Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Jumping Jack Rabbits!

As a follow up to my rant about missing arena shooters a few weeks ago, I thought I would make a short post about what exactly 'bunny hopping' is in first person shooters is. Or at least what it should be deemed as.

Many games, especially older ones, had some technique of moving faster than normally intended. Some of these were innocent exploits of in-game physics. Others were hard-coded in. Gaining control of these techniques and using them to your advantage was considered essential to becoming a better player and opened an entirely new avenue of possibilities in terms of player skill and creativity. Moving around a map with efficiency was just as important as shooting your enemy.

One such technique was called 'bunny hopping'. This existed in games such as the Quake and Half-life series which actually are all derivatives of the same engine. In Serious Sam, bunny hopping was coded in and made significantly easier for players to use. In the Unreal Tournament series it was non-existent, but replaced with 'dodge jumping' and other combinations of jumps. The truth is, while most games had some sort of movement enhancing options, they were not all performed the same way.

I will freely admit I am not an expert at bunny hopping in the Quake engine games. In fact I am sure I am pretty terrible at it. Nevertheless, these 'trick jumps' were the sort of thing you naturally picked up on after playing a few hundred games and it was not uncommon to see other players doing it as well online. After pressing jump so many times you begin to get a feel for the physics, and certain situations where you turn the mouse randomly to allow you to accelerate faster than you should. "Why..." you ask, "... should I simply not emulate this all the time?".

Sad as it may be, there seems to be some confusion amongst newer gamers as to what 'bunny hopping' is/was. "It's where you press jump repeatedly" they will say, "making you much harder to hit." Well, half of that is true. When you bunny hop, you do become a little harder to hit. But it is not as simple as pressing jump. As true 'bunny hopping' is remarkably different for every (oldskool) game, I think I will use a simple demonstration.

This is not bunny hopping:

That is called pressing forward and jump repeatedly.

This is bunny hopping:

... and I'm not going to tell you how to do it.

Mainly because you will need a keyboard and mouse to start with.

:)

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

How absurd!

Well I just couldn't not put this in.


I mean, who doesn't like a violently insane red-headed angry man shooting laser beams out of their arms and instagibbing people with the most powerful move in a fighting game ever?

No-one, that's who.

And if you're no-one, then you're stupid!

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

I like my weapons how I like my music ... heavy and metal!

If I had more free time on my hands and/or possibly wasn't doing some sort of research already, there is something I would probably look in to a bit more. This something is, quite simply, the appropriateness of certain types of music for gaming and how they can affect the player's performance. It is probably something that doesn't require much investigation as we already know that music does have an incredible affect on how people can behave. Athletes train to certain upbeat, fast paced music to keep their energy flowing and their frame of mind set in the right place. Relaxing cinematography is usually accompanied by likewise music, and not deathmetal. It's not exactly a science.

I'm certain many gamers, myself included, prefer to play their own type of music when playing games. Many a time in Warsong Gulch in WoW I would turn some distortion guitar based metal on, or sometimes the Hellmarch theme from the Command and Conquer series. Some games such as the Unreal Tournament series already nail a particular type on music to the board which depending on your taste can be suitable enough for you. Playing a particular style of music can make you both play a certain way and enhance the mood of the situation. It's almost like taking drugs...

So, during the recent flooding events taking place here, while I have still had electricity I thought I would make a short experimental LoL video. The footage is ... average paced . It's not surprising, it comes from an averagely paced game. Usually you don't feel overexcited or (too) bored when watching footage of someone else playing. But what if you were to over-dramatise the events that were happening? Make the relatively simple game play seem chaotic and incredible through music and simple editing alone?


Recommend changing to high (720p) resolution playback. Tis my first HD video ever uploaded! I don't know about you, but re-watching it back does leave a slightly more titanic edge to the whole thing. I would like to think it is successful, but I guess it depends on your taste in music, really.

Special regard given to hotpies, m1c_ch3ck and MorePieNow who participated in the filming and killing.

Also, a free chocolate given to the first person to tell me where the music in the video is from.