Skimming Momentum Theory

[caesium]

i agree with most of your conclusions, mushy, but not with a few bits in your reasoning (doesn't matter tho, cos they are minor, and ppl seem to be understanding the general idea fine so i cba to ellaborate!).

so yeah, for a while now i've been wanting faster bhop speed and also quicker rate of momentum loss to bring you back down to that speed quicker when you exceed it (whatever combination of soft/hard/floppy caps is needed to implement that).

a rough example to give some idea of sorts of numbers/amounts i'm thinking:
- bhop <= ~2x class run speed.
- the momentum reduction is such that after the SECOND bhop-jump after a decent conc you should be going approximately at the bhop speed (and for other speeds it is obviously specified by these boundary conditions and the fact that the momentum reduction follows a sensible profile).

this does 2 things:
1) makes "pure bhop" faster and hence a much more useful tool in its own right. "pure bhop" is extremely skillful (not just as a technique to learn ofc, but predominantly due to the tactical mindgames you play with the nme!) but is very under-rewarded atm.
2) poor concs that land nowhere near the objective will not be nearly as effective. relatively there will be far more reward for landing directly on (or ideally flying straight through) the flag/objective, there will be a greatly reduced but still significant reward for getting to the flag/objective after just 1 bhop-jump, and there will be no reward at all (relative to no using a conc and just doing a strafe jump and using "pure bhop") for getting to the flag/objective after 2 or more bhop-jumps.

[bokko]

Originally Posted by caesium

blabla

tl:dr

r u 5?

[caesium]

Originally Posted by bokko211

Cowe the Nettle

Gin ye be for lang kail,
Cowe the nettle, stoo the nettle;
Gin ye be for lang kail,
Cowe the nettle early.

Cowe it laich, cowe it sune,
Cowe it in the month o' June;
Stoo it ere it's in the bloom,
Cowe the nettle early.

Cowe it by the old wa's,
Cowe it where the sun ne'er fa's,
Stoo it when the day daws,
Cowe the nettle early.

Auld heuk wi' no ae tooth,
Cowe the nettle, stoo the nettle;
Auld gluive wi' leather loof,
Cowe the nettle early.

HAI BOKKO211 we made a tftwosucksmaballs clan called "ru5?" but sadly we recently got renamed OH WELL...

[Dr.Satan]

I definitely agree with this and I think a mix of circ's solution and less of or no stop in air would pretty much be the solution.

[dys]

This thread deserves a thumbs up!

[Hammock]

The best example I can think of that pertains to this is on openfire. If the flag lands on the ramp to water on openfire or anywhere within 5 feet of the water, that flag is as good as gone.

All it takes is a scout from batts, to conc straight down into the ramp and fly at warp speed to the end. I've done this, I've had it done to me, and it's pretty hard to stop unless you luck out and have the guy blocking you down the way. Even demo pipes are hard to time on that.

There's no real skill involved to that jump, pure and simple just be as fast as you can be to beat the dets.

[SmellyCat]

Sadly, the way the air movement/skimming works in FF is a large reason why i don't really play so much (though my shoddy PC doesn't help). As other people mentioned, for a little while I though the whole skimming thing was really cool, then I realised how stupidly easy it was and how it was actually limiting what I (as a scouter) could actually do. It becomes all about just using concs to make your hop fast, nothing else really mattered...


I like the sounds of what Caesium suggests. I've thought for a long time that something similar to the TFC bunnyhop (now) would actually be amazing if the cap had been slightly better implemented. But, what do I know?

[Green Mushy]

I think the momentum gone wild stuff is a major reason a lot of TFC'ers dont like FF, and is a big reason the game becomes overwhelming to some.

I also wanted to state something i forgot in the main post. It may be the source of balancing trouble because in pubs, people dont ususally utilize the momentum stuff. So, youll have the 1.0 heavy owning people in pubs cuz they move slow, where it would be fine in league play.

The point im making is that there is a huge diffence in speed between pubs and league because leaguestyles abuse this feature, and pubs dont use it. So balancing a heavy for example, or sg, would be really hard when you dont know how fast people will be moving around them. If you make speeds more of a formula, that stuff would be easier.

[Circuitous]

Originally Posted by Green Mushy

We cant have anything slow you in midair. That would break the game so badly, and it doesnt make much sense. Unless im misunderstanding this, you want scouts to conc in really fast, then slowly loft downward into awaiting defenders, not to mention the already alert sentry gun? Slowed air movement is not the problem, the speed after landing is.

In tfc, you would move 1200 by concing in air, then hit the ground, and move at 420. Thats a huge drop. All im proposing is that instead of players being able to jump after landing and move at 1000 ups, we lower that to 700 ups(or some other feelgood number).

So, there should be no cap on air movement, and a cap on momentum ground movement, and a cap on bhop.

And, i dont really understand what it means to exceed a hard cap. The meaning of that, to my understanding, is that there is a definite speed that cant be exceeded, hence the hard(like a wall).

I'm sorry, that was bad wording on my part.

The hard cap is the hard bhop cap. You could not exceed this by using air acceleration alone - however, any kind of explosive or conc could readily send you over it.

Whenever you're over the hard cap, the game tries to slow you down. While in the air, it does this at a very slow rate, but if you're air strafing, the effect is practically negated.

When you land is when the real slowing down occurs. You'd be at the hard cap immediately upon landing, and would move towards the soft cap with each successive jump if you weren't bhopping.

So, using your input and caesium's input, I propose the following.

160% hard cap (Scout bhop speed of 672-675 ups), 105% soft cap (Scout jumping speed of 441, easily exceeded with air control).

The TFC "you're too fast, here's a brick wall" speed was 680 for a Scout (170% of 400), so there's your comparison. Basically a 160% bhop cap in FF is the equivalent of keeping just below the TFC bhop cap to avoid getting slammed.

So, upon landing as a Scout, your speed would not be over 672 ups. Still respectable, and faster than you can currently get from normal bhopping, but not 1500 ups like you'd get from landing after a good conc.

So with this, unassisted bhop is fast, skimming is way down, and gameplay is more towards TFC style, without the "brick wall" action.

Thoughts?

[ViLE]

page 2 owns.

Caesium's commentary is quite informative and I am really starting to like the way everyone is headed with this.

Circuitous, I like the way you're thinking, but I'm not sure where you mean to leave skimming at.

i like caesium's 2jump bidnes mahself

[Circuitous]

Skimming would be all but dead under the existing code. It could be modified to add caesium's 2jump concept with little effort, I imagine. The only reason it works now is because there pretty much is no bhop cap. The hard cap is nonexistant and the soft cap so low that skimming is just a side effect of bhop code, if I remember correctly.

I don't remember exactly what the code was, but the devs posted it in the beta somewhere. It showed exactly what the slowdown would be on each successive jump for a given speed at a given hard and soft cap.

Originally Posted by Skillet

I would like to see what unlimited bhop would look like in FF, FF is already fast, it was look insane lol

Meant to reply to this earlier.

Unlimited bhop existed in FF for several beta revisions. My personal favorite was the amazingly-slow-build-up version - I can't remember who I was trying it out with, I want to say rizzo, but they enjoyed it as well.

Reverse bhop was amazing as well... If you set the hard cap lower than the soft cap, each jump would cause your speed to increase. The faster you were already going, the bigger the increase, and one good strafe jump could launch you as fast as a conc.

Good times...

[Dr.Satan]

Originally Posted by Circuitous

I'm sorry, that was bad wording on my part.

The hard cap is the hard bhop cap...

Win...now if only a dev would implement it...maybe I can get jigg's attn.

[Circuitous]

Really anyone could do it, it's three lines of code and two variables.

[Green Mushy]

Originally Posted by Circuitous

So with this, unassisted bhop is fast, skimming is way down, and gameplay is more towards TFC style, without the "brick wall" action.

Thoughts?

Im so pumped for this idea. I really think what ur suggesting will make the game more fun. You would get the nostalgic TFC feel, and still have the awesome elastic momentum physics of FF(which i love).

I hope people dont kneejerk away from this idea because it is something similar to TFC.

Also, if this is to be implemented in some way, this is the thing that needs to change first. Then other things balance off this, as i said before.

[Ihmhi]

This thread makes sense and has a lot of insightful posts.

What the fuck is it doing on these forums?

Uh, anyway.

I can't bhop for shit so most of this won't affect me. What I can say from a non-bhopper, non-leaguer (TFC or FF) perspective is that I sorta like the little bit of extra speed I get coming down off of a jump. Without it, a lot of times I would end up dead.

And before anyone says "LEARN 2 BHOP NOOB", I'm just not that good at it and/or no one has explained it to me very well. (Please don't use this thread to explain it to me, nor PM me about it - I'll get to it on my own time.) From a position of a player who can't bhop, won't this seem like the game is slowed down?

[squeek.]

Originally Posted by Ihmhi

I can't bhop for shit so most of this won't affect me. What I can say from a non-bhopper, non-leaguer (TFC or FF) perspective is that I sorta like the little bit of extra speed I get coming down off of a jump. Without it, a lot of times I would end up dead.

With this suggestion in effect, you'd keep "the little bit of extra speed", but you wouldn't keep the near-conc speed that you can get currently. 1300 is midair conc speed; you are at 1000 speed after your first jump. That is a bit too much and it is causing problems.

Just making this clear even though Mushy has tried as well:

This is NOT getting rid of skimming, it is balancing it.

[caesium]

i think most ppl understood what i meant, but here's an example to clarify:

1. made-up (example) definitions:
- imagine the scout runs in a straight line at exactly 1 dinosaur-length/second.
- after doing a "standard conc" let's pretend that the scout moves at exactly 7 dinosaur-lengths/second.

2. pure bhop:
- you lot are saying the bhop cap in tfc was 170%, which therefore imo is the absolute minimum FF should use (i recon somewhere between 170% and 200% would be best). for the purposes of this example i'll use 200% "average bhop speed".
- using this 200% example figure, this means that the fastest "average bhop speed" (i.e. over a whole jump cycle, because you accelerate in the air and then slow down due to the jump) that a scout can attain ONLY from using bhop on flat ground is 2 dinosaur-lengths/second.
- it is worth reminding ppl that skilled players will be able to attain this (or very slightly slower) speed of 2 dinosaur-lengths/second in just one good strafe/circle jump when they start a bhop sequence, thus making pure bhop a genuinely useful skill again especially in tight situations.

3. skimming (i.e. when you exceed this 200%):
- we set the momentum reduction such that a scout that is initially flying at exactly 7 dinosaur-lengths/second will end up moving at exactly 2 dinosaur-lengths/second after doing 2 bhop-jumps. this is assuming that we are completely flat ground and there are absolutely no control inputs from the scout (except holding jump for the bhop ofc).
- we decide on an approximate target speed that a scout initially flying at exactly 7 dinosaur-lengths/second will be moving at after 1 bhop-jump. i suggest something like 3 dinosaur-lengths/second ([1/2]*[initial speed - run speed]), but this is just a target speed to help specify a sensible profile (see 4 below). this means that if a scout comes flying in at 7, he will be moving at ~3 after 1 bhop-jump, then 2 after 2 bhop-jumps, and he will then stay at 2 if he starts to do perfect bhop.

4. finally we use the desired 7 to 2 after 2 bhop-jumps, the approximate target speed after one bhop-jump, and the 200% "average bhop speed" to determine a sensible continuous profile for the momentum reduction that is specified for all possible initial speeds.

[btw this example is given in SI dinosaurs]

[Circuitous]

Well, as I posted, a 160% cap in FF is roughly equivalent to a 170% in TFC, because the run speeds were increased. A 200% cap is... well, ridiculous. We had such caps in the beta. With tweaking, maybe, but...

[fireb0rn]

I think a 160 cap in FF might be fine. since there isn't any "brickwalling" you should be able to sit right at the hardcap and go above it every time you strafe while in the air. in TFC you would have to sit ~5% below the cap and ensure you never went above it. so it would be somewhat faster than TFC.

I've always been for a raise of the bhop cap and a reduction in skimming speeds. I find that often when I play I'll simply attempt to go as quickly as possible rather than making planned jumps, whereas in TFC it was opposite. outsmarting your opponents was really a great thing in TFC and I've found it's somewhat a lesser factor here.

the reduction in skimming should do well here I think. newer players won't be scared off by people moving at ridiculous speeds, while other players will be compensated with a more consistent speed through the higher bunnyhop cap. engineer sentry guns might require tweaking, though.

anyways, I think skimming should still remain. but the fact that fast skimming exists means that a high bunnyhop cap cannot, and I would rather have a high bunnyhopping cap. so I completely agree with this thread.

[Credge]

Originally Posted by Circuitous

Well, as I posted, a 160% cap in FF is roughly equivalent to a 170% in TFC, because the run speeds were increased. A 200% cap is... well, ridiculous. We had such caps in the beta. With tweaking, maybe, but...

The problem, in this, isn't that the speeds are too slow/fast. It's that slow classes can't reach the same speeds using equal skill (TFC BHop cap for example). This was fixed for the offense with the man cannon, in a sense. Offensive players get the boost from the man cannon. Defensive players usually don't get a real benefit from it.

This, coupled with the fact that classes like demo and soldier can get across the map in just about the same time as a scout can (thanks to his jump pad) has really made the game a mish-mash of pub-influenced league play and league-influenced pub play. What I mean is that the same formulas that work in pub play (engies, demos, soldiers, and medics) are what is used in league play.

The issue at hand, though, is skimming. This is the biggest tool that offensive players have currently. It doesn't take much skill to prime a conc and run in the direction of the flag. Eliminate the skim and you level the O and D playing field a little bit. O in this is insanely fast and, because of man cannons and medic packs, they can now use heavier classes with more than full health and full grenades fighting against those same classes that are going to have normal health and low grenades.

Make the BHop hard cap the same with all classes and make it faster to reach that cap with lighter classes and slower to reach that cap with heavier classes. This way, those classes can benefit from the cap on defense but not be overpoweringly fast.

If the goal in mind is to balance both league and pub play then the solution is simple. Remove skimming (redundant in pub play, makes it too easy to get out with the flag in league play), make a hard BHop cap that is the same across the board (700 for example) and make that speed harder to reach with heavier armor types (kind of redundant in pub play, helps the pace of the game in league play... also increases the skill required for both O and D), and make the HW good (helps D on league play tremendously and makes him a fun and viable class in pub play). This would easily level the playing field on both O and D as well as not ruin pub or league play.