UT3 Problems..

I know this probably isn't the right place to be asking this, and most of you will probably think i'm an idiot, but I don't care. lol

Keep in mind this is basically the first first-person shooter I've ever really played (messed around with TFC like 6 years ago). I bought UT3 a couple days ago, been playing it a couple hours or so a day since, and I've run into some problems that I'm looking for a way to fix. I'm having trouble turning around quickly enough to 'not die' when people, NPCs or other players, jump through me, behind me, around me, etc. I'm also having trouble aiming. And lastly, I can't seem to find the right spot to bind weapon switching, so whenever someone runs into me, whatever weapon I'm using is usually what I die with (if you catch my drift lol).

I've messed with the mouse sensitivity, etc and I either can't find a sweet spot or just need practice or I need to give my mouse hand more room to move around, or something, but it seems like when I swing my mouse around in combination with the movement keys, I just end up turning around too slowly and getting killed. Especially when trying to swing around with a minigun or link gun, or trying to follow some idiot jumping around with a rocket launcher.

Any suggestions? Any scenarios I can set up within the game to practice? My usual philosophy is just play players better than me, get used to it, then eventually I'll get better, but as has been the case, I just die too fast and hardly have time to practice switching weapons, turning around and aiming properly, etc.

Any key-bindings that have worked for you? What mouse sensitivity do you play with? I know this is stupid, and as I'm typing this, I don't know why I'm actually asking, but I like getting others opinions, and maybe someone will spark a thought and help me even a little to get better at this game, and 1st-person shooters in general.

Sorry for the length.

One more thing... I don't notice any jumping or skipping or anything like that, but I 'am' playing on an old dell desktop. 2.5gigs of ram, 3.06 GHz processor, several years old, Radeon 9600 graphics card or something stupid.. Is it possible that there are just so many things going on that my turning (or even recognition of the movement of my target) is more delayed than I can perceive? Sometimes I feel like I'm dead before I even know what hit me...

 

First of all - waitWHAT?! 0.o

Weapon switching as in Team Fortress Classic (Q)? I haven't seen any other games, except Valve's, which support fast previous weapon switching. You're just gonna have to use the numbers on your keyboard. Try to memorize them and/or write them to a list.

Well, practice with bots, set on the easiest level or play in n00b servers (no offense, lol). The bots, while set on the easiest level take, like, 5-6 secs to turn around and start shooting you with their terrible aim. We were all n00bs at the beginning , but practice makes perfect.

I've always played with the default mouse sensitivity settings on games. In UT3's case that's 2500, however I own a "semi-gaming" mouse, which allows me with the push of a button to change my mouse sensitivity (dpi) to a higher or lower state, whenever I feel like it. This helps me a lot, since I play 4-5 games with different dpi's: UT3 - ~800 dpi, TF2 - ~1600dpi, GMod - ~600 dpi. I've never experimented with the mouse sensitivity options in a game.

It's not delayed. You should check what's your ping (latency) in-game - it shows how much time does it take for your computer to communicate with the server and is usually measured in miliseconds (ms). Everything ABOVE 100 ms is bad.

PS: LOL'ed on the " several years old, Radeon 9600 graphics card" part. xD