Bounces and bhops in Momentum Mod

[Gorge004]

With Momentum Mod around the corner, we have the chance of starting fresh with jumping by choosing what to add/remove from tf2 jumping to make jumping more enjoyable to speedrun.

not everyone is gonna move to momentum mod though. the goal should be to accurately recreate the tf2 engine so that runs in momentum mod and tf2 can be compared fairly.

The goal is not to make everyone move to mmod no, but i dont think that should mean we should make sure we can compare the 2. its another game another plugin another leaderboard. Im not saying the current system is bad, but if theres a new thing coming out dont we want to improve what we have instead of repeating the same mistakes? theres gonna be some differences between the 2 when people start making maps for momentum mod with mmod specific entities anyway.

I get your point tho, having 2 different jump_beef wr or w/e could be confusing? But doesn't surf already have that with different servers and/or leaderboards, even across different game they have different rankings. We have 1 ranking system currently, that would make a 2nd one.

[gibus]

I get your point tho, having 2 different jump_beef wr or w/e could be confusing? But doesn't surf already have that with different servers and/or leaderboards, even across different game they have different rankings. We have 1 ranking system currently, that would make a 2nd one.

same engine though; it would be weird if you could do some strats in one engine but not another

[porkie]

Thought I'd weigh in on this one real quick.

I'm one of a few idiots that actually, genuinely enjoys speedrunning demo maps as soldier and I am absolutely in favour of having no points awarded for soldier completions on demo maps. This is the primary reason that there are a bunch of bad but dedicated players in the top 50 on tempus (possibly me included).

To add to that, I think that you should have a proper conversation with the top demo players about demo bounces / bhops, and see what they really want. Do not take soldier wallpogo mains opinions into account. They gain no points from demo maps, why should they care?
I think the main argument for keeping demo bounces is to make it so that the times on mmod are comparable to tempus - an asdf WR on mmod with no bhop is almost guaranteed to be slower than the current tempus record - how much do the top demo players value that? I am OK with the games being entirely separate.

When making any decisions or suggestions about mmod, I think the 'speedrun' aspect of it should be held in your mind at all times. One of the main problems with tempus (imo) is that you can get into the top 100 with no top times at all, and potentially with 5 hour runs on loads of maps, as long as you complete them all eventually. For me, some of the charm of jumping was lost when angled bhopping was discovered. It allowed for so many new strats that were so good, that you were forced to use them to be competitive. Does something like that really add to the classic jump speedrun experience? You could argue that it's technically possible, therefore we should use it. But I'd argue it's more fun to speedrun a jump properly, instead of skipping loads of stuff with an awkward bhop that takes 5 seconds and staring at showpos to set up. Intended bhops / bounces are a different story.

I think that if you get rid of stuff like that (bhops in places they were unintended, demo bhops etc) then you should remove speedo and third person as well, and just count mmod and tempus as different things. It would clean up the whole thing and create a more streamlined experience for everyone. If this takes off, we could see (hopefully, fingers crossed) a large increase in the amount of people who want to play surf/jump/bhop whatever, and we need to make it seem accessible, but not too shallow. I think removing bounces entirely, or making them trivial is too far, but keeping all the crap we have to do nowadays could be too much.

TL;DR:
No points for soldier on demo maps: good - removes bad gamers from high ranks.
Talk to top demo mains ONLY about demo bounces/bhops: soldiers get no points from demo maps so ignore wallpogo mains.
IMO it is OK if tf2 and mmod times are not comparable: if anything is changed then it is unfair to compare them - this is fine.
Keep the 'speedrun game' mindset when making decisions: do angled bhops, random bounces, speedo and third person really add to the speedrun experience? Think big picture.

[879m]

Gotta agree with you porkie, stuff like third person and to a lesser extent speedo were only ever used to get around issues with ping and stuff. mmod will get rid of the source of these problems, so now we're able to get rid of random shit.

It's just a matter of deciding what and how much gets changed (for example tf2 unit specific one tick bounces -> mmod trigger enabled consistent bounces)

[Gorge004]

Yea like 879m said, there's a possibility we would get a bounce trigger to place in maps where we want bounce and/or bhop to be possible, because atm they dont exist.
This mean no angle bhop, and no "walk left shoot sideway 360 bhop wait 3sec shoot" setups that comes from different height. If we want a bounce there, we just put a trigger and you can bounce giving you do the correct timing ofc. This could remove the pain for the mapper to make a platform an exact amount of unit, depending how that trigger would work.

The question is where do we put those triggers if thats what ends up happening. Everywhere there's a bounce in tf2? Everywhere the mapper intended a bounce? Should we add more bounce strat in some cases where they weren't possible in tf2?

We have time to decide on those things, and we can try different stuff once we can start testing them, see how people react to them etc.

[John]

will these map entities be modified server side or will maps have to be ported over (new bsp) to accomodate for these changes?

[Syphilis]

The leaderboards I assume will be different from tempus no matter what so I don't see anything wrong with changing a few unwanted things to make some maps more fun to run. Especially if the mapper didnt intend for them to happen originally.
Also correct me if i'm wrong but many t6 demo maps today are built with 3rd person in mind because they are way too hard without it even offline. And personally it makes airpogo more fun. So if they can make a bounce trigger, they could also make a trigger that allows 3rd person to be used.

[neon]

Just because TF2 has some annoying strats, doesn't mean momentum needs to have those. I feel like this should be taken as a chance to make a better jumping experience instead of 100% copy.

[generic]

Thought I'd weigh in on this one real quick.

I'm one of a few idiots that actually, genuinely enjoys speedrunning demo maps as soldier and I am absolutely in favour of having no points awarded for soldier completions on demo maps. This is the primary reason that there are a bunch of bad but dedicated players in the top 50 on tempus (possibly me included).

To add to that, I think that you should have a proper conversation with the top demo players about demo bounces / bhops, and see what they really want. Do not take soldier wallpogo mains opinions into account. They gain no points from demo maps, why should they care?
I think the main argument for keeping demo bounces is to make it so that the times on mmod are comparable to tempus - an asdf WR on mmod with no bhop is almost guaranteed to be slower than the current tempus record - how much do the top demo players value that? I am OK with the games being entirely separate.

When making any decisions or suggestions about mmod, I think the 'speedrun' aspect of it should be held in your mind at all times. One of the main problems with tempus (imo) is that you can get into the top 100 with no top times at all, and potentially with 5 hour runs on loads of maps, as long as you complete them all eventually. For me, some of the charm of jumping was lost when angled bhopping was discovered. It allowed for so many new strats that were so good, that you were forced to use them to be competitive. Does something like that really add to the classic jump speedrun experience? You could argue that it's technically possible, therefore we should use it. But I'd argue it's more fun to speedrun a jump properly, instead of skipping loads of stuff with an awkward bhop that takes 5 seconds and staring at showpos to set up. Intended bhops / bounces are a different story.

I think that if you get rid of stuff like that (bhops in places they were unintended, demo bhops etc) then you should remove speedo and third person as well, and just count mmod and tempus as different things. It would clean up the whole thing and create a more streamlined experience for everyone. If this takes off, we could see (hopefully, fingers crossed) a large increase in the amount of people who want to play surf/jump/bhop whatever, and we need to make it seem accessible, but not too shallow. I think removing bounces entirely, or making them trivial is too far, but keeping all the crap we have to do nowadays could be too much.

TL;DR:
No points for soldier on demo maps: good - removes bad gamers from high ranks.
Talk to top demo mains ONLY about demo bounces/bhops: soldiers get no points from demo maps so ignore wallpogo mains.
IMO it is OK if tf2 and mmod times are not comparable: if anything is changed then it is unfair to compare them - this is fine.
Keep the 'speedrun game' mindset when making decisions: do angled bhops, random bounces, speedo and third person really add to the speedrun experience? Think big picture.

I agree with you mostly and I do appreciate your perspective. Just to kinda talk about something that I have a feeling was not your main point though; I do think taking away speedo though would be a mistake. I play soldier, and its easy to say just take it away; I would only miss it for jurfs where you have to go 1100 anyway, and and that's just because I'm lazy and don't want to pay attention. Ultimately though I appreciate how essentially clarified version of an sv_cheats 0 console command has allowed a rather convoluted jump mechanic to have at least a base of reference. I'm not going to pretend its as necessary offline, but allowing people to have a definite thing to judge where there stickies are instead of just having to just shoot in the dark until they get "it" is something that benefits demo jumping as a whole. I don't think its such a crutch that good hard work and talent will trump it, but letting people have a more concrete thing to develop their muscle memory around will make learning less frustrating, and allow for better runs. 

To touch on something broader though, I don't have the best perspective though because I don't play that much demo, I'm not good at demo, and don't use speedo with him. I also cant help but notice a good chunk of people with speedo opinions, or demo opinions in general, aren't top demo jumpers either. This is a speedrunning focused game. To use speedo as an example; I know starkie isn't a fan of it, and I imagine soup wouldn't be a fan as well; but the majority of people I see saying no are soldier mains who are just voting against something that wont effect them. Ultimately its not like lesser skilled players or soldier players shouldn't have a say, but the game seems to be catering to the type of person who wants to be as good as they can at the game mode at hand, and valuing the feedback of people that haven't gotten to that level as much or against those who have is not a great idea imo.

This is something I seen in the momentum discord, where surfers or bhop players will weight in with jumping opinions despite not having much of a base of reference for how it works in our game and drawing on their experience in surf instead. Two examples are prespeeding and bounces, where prespeeding is looked down upon (rightly so in surf and bhop, but thats not equivalent to jump objectively) and bounces, which where seen to be needlessly complicated. This isn't to say that their perspectives aren't valuable; its good to get an outsiders view on things, like how convoluted bounces, can seem. I wouldn't be shocked if it turns out jumping doesn't loose much when all bounces are crouched and uncrouched (which is what they were talking about). But jumpers are the people that have spent a good chunk of time jumping and probably have a better perspective on what works and what doesn't. And this is the same within jumping as well.

[Gorge004]

will these map entities be modified server side or will maps have to be ported over (new bsp) to accomodate for these changes?

Will have to port over every maps afaik. But maybe there's gonna be some tool ingame to add them without having to change the vmf. For example, there are momentum trigger entities such as trigger_momentum_timer_start, trigger_momentum_timer_stop, trigger_momentum_timer_checkpoint, that lets you put your own cp and start/end zone in the vmf dirrectly. but there's also tool ingame that lets you do that if you only have access to the bsp and not the vmf, like how tempus does it. Maybe some similar tool could be added in the future idk whats possible or not but for now we will be porting every map and manually change stuff that's needed in the vmf.

[porkie]

I think there is an argument to keep speedo - I think many people don't like it / wouldn't make use of it, but it's probably better to have it forced on for everyone than make 2 leaderboards, one for speedo and one for no speedo. It's less intrusive than thirdperson for sure.

[generic]

I think mainly just including it as an option in the main leaderboards would be the strat

[Zike]

Talk to top demo mains ONLY about demo bounces/bhops: soldiers get no points from demo maps so ignore wallpogo mains.

Just to make it very clear myself, newjuls, and soup all do not like this bhop strat.