[tutorial] BHOP balance test text version
ezekel
Join Date: 2012-11-29 Member: 173589Members, NS2 Map Tester
Join Date: 2012-11-29 Member: 173589Members, NS2 Map Tester
*Note: This is a tutorial for the balance test version of natural selection 2 - these things are subject to change and may or may not see a release in the vanilla game. Also the speeds obtainable were done as of 5/8/2013 @ 12-1 pm eastern on ns2_nsl_summit
Hey everyone, I'm hoping this weekend me and another guy can get some in-game footage/voice recording explaining the movement changes in BT and all that. Anyway I'm going to try and provide a very detailed text explanation right now, so that you guys can practice it and get the hang for it!
Alright first off
1) Skulk - speeds obtainable: Average: 13 to 16 speed. Maximum: 18.17-20+ speed
Starting: As you know, the vanilla skulk has two ways to accelerate, a boost from jumping off a wall, and going on a decline (down a hill) in balance test, the skulk can bunny hop and pick up some serious speeds, and even later on can be used in combat
So here's how you start it off, I recommend veil or tram north/south tunnel as a test map as they are the easiest maps to get the hang of it
First approach a wall on either your left or right side, for this example I'll use a wall on your left side. You're going to approach the wall jump while holding your left movement key and having your mouse cursor positioned to the point where it's "glancing at the wall" you don't want to aim at the wall because directly hitting a wall will stop your speed. Once you hit the wall let go of your left movement key and hit+hold your right movement key while strafing your mouse towards the direction you're moving (which would be right at this point) from there you want to hit jump again as soon as you feel you land, there is no perfect timing to hit just do it when you feel you've landed. then from there you want to keep repeating those opposites on the ground or towards your next wall, you'll begin to hear a new sound which will confirm you've picked up speed.
Continue doing this properly and you will hear a second new sound, which confirms you're again doing it correctly. Now from this point you can begin to pick up serious speed by continuously glancing off walls, when you approach something like a staircase you're going to want to try and hit the side of the wall to skip the staircase because hitting a staircase directly will stop you in your tracks.
Advanced: Now that you've got down the bhop gain, you're going to want to go faster and use it in combat, mix it with leap, or make sharp turns
So to go even faster (once you've reached the second sound) is quite difficult and you'll need to know routes of the maps. You're going to need to do upward walljumps mixed with your bhop. So now when you go towards a wall you're going to want to also move your mouse cursor in the opposite direction as usual BUT you want to aim upward as soon as you glance the wall, this will give you an extra "oomph" and while you're doing it you want to then slowly place your cursor back downwards. Make sure to keep your mouse movements smooth and not very fast/erratic
Properly do this for a few jumps and you'll see an INSANE speed increase, this is pretty difficult at first but once you know your route inside and out and if you can do this (I can now after many hours sometimes get this going almost all the time) it'll feel like you're going faster than fast.. if that's a good explanation.
Combat: When in combat, you can now use bhop to evade, initiate, or during the fight itself. When you want to evade or you run into a marine in a bad situation (assuming he isn't close range and has a shotgun, in which case you're most likely dead) you can immediately find any wall and just begin your upward glancing bhops into wall+floor / wall+ wall to gain speed VERY fast which will help you flee the scene. As for initiating it's as simple as being in a bhop and knowing a marines location or running into them when they are unaware, just fly towards them with bhop begin your first bite and then after that by the time they turn to respond you'll already have your next one-two bites in and they will fall victim to you.
Now during the fight is tough for me to explain, but when fighting you want to get a bite in, evade by climbing up a wall or towards any wall then jumping off (while using the bhop opposite direction movement) and you'll begin to accelerate off the wall into them, get your bite in and repeat or keep your bhop going and bounce from another wall.. this will keep you moving fast and especially in a group will make it even tougher to track
Sharp turns + leap: Now you'll know that when bhopping you don't have much turning room, to make a sharp turn you're going to need to jump off the wall opposite of where you need to turn BEFORE the actual turn itself so that when you strafe towards it you're already headed in the direction of the sharp turn, as soon as the turn is made you'll most likely be very close to a wall so you'll need to bhop off that wall and as soon as the bhop is landed your momentum will have shifted in the right direction and the turn has been made! Now if you happen to have leap, you can avoid this sharp turn difficulty by simply before the turn doing a leap towards a wall and then continuing the bhop. You'll most likely lose speed from the leap but you'll have made the turn and still have momentum compared to if you failed the turn and lost all of it.
With leap you can begin bhop much quicker as it's like an accelerate, this causes start ups + flee times to be decreased and will help you reach fast speed, combine this will celerity and you'll have more room for mistakes and still being able to keep your speed up.
Now that you understand bhop, get out there and practice; you'll be munching RTs all over the place.
2) Lerk - speeds obtainable: Average: 8.50 to 10 speed. Maximum: 10.85 speed. Celerity Maximum: 12.75
Lerk has undergone some changes so he requires more "flaps" or jumps to gain speed, and I believe he is overall slightly slower than a regular lerk. So this one is fairly simple, you need to do 2-3x flaps upward then glide downwards (you gain speed gliding downwards) repeat those two steps to maintain your speed, I find this very difficult to keep track of in combat, and essentially this slowdown makes the lerk more towards his "support" type role instead of being a very aggressive early game dominator
When you do a 180 type turn with your mouse cursor you will also decrease 1-2 speed, so make sure to continue flapping at all times
3) Fade - speeds obtainable: Average: 18 to 21-26 speed. Maximum: 28-30+ speed
Blink: You now start with blink as a fade, but you can still go VERY fast. To properly do this you want to, jump first, wait 0.3-0.5 seconds then blink and then repeat. If done correct you should see yourself going very, very fast. Make sure to combine this with crouch to get under certain structures
Bhop + blink: Now fade can bhop, so essentially it's the same thing as skulk bhop except you stay on the ground, once you build up speed from blinking, you can stop blinking and begin the bhop this will keep you going at a semi-fast speed while saving your adrenaline if you're cooling down or just think you might need it in a short while. When making turns/sharp turns you do NOT want to be in blink mode, you want to jump + blink before the turn, bhop during the turn, then begin blinking again once the turn has been made to keep speed and keep you navigating along the map. You should essentially be able to make almost every single sharp turn this method while maintaining fast speeds. Just takes some practice to figure out when is the best time to do the turn
Shadowstep: Shadowstep now has no additional momentum, and is basically a full commitment to any direction. You can shadowstep in the air, downwards, wherever. This is now essentially a dodge mechanic or a gap closer, during a shadowstep you can't move in any direction besides the step.. so make sure before you use it you know you're going where you want to go. After the shadowstep is over on the ground you stop moving due to ground friction. So during a bhop + blink you can shadowstep in the AIR and keep your current speed from the blink + jumping, but you won't gain any speed. Doing the shadowstep on the ground applies ground friction which is essentially what will make you slow down/lose speed. You can blink in one direction, shadowstep backwards and if you don't touch the ground you have now full momentum in the opposite direction. I personally still need tons of practice with this mechanic as I always forget that I can shadowstep in every direction, and still need to figure out how to best use this in combat.
Well that's all for now, hope this helps all of you. And I hope to have a video out this weekend sometime explaining all of this via voice with in-game footage!
Hey everyone, I'm hoping this weekend me and another guy can get some in-game footage/voice recording explaining the movement changes in BT and all that. Anyway I'm going to try and provide a very detailed text explanation right now, so that you guys can practice it and get the hang for it!
Alright first off
1) Skulk - speeds obtainable: Average: 13 to 16 speed. Maximum: 18.17-20+ speed
Starting: As you know, the vanilla skulk has two ways to accelerate, a boost from jumping off a wall, and going on a decline (down a hill) in balance test, the skulk can bunny hop and pick up some serious speeds, and even later on can be used in combat
So here's how you start it off, I recommend veil or tram north/south tunnel as a test map as they are the easiest maps to get the hang of it
First approach a wall on either your left or right side, for this example I'll use a wall on your left side. You're going to approach the wall jump while holding your left movement key and having your mouse cursor positioned to the point where it's "glancing at the wall" you don't want to aim at the wall because directly hitting a wall will stop your speed. Once you hit the wall let go of your left movement key and hit+hold your right movement key while strafing your mouse towards the direction you're moving (which would be right at this point) from there you want to hit jump again as soon as you feel you land, there is no perfect timing to hit just do it when you feel you've landed. then from there you want to keep repeating those opposites on the ground or towards your next wall, you'll begin to hear a new sound which will confirm you've picked up speed.
Continue doing this properly and you will hear a second new sound, which confirms you're again doing it correctly. Now from this point you can begin to pick up serious speed by continuously glancing off walls, when you approach something like a staircase you're going to want to try and hit the side of the wall to skip the staircase because hitting a staircase directly will stop you in your tracks.
Advanced: Now that you've got down the bhop gain, you're going to want to go faster and use it in combat, mix it with leap, or make sharp turns
So to go even faster (once you've reached the second sound) is quite difficult and you'll need to know routes of the maps. You're going to need to do upward walljumps mixed with your bhop. So now when you go towards a wall you're going to want to also move your mouse cursor in the opposite direction as usual BUT you want to aim upward as soon as you glance the wall, this will give you an extra "oomph" and while you're doing it you want to then slowly place your cursor back downwards. Make sure to keep your mouse movements smooth and not very fast/erratic
Properly do this for a few jumps and you'll see an INSANE speed increase, this is pretty difficult at first but once you know your route inside and out and if you can do this (I can now after many hours sometimes get this going almost all the time) it'll feel like you're going faster than fast.. if that's a good explanation.
Combat: When in combat, you can now use bhop to evade, initiate, or during the fight itself. When you want to evade or you run into a marine in a bad situation (assuming he isn't close range and has a shotgun, in which case you're most likely dead) you can immediately find any wall and just begin your upward glancing bhops into wall+floor / wall+ wall to gain speed VERY fast which will help you flee the scene. As for initiating it's as simple as being in a bhop and knowing a marines location or running into them when they are unaware, just fly towards them with bhop begin your first bite and then after that by the time they turn to respond you'll already have your next one-two bites in and they will fall victim to you.
Now during the fight is tough for me to explain, but when fighting you want to get a bite in, evade by climbing up a wall or towards any wall then jumping off (while using the bhop opposite direction movement) and you'll begin to accelerate off the wall into them, get your bite in and repeat or keep your bhop going and bounce from another wall.. this will keep you moving fast and especially in a group will make it even tougher to track
Sharp turns + leap: Now you'll know that when bhopping you don't have much turning room, to make a sharp turn you're going to need to jump off the wall opposite of where you need to turn BEFORE the actual turn itself so that when you strafe towards it you're already headed in the direction of the sharp turn, as soon as the turn is made you'll most likely be very close to a wall so you'll need to bhop off that wall and as soon as the bhop is landed your momentum will have shifted in the right direction and the turn has been made! Now if you happen to have leap, you can avoid this sharp turn difficulty by simply before the turn doing a leap towards a wall and then continuing the bhop. You'll most likely lose speed from the leap but you'll have made the turn and still have momentum compared to if you failed the turn and lost all of it.
With leap you can begin bhop much quicker as it's like an accelerate, this causes start ups + flee times to be decreased and will help you reach fast speed, combine this will celerity and you'll have more room for mistakes and still being able to keep your speed up.
Now that you understand bhop, get out there and practice; you'll be munching RTs all over the place.
2) Lerk - speeds obtainable: Average: 8.50 to 10 speed. Maximum: 10.85 speed. Celerity Maximum: 12.75
Lerk has undergone some changes so he requires more "flaps" or jumps to gain speed, and I believe he is overall slightly slower than a regular lerk. So this one is fairly simple, you need to do 2-3x flaps upward then glide downwards (you gain speed gliding downwards) repeat those two steps to maintain your speed, I find this very difficult to keep track of in combat, and essentially this slowdown makes the lerk more towards his "support" type role instead of being a very aggressive early game dominator
When you do a 180 type turn with your mouse cursor you will also decrease 1-2 speed, so make sure to continue flapping at all times
3) Fade - speeds obtainable: Average: 18 to 21-26 speed. Maximum: 28-30+ speed
Blink: You now start with blink as a fade, but you can still go VERY fast. To properly do this you want to, jump first, wait 0.3-0.5 seconds then blink and then repeat. If done correct you should see yourself going very, very fast. Make sure to combine this with crouch to get under certain structures
Bhop + blink: Now fade can bhop, so essentially it's the same thing as skulk bhop except you stay on the ground, once you build up speed from blinking, you can stop blinking and begin the bhop this will keep you going at a semi-fast speed while saving your adrenaline if you're cooling down or just think you might need it in a short while. When making turns/sharp turns you do NOT want to be in blink mode, you want to jump + blink before the turn, bhop during the turn, then begin blinking again once the turn has been made to keep speed and keep you navigating along the map. You should essentially be able to make almost every single sharp turn this method while maintaining fast speeds. Just takes some practice to figure out when is the best time to do the turn
Shadowstep: Shadowstep now has no additional momentum, and is basically a full commitment to any direction. You can shadowstep in the air, downwards, wherever. This is now essentially a dodge mechanic or a gap closer, during a shadowstep you can't move in any direction besides the step.. so make sure before you use it you know you're going where you want to go. After the shadowstep is over on the ground you stop moving due to ground friction. So during a bhop + blink you can shadowstep in the AIR and keep your current speed from the blink + jumping, but you won't gain any speed. Doing the shadowstep on the ground applies ground friction which is essentially what will make you slow down/lose speed. You can blink in one direction, shadowstep backwards and if you don't touch the ground you have now full momentum in the opposite direction. I personally still need tons of practice with this mechanic as I always forget that I can shadowstep in every direction, and still need to figure out how to best use this in combat.
Well that's all for now, hope this helps all of you. And I hope to have a video out this weekend sometime explaining all of this via voice with in-game footage!
Comments
Feel free to ask any questions, if you think something needs to be explained better
I want to try this out, sounds very cool.
Meh, going to say that you should stay away from in combat advice on using the bhop - its just generally not the place to be using it once your within melee range. Better to use strafe movements to avoid fire while constantly biting, biting a marine once then running away to a wall to jump off to get speed again is just going to get you killed against better players. That said, there is a time/place to be a pure bait/distraction skulk (usually when you have a nearby teammate who can easily get the kill). Then you can proceed to move around erratically to dodge as many bullets as possible.
Agree! generally when I try and do the bhop in combat, i try and get behind a wall or cover then gain speed; I do end up dead a lot when facing people with good aim, but it's pretty useful when your team is nearby to distract... anyway!
What do you mean? You need to use A/D
Edit and here are the numbers, will edit main post: map tested was ns2_nsl_summit
Celerity seems to make no difference besides making the top speeds reached QUICKER, only the lerk receives a maximum speed boost. Obviously ground movement speeds are still increased with celerity
Skulk: Average: 13-16 speed
Top/max: 18.17-20 (note it is extremely difficult to go past 18.17)
Celerity/leap make no difference in max speeds, just makes it easier to get going
Lerk: 8.50-10 average, 10.85 max
Celerity: 12.75 max
Fade: 18-21 average (no celerity) -- Not sure if celerity makes a difference, possibly just makes it easier to gain speed)
Max: 26+ I believe you can reach 28-30 but you'd need more room to continue doing this perfectly, I was doing a lot of turns and it was summit so before I could get past 26. whatever I'd run into something
Also as a fade, you can make VERY sharp turns at speeds of 26 by doing the shadowstep which keeps your current speed in AIR ONLY then continuing your bhop, this is VERY difficult to do and keep track of (I'm playing default key bindings)
I mean just the evasive move for in combat, which especially works well against pistol - strafing left and right quickly to make you harder to track/predict movement... currently if you do it quickly you basically dont move at all, and if you do it slowly, so you actually move, its so slow that it barely makes a difference - considering other possible evasive manoeuvres. I think it was the last bigger movement change patch which gimped it - with this bunnyhop change, i think it would be cool if that would work better again.
I understand, you mean if you strafe left/right as a skulk to dodge too quick, you pretty much won't go anywhere. But if you do it slowly you'll move, but so slow that a marine can easily track you (minus a pistol where there's more room for mistake) but wouldn't doing this require a speed boost? I'm not entirely sure how this would work, sounds like an interesting dodge mechanic.. however with the current BT skulk you can do a lot already.
IMO A/D should be the exact same as vanilla currently is
I still feel like its a bit slow.
But whatever - if everybody is happy with it... fine. (guess i got spoiled from how it was in the earlier days of ns2)
edit: it wouldnt need a speed boost, it would only need a change on how fast you accelerate while strafing...- tho i guess that could make it harder to move precise)
Um, I'm lost here.
Casual players > regular aim + regular skulking = fine
Hardcore players >amazing aim + bhop skulking = fine
For the better aimer, there's now more wiggle room for the better skulk, sure this tutorial will help (hopefully) everyone learn it, but the difference between the regular player and the hardcore competitive player will still be there. You won't be seeing every single skulk perfecting this movement and flying across the map dominating you endlessly, you'll see the competitive player doing what they've been doing. I'm all for this change and it really adds into the skilled movement of the aliens (I'm still on personal debate about the lerk though~)
a glance is a term in this game (like a glancing bite) where you aren't directly on target, just at the side of it but still able to hit it
you can move the mouse away from the wall as if it was a fluid motion -- just don't do it spastic or too fast as this will cause speed loss, this is something you need to get a feel for
As for the ground and walls it works like this
wall + wall = fastest gain
wall + floor = second fastest
floor + floor = slowest
You're bhopping the same way for all of them, however with the floor you're constantly doing it, with walls you're only doing it when you're hitting the walls. The "upward" aim with your mouse cursor is for the wall only, generally used to go over a structure / move upward maintaining speed on an incline or staircase, but it also gives more of a boost then just jumping off the wall
I don't believe he was using scripts or the like, but I know one cannot do this anymore