<!--coloro:orange--><span style="color:orange"><!--/coloro-->EDIT: removed advice, moved to PMs<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<b>Back on topic</b> Cory's post detailed why they have trying to replace BHop with Walljump. Overall I'd agree with the weaknesses of BHop, being opaque to the casual player. In theory Walljumping is less opaque, but it's still a bit clunky and still not the easiest thing to "stumble" upon.
My personal opinion is if we're going to implement any skill-based movement system it needs to be integral. Warsow did this amazingly. They made it fluid, intuitive, and one of the first tutorials on it taught how to queue jump. It had visualizations on the models, sounds, and made it easy to at least pick up but had a curve to master for maximum efficiency as you float around the map. Walljump has the audio, but better feedback is required imo. Plus hopefully it will continue to be tweaked to be a much more gradual skill/reward curve. Currently a bit too binary.
As for BHop being useful everywhere versus Walljump only on walls, I haven't worked through all that myself yet. Bascillus continues to be a badass at explaining its merits though.
<!--quoteo(post=1977674:date=Sep 14 2012, 12:15 PM:name=spellman23)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (spellman23 @ Sep 14 2012, 12:15 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1977674"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><b>Back on topic</b> Cory's post detailed why they have trying to replace BHop with Walljump. Overall I'd agree with the weaknesses of BHop, being opaque to the casual player. In theory Walljumping is less opaque, but it's still a bit clunky and still not the easiest thing to "stumble" upon.
My personal opinion is if we're going to implement any skill-based movement system it needs to be integral. Warsow did this amazingly. They made it fluid, intuitive, and one of the first tutorials on it taught how to queue jump. It had visualizations on the models, sounds, and made it easy to at least pick up but had a curve to master for maximum efficiency as you float around the map. Walljump has the audio, but better feedback is required imo. Plus hopefully it will continue to be tweaked to be a much more gradual skill/reward curve. Currently a bit too binary.
As for BHop being useful everywhere versus Walljump only on walls, I haven't worked through all that myself yet. Bascillus continues to be a badass at explaining its merits though.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Again, my point with movement controls like in Warsaw is that I don't really see how such a feature fits in within Natural Selection. Its nice to be able to move faster, but the fundamental question becomes, why is there a mechanism that allows you to move faster than the default speed at all? If the game is balanced around the maximum achievable speed through some arbitrary mechanism, why is there a lower default speed to begin with?
My point is that its a mechanism that, while taking skill to manage, imposes and artificial barrier on movement mechanics for no greater purpose than to give the player something to do to make them feel like their gaining something.
What's the point? Is it skilled? Yes, absolutely, that's not in question. But is it <i>necessary</i>? I haven't seen anything to convince me it is.
<!--coloro:orange--><span style="color:orange"><!--/coloro-->EDIT: removed advice, moved to PMs<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
<!--coloro:red--><span style="color:red"><!--/coloro--><!--sizeo:3--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b>On topic:</b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec--><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> To your question "Is it necessary?" I guess it depends on what you think is necessary.
From a purely theoretical theorycrafting standpoint, no. As you said if we balance the game around a certain max speed and incorporate ways to increase that speed (Celerity) then we should be fine. Other fast-paced shooters have demonstrated thisand become wildly successful.
However, it adds in something else. It adds a new mechanic to master and improve upon, analogous to the Marine's increased aiming abilities. The better you are at Alien movement, the faster you can close gaps, dodge fire, and score hits. Marines get better at aiming to try and counter this and kill you before you get close. Plus it provides a whole range of interesting mechanics and gameplay allowing freedom of expression as you utilize your environment.
Arguably extra skill-based mechanics are silly. See the Deny mechanic in DotA. League of Legends intentionally removed it because they saw it as unintuitive, and instead balanced their game around zoning and applying pressure at the enemy's towers. And yet the arguments rage on and DotA2 is incorporating Deny.
But I'm on the side of Fana and Bacillus. The extra merits, the new things to explore, and the interesting gameplay provided by skill-based movements such as BHop (and hopefully in the future a refined Walljump) rewards players even with the cost of entry. It's a risk-reward balance, but in my opinion is it's rewards outweigh the problems.
<!--quoteo(post=1977721:date=Sep 14 2012, 01:54 PM:name=spellman23)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (spellman23 @ Sep 14 2012, 01:54 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1977721"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><!--coloro:red--><span style="color:red"><!--/coloro--><!--sizeo:3--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b>On topic:</b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec--><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--> To your question "Is it necessary?" I guess it depends on what you think is necessary.
From a purely theoretical theorycrafting standpoint, no. As you said if we balance the game around a certain max speed and incorporate ways to increase that speed (Celerity) then we should be fine. Other fast-paced shooters have demonstrated thisand become wildly successful.
However, it adds in something else. It adds a new mechanic to master and improve upon, analogous to the Marine's increased aiming abilities. The better you are at Alien movement, the faster you can close gaps, dodge fire, and score hits. Marines get better at aiming to try and counter this and kill you before you get close. Plus it provides a whole range of interesting mechanics and gameplay allowing freedom of expression as you utilize your environment.
Arguably extra skill-based mechanics are silly. See the Deny mechanic in DotA. League of Legends intentionally removed it because they saw it as unintuitive, and instead balanced their game around zoning and applying pressure at the enemy's towers. And yet the arguments rage on and DotA2 is incorporating Deny.
But I'm on the side of Fana and Bacillus. The extra merits, the new things to explore, and the interesting gameplay provided by skill-based movements such as BHop (and hopefully in the future a refined Walljump) rewards players even with the cost of entry. It's a risk-reward balance, but in my opinion is it's rewards outweigh the problems.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I actually agree with you that increasing the skill ceiling in a game is beneficial. But this isn't the first time I've heard community members refer to the "inferiority" of NS2's movement controls. How are they inferior for the lack of such optional mechanics? I would argue that only those things which directly, and negatively, impact game play could warrant being labeled as "inferior."
The inclusion of such mechanics may "improve" things, but I do not see how their absence detracts from the system at all.
<!--quoteo(post=1976468:date=Sep 12 2012, 08:38 PM:name=Yuuki)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Yuuki @ Sep 12 2012, 08:38 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1976468"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->One big problem with wall jumping is the discontinuous efficiency curve. If you jump say 0.2 second too late you get maybe 50% bonus, 0.1 second gives you 70% and 0.001s 100%. If you jump 0.00001 seconds too early however you get 0%.
This discontinuity and asymmetry makes it much more difficult to learn, and make it appear buggy.
*
About the mouse movement, I'm not sure what it optimal. But my guess is that if you want to maximize the jump distance you have to look completely up when you press jump, in order to get closer to the optimal 45 degree angle.
Maybe it would be more intuitive if looking 45 degree up would be optimal.
Fixed all this, I think it helps a lot, specially the angle (it's a bit lower than 45 degree), you don't need to swing your mouse like a demented madman, but only like an crazy parkinsonian. Early timings never gives you max bonus (numbers are a bit off). Debugspeed indicates when you do early timing ("distance used 1"):
For the movement being 'inferior', load up NS1 and run around. The movement of all classes (marine and aliens) feels much more natural and responsive, even sans-bhop. Its not even that there is a huge lack of skill in the movement for all alien classes (which there is), but even the basic movement which is arguably essential to a skill based melee/ranged combat game is very limited. Strafing and jumping is very binary in NS2, with most of your velocity being changed into whatever you input from the keyboard, and almost nothing to where you look with the mouse. This makes smooth and skillful movement very difficult, as you either wiggle around somewhat with strafe while still trying to maintain some forward momentum, or try to gradually move left/right with your mouse. It also puts additional strain on the netcode and engine IMO as you make alot of sharp sudden movements in NS2, compared to NS1 where almost everything was smoothed out, sudden directional changes caused massive speed loss.
Pretty much comes down to the direction the game is going to go.. If they want to keep it so aliens use movement and evasiveness to be effective, you need to account for varying degrees of marine aim with corresponding ways/mechanics for aliens to improve. Otherwise, gameplay should be changed to normalize everything and make it a pure numbers game.
<!--quoteo(post=1976447:date=Sep 12 2012, 08:56 PM:name=fmpone)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (fmpone @ Sep 12 2012, 08:56 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1976447"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->What is the risk of adding bunny hop back in? New players won't know how to do it? ...who cares? Creating a big skill cap between new players and vets? ...isn't that the whole idea of a skill-based game?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> So game should reward old farts for knowing tiny, hard to notice details of movement and/or even reading movement code?
I find it hilarious that people whine that wall jumping gives speed 12-14 and not 20 they wanted. There are things harder to measure that are important. The number of mouse moves, smoothness and speed of each one that marine has to do when skulk is bouncing from one wall to another to get LMG bullets to hit the target.
BTW I think I've seen RedDragon in combat as cele lerk doing like 20 kills in marine spawn in 30 seconds without any other alien player in there. :) That's what I call real skill-based movement, flying as lerk so well that people are more often dead than trying to kill you.
Bunny hopping is just one example where sometimes it takes skill and later people just script the ###### out of it and make huge drama about removal of cheesy feature.
<!--quoteo(post=1977820:date=Sep 14 2012, 01:55 PM:name=MOOtant)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (MOOtant @ Sep 14 2012, 01:55 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1977820"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->So game should reward old farts for knowing tiny, hard to notice details of movement and/or even reading movement code?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Let me fix this for you:
So game should reward <b>players</b> for knowing tiny, hard to notice details of movement and/or even reading movement code?
The answer is yes. having a deep understanding of the mechanics of a game is the very definition of mastery. Players who notice and exploit 'little details' and inconsistencies of the game rules should be rewarded, because they have better mastery of the game.
bhop, wall hop .... in the end the game just needs to reward effort, mastery and practice.
<!--quoteo(post=1977847:date=Sep 14 2012, 02:44 PM:name=Magneto)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Magneto @ Sep 14 2012, 02:44 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1977847"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Shouldn't we get to vote on issues like this?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No. Oh gods no. Game design by Democracy = failure. Massive, masive failure.
<!--quoteo(post=1977847:date=Sep 14 2012, 11:44 PM:name=Magneto)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Magneto @ Sep 14 2012, 11:44 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1977847"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Shouldn't we get to vote on issues like this?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> No, because forum trolls don't represent population of players of the final game.
On the other hand you can make a mod, get people to play on your server with it running and get their opinion.
I'd be glad to see something that isn't BH nor WJ that works, people are free to write code that implements their idea. Removing BH fixes known issue of it being annoying. Adding something that doesn't replace its all use cases gets flamed, yes but what most people that flame it can offer is only saying "get BH back in".
I find lerk that can "dance" with shotgunners and kill hordes of them a lot more interesting to watch and demanding more skills than BH.
i think the issue here is that people aren't really talking about what walljump needs to have in order for it to be successful.
i believe these are the following pro's of bunnyhopping that are missing from the walljump mechanic:
- linear scaling. you gain more benefit and retain more speed increase the more precise your timing. walljump mechanic punishes you too hard for pressing jump too early.
- continuous speed increase. the benefits of bunnyhop accrue smoothly - there is no sudden speed spikes, even if the acceleration rate was high. in ns2, walljump adds the extra speed all in one go, which makes it extremely difficult for new/bad players (read: me) to track a skulk that's been bouncing between walls for 30 seconds. this is also a problem with leap.
- the fact that the benefit is actually about gaining speed in the air, and the hop part is only reduce the speed loss due to friction with the ground. in ns2, in order to start using the mechanic you have to get to a wall first. also, the walljump mechanic doesn't allow you to get enough momentum in the y-axis. if i'm looking up while walljumping i should be able to transfer much of my forward momentum into upwards/downwards momentum. but right now it doesn't. walljump should be about gaining momentum in the direction you're looking, and shouldn't give you any push away from the wall, e.g. if i jump on a wall and look straight up, i should be able to jump and have it propel me up the wall.
- the ability to start using it in any situation. in ns2, a big hurdle to walljump being accessible is due to the bumpiness of level geometry. in ns1, the levels were pretty much flat and so you could bunnyhop a track around the map. however there's a lot of obstacles and protruding objects in the levels of ns2, and furthermore getting blocked by a small corner or bump makes you lose your speed.
another problem I think is how celerity and leap impact walljumping. With celerity it can either be overpowered because the speed from standing to max speed with walljump is almost instantaneous or it could be impossible to control because you have to count on new wall geometry all the time and the speed from cele makes it really hard. Leap is even worse, it gives you less speed the faster you are going, up to a certain amount where it actually LOWERS your speed. And if you are going at max speed, it stops your speed gain past default run speed completely for a short amount of time whether or not you keep doing perfect walljumps. It's only noticeable if you are jumping correctly though.
<!--quoteo(post=1977417:date=Sep 14 2012, 02:05 AM:name=Squeal_Like_A_Pig)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Squeal_Like_A_Pig @ Sep 14 2012, 02:05 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1977417"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Despite some comments to the contrary, we have weighed in on numerous occasions as to why we have been reluctant to add BHing to the game.
We don't hate BHing, and Charlie has stated that he admires the skill required to pull it off properly. It was purposely not removed from NS1, but that is not the same thing as adding it in on purpose either. It is asking a lot to take a controversial mechanic based around exploiting some unintended holes in the movement code of an old engine ( (that to this day some programmer is still probably embarrassed about overlooking), and actually program it into NS2.
It always looked like a bug, and it was very unintuitive to new players. Yes, people may say the same thing about the current implementation of wall jumping. I don't particularly agree, because the goal of it is for new players to be able to accidentally discover it, by getting feedback of sound effects and a noticeable speed boost when they jump off a surface, ideally leading them to experiment more with it. And players can see skulks bouncing around off of the walls, and can at least make some kind of sense out of it, as opposed to seeing some bouncing skulk moving at insane speeds across an open floor. BHing was next to impossible for a new player to ever discover on their own.
The skulk class is about using all surfaces to their advantage, and that is the intended goal of the wall jumping mechanic - to get skulks off the floor and using all surfaces to their advantage.
BHing is clearly loved by a lot of people, but it is also hated by just as many. It is a very controversial gameplay mechanic, and not something we really want to just add in at this point. We are working on developing the wall jumping mechanic to be, while perhaps not a straight replacement for BH, at least something which can add additional depth and movement speed to the skulk class in a more user friendly manner. I will be the first to admit that we aren't quite there yet with wall jump, and it will continue to get more tweaking before and after release, to get it to a better place.
That said, while BH will probably not be added into the game officially, Charlie has said that he'd be interested in seeing a mod of BH at some point, and I'd be very surprised if someone from the community doesn't make one post release.
--Cory<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
There seems to be a misunderstanding of the barriers of entry to bunnyhopping and it's seen in walljumping's implementation. The biggest barrier of entry is jump timing and NS2 has made that even worse by making it an arbitrary time instead of instant. Adding sound queues is a good idea to aide players in learning it, but that doesn't change the fact that the jump timing has been made more confounding to new players. Wall jumping also asks players to do a similar instant jump timing that ns1 required to maintain speed on flat ground.
<b>The underlying concept of bunnyhopping is just as easy to grasp, if not easier than wall hopping: turning in the air accelerates you, jumping maintains that speed. Many games have simplified the mechanical tasks required to execute this in favor of making it easier to learn and this doesn't hurt the mechanic much.</b> Painkiller allows players to just hold w and queue a jump by holding space in air and they're bunny hopping, no problem. Warsow allows people to hold space and w and they also are bunnyhopping, easing players into even more advanced jump tricks. Fortress Forever had the exact same issue as NS2 and they allowed players to hold space to jump and decreased the overall speed gain it gives to not create a large skill gap, while also making an amazing ingame tutorial that teaches the mechanic beautifully in a matter of minutes. Even in quakeworld, which the originally unintentional mechanic came from, players could queue jumps before landing by holding space. Half life really just made the barrier of entry unnecessarily hard because of its jump code.
All of those games have a greatly lower barrier of entry to the mechanic than NS, while removing very little value from it. With an implementation like this in NS2, coupled with sound queues and gallop animations, there really isn't a good reason to choose wall hopping instead. It's also important to note that the snappy, agile feel of the ns1 skulk that many people find missing in ns2 and flayra has tried multiple times before to implement is largely a result of air control and the acceleration coupled with that even when not bunny hopping.
bhop, wall hop .... in the end the game just needs to reward effort, mastery and practice.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
completely agree. but the real difficult thing is to make such movement mechanics not be "OP", and follow the "easy to learn, hard to master" rule. i think everything here in this thread has to agree that the current implementation of wall jump is not working, even the ones who actually like it: it could be better. my goal for 1.0 is to make the skulk feel less clumsy, allow players who understand / master the mechanics to gain an advantage, without ruining the "skulk vs rifle" early game balance. post 1.0 i want to dedicate more time, and focus solely on movement until it feels perfect
<!--quoteo(post=1977672:date=Sep 14 2012, 11:10 AM:name=jbaker8935)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (jbaker8935 @ Sep 14 2012, 11:10 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1977672"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->technically it might not be considered in the 'engine', but the movement code source was provided by valve. so, i dont think any misunderstanding rises to the level of lie or even falsehood.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
In case you missed the line of reasoning.
It's was an engine bug -> it couldn't be fixed -> UWE didn't keep it in by choice, it was either begrudgingly keep it or nerf alien jumping
<!--quoteo(post=1977672:date=Sep 14 2012, 11:10 AM:name=jbaker8935)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (jbaker8935 @ Sep 14 2012, 11:10 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1977672"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->if valve's code was used unmodified, what would happen?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Then you get bunnyhopping with pm_preventmegabunny(or whatever silly name it had) which pulls your speed back to 1.0x run speed whenever you exceed 1.7x and jump.
<i>This limitation was removed by UWE, greatly improving the utility of bunnyhopping.</i>
If you've spent countless hours digging through this very code, implementing lerk flight, leap, blink, wall climb, jet packs, paralysis/stomp stun effect, devour effect, phase gates, hive teleport, damage knockback etc. is it going to take longer than a coffee break to remove bunnyhopping for aliens?
Comments
<b>Back on topic</b>
Cory's post detailed why they have trying to replace BHop with Walljump. Overall I'd agree with the weaknesses of BHop, being opaque to the casual player. In theory Walljumping is less opaque, but it's still a bit clunky and still not the easiest thing to "stumble" upon.
My personal opinion is if we're going to implement any skill-based movement system it needs to be integral. Warsow did this amazingly. They made it fluid, intuitive, and one of the first tutorials on it taught how to queue jump. It had visualizations on the models, sounds, and made it easy to at least pick up but had a curve to master for maximum efficiency as you float around the map. Walljump has the audio, but better feedback is required imo. Plus hopefully it will continue to be tweaked to be a much more gradual skill/reward curve. Currently a bit too binary.
As for BHop being useful everywhere versus Walljump only on walls, I haven't worked through all that myself yet. Bascillus continues to be a badass at explaining its merits though.
<!--quoteo(post=1977674:date=Sep 14 2012, 12:15 PM:name=spellman23)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (spellman23 @ Sep 14 2012, 12:15 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1977674"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><b>Back on topic</b>
Cory's post detailed why they have trying to replace BHop with Walljump. Overall I'd agree with the weaknesses of BHop, being opaque to the casual player. In theory Walljumping is less opaque, but it's still a bit clunky and still not the easiest thing to "stumble" upon.
My personal opinion is if we're going to implement any skill-based movement system it needs to be integral. Warsow did this amazingly. They made it fluid, intuitive, and one of the first tutorials on it taught how to queue jump. It had visualizations on the models, sounds, and made it easy to at least pick up but had a curve to master for maximum efficiency as you float around the map. Walljump has the audio, but better feedback is required imo. Plus hopefully it will continue to be tweaked to be a much more gradual skill/reward curve. Currently a bit too binary.
As for BHop being useful everywhere versus Walljump only on walls, I haven't worked through all that myself yet. Bascillus continues to be a badass at explaining its merits though.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Again, my point with movement controls like in Warsaw is that I don't really see how such a feature fits in within Natural Selection. Its nice to be able to move faster, but the fundamental question becomes, why is there a mechanism that allows you to move faster than the default speed at all? If the game is balanced around the maximum achievable speed through some arbitrary mechanism, why is there a lower default speed to begin with?
My point is that its a mechanism that, while taking skill to manage, imposes and artificial barrier on movement mechanics for no greater purpose than to give the player something to do to make them feel like their gaining something.
What's the point? Is it skilled? Yes, absolutely, that's not in question. But is it <i>necessary</i>? I haven't seen anything to convince me it is.
<!--coloro:red--><span style="color:red"><!--/coloro--><!--sizeo:3--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b>On topic:</b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec--><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
To your question "Is it necessary?" I guess it depends on what you think is necessary.
From a purely theoretical theorycrafting standpoint, no. As you said if we balance the game around a certain max speed and incorporate ways to increase that speed (Celerity) then we should be fine. Other fast-paced shooters have demonstrated thisand become wildly successful.
However, it adds in something else. It adds a new mechanic to master and improve upon, analogous to the Marine's increased aiming abilities. The better you are at Alien movement, the faster you can close gaps, dodge fire, and score hits. Marines get better at aiming to try and counter this and kill you before you get close. Plus it provides a whole range of interesting mechanics and gameplay allowing freedom of expression as you utilize your environment.
Arguably extra skill-based mechanics are silly. See the Deny mechanic in DotA. League of Legends intentionally removed it because they saw it as unintuitive, and instead balanced their game around zoning and applying pressure at the enemy's towers. And yet the arguments rage on and DotA2 is incorporating Deny.
But I'm on the side of Fana and Bacillus. The extra merits, the new things to explore, and the interesting gameplay provided by skill-based movements such as BHop (and hopefully in the future a refined Walljump) rewards players even with the cost of entry. It's a risk-reward balance, but in my opinion is it's rewards outweigh the problems.
<!--quoteo(post=1977721:date=Sep 14 2012, 01:54 PM:name=spellman23)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (spellman23 @ Sep 14 2012, 01:54 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1977721"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--><!--coloro:red--><span style="color:red"><!--/coloro--><!--sizeo:3--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b>On topic:</b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec--><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
To your question "Is it necessary?" I guess it depends on what you think is necessary.
From a purely theoretical theorycrafting standpoint, no. As you said if we balance the game around a certain max speed and incorporate ways to increase that speed (Celerity) then we should be fine. Other fast-paced shooters have demonstrated thisand become wildly successful.
However, it adds in something else. It adds a new mechanic to master and improve upon, analogous to the Marine's increased aiming abilities. The better you are at Alien movement, the faster you can close gaps, dodge fire, and score hits. Marines get better at aiming to try and counter this and kill you before you get close. Plus it provides a whole range of interesting mechanics and gameplay allowing freedom of expression as you utilize your environment.
Arguably extra skill-based mechanics are silly. See the Deny mechanic in DotA. League of Legends intentionally removed it because they saw it as unintuitive, and instead balanced their game around zoning and applying pressure at the enemy's towers. And yet the arguments rage on and DotA2 is incorporating Deny.
But I'm on the side of Fana and Bacillus. The extra merits, the new things to explore, and the interesting gameplay provided by skill-based movements such as BHop (and hopefully in the future a refined Walljump) rewards players even with the cost of entry. It's a risk-reward balance, but in my opinion is it's rewards outweigh the problems.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I actually agree with you that increasing the skill ceiling in a game is beneficial. But this isn't the first time I've heard community members refer to the "inferiority" of NS2's movement controls. How are they inferior for the lack of such optional mechanics? I would argue that only those things which directly, and negatively, impact game play could warrant being labeled as "inferior."
The inclusion of such mechanics may "improve" things, but I do not see how their absence detracts from the system at all.
This discontinuity and asymmetry makes it much more difficult to learn, and make it appear buggy.
*
About the mouse movement, I'm not sure what it optimal. But my guess is that if you want to maximize the jump distance you have to look completely up when you press jump, in order to get closer to the optimal 45 degree angle.
Maybe it would be more intuitive if looking 45 degree up would be optimal.
<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Ideal_projectile_motion_for_different_angles.svg/512px-Ideal_projectile_motion_for_different_angles.svg.png" target="_blank">http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm..._angles.svg.png</a><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Fixed all this, I think it helps a lot, specially the angle (it's a bit lower than 45 degree), you don't need to swing your mouse like a demented madman, but only like an crazy parkinsonian. Early timings never gives you max bonus (numbers are a bit off). Debugspeed indicates when you do early timing ("distance used 1"):
<a href="http://www2.zshare.ma/zt37n4wcpc5z" target="_blank">http://www2.zshare.ma/zt37n4wcpc5z</a>
Pretty much comes down to the direction the game is going to go.. If they want to keep it so aliens use movement and evasiveness to be effective, you need to account for varying degrees of marine aim with corresponding ways/mechanics for aliens to improve. Otherwise, gameplay should be changed to normalize everything and make it a pure numbers game.
So game should reward old farts for knowing tiny, hard to notice details of movement and/or even reading movement code?
I find it hilarious that people whine that wall jumping gives speed 12-14 and not 20 they wanted. There are things harder to measure that are important. The number of mouse moves, smoothness and speed of each one that marine has to do when skulk is bouncing from one wall to another to get LMG bullets to hit the target.
BTW I think I've seen RedDragon in combat as cele lerk doing like 20 kills in marine spawn in 30 seconds without any other alien player in there. :) That's what I call real skill-based movement, flying as lerk so well that people are more often dead than trying to kill you.
Bunny hopping is just one example where sometimes it takes skill and later people just script the ###### out of it and make huge drama about removal of cheesy feature.
Let me fix this for you:
So game should reward <b>players</b> for knowing tiny, hard to notice details of movement and/or even reading movement code?
The answer is yes. having a deep understanding of the mechanics of a game is the very definition of mastery. Players who notice and exploit 'little details' and inconsistencies of the game rules should be rewarded, because they have better mastery of the game.
bhop, wall hop .... in the end the game just needs to reward effort, mastery and practice.
No. Oh gods no. Game design by Democracy = failure. Massive, masive failure.
No, because forum trolls don't represent population of players of the final game.
On the other hand you can make a mod, get people to play on your server with it running and get their opinion.
I'd be glad to see something that isn't BH nor WJ that works, people are free to write code that implements their idea. Removing BH fixes known issue of it being annoying. Adding something that doesn't replace its all use cases gets flamed, yes but what most people that flame it can offer is only saying "get BH back in".
I find lerk that can "dance" with shotgunners and kill hordes of them a lot more interesting to watch and demanding more skills than BH.
i believe these are the following pro's of bunnyhopping that are missing from the walljump mechanic:
- linear scaling. you gain more benefit and retain more speed increase the more precise your timing. walljump mechanic punishes you too hard for pressing jump too early.
- continuous speed increase. the benefits of bunnyhop accrue smoothly - there is no sudden speed spikes, even if the acceleration rate was high. in ns2, walljump adds the extra speed all in one go, which makes it extremely difficult for new/bad players (read: me) to track a skulk that's been bouncing between walls for 30 seconds. this is also a problem with leap.
- the fact that the benefit is actually about gaining speed in the air, and the hop part is only reduce the speed loss due to friction with the ground. in ns2, in order to start using the mechanic you have to get to a wall first. also, the walljump mechanic doesn't allow you to get enough momentum in the y-axis. if i'm looking up while walljumping i should be able to transfer much of my forward momentum into upwards/downwards momentum. but right now it doesn't. walljump should be about gaining momentum in the direction you're looking, and shouldn't give you any push away from the wall, e.g. if i jump on a wall and look straight up, i should be able to jump and have it propel me up the wall.
- the ability to start using it in any situation. in ns2, a big hurdle to walljump being accessible is due to the bumpiness of level geometry. in ns1, the levels were pretty much flat and so you could bunnyhop a track around the map. however there's a lot of obstacles and protruding objects in the levels of ns2, and furthermore getting blocked by a small corner or bump makes you lose your speed.
We don't hate BHing, and Charlie has stated that he admires the skill required to pull it off properly. It was purposely not removed from NS1, but that is not the same thing as adding it in on purpose either. It is asking a lot to take a controversial mechanic based around exploiting some unintended holes in the movement code of an old engine ( (that to this day some programmer is still probably embarrassed about overlooking), and actually program it into NS2.
It always looked like a bug, and it was very unintuitive to new players. Yes, people may say the same thing about the current implementation of wall jumping. I don't particularly agree, because the goal of it is for new players to be able to accidentally discover it, by getting feedback of sound effects and a noticeable speed boost when they jump off a surface, ideally leading them to experiment more with it. And players can see skulks bouncing around off of the walls, and can at least make some kind of sense out of it, as opposed to seeing some bouncing skulk moving at insane speeds across an open floor. BHing was next to impossible for a new player to ever discover on their own.
The skulk class is about using all surfaces to their advantage, and that is the intended goal of the wall jumping mechanic - to get skulks off the floor and using all surfaces to their advantage.
BHing is clearly loved by a lot of people, but it is also hated by just as many. It is a very controversial gameplay mechanic, and not something we really want to just add in at this point. We are working on developing the wall jumping mechanic to be, while perhaps not a straight replacement for BH, at least something which can add additional depth and movement speed to the skulk class in a more user friendly manner. I will be the first to admit that we aren't quite there yet with wall jump, and it will continue to get more tweaking before and after release, to get it to a better place.
That said, while BH will probably not be added into the game officially, Charlie has said that he'd be interested in seeing a mod of BH at some point, and I'd be very surprised if someone from the community doesn't make one post release.
--Cory<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
There seems to be a misunderstanding of the barriers of entry to bunnyhopping and it's seen in walljumping's implementation. The biggest barrier of entry is jump timing and NS2 has made that even worse by making it an arbitrary time instead of instant. Adding sound queues is a good idea to aide players in learning it, but that doesn't change the fact that the jump timing has been made more confounding to new players. Wall jumping also asks players to do a similar instant jump timing that ns1 required to maintain speed on flat ground.
<b>The underlying concept of bunnyhopping is just as easy to grasp, if not easier than wall hopping: turning in the air accelerates you, jumping maintains that speed. Many games have simplified the mechanical tasks required to execute this in favor of making it easier to learn and this doesn't hurt the mechanic much.</b> Painkiller allows players to just hold w and queue a jump by holding space in air and they're bunny hopping, no problem. Warsow allows people to hold space and w and they also are bunnyhopping, easing players into even more advanced jump tricks. Fortress Forever had the exact same issue as NS2 and they allowed players to hold space to jump and decreased the overall speed gain it gives to not create a large skill gap, while also making an amazing ingame tutorial that teaches the mechanic beautifully in a matter of minutes. Even in quakeworld, which the originally unintentional mechanic came from, players could queue jumps before landing by holding space. Half life really just made the barrier of entry unnecessarily hard because of its jump code.
All of those games have a greatly lower barrier of entry to the mechanic than NS, while removing very little value from it. With an implementation like this in NS2, coupled with sound queues and gallop animations, there really isn't a good reason to choose wall hopping instead. It's also important to note that the snappy, agile feel of the ns1 skulk that many people find missing in ns2 and flayra has tried multiple times before to implement is largely a result of air control and the acceleration coupled with that even when not bunny hopping.
bhop, wall hop .... in the end the game just needs to reward effort, mastery and practice.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
completely agree. but the real difficult thing is to make such movement mechanics not be "OP", and follow the "easy to learn, hard to master" rule. i think everything here in this thread has to agree that the current implementation of wall jump is not working, even the ones who actually like it: it could be better. my goal for 1.0 is to make the skulk feel less clumsy, allow players who understand / master the mechanics to gain an advantage, without ruining the "skulk vs rifle" early game balance. post 1.0 i want to dedicate more time, and focus solely on movement until it feels perfect
In case you missed the line of reasoning.
It's was an engine bug -> it couldn't be fixed -> UWE didn't keep it in by choice, it was either begrudgingly keep it or nerf alien jumping
<!--quoteo(post=1977672:date=Sep 14 2012, 11:10 AM:name=jbaker8935)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (jbaker8935 @ Sep 14 2012, 11:10 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1977672"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->if valve's code was used unmodified, what would happen?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Then you get bunnyhopping with pm_preventmegabunny(or whatever silly name it had) which pulls your speed back to 1.0x run speed whenever you exceed 1.7x and jump.
<i>This limitation was removed by UWE, greatly improving the utility of bunnyhopping.</i>
If you've spent countless hours digging through this very code, implementing lerk flight, leap, blink, wall climb, jet packs, paralysis/stomp stun effect, devour effect, phase gates, hive teleport, damage knockback etc. is it going to take longer than a coffee break to remove bunnyhopping for aliens?