Advanced Agility
Near-perfect straferunning:
Advanced players will have worked on their straferunning skills to the point that they dont crash walls, except maybe in lagged connects. Learning to do this takes time and practice, and getting it right when being chased by an opponant armed with every weapon imaginable is something to work toward.
Backwards straferunning and regular running in hallways becomes an issue for a player that is moving toward advanced skill. Being able to do this comes from a knowledge of how the map is laid out, and practice, practice, practice. Straferunning backwards is mostly a manuverability option when having hallway battles, especially where SuperShotgun and BFG are used, and regular running backwards is a defensive manuver, usually while retreating with a less effective weapon than your opponent has. You cant shoot at someone with your back turned, so it makes sense to run backwards at times.
Being able to move well backwards also gives you the advantage that even while you are retreating, you get to watch where your opponant goes. The opponant may not choose to chase you immedietely, deciding instead to run for a certain weapon. Being able to observe this gives you the opporatunity to make decisions you would not otherwise be able to make sensibly.
Your ability to move backwards quickly and accurately, all over your maps of choice including down hallways and around corners, makes a big difference when playing other people who can't do it well.
Wallrunning
Wallrunning is a way that you can take advantage of an odd bug in Doom2. There are some walls, most predictably walls that run north-south, that you can activate the bug on. There are some other walls that will do it that arent north-south pointing, but they are hard to find and identify (theres a diagonal one in Doom2 map18 that will do it, and its not north-south) The effect of the bug is that you move incredibly fast in the northbound direction.
Some facts about wallrunning as it is used in deathmatch:
How to wallrun:
- Only works predictably on a North-South facing wall
- Only works if you are moving in the northbound direction
- Appears to work when the wall is uninterrupted. This is possibly related to sector changes, unsure at this time.
- Appears to only work if the wall itself is not passable from your side or the other side. You cant wallrun up against the side of a wall that acts as a ledge or platform. You can wallrun up against windows though; you can wallrun on the north-south facing window in the BFG room.
You position yourself at the bottom of a north-running hallway. Touch the wall with your back, and face up the hall at as close to a 38 degree angle as you can imagine. Then, straferun up the hall with your back touching the wall. If you have the right angle, you will wallrun, and be at the north end of the hall with blazing speed.
Its possible to get so good at wallrunning that you can jump on a northbound wall and get the wallrun started right when you jump on, and use it as a controlled manuver. This takes practice! This is in the "advanced" section of this manual because of its difficulty to get good enough at it to make it usable in a deathmatch.
Before using the Wallrun Area in the training facility, if this is your first time wallrunning, you should try this on the wall of the South Wing first. The Wallrun Area itself (second door on the left, after the briefing room) is set up for advanced wallrun practice, after you have basically learned what it is.
Advanced wallrunning points:
If you're just learning to wallrun, don't worry about this stuff yet. Come back when you feel like you are pretty good at basically jumping on a wall and getting off a basic wallrunning without a problem.
(1) You can wallrun from 4 relative orientations on any one northbound wall. Two of these are useful, two are no good. The two that are good are:
- facing northbound, angled at the straferunning angle into the hallway, and performing the straferun forward
- facing southbound, angled at the straferunning angle into the hallway, and performing the straferun backwards. This causes you to wallrun backwards up the hall.
The two virtually useless ones are:I don't even practice those two last ones.
- facing northbound, angled into the wall (you can't see a damn thing except the wall), and straferunning up the wall
- facing southbound, angled into the wall (still cant see a damn thing) and straferunning backwards up the wall
(2) A fun and useful trick is to be able to control your wallrun well enough that you can wallrun past someone and make a swingshot straight out of the wallrun and hit them. Another one is to be able to get a silent BFG off, and wallrun up a hallway while it is winding up and bang the guy with the traces (or the green ball if you can manage it) at the top of the hall.
(3) It's possible to begin wallrunning up a hallway, beginning the wallrun either forward or backwards, and switch your wallrunning orientation in the middle of the wallrun to the other one, and finish the wallrun that way, without completely losing your wallrun.
