Bugfixes and suggestions for the improvement of conc mode. Most of these are intended for CTF style concing, the idea is to expand the mode beyond just juggling that would enable play/maps more similar to a traditional singleplayer speedrun.
Bunnyhopping speed cap
Current version with no cap makes it feel too much like defrag where you just stare at the speedometer and instantly reset when you are below a certain threshold, where in TFC it’s more about movement execution with short bursts of acceleration rather than trying to maintain max speed at all times.
For example now you are forced to keep as much speed as possible on landing between jumps so if your midair strafing wasn’t optimal it will cause a chain reaction that also affects the following bhop and create a huge time loss that can't be recovered.
Fast strafing is obviously still important but it shouldn't be this punishing to the point where bhop acceleration becomes almost useless when most of your speed comes from concs only instead of a combination of both, especially with HH into the floor giving you free 2000ups making it the far superior method of acceleration.
Current cap on our TFC CTF server is 200% of base speed with no slow down which feels perfect imo so somewhere around 300% should be the absolute maximum to allow players to build speed themselves and not just skip this part of the game with free max boosts.
Scout/movement speed stuff
Unpopular opinion but since TFC had 2 conc classes it feels kinda dumb to only include 1 of them, especially when it’s a speedrun game and you chose the fat slow one. This was also voted on when there were only 3 or so conc players on the discord so it feels a bit like a robbery.
Considering my main point about making the game more TFC-like and focusing on acceleration and agile movement through smaller spaces, scout is the superior option because it gives you a much bigger range of movement options, where medic only gets the lower end of that scale and the lower flexibility that comes with it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWcKrzBOd-E
If 2 classes isn’t an option due to splitting leaderboards etc I would suggest a ‘hybrid class’ with the movement speed of medic but the agility and acceleration of scout. The higher AA already does that in a way, but there are probably alot more unknown cvars that affect TFC movement including the hidden class multiplier which we never really figured out.
Handheld concs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEbKSZIq5xk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAspUMoFAoU
Hard to describe the exact problem here but something about strafejump into hh feels wrong, it’s almost like there is more vertical movement going on.
I tested this by recreating the schtop CTF map from TFC 1:1 for MM. In MM you hit the top of the skybox a lot easier which almost never happens in TFC, and you seem to fall down faster making it harder to aim for the small ramp to then slide on it.
It seems to be missing that "floaty" feeling from TFC that makes it easier to pick an angle/direction during the first phase of the jump, and helps you pick a landing spot during the airborne part. It feels more like you have to go in blind, having to know the exact inputs beforehand instead of reacting to movement and adjust from there.
Rampslide (not surf ramps but the flat kind you slide from bottom to top!)
https://youtu.be/uWGUoMbv-VA?t=198
Currently in MM, rampslides slow you down too much and too quickly. On a single ramp you stall much sooner than expected and combos with more than 1 ramp are pretty much impossible as a result.
I have tested this a bit and found it is not only related to friction since using triggers to lower friction doesn’t solve the problem, though it does make slides feel a tiny bit better – possible the overall friction needs to be slightly lower to compensate? It feels like source movement is less slide-y than TFC in general.
https://www.ryanliptak.com/blog/rampsliding-quake-engine-quirk/
According to this, rampslides work when your vertical velocity is high enough so could it maybe be fixed by simply tweaking this value to trigger a rampslide more easy?
Resupplying concs
Makes the routing part of a SR obsolete when the mapper gets to decide exactly when and where concs should be used, bags as they were used in TFC provide more freedom to try alternative lines and optimize the ‘conc economy’. In TFC, you had an ammo cap of 3 concs and bags were commonly used to resupply anywhere from 1-3 concs at a time. This was something the player had to interact with to pick up, so for an SR you can potentially create a route where you use less concs and skip a bag, thus saving time etc.
These don’t have to be literal bags, but the currently proposed solution resembles an ammo cap instead of a resupply, where you would have 5 concs to do a whole jump/section, but you can choose where to spend them.
This can create similar routing based maps to what’s seen in Defrag where the player gets the option of where to go/what to pick up to make the fastest route for them. An example of this from DFWC2014:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HZlcanzn08
Another idea would be to expand the potential inventory size to accommodate this (ie >3), where this could be a map-side variable to be determined by the mapper. This could again open up new map type/routing opportunities.
Walls
Sometimes hitting a wall at an angle slows you down more than it should. I can’t really give much more information on how or when this happens since its hard to reproduce reliably.
It doesn’t seem to be related to the texture seam glitch because this happens even on a single face wall, and it doesnt stop you completely as if you get stuck on some invisible ledge, but the amount of slowdown is more random and doesnt seem related to angle or speed.
Now for some experimental ideas, these are mostly based on seeing them being used in other games without knowing how they actually work.
Crouchsliding
Most conc jumps (but especially HH) are directly related to the player’s bunnyhop pattern, and predicting when to prime your next conc in relation to your current bhop is almost impossible as it has to line up perfectly with your jump pattern.
Using this crouch slide would create a buffer to keep speed and reliably use concs (especially HH) without relying on timing/spacing hop patterns.
It could also potentially provide more agility to navigate smaller spaces where high speed bhop may be hard to do, basically an extra option to gain speed and one that synergizes pretty well with concs. It could be implemented in a few ways:
Full crouchslide that allows you to accelerate at the same rate as bunnyhop while sliding (see Slash in quake)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UPGj-dnl6E
Slide on crouched landing. This is similar to TFC, but the effect will need to be increased as currently it doesn’t slide for long enough to line up bunnyhop patterns even when used as scout. This is like an in-between option that allows you to keep some speed but not build it, and only for a limited distance to help with lining up concs.
Chopping/duckroll. I hate this option myself but its basically a shitty version of crouchslide, removing almost all friction and giving you midair movement while on the ground.
Yeetconcs/increased throw strength
This would be an alternative throwing mode with a seperate keybind, not a replacment of deafult throws.
Dropping and throwing concs while bunnyhopping is hard to pull off since you move much faster than your conc and as a result, quick double concs or similar setups are hard to do without awkward full stops that ruin flow in the run.
Increasing throw speed/distance provides a much bigger range on where and when you can throw, even allowing for extra tricks/movement to be done in between the prethrow and the jump. Think CSGO nades that can be thrown over a building while you bhop through it!
This could probably fuck up juggling in many ways so more thought and testing is required.
