Welcome back to the 5th episode of my Newbie Corner! Now that we’ve been examining movement and weapons, the air for new newbie stuff is starting to get thinner and thinner, but there’s still enough material left to be covered by one or two newbie corners, so let’s get started! In this part I’ll be providing some general gameplay hints that hopefully will make your life as a newbie out there on the servers easier – and longer

First of all, Xonotic encourages the usage of weapon combos. How so? Well, if you shoot, you will have to wait a short while (the refire time) until that weapon is able to shoot again, unless you’re holding a constant or rapid fire weapon (currently only hagar and mg). The refire time is rather short so it doesn’t feel like limiting you much if you’re not aware of the concept of weapon combos. But if you switch your weapon immediately after you shoot, you can land a second shot with the second weapon faster than you would be able to with a second shot of the first weapon, as the refire time is longer than the weapon switch delay. This way you are able to deal more damage per second by combining different weapons. Additionally, combining weapons also enables you to combine the specific benefits of two weapons, like slowing down a fast target with crylink in order to be able to easier finish it off with an instahit gun such as nex.

This leads to the problem that it’s terrible difficult for any orthopedic healthy and sane person to do weapon combos efficiently and reliably with the default keyboard layout or (omg!) the mouse wheel. Fortunately, Xonotic allows you to re-configure the entire keyboard bindings very easily (settings window → input tab). I consider direct weapon binds per weapon the easiest way to access any weapon immediately, and would strongly recommend to place the relevant binds around your movement keys or on extra mouse buttons your desktop rodent may have. You will have to find a solution that feels comfortable for you, which might require some experimenting. I for example moved my movement keys from wasd to esdf in order to have more keys available around my movement keys for weapon binds. But that’s just an example, you’ll have to find out what works best for you.

Don’t worry, impacts on your playing skills that result from redesigning your keyboard layout will, once you found a comfortable setup, be temporary only and the change WILL pay off in the longrun. Being able to pick the right weapon for the job instantly by means of a finger reflex is a great advantage in a FPS that is as fast paced as Xonotic.

Another thing you should be aware of is that splash damage travels through walls. Knowledge of this fact can come in very handy at various situations. Especially if you know or suspect someone to be on a higher level above you and the ceiling is thin, you can just try a lucky mortar or rocket shot at the ceiling. The hit indicator sound (that little beep) will tell you if your guess was right. If you’re very confident about the location of your opponent, you can even unleash an electro combo (see Part 4: electro) at the ceiling, which works surprisingly well and does a great amount of splash damage, but takes a bit more time to do.

Using splash damage that travels through walls is a very useful and secure technique, as the opponent will obviously not able to fire back at the same time.

This is something which is almost too obvious to be included here, but I’ve seen so many new players running right past health and armor pickups without taking them. In Xonotic, your starting health of 100 can be brought below zero very quickly. It takes any experienced player two shots to accomplish this, which typically are a two weapon combo so this goes REALLY fast. If ONE player can finish you off that fast, imagine how long your life lasts in a typical EIGHT player deathmatch. This is why it is absolutely crucial to pick up any health and armor you might find on your way, unless of course this puts you in a dangerous position that outweighs the advantages of a health/armor boost. A mega armor or mega health gives you additional 100 health or armor points respectively, which obviously equals the amount of damage you can take with your starting health – you could consider a mega armor or mega health an extra life. Megas respawn within 30 seconds of being taken.

However, note that if you are above 100 health/armor, both health and armor will start to rot down to 100 a short while after you picked up your last health or armor respectively. The higher above 100 you are, the faster the rot goes. On the other hand if you are below 100 health, your health will start to regenerate a short while after you took damage for the last time. Again, the lower your health is, the faster it regenerates. This means if you get out of a battle with really low health and there is no health pickup anywhere near, it can be a good idea to retreat to a place out of action until you managed to regenerate a bit. Armor obviously does not regenerate.

The fewer players you have in a match, the more important it gets to listen to the sounds they make. Each armor or health pickup size has its own distinctive pickup sound. Pickup sounds are louder and therefore easier to notice even at some distance than footsteps. If you know where which pickups are on the map you’re playing, you’ll be very often able to know where other players are before seeing them just by listening to the pickup sounds they make.

Also note that the sound a player makes when getting hit varies depending on how low that player’s health is. When you hit a player and you hear the characteristic “very low health groan” (most newbies know that sound primarily from their own player model… ), you’ll know that you’ll only need to deal a few damage points to finish that player off, so you can go for fast high spread (mg, shotgun) or fast splash damage weapons (crylink). Listening is a very important part of duel gameplay.

These are the general gameplay hints I was able to think of. I hope they’ll help you live longer on public servers! Have fun and good luck, see you on the servers and stay tuned for the next issue, which will cover configuration tweaks for assisting you to concentrate on the important parts of the gameplay.

Join Hero and other members of his clan in the #profoundvelocity channel on Quakenet’s IRC network.

Join the discussion on this post here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you’d like to drop him a line or two, head on to our official forum, and let him know how awesome he is!

GG dude!

The competition for the top spot was fierce, but in the end everyone wins – we now have eleven new maps for our fragging enjoyment! Here’s a survey of the field:

• Fuse by cityy
• Silent Siege by Justin
• FE-26 by monad
• Opium by cityy
• Synthetic by foogs
• Imprisoned by Justin
• Solace by Debugger
• Pluvial by Debugger
• metalmaze by DarkSlayer
• Facility 123 by Cortez
• RAWK by InsaneKid

This community is lucky to have so many talented and creative individuals! I’d like to thank every mapper who took part in this competition. You should all be proud of your creations.

Since it is nearing the end of 2012, I’d like to reflect back on how much progress we’ve made with stats this past year. Here are a few tidbits that I find interesting.

First of all, players are playing more games. In January the average player played 13.87 games. This past November the average player played 16.49 games (a 19% increase). I’d like to think that this is because of our welcoming community. Every time I go online, I see new people being encouraged and coached by the veterans out there. Thanks go to all of you folks helping the new people learn how to move efficiently, bend their rockets, and laser jump. You are training a new generation of pwners!

Secondly, more people are playing in each game. The average number of players per game was 3.83 in January. In November that number jumped up to 4.82 (a 26% increase). I think this reflects the popularity of our CTF and DM servers, though duel still remains quite popular.

As a side note, there was a surge in TDM games after the competitive community announced the Nation’s Cup. A measly 9 TDM games were played in January, while November saw 170 games played. TDM mode seems to be a favorite amongst the competitive players wanting a bit more action than a duel, but with similar strategies.

We also had many more servers report in during the month of November (22) than we did in January (8). The features added to stats throughout the year paired with the new setup FAQ really helped to speed things along. It’s not uncommon to get a server up and running with stats in under ten minutes these days!

Finally, we’re seeing more overall games now than we have at any other point during the year. Back in January we recorded just over 2,000 games, while November saw a whopping 10,000! What’s more is that those games came from just 22 out of the 78 servers active on our master server list. As more servers join the stats-enabled pool, that upward trend will only increase.

It’s been a whirlwind of a year, and it has been a lot of fun! As we roll into 2013, let’s keep those servers hopping! Happy fragging, and here’s to the next 100,000 games.

Now that I’ve bored everyone to death with nifty movement tricks, let’s have a look at what everyone is keen on getting its hands on when it comes to first person shooters:

In this blog post I’ll explain the functions of the core weapons.

I already explained the laser as versatile movement tool in Part 2 of my Newbie Corner. Apart from moving yourself around, you can also use it for juggling around other players, irritating annyoing campers or generally messing with other people’s movement. Pushing people around or forcing a prolonged bunny hop can be especially effective on space maps. Unless shooting at sitting ducks (such as campers), you might want to aim at your target’s feet to make use of its splash damage, as the laser projectile needs some time to travel even though it is rather fast, thus aiming directly at moving targets can be rather tricky.

The laser does not eat any ammo. Secondary fire will switch to the previously used weapon.

The shotgun is your second spawn weapon. Primary fire is very powerful in close combat and, due to the bullets’ spread and being insta hit, a useful finishing weapon at medium range. Note that the push force of primary fire will slow down targets moving towards you, which can be very effective on space maps at spots where players are supposed to touch down from distant jump pads. If you shoot them with shotgun while they are still flying, they probably won’t make it to their usual landing spot.

The secondary fire mode allows you to swing the shotgun like a big trout and to slap other players, which is, apart from dealing rather lots of damage, very much fun to do.

The machine gun’s primary fire has a high spread, so it’s useful mostly in close to medium range. Secondary fire has lower spread and shoots small bursts, which is more useful at medium to longer ranges. As the machine gun projectiles have a little push force and are fired rapidly, it can be quite useful for slowing down players that come at you at high speeds. In fact, it’s hard to get into slapping range of someone that has a steady aim as long as such player is firing the machine gun.

You’ll notice a ring around your crosshair that shows the depleting ammo. Once it is empty, the machine gun automatically reloads. To avoid running around with a couple of bullets only and having to reload in the middle of a battle (which takes far too much time), you can reload the machine gun manually at a convenient time by using the “reload” bind that you can set up or by re-pressing the machine gun bind while already wielding the machine gun.

The mortar fires ballistic grenades which deal a lot of direct and splash damage in addition to pushing the player away from the impact. Whereas primary fire detonates upon impact, secondary fire detonates exactly 0.5 seconds after the first bounce of the grenade. With this knowledge you can time the detonation of secondary mortar. Mortar is a very effective weapon against any non-flying targets and to spam around corners.

The electro primary behaves like an ordinary rocket launcher as you might know it from other games. However, it’s not really useful for doing high jumps. The secondary fire mode looks like some ordinary sluggish grenade like balls, but has a not so obvious special function: if you detonate the up to three blobs the secondary fire mode can release with primary fire, they will explode with a big WOOOSH that deals a lot of direct and splash damage (up to 130 dmg!). This makes the electro especially useful for blocking entries, releasing upon several opponents that are busy fighting each other or spamming where you predict someone to come.

The crylink has a couple of very non-obvious features, which makes this weapon rather interesting and unique. First of all, getting hit by crylink particles will slow you down very much, no matter of the direction you’re moving in in relation to the firing player. Even if you move at insane speeds, getting hit by several crylink particles at once will make you perform a full stop. This makes the crylink very popular amongst defending CTF players, as you can really annoy fast flag runners with it provided you manage to hit them.

The latter can, however, be quite tricky, given the high spread crylink primary has. Fortunately, crylink has another feature that is very unlikely to be discovered unless someone tells you about it: when you release primary fire, the spread of crylink primary will inverse. Let that sink in for a moment.

“When you release primary fire, the spread of crylink primary will inverse“

Got it? This means that if you press the primary fire button, the particles will get fired with a certain spread. As long as you keep the primary fire button pressed, the spread will stay constant. Once you release it, the spread inverses, which means all particles traverse a single spot. Now the trick is to time the release so that all particles hit the opponent, or at least are NEAR to the opponent. Why to be at least near the opponent? Because once ONE crylink particle of a shot detonates (i.e. hits a player), ALL of them detonate. And crylink does most of its damage per splash damage.

Crylink secondary does not have the spread inversion feature. As of the autobuild version (which many servers already use), crylink secondary will not bounce, but also slow down and moderately damage other players. Players within a certain range of the particles’ explosion will get dragged towards it, so you can also use that to move players around a bit. In Xonotic’s official 0.6 release, the crylink secondary is a rapid fire of low spread, one-time bouncing and very low damage particles which proved to be of little use given the high ammo cost and low damage.

In the hands of a player with a good aim the nex is probably the most powerful weapon in the entire game. It fires a single beam with zero spread that will instantly hit anything in its way and will even shoot through other players. You’ll notice a small ring around the crosshair when holding the nex in your hands. If the ring is full, the nex is charged (and also starts to glow red). Charging happens automatically once you hold the weapon, and it does not cost any ammo. Upon firing, the nex obviously discharges and starts to recharge unless you switch to another weapon (what you should do, but more about weapon combos in the next issue). If charged, the nex deals 90 dmg, if you shoot with it immediately again, it deals 70 dmg, minimum damage you can deal with nex is 56 (if you switch to another weapon immediately after shooting and then shoot nex immediately after reswitching to nex, so it doesn’t have the refire time for recharging).

Secondary fire only zooms in, as the weapon is strong enough as it is even without a secondary fire mode (in before balance flame war ).

The hagar rapidly fires small rockets with a high spread. By holding secondary you can load up to 4 rockets that you can fire simultaneously by releasing secondary fire. If you hold secondary fire too long, hagar will make a little beep and automatically release the loaded rockets so you can’t run around the map and just keeping hagar loaded all the time until you find someone. Unloading hagar secondary can deal a lot of damage at close range, however you’ll need to watch out not to get killed yourself by the splash damage it does. Otherwise the high spread makes this weapon most usefull against opponents standing next to a wall so the rockets that miss will at least do splash damage. On most competitive servers you’ll be able to discharge the hagar secondary without firing the rockets by pressing primary again while still holding secondary.

The rocket launcher also has some very interesting features that are not very typical for this kind of weapon. First of all you can use the secondary fire to immediately detonate remotely any rocket you fired (provided of course it is still flying). No need to hit a flying target directly, just get the rocket near and, BAM, there you go. Apart from the high splash damage, the explosion also deals quite a lot of push force, so if you want to push some flying player off the map, rocket launcher is your weapon of choice as you can not only push players away from you (push direction obviously depends on the explosion’s position in relation to the player).

But not enough, you can of course also use the rocket launcher to push YOURSELF around. If you happen to be flying and need some extra acceleration but there is no wall near to laser yourself off, just shoot a rocket downwards and immediately detonate it. Yes, it hurts. A lot. But it might be worth it, be it to push you back onto the map if you are falling into the void or to prolong a laser jump so you manage to reach a distant location. This technique is called “rocket flying“.

You think I’m already done with the rocket launcher? Not yet! In addition to this already very useful feature to remotely detonate your rockets you can also GUIDE the rockets. Just keeping the primary fire button pressed and moving the mouse enables you to do some interesting stuff which can come in very handy in all sorts of situations.

Of course you can combine rocket guiding and remote detonation.

That’s it, I hope to have been able to provide some insight into the functions of the core weapon set. For a more comprehensive overview of all the weapons that are available in the game and basically a general introduction to Xonotic see the basic basics thread on the Xonotic forums, which also gets updated every now and then. In the next issue of this newbie corner I’ll be providing general weapon usage and probably some additional gameplay hints. So long, stay tuned and have fun!

Yay it’s time again for a new episode of my newbie tutorials! Today I’ll show you a very useful movement trick:

Ramps are sloped surfaces that can be used for extra upwards boost when doing a jump. If done properly, you can get to places you would not be able to reach without using a jump pad or the laser (see the previous part covering laser jumps), while not making any suspicious noises nor loosing any health. This makes ramp jumps especially useful in duels or 2v2 tdm matches and generally extends your movement options in all game modes. Ramp jumps are also very much fun to do, so let’s get started.

In my “live” newbie tutorials, I always demonstrate the ramp jump on this spot on the map Xoylent, as it’s rather easy to master and you get the idea how it actually works:

To do a ramp jump, you simply jump onto the sloped surface and jump again. Of course you can keep the jump button pressed for convenience, as with bunny hopping you will automatically jump again when hitting the sloped surface. Now this sounds awfully easy to do, and it wouldn’t be a proper challenge to master if that was all you got to do, would it. So let’s have a close look at how this actually works.

The easiest way to make a ramp jump boost you up high is to approach the ramp frontally (see figure below), not sideways or parallelly (unless of course you’re doing a strafe turn jump upwards the ramp, but hey this is a newbie guide!). See below what I mean with “approach the ramp frontally”:

Make sure that you hit the ramp at a flat angle (seen from the side, as in the image below). If possible, try to hit it when still going upwards from your previous jump. If you’re already on your way down from the previous jump when you hit the ramp, the angle at which you hit it will be steeper – if the angle is too steep or even 90 degree you’ll get slowed down and the ramp won’t give you the desired upwards boost.

The faster you are, the higher you will get. Ramp jumps that require a higher than walking speed to do are especially tricky, since you will need to bunny hop onto them and time your jumps so you hit the ramp at a good angle. In some cases, you’ll be able to ramp jump onto another ramp, which will result in a double ramp jump.

You will find ramps on a lot of maps, if you look for them. Now that I’ve shown you the mechanics behind ramp jumping, I’ll include some examples of ramp jumps in some of the stock maps for you to try out.

Xoylent

The ramp I showed as first example on Xoylent can also be used to get  to the nex platform. It’s easier if you use the right corner of the ramp for this jump.

At mega health you can do a double ramp jump up to crylink, the pipes serve as second ramp. Note that you don’t have to approach these ramps frontally as you can compensate the lower upwards boost by using the second ramp.

One of the most tricky ramp jumps I’m going to show you here is the one from rocket launcher to mega health. This one is not possible to my knowledge to do with walking speed, so you’ll have to do a bunny hop onto the ramp. I always start between the rocket launcher’s spawn point and the wall behind it, start a bunny hop and usually hit the ramp at the right time then. You’ll have to experiment a bit and find the good starting point for you, then you can reproduce that jump and start to get a feeling how you can do it in-game on the fly, without stopping at your favorite starting point. When turning around after the ramp jump you can switch from the forward key to the appropriate strafe key in order to loose less speed, but it’s not required to perform that jump.

Afterslime

On Afterslime you can walk up to the little barrel below mortar and jump just as you reach it, it will take you up to mortar. Those barrels can be a bit tricky if you use their center for jumping, it seems using the solid corners of the barrels works best for me. Approach the barrel frontally by walking, there is no need for a pre-jump.

From the stairs you can take a shortcut to the gangway where the electro is by using that fancy object over here. This can be quite useful if someone is expecting you to take the longer but more obvious way through the mortar room.

The very same jump can be done from electro gangway up to the upper passageway near strength room. Using this jump enables you to avoid making suspicious noises by using the jump pad or the laser.

A very nice trickjump is the one to mega armor. You can do this one on both sides of the mega armor room. Remember to use the solid corner of the barrel. Walk up to the barrel and jump as you reach it, keep jump button pressed and use the little ramp on the pillar for pushing you right up to the top of the pillar. This jump is very hard to do on the fly out of a bunny hop, as you’ll be probably approaching the first ramp too fast which will boost you up too much to use the second ramp properly, so walking speed is recommended here.

Stormkeep

Stormkeep has a lot of easy ramp jumps, as stormkeep’s ramps are mostly long and therefore easy to bunny hop onto. The first one is a very easy one, you shouldn’t have any difficulties with doing that one.

Also the other side of the warpzone can be used as a ramp, you’ll need a bit more speed though to do this one, so gain some by a couple of pre-jumps.

Probably the most useful jump on stormkeep. If you are too slow to make the jump directly to mega health from the little platform beside the stairs leading down there, head to the right and do a ramp jump up the stairs as shown here. No need to take the longer route via the small armor shards, which are placed so uniquely that any experienced player can tell EXACTLY where you are when you pick those up in a row and could intercept you before you reach the mega health.

This is a nice way to get to the top of the warpzone without making any noise in order to surprise someone that you expect to come through the warpzone soon. You’ll need quite some speed, it’s recommended to start prejumps in the tunnel system where the small armor shards are (below Crylink).

Runningman

On runningman, you can use the very tiny ramp at the edge of the floor to jump up to the higher level where crylink is placed. You’ll have to jump just before you bump into the wall in order to make it, it takes some practice but it is doable reliably once you figured it out.

You can bend the jump above so it takes you directly to the mega armor. However, this requires a lot of practice to reliably succeed. In-game I’d recommend to stick with the jump to crylink side and from there jump over to mega armor unless you know for sure you master the bended jump. I consider this jump the hardest one of all that I show you in this post.

The ledges at hagar also serve as ramps, you can use them for a double ramp jump from the lower level up to the higher one like this. Note that when you are doing this on the fly out of a bunny hop, you might even be able to skip the upper ramp jump as the first one will take you all the way up already if you have enough speed.

This jump up to mortar works most reliably for me when I walk up to the ramp and jump just before I touch it. It’s the easiest way to get get up there without having to traverse the very open space or making a laser jump (which makes noise).

I hope I succeeded in enabling some people to do stuff they hadn’t done before. Keep your eyes open for ramps and interesting jumps to do with them, as most mappers put some ramps at strategic places. Ramp jumping is a lot of fun and mastering this technique can give you a real advantage over other players – Practice and enjoy!

So long, the next issue of my newbie corner will cover weapon usage tips for a selected assortment of weapons, so stay tuned!

The fragmovie is 17:47 long, and features some of the best community frags gathered in the past half year since the release of Xonotic 0.6. Names like Asyyy, fisume, kojn, Mirio, PCLizard, srkdy and many others including ZeroQL himself, ensure that you have an awesome time watching the epic gibbage shown in the fragmovie. So make some popcorn, get in your most comfy chair, and have fun watching KILLING X ZONE!

Online Streams:

Youtube
own3d.tv

Direct Downloads:

Medium Quality (1280×800 60FPS 1301MB)
Normal Quality (1680×1050 60FPS 1935MB)
Über Quality (1680×1050 60FPS 3205MB)

Torrent Downloads:

Medium Quality
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If you’ve liked the movie, be sure to leave your comment on the Xonotic forum too!

Hello and welcome back to another short introduction into Xonotic gameplay! Today I’ll show you two important aspects of a very useful movement tool in Xonotic, THE LASER!

While dealing somewhat low damage, the Laser is one of the most important weapons in Xonotic. It’s projectile creates a blast upon impact on any surface or object that deals little damage to players being nearby, but pushes such players away from the impact spot. That way, the push force of the laser projectile impact can be used to move both other players and yourself around. You can test this easily by standing and shooting at the ground below you with the laser. You’ll notice that you get pushed up into the air by the blast. Now if you jump at the same time, you can get pushed even higher. If you get the timing right, you can get very high, like from the upper platform to the roof or from the fan to Crylink on the map Xoylent.

But you’ll not always want to do very high jumps, for example if you’re on the run and need to hit a passageway without bumping your head on an arch above it (like the mega armor on Stormkeep coming from Hagar). In such cases, it can be useful to fire downwards while you are already (or still) in the air during bunny hopping, allowing the laser to travel a short distance before impact and having more space between impact and yourself, so the push is not that strong.

You’ll have to experiment a bit with the timing of shooting and jumping to reliably achieve the desired jump heighth, but this will become muscle memory rather quickly since you’ll be using laser jumps a lot in Xonotic gameplay.

Now, when accelerating fast, you won’t always want to do that vertically. Some times the first few bunny hops are not fast enough to reach a place (or to get out of a place) in time. With the technique of wall lasering you can easily reach rather high horizontal speeds instantly, out of the stand.

To master wall lasering, you’ll obviously need a wall. While it would seem logic to use a wall that you can laser off in a 90 degree angle with a laser shot backwards, it is at least equally effective and easier to use a wall that is parallel to your desired movement direction. For practicing this, you start off standing next to that wall and are facing into the desired movement direction. Then you start a bunny hop by pressing foward and then the jump key. While in the air from your first jump, you flick around (to approximately 8 o’clock if the wall is left from you, 4 o’clock if the wall is right to you), shoot the laser at the wall, aiming slightly above your head. If you shoot parallel or even down a bit, you’ll get a high upwards boost, wasting energy into vertical acceleration, so be sure to aim a little bit upwards! After the flick shot turn back to your desired movement direction and contine to bunny hop. Do not release the jump key during the entire process.

Now let’s tweak this a little more. You wouldn’t want to accelerate into your viewing direction when looking backwards during the flick shot, would you. That is why you should switch for the time you are not looking in your desired movement direction from the forward key to the respective strafe key (strafe right if you turn to a wall on your left, strafe left if you turn to a wall on your right). When turning back into movement direction, keep the strafe key pressed until you can switch to forward key again. You can use a smoother mouse movement for turning back at least for the last couple of degrees in order to gain extra acceleration as explained in Part 1 (Bunny Hopping). Also remember to release the forward key before pressing the strafe key, and vice versa!

Once you’ve learned how to reliably accelerate out of the stand with this technique, you can also use it while already bunny hopping in order to gain extra horizontal speed. Just flick around when passing a wall to gain an extra boost. Note that the laser always needs to travel a bit until it hits the wall. The faster you get, the less you need to turn backwards, since you’ll travel forwards while the laser is on its way to the wall. At very high speeds you will even be able to shoot at 10 o’clock or 2 o’clock respectively, so you’re not even facing backwards any more! But most maps don’t allow for such fast movement. Experiment and learn at which speed to use what angle, and you’ll be a fast flag runner very soon!

That’s it for now, stay tuned for the next issue of the Newbie Corner which will cover Ramp Jumping!

P.S. – Our servers still love you even though you gave them a slight bump