Wall jump issues

(Violator) #1

For me wall-jumping is a very ‘hit and hope’ ability at the moment and still feels very awkward to use (I’ve banged on about this for ages), compared to say Titanfall, and some mercs can barely use it at all which isn’t obvious. There are these ways of using it currently -

  1. Wall run boost. Running parallel to a wall and using it to give you some extra forward speed, however if doesn’t seem to give much if any advantage over straight running so is not useful. Needs to give more of a boost.

  2. Wall run to gain higher ground. Running parallel to a wall to gain access to a higher ledge. This is awkward as you invariably hit the edge of the ledge and bounce backwards at a random angle - it takes luck to hit it just right - jump height being the main problem. Some kind of mantling would help here.

  3. Corner mash. Using two wall jumps at a corner to gain access to a higher ledge. This is the most awkward as you have to cope with two random rebounds. Yesterday a group of us were struggling to do this on Dome in the room with the broken floor below the ammo room. Getting the right jump height is very unpredictable with little tolerance.

  4. Proxy monkey spam. For Proxy and other light mercs, you can use it to gain height and spam shotgun at the enemy. I don’t really have an issue with this though I don’t tend to do it myself.

Adding some kind of mantling would help with 2 & 3 I feel. The player should be rewarded with no mantle need if they nail it, but still be able to pull themselves up with a mantle with its speed penalty if they don’t quite do it.

It needs a bit more air time at the end of the jump to locate the ledge edge at the top of the jump. There seems to be almost none which contributes to the pixel-precision required to hit the ledge.

You should ‘linger’ on the wall for a few ms. Currently it is a straight rebound with no delay and you feel like a rubber ball. It should feel like you are using your feet to push you off the wall.

(tokamak) #2

Especially wall jump routes that involve narrow ledges it’s quite a gamble. You keep bouncing away from the place you want to stand on. Some option to solidify (IE unable to move further than the ledge allows)your position with, say, crouch would be really welcome there.

(Violator) #3

You may be onto something there - using crouch to do the mantling would work. Currently the crouch-jump gives you some extra height but if it could also be used to grab at the jump apex…

(Szakalot) #4

I agree that mantling would be nice.

Otherwise, unless spamming the space key when in tight corners; I don’t feel like wall jumping is random at all. You have to think about it a little in terms of quake-like strafe jumping, that is: the direction you are facing, and movement keys you are using have great influence on how the jump will turn out. Also, whether you want to bounce of the wall as fast as possible; or you let your jump take you further up (and closer to the wall) before hitting space.

(Anti) #5

[QUOTE=Szakalot;514316]I agree that mantling would be nice.

Otherwise, unless spamming the space key when in tight corners; I don’t feel like wall jumping is random at all. You have to think about it a little in terms of quake-like strafe jumping, that is: the direction you are facing, and movement keys you are using have great influence on how the jump will turn out. Also, whether you want to bounce of the wall as fast as possible; or you let your jump take you further up (and closer to the wall) before hitting space.[/QUOTE]

I agree with this. When it first went in I wasn’t very impressed with Smooth’s balancing of it as I always struggled to pull off moves, but in most cases I was looking at the point on the wall I was hitting, then turning to face the destination afterwards, pressing forwards the whole way through.

That approach looses a lot of the ‘hop’ momentum to turning. The best technique is to look towards the destination at the point you hop off a wall, so all hop momentum is towards the target. After some practice I’m now much better at this and it does actually feel like I’ve had to develop my skills/technique to make the most of the system.

There are still some spots that can be tough (specifically jumping off a wall to land on a narrow ledge attached to the same wall) but this is more of a geometry issue that we need to fix than anything else.

(Violator) #6

The random angle issue isn’t so bad in the parallel case, it does seem to work more on aim now rather than keypress (which was a nightmare), it is more the corner jumps and that ledge snag at the top of the jump + the instant rebound making it feel unnatural. There is timing involved to gaining height which is good (mentioning mashing was probably a bit harsh, it used to be that you could mash in corners and gain crazy height but this has been removed) but I find it very hard to reproduce the exact jump unlike in say ET or QW where after practise you could nail the jumps pretty much every time (e.g. Oasis left wall jump).

Fixing geometry will help but I don’t think its the magic bullet in this case.

Some things that work well -
Dome - the roof access from the att spawn.
Trainyard - the RH ammo room steps / gas tank.
Bridge def spawn left wall gap from barrier room - between the two walls you can get some good height and speed at the end (two jumps in succession do give a good speed boost but opportunities are rare).
Trainyard att spawn from 2nd objective to docs, you can do a fun jump off the right hand side wall corner - completely useless apart from gaining a bit of distance but would like to see some use for long jumps like this to cross large gaps for instance (no death pits though please :)).

Some things that don’t -
Dome - the corner jump in the broken floor room - requires ‘pro-level’ timing twice! Same for the jumps outside and to the left of this to get through the side window, first jump is ok but hard to get onto the roof as you keep getting caught on it.
Dome - the roof access via the small pipe between the MG and bomb site A, though this isn’t as bad. The problem here is the kick off the wall makes it hard to get onto the narrow pipe.
WC backrage jump onto balcony behind chapel, though not sure this is intentional?

(Shiv) #7

I love the whitechapel wall jump from the raised section to the right of the ev (from defender spawn), wall jump the grating then land on the big container, you can then wall jump from there into the back passage of the warehouse.
It has a lot of air time, and covers quite a bit of ground.

Like monkey ninja!

(Szakalot) #8

[QUOTE=Shiv;514319]I love the whitechapel wall jump from the raised section to the right of the ev (from defender spawn), wall jump the grating then land on the big container, you can then wall jump from there into the back passage of the warehouse.
It has a lot of air time, and covers quite a bit of ground.

Like monkey ninja![/QUOTE]

Who showed you this?! We promised to keep it secret with LuLNope! :stroggbanana:

(Szakalot) #9

While we are on the subject, I think it would be good to try to limit walljump spam in tight quarters. I think its little silly I can behave like a drunken jo-jo simply by mashing space and running into walls. Perhaps some minimal time interval between the consecutive jumps could address this?

(Glottis-3D) #10

stamina solves this. in a natural and good way.
if you add delays between jumps, then the game becomes even more slow and boring.

(Glottis-3D) #11

[QUOTE=Anti;514317]I agree with this. When it first went in I wasn’t very impressed with Smooth’s balancing of it as I always struggled to pull off moves, but in most cases I was looking at the point on the wall I was hitting, then turning to face the destination afterwards, pressing forwards the whole way through.

That approach looses a lot of the ‘hop’ momentum to turning. The best technique is to look towards the destination at the point you hop off a wall, so all hop momentum is towards the target. After some practice I’m now much better at this and it does actually feel like I’ve had to develop my skills/technique to make the most of the system.

There are still some spots that can be tough (specifically jumping off a wall to land on a narrow ledge attached to the same wall) but this is more of a geometry issue that we need to fix than anything else.[/QUOTE]

we are mostly concerned about inconsistency of wall jumping.
if i make 100 jumps with almost the same conditions (start point, pressed buttons, move directions). i get the different results like 50% of jumps.

it doesnt even matter if i get to the “window” or not. jump needs to be 100% consistent.
if i face the wrong dirrection that should only cause ‘ohnoez, i missed 1 mm!! so close!!’.

remember quakelive/quake3 dm6(campgrounds) bridge to rail jump. if you do 100 wrong jumps you will get 100 of ‘almost got there’ jumps. but they will be all the same in outcome. if you overturn the first circle jump - you fall down before the 2nd jump. if you underturn the circlejump - you will fall down right before railgun.

now i get the feeling that i have different height, different wall-hop-direction, different speed of walljump etc. and all combinations of those differencies.

(Szakalot) #12

I didn’t play quake3 much, but I don’t have the same impression as you do as far as DB jumps. I’ve been doing some trickjumps wtih people here or there, and typically; after knowing how to do it, it was highly reproducible;
perhaps you are not considering a particular factor, that makes your jumps more random?

The interval I mentioned should only apply for spam-jumping when in really tight corners; such as trainyard staircase behind the mj-flank on the last obj. Any area with low ceiling will allow you to jump up&down like a particle in a particle accelerator.

Something like 0.05 sec should slow down people’s ability to spam the jumps, without slowing down any other jumping mechanic. Alternatively, increasing intervals for future jumps;so no interval for the first two jumps, and a small interval for the 3rd one.

The aim would be purely to limit the ability to act like a gdamn yo-yo

(Shiv) #13

Yeah, i am with szak, the new dome level has some (sexy) trickier jumps… and once i understood them i nail them pretty much every time.
Even the off the post round the corner jump.
Look where you want to go before you do the second jump, remembering there is always a push back from the wall, so aim to compensate.

So a jump to hop up a wall section, aim into the wall to remain into the wall.
Stuff away from the wall is easier… a few (whitechapel long jump!) require a crouch.
Circle jumping also seems to help on dome, and waiting a little longer to bounce off the wall for the long jumps.

(Glottis-3D) #14

well, that clearly doesnt work for everybody.

(Szakalot) #15

Which would be evidence that nothing is wrong with the game’s mechanics, but the approach players take. I’m sure you are a really good TJumper, since you mentioned non-trivial TJs from ET or quake, if you want we can hop around tonight together, and see if there is something specific that you are doing differently : )

(Glottis-3D) #16

thats what i thought.
but since Violator also has those problems, so there is something with the game.
and this guy spends MONTHES trickjumping all over tha epmty maps. (at least he did a year ago)

trickjumps need consistency in both win and fail. if you do it right you know where you will land, and if you do it wrong you also know where you will land.

(Szakalot) #17

Consistency in TJ win is absolutely essential

I can agree that consistency in fail is nice, but much less of a priority compared to other stuff that has to be fixed : P