Dretches (was Re: server ping rising...)

[shopper123]

  hey im new as well but on the wiki page it says dretches are great for drawing human fire away from the rest of the force

but: if you jump up and down alot then your max speed gets a slight boost per jump

happy dretching
:shopper123

[ULTRA Random ViruS]

[1]on the wiki page it says dretches are great for drawing human fire away from the rest of the force

[2]if you jump up and down alot then your max speed gets a slight boost per jump

[1]Never works on me, if i see a bigger alien first, i will only focus my fire and chase that one, ignoring other aliens. Also, if i got armour on, i tend to ignore dretches anyway. Dretches as a distraction doesn't really work on lots of other people as well, so i think someone should remove this from the wiki page.
[2]You need to learn something called strafe jumping. Youtube 'quake strafe jumping' for tutorials. Jumping up and down simply doesn't not gain speed. With strafe jumping, in maps with long areas like transit and arachnid you can gain about 5 times your normal running speed.

[Qrntz]

I think ViruS and shopper123 would make a really good couple.

[Zordos]

I'm a dretch player, just because I like it and it never worked for me either.

[Nux]

on the wiki page it says dretches are great for drawing human fire away from the rest of the force

That's pretty bad advice. If anything, dretches are more effective when the human is distracted by bigger aliens that can take a few hits without dying. Drawing fire as a dretch is just going to get the dretch killed which gives the human an extra 175 creds in the bank and one less alien to deal with.

if you jump up and down alot then your max speed gets a slight boost per jump

I'm not sure why you said max speed but ignoring that: jumping up and down is only a small step up from just running in a straight line. As has been said, learn to strafe jump: It's fairly simple to explain but harder to master:

• 0. Always hold forward.
• 1. Start with your mouse to the right (or left) and hold jump (space). This is preparation so that you'll have room to move your mouse in the next step.
  Protip: Technically you should start with a quick motion called a 'circle jump' but this is harder to explain than it is to just teach yourself once you get the feel of strafe jumping.
• 2. As soon as you're off the ground, release jump and strafe to the left (or right) and slowly move your mouse in the same direction. This is the part that actually causes the acceleration.
• 3. Before you hit the ground, start holding jump (space). This will cause you to jump as soon as you hit the ground. If you spend any longer on the ground you'll slow down due to friction.
• 4. After hitting the ground, repeat steps 1 and 3 unless doing so would cause you to hit a wall / go too far off course, in which case simply switch left for right and vice versa in the previous 3 steps and continue repeating.
  Note: Most of the time you'll probably have to switch directions each time you land but this is only necessary because of small hallways. If your path is long enough it can be easier and more reliable to stick to the same directions for a number of jumps.

You'll probably get it wrong a lot before you get it right. Just concentrate on doing these steps without pushing yourself too far off course (stick to straight hallways at first) and sooner or later you'll find you moved faster and you'll get the hang of it. Once you get used to increasing your speed the next challenge is maintaining it which is really a matter of only two things:

• 1. Don't hit walls (minimise collisions)
• 2. Spend most of your time in the air (minimise floor friction and maximise the time spent accelerating)

tl;dr version: While holding forward in the air, move your mouse in the same direction as strafing to accelerate.

[/dev/humancontroller]

strafe jump: It's fairly simple to explain but harder to master:

• 0. Always hold forward.
• 1. Start with your mouse to the right (or left) and hold jump (space). This is preparation so that you'll have room to move your mouse in the next step.
  Protip: Technically you should start with a quick motion called a 'circle jump' but this is harder to explain than it is to just teach yourself once you get the feel of strafe jumping.
• 2. As soon as you're off the ground, release jump and strafe to the left (or right) and slowly move your mouse in the same direction. This is the part that actually causes the acceleration.
• 3. Before you hit the ground, start holding jump (space). This will cause you to jump as soon as you hit the ground. If you spend any longer on the ground you'll slow down due to friction.
• 4. After hitting the ground, repeat steps 1 and 3 unless doing so would cause you to hit a wall / go too far off course, in which case simply switch left for right and vice versa in the previous 3 steps and continue repeating.
  Note: Most of the time you'll probably have to switch directions each time you land but this is only necessary because of small hallways. If your path is long enough it can be easier and more reliable to stick to the same directions for a number of jumps.

that explanation sucks balls: one who does not already know how to strafejump will learn nothing from the above.

[RAKninja-Decepticon]

that explanation sucks balls: one who does not already know how to strafejump will learn nothing from the above.

heres a better one.

http://www.funender.com/quake/articles/strafing_theory.html

[ULTRA Random ViruS]

baha its confusing to read with all the maths stuff. I uploaded a strafe jumping theory video with some crap explanations a few weeks/months ago but i do have some pivot animations to show how it is done without using the strafe keys.
youtube.com/zdrytchx
It is not garanteed that people will understand all the crap i put in it though.

[/dev/humancontroller]

It is not garanteed that people will understand all the crap i put in it though.

it is, however, guaranteed that people will not understand all your crap.

[ULTRA Random ViruS]

It is not garanteed that people will understand all the crap i put in it though.

it is, however, guaranteed that people will not understand all your crap.

I did. Thats -1 of what you define of 'people'.
Also its likely someone will understand a portion of it, unlikely to understand all of it.

[UniqPhoeniX]

1. Jump forward
2. Look ~30degrees left of your current movement direction, hold left+forward. This will cause you to accelerate to left and a bit forward, even past max velocity
3. Hold jump every time before you hit the ground and release right after to jump instantly on landing and avoid friction
4. Switch both aim and strafe direction every jump to avoid drifting off course
5. The required angle approaches 45 degrees as your velocity increases. Higher velocities require more precise aim. Aiming too far to the side (of your movement direction) will cause you to slow down

straftrain1 is best map for practice
use /cg_drawSpeed 7

(What matters is accelerating ~75-90 degrees to the side of the current movement direction, which can be done with left+fwd + aiming ~30 degrees to the left, or left + aim ~15 degrees to right, or with some other combination, but the 1 described above is easiest IMO and has less risk of accidentally slowing you down.)

[Nux]

that explanation sucks balls: one who does not already know how to strafejump will learn nothing from the above.

ON THE CONTRARY.^TM One who knows how to strafejump will learn nothing from the above. Whether anyone else will learn from it has yet to be seen.

2. Look ~30degrees left of your current movement direction, hold left+forward. This will cause you to accelerate to left and a bit forward, even past max velocity

This is the description of strafe jumping I was originally given but there's a reason I said 'slowly move your mouse in the same direction' and not 'point your view to an angle from your direction of movement. Although 'pointing at an angle' does seem to increase acceleration I've found that by instead slowly moving the mouse in the strafe direction I can reach much higher speeds with only sutble mouse motions.

[/dev/humancontroller]

1. Jump forward
2. Look ~30degrees left of your current movement direction, hold left+forward. This will cause you to accelerate to left and a bit forward, even past max velocity
3. Hold jump every time before you hit the ground and release right after to jump instantly on landing and avoid friction
4. Switch both aim and strafe direction every jump to avoid drifting off course
5. The required angle approaches 45 degrees as your velocity increases. Higher velocities require more precise aim. Aiming too far to the side (of your movement direction) will cause you to slow down

more clear, but still WRONG.

Although 'pointing at an angle' does seem to increase acceleration I've found that by instead slowly moving the mouse in the strafe direction I can reach much higher speeds with only sutble mouse motions.

WRONG. the optimal deviation between the acceleration direction and the velocity direction depends on:

• your player's speed, and
• whether you are holding the up/down keys.

for the best results, when flipping the acceleration direction (by means of turning and applying different movement key input), one should turn towards the (new) optimal angle immediately, and account for speed changes after that: slowly turn even more "away" from the velocity vector, thus following the changing optimal angle.

[RAKninja-Decepticon]

the only way to know "where to look" it to turn your spedometer on and practice. 

you'll know the sweet spot when you see it.

[ULTRA Random ViruS]

I think the best tutorial is a simple one that shows which buttons you press and the actualy video. They already have some on youtube for quake.


Does anyone have the map jump-a4? Its the one similar to straftrain1 but instead has 10 of them without the solidslick. I once had it because i remember attempting to fool customized pathbots into strafe jumping on my mac, and i didnt port jump-a4 along with about 2 gb of other maps back here. I usually download my maps i've lost from dtrem.com [drazilox-tremulous], but it nolonger has maps and i think the site died.

[Nux]

WRONG. the optimal deviation between the acceleration direction and the velocity direction depends on:

• your player's speed, and
• whether you are holding the up/down keys.

for the best results, when flipping the acceleration direction (by means of turning and applying different movement key input), one should turn towards the (new) optimal angle immediately, and account for speed changes after that: slowly turn even more "away" from the velocity vector, thus following the changing optimal angle.

I would be happy to see how/if this improves my strafejumping. I'm willing to accept that the only reason my method works at all is because in keeping the mouse in motion I'm guaranteed to either move through this optimal angle or otherwise find something close to it per jump. I'd also love to see/program an automated example of this optimal method.

Still, it should be noted that there's a difference between a theoretical optimum and a practical method for humans. I have found from trial and error that slow motions of the mouse works in game, taking into account the need to react to circumstances/obstacles, to aim smoothly at targets, etc. If you like I'll provide a demo of this or perhaps we could meet on a server to compare the methods.

[ULTRA Random ViruS]

My fravourite place for strafe jumping is often the atcs middle building. Dunno why, just is. Practicing marauder manouvres that is. Apart from that, theres strafserie_b and hot_jumps_a4-rc1 or something like that. It involves a bunch of dretch monouvre practices. Kinda gets boring after a while though once you've mastered it.

[RAKninja-Decepticon]

WRONG. the optimal deviation between the acceleration direction and the velocity direction depends on:

• your player's speed, and
• whether you are holding the up/down keys.

for the best results, when flipping the acceleration direction (by means of turning and applying different movement key input), one should turn towards the (new) optimal angle immediately, and account for speed changes after that: slowly turn even more "away" from the velocity vector, thus following the changing optimal angle.

I would be happy to see how/if this improves my strafejumping. I'm willing to accept that the only reason my method works at all is because in keeping the mouse in motion I'm guaranteed to either move through this optimal angle or otherwise find something close to it per jump. I'd also love to see/program an automated example of this optimal method.

Still, it should be noted that there's a difference between a theoretical optimum and a practical method for humans. I have found from trial and error that slow motions of the mouse works in game, taking into account the need to react to circumstances/obstacles, to aim smoothly at targets, etc. If you like I'll provide a demo of this or perhaps we could meet on a server to compare the methods.

did you check out that link i posted?  it mathematically shows you the "optimum angle" and how it works.

a quick explanation on why you want to stay looking in the "optimal" is that looking anywhere else will either slow you, or reduce your actual acceleration.  depending on how far you are from "optimal", you could be accelerating to only 800 ups when you might have had 1200 in the same number of jumps.

do you play with the spedometer on?  watching it quickly shows you how the optimum works and pretty much where it is.

[Nux]

did you check out that link i posted?

No I didn't, but now I have and I found it very informative. Thanks!

So the reason why my 'moving mouse' method works is simply because I'm tracking the optimum angle as it changes between bounces. I just had a quick go on a strafe training map and can confirm that by habit I do larger angles for later bounces at faster speeds. Looks like yet again my conscious brain clearly doesn't have a clue, but that doesn't stop my subconscious doing it's job.

So the lesson here is:

• Yes, it's the angle that causes the acceleration and
• No, you should not keep the angle fixed per bounce. The optimum angle increases as your velocity does and it does so quickly at first.

[ULTRA Random ViruS]

I checked that random strafe jump practice server, it sucks.
SiR/Asia unofficial has one more which it doesn't have.
I've recently tested myself to see how fast i could get on the solid slick run in straftrain1, and i reached somewhere around 2100 as the highest score before the end. Most of my other scores were around 1800s... damn i need to improve. Btw, this is as dretch. If you use goon or marauder, thats another case.

[unimunk]

drenches drenches drenches drenches!!1