Eventually i did this;
onevent EVENT_DISPLAYREST setvar cameradist 200000 setplayer[THISACTOR].look_ang angle endevent onevent EVENT_GAME setplayer[THISACTOR].look_ang angle endevent onevent EVENT_TURNLEFT setvar angle 512 setplayer[THISACTOR].ang 1024 endevent onevent EVENT_TURNRIGHT setvar angle 1536 setplayer[THISACTOR].ang 0 endevent
For some reason I also have to do "setplayer[THISACTOR].look_ang angle" under EVENT_GAME or else a horrid flicker occurs, i figure this is somewhat inefficient, but it runs on my Athlon XP so it can't be that bad, the controls in this manner are surprisingly fluent (i think that's the word) - at the moment the camera is facing forward when the game starts, but I think I know how to fix that (rearrange the code a bit and probably define "angle" as 1536 at the top of the .con).