Big post incoming...
So I've been wanting to make this thread for a few weeks now and now that I finished finals I finally found the time and motivation to do so. Before you read any further I just want to mention that the following jumps in these videos are HARD to do... it literally takes years to get that good at airstrafing to be able to pull this stuff off. I suspect that most of you have not jumped at all in cs 1.6, so I just wanted to make that known. These videos are perhaps comparable to dellorts movies in terms of skill, for their respective time periods at least.
I started jumping/surfing/bhopping and all that jazz in cs 1.6 prolly about 6-7 years ago. I was a complete noob for a long time, and I was mostly interested in surfing, simply cuz I liked going fast. kzing otherwise known as climbing was never very interesting to me for that reason. I got into bhopping shortly after surfing, and likewise I was never very good for a long time. In fact, by the time I quit jumping in cs 1.6 around 4 years ago, I was merely a no-namer, though I did get close to breaking a few world records. But honestly I can only look back with nostalgia. The community was awesome and the servers I used to occupy often had top-level jumpers come in every so often. Everyone would go nuts if one of the top-level jumpers came in to the server, and at least half the team would spec them to see them in action.
So now I'm just going to explain how jumping worked in cs 1.6... Jumping in that game is all about air strafing. If you were a good air strafer, you could easily be a good kzer/bhopper/surfer/ljer. Before I continue on, you should familiarize yourself with some jumping terms, some that are actually pretty relevant to jumping in tf2 as well.
Longjump - As the name states, ljing is all about how far you can jump. The standard for measurement for ljing are in units (like as in the units used in mapmaking). It takes a shit ton of practice to get good at ljing.
Countjump - Similar to a lj, except right before you jump you hit duck (players do this perfectly by binding crouch to either mousewheel up or down. I guess I should also mention that it was fundamental to bind jump to mousewheel up or down as well.) Tapping duck in cs 1.6 will result in a mini jump almost. Your legs shoot up to your body and you get some airtime as a result. It's called a countjump after a guy named "count" who discovered the jump. Doing a countjump will result in a longer distance than a lj. I find it interesting how the same exact thing can be found in tf2 jumping in the form of ctapping.
Prestrafe - Right before a lj/cj you would have to prestrafe to get a farther distance. To prestrafe you have to walk in one direction parallel to the edge of a block then strafe into the edge of the block you were about to jump off. Someone discovered that doing this movement actually boosted your acceleration speed when you jump. You'll see what I mean in the videos. Every lj/cj involves prestrafing.
Bhopping - I assume your familiar with what bunny hopping is. But in cs 1.6 it works a bit differently. Basically every time you jump, the game mechanics slow you down when you land. This makes consecutive jumps impossible to do without slowing down unless you air strafe. This is much different from tf2 where you can just spam jump while doing no strafing and maintain the same speed. Being a good bhopper was all about how good your air strafing was.
Edgebugging - Known as when you fall from a height and land on an edge in a way so that you don't take any fall damage. It takes mostly luck to pull off, but you felt like a complete badass when you did it. It's very very similiar to jump_littleman's 3rd lvl on the 2nd red course. Skip to 7:45 of this vid to see it in action.
Jump-bugging - Similar to edgebugging, but super hard to pull off. Just watch this vid if you want to learn more.
KZ - Basically just climbing. The jumps are spread out in a way so that the goal is just to climb up to the top of the map. World records of kz maps usually involve bhopping some of the jumps so as to get a time boost.
Those are the terms I remember, though I'm probably forgetting something (I'm fairly certain the surfing community had a term for when you hold jump/crouch in water so as to maintain speed... I think it was "bobbing" but I can't remember). Now I'll just go over some of the top players that are relevant to me.
The legend himself: BiboSo back when I started out there was this guy named Bibo who was in the surf clan of the server I used to play on (surf-cs.net, they're no longer around). Everyone looked up to him, and at this time, he was unknown in the kz/bhopping community. About a year later he also joined kzmonkeys, a top NA jumping clan, which also no longer exists. To join two top level clans in surfing and jumping had never been done before. This guy had absurdly god like air strafing. For a few years he became generally regarded as the best NA jumper as well as perhaps the only notable Canadian jumper.
It was big, big, big news when he broke the world record for the longjump:
Air strafing is a strange skill in that in some people it simply clicks and they are beasts at it. Bibo was a great surfer, which is all about air strafing, so it's not hard to see how he became so good at kz/bhopping.
It was also big news when he broke the world record for bkz_goldhop by smashing zhady's longstanding time:
Bkz_goldhop is basically the jump_adventure of cs 1.6 bunnyhop maps. It's quite honestly the most memorable jumping map of all time for me at least.
While I'm the subject zhady is a jumper from sweden who has broken the most world records of any other jumper, though currently he holds a mere 10 world records. It just goes to show how advanced the current jumping scene is in 1.6. Here's a pretty cool vid of his:
And here's bibo's video, which had me super hyped up at the time of release, for I looked up to Bibo as the best jumper in the scene (though in hindsight he probably wasn't... There were some insane European jumpers out there who I had never even heard of):
And after doing some digging around on youtube I found this relatively recent video of his sick airstrafe skills in action (believe me when I say that this stuff is extremely difficult to pull off):
The pitiful NA sceneSo for some reason or another, the Europeans have always dominated the NA scene in the jumping community. I have no idea why truth be told. Looking at the current leaderboards,
http://xtreme-jumps.eu/demos.php, you'll notice there's a massive number of Europeans compared to North Americans. It's also worth mentioning how much the scene has developed since I quit. The big timers of my era such as zhady, ndr, and brian hold very few current world records if any. It seems that times are always getting refined and world records are constantly be broken. In fact... Looking at the leaderboards, there's pretty much no name that I recognize. The only notable NA player is some guy named pizza^.
The most well known American jumper, was a guy named brian, who I never saw in any of the servers I played at, and so I did not really hear all too much about him. But he was a beast nonetheless... He held the most world records at one point in time.
The lack of world records in tf2?One thing I do not understand since starting jumping in tf2 around two months ago is the lack of emphasis placed on world records and speed runs in general. It seems like there is no competition, everyone is just jumping for fun (which is not necessarily bad, but it's going to lead to a dying off community in general. People need world records to maintain motivation). In the 1.6 community you weren't considered a good jumper unless you had a few world records under your name. If you look on the homepage of xtreme-jumps.eu, basically the hub for the cs 1.6 jumping community, you'll see that every week they release new demos of players breaking world records.
xtreme-jumps.euHonestly, whenever I go into a jump server in tf2 I feel like it's completely pointless unless I'm being timed. Often times, the skillsrank plugin is broken, which is a huge disappointment truthfully, and other servers don't even have timers. I can't understand why the jump it server would remove beginner maps from the map cycle either. Even for the pro players, you can always refine times. In fact it's probably easier to refine times on shorter, easier courses if anything. I'm thinking in particular of eleven's speedrun on jump_kilo on the easy side. Skip to 3 mins, 12 seconds.
No doubt, if someone kept trying, that speedrun could be shattered by a several seconds.
The verdictI'm not going to argue that jumping in cs 1.6 is better than in tf2 or vise versa. They are simply way too different to make that judgement. Jumping in cs 1.6 is all about air strafing whereas in tf2 it's all about timing. Though I just want to mention at how surprised I am to see how flourishing the jump community in 1.6 is, even after so many years. I also want to point out how developed and more skilled it has become in the years. It's hard to imagine that in a few years, if jumping in tf2 is still around, the current top players will be no-namers in terms of skill. But it will happen... unless jumping dies off in tf2. And that's why, to preserve jumping and ensure it to continue, there needs to be a greater emphasis placed on speedruns. The goal of jumping should not merely be completing a map (unless it's super duper hard), but to complete in the shortest amount of time possible.
I leave you with a speedrun of bkz_goldhop, the current world record, which was broken very recently. People are always striving for faster and faster times, to claim the title of being the best.
