was happening in real life. For example, if you face a wall in your house, you shouldn’t be able to see your friends 50 feet away playing basketball. The same is true with Infantry’s LOS. Anything you can’t see will be blacked out like “Fog of War” from the Warcraft series, and anyone standing in that area should be invisible to you. It allows for things like ambushes and other cool stuff like that.
- Strafe: A.K.A Sidestepping. A slow lateral movement from side to side.
- Recycle: A system used for restarting zones after new files have been uploaded. Usually happens very quickly; by the time you notice you’ve been disconnected, the server is already back up with the new map, map settings, etc.
- Harmless Games: the producers of Infantry. Created by Rod Humble and Jeff Petersen.
- Lag: This the general term people use to refer to packet loss and latency (high pings). If you have high packet loss and ping, that’s bad…, average is around 200-250ms ping with around a 1-5%s2u/1-5%u2s packet loss.
- CTF: Capture the Flag. This is where you capture either moving or non-moving flags to win, usually played as a team. Turrent: This is a common mispelling of the word “turret”, as in the turret or main gun of a tank, or the turret when you attach in Subspace.
- Vultcher: Also a common mispelling of the word “vulture”. Much like real Vultures scavenge for food, a Vulture in a game hovers outside a fight (or might just rush into it) and attempts to pick off fighting or weak players.
12) Quick FAQ
Q: How do I PLAY?
A: Different zones have different goals. Read the zone information in the Information menu. One zone may require you to capture flags for a certain amount of time (CTF), or another zone might be pure deathmatch.
Q: How do I get into or out of Spec?
A: Press F12 to toggle into or out of Spectator mode. Right click on a player name and choose “Spectate” if you want to spec them. Q: How do I choose my character? A: Go in to the Game Functions menu, go to Skills, and choose a skill.
Q: How do I change my character?
A: Go to Spec (F12) and type ?wipecharacter. This will erase all your characters information, allowing you to go back to the Skills menu and redefine your skills.
Q: How do I attach to a teammate?
A: If you’re in a zone that gives you an attachment device (often called Teleport), you simply assign it to a key just like a weapon, select a player in your Player list, and then “fire” the Teleport.
Q: How do I buy stuff?
A: Go into the Menu, go to Game Functions, and then go to Store. You may need to be in a store zone, or in spectator mode, in order to buy things.
Q: How do I drive vehicles?
A: Go up to a vehicle and make sure it’s selected (when it turns purple), then press your space key (default), and then choose which position you want to take.
Q: How do I get out of this vehicle?
A: Press Space + Shift (default).
Q: How do I pick up or drop flags?
A: Select them the same way as a vehicle or an item on the ground, and press Space + Space. They usually drop after a time limit, shown at the bottom-right part of your screen.
Q: How do I shoot my weapons?
A: Right-click on the weapon, and select the key which you want it to fire from. Press that key to fire it.
Q: How do I turn on armor/use this item?
A: Same as with a weapon assign it a key then “fire” it.
Q: How do I see my score?
A: Go into the main menu, and then go to Game Functions, then Scores. You can sort the scores by the various options by clicking on the headers (i.e. Kill points, Flag points, etc).
Q: How do I make macros? A: Type in the message which you wish to macro, then press Shift + F, where F is the key you wants it to be assigned to. For example, typing in “Hi” then pressing Shift + F5 will send “Hi” into the main chat every time you press Shift + F5
Q: How do I take screenshots?
A: The easiest way to take screenshots is to download a screenshot program such as Hypersnap DX. It can be downloaded from www.hyperionics.com, see it’s help files for more information.
Q: I’m an infiltrator and I’m cloaked but people can still see me, why?
A: There is a purchasable utility item called Enhanced Sensors which allows players to see other cloaked players within a limited radius, there is no way to circumvent this.
13) Credits
This guide was made for new and existing players to assist in game play. This covers a lot of what happens in game but not everything. This should be enough to get you started and have fun in game.
Thanks to Rod and Jeff for making Infantry, and thanks to Yankee, LJC, and Juan for what you’ve done as well. Also Thanks to SP33DY_G (Jose) and Revenat (Bill Corning) for their continued hard work for our game.
Most importantly, thanks to Luminair and Un0me for putting the time and effort to put this together and donating it to the community – SPD_G Authored by: Luminair,
Modified and Updated by: Un0me