New player saying hiya with a couple of questions

[Omicega]

I started playing about a week or two ago and I'm loving it. I'd messed around with SS13 servers in the past, but this is the first time I've actually stuck with the game to any degree whatsoever. I haven't even glanced at any other server since starting up CM and poring over the wiki for the first time.

Even in the short time I've been poking around on the CM server, the speed at which new updates get rolled out etc has been pretty impressive - and with people's willingness to help out and the comprehensive wiki and forum guides littered all over the place, I've been trying my best to poke around as both PFC and squad medic for the past while. The whole roleplay angle is something I'm pretty familiar with, but wrestling with the interface as well as a lack of general map/game knowledge has been the hard part. I did eventually manage to buckshot a few aliens once I found a macro for pumping the shotgun, though.

I've mostly been playing as Alicia Parker, but on the first medic round I did I queued in as a random name so nobody would see me fucking it up, although I think I overestimated the difficulty. The only confusing part was trying to get a loadout sorted before the first drop, and there are so many different guides about it that it's tricky to know which one to commit to.

There's a couple of questions I had, though - one gameplay related, and one that seems like a really annoying bug. First off, if you choose to need prescription glasses in character creation and then wind up picking medic, are you just screwed when it comes to wearing the medical HUD or is there some way to combine it and the glasses you spawn with? Do I just need to remember to switch that off when I'm queueing as anything that needs a HUD in the eye slot?

Secondly, I have a really irritating bug that's been stopping me from trying out other roles. My BYOND won't ready up properly - I can be there before roundstart and with the Ready option ticked, but when the round actually kicks off I'm just left staring at the title screen. I can hear all the sound effects of marines shifting gear around as they get out of cryo, but I don't actually spawn in myself and end up having to unready and then latejoin a couple of minutes in, which usually means I miss most roles I'm interested in except for squad marine and (sometimes) squad medic. I'd love to try CL, but it's never available for a latejoiner in my experience. Is there any way I can go about trying to fix this?

[Butterrobber202]

Alright, so for the ready up thing, your best bet is to tick ready up and scroll down the Lobby Tab and find your CKEY. Aka, Username. I think you can combine glasses w/ medic huds by clicking them together, but in truth your best bet is to not need glasses.

[TehSpoderman]

I think the roundstart thing means that all roles you have been interested in are taken.

[Cairath]

Try and observe until a round is over and snipe that CL spot! Judging by who is in command, you'll either have fun or be bored out of your skull. Name's Victoria Vile, though chances are you'll never see me unless you go into CiC or break Marine Law.

[Omicega]

Alright, so for the ready up thing, your best bet is to tick ready up and scroll down the Lobby Tab and find your CKEY. Aka, Username. I think you can combine glasses w/ medic huds by clicking them together, but in truth your best bet is to not need glasses.

Last time I tried, I wasn't able to combine them just by clicking. I'm not entirely sure if I was doing it right, though - I was too busy trying to get a loadout set up and get rid of all the useless injectors in the medic bag by default.

I think the roundstart thing means that all roles you have been interested in are taken.

I'm not sure if that was it, but I reinstalled BYOND, cleared the cache and made sure my preferences were set up and now it looks like it's working just fine. I still can't always get my hands on the roles I want, but at least it will actually put me into the game rather than freezing up.

Try and observe until a round is over and snipe that CL spot! Judging by who is in command, you'll either have fun or be bored out of your skull. Name's Victoria Vile, though chances are you'll never see me unless you go into CiC or break Marine Law.

I'll be trying my best. I'd love to take a pop at being a small part of an evil megacorp, but grabbing hold of it is pretty tricky. I also tend to wind up latejoining a lot since the rounds last so long and are wildly inconsistent in length, but I'm definitely looking forward to finally grabbing it.

Thanks all for the help, though!