[SUGGESTION] Movement + sound related suggestions

1. Remove strafejump speed cap? (Poll)
Apparently there's a speed cap for strafe jumpers in vanilla and any physics excluding defrag. I'm assuming it's there to make things more fair for less skilled players or just to limit the speed in general, but it seems like such a waste of possibilities, especially with an entire subcommunity of advanced strafe jumpers around. It's also weird because there isn't an actual speed cap, just a strafe speed cap on a flat surfaces specifically. You can keep speeding up almost indefinitely with rocket/laser boosts and you can stack up speed from jumping off from downward slopes.. However when you strafe jump on a flat surface, you can reach only around 900qu/s speed and the closer to that milestone you get the slower you accelerate, until you stop accelerating completely. I don't get it, why is the harder alternative for movement the one being limited?

Removing the strafe cap wouldn't impact DM/Duel in the long run, but in CTF and Minsta+Hook you might see some (slight) changes as you would now be able to accelerate without using laser/hook. Combine that with laser/hook and you'd go even faster! Give defraggers a reason to play vanilla and vice versa, please!

2. Mute step sounds automatically when crouching
Sometimes when you're crouching and you turn in ground your character generates step sounds. I have no technical knowledge why this happens, but my guess is that the step sounds are activated when a certain ground speed is reached. As it so happens, sometimes this ground speed is reached when you for instance do circle-jump like motions while on crouch and sometimes a simple twitch or turn is enough. Either increase the speed required for step sounds to activate (if there's any) or just automatically mute them while crouching. Silent and sneaky movement will remain broken if nothing is done.

3. Bring back jump grunt sounds (wink wink server admins)
I understand most people find them annoying, but there's a very practical use for them in mods that involve situational awareness, enemy location detecting and shooting. People who play Quakeworld or Quake Live for instance, often use the grunt sounds to confuse or mislead opponents into thinking that you're hopping away or dropping from a level above, while you're actually just staying still and using that moment of confusion for your advantage. The effect of this mechanic is similar to laser jump feigns, but more practical in various ways. Current jumping sounds aren't often loud enough to carry the sound to the opponent and is often masked by other sounds like rocket/vortex impacts, also the sound is only generated when you land. I know the grunt sounds exists somewhere, but they're disabled on almost every server as well as from the default ruleset. Is there any chance you might like them included on competitive rulesets?

edit: I figured that stair gliding might be one of the primary reasons why grunts are disabled, whenever you glide stairs you execute multiple jumps in a quick succession which gives you an extratone of grunt sounds. I don't recall it being a problem, but I would imagine it to be. Solution here might be as simple as limiting how many jump sounds can play per second, similar to how air shot sounds are.

Discuss!

2. Is that new? I recall there was no crouch movement sounds last time I played. Sounds like a reasonable change though if that's not the case.

3. What's the difference between this and step sounds? You can already quite clearly hear if someone walks or jumps by step sounds.

3. What's the difference between this and step sounds? You can already quite clearly hear if someone walks or jumps by step sounds.

- No you can't hear them quite clearly especially if there's rockets and stuff exploding near by.
- Most people jump rather than walk, in which case you only hear landing sounds which you also can't hear quite clearly for the same reason.
- You can't feign sounds with steps, if you hear them they tell you more frequently where your opponent is going to and it's harder to confuse anyone with them.
- The point was the lack of jump sounds and things you could do with them in addition to what there currently is.

Somebody might of taken the liberty of modding themselves louder step/landing sounds and with that in mind, I'm strictly speaking of default sounds.

edit:

2. Is that new? I recall there was no crouch movement sounds last time I played. Sounds like a reasonable change though if that's not the case.

It's been there for quite some time now, might of been since the beginning. I don't know the exact values, but you start generating step sounds when your ground speed reaches somewhere around 220qu/s. Try making some circle-jump esque 180-90 degree turns while crouching. So let's assume the limit of "sneaky crouch" is below 220, it should be raised to at least 300 or muted automatically when you have crouch pressed down.

Smilecythe I agree with you about grunting sounds, I prefer with grunt sounds, like in Quake and other games. Sad how most admins disable it.

P.S enable jump sound is g_jump_grunt 1

1.) Even though I'm terrible at strafing compared to you guys I always felt like it wasn't fair to handicap players. I think vanilla physics should remove the cap as it would make gameplay more interesting and force people like me to learn how to strafe better.

2.) I was just think about making a topic about this since I've noticed this quite a lot in the past while crouching. Its really annoying in some maps where you still make noise even though you're trying not to. Just kinda seems redundant at some point. It would be nice to actually be quiet all the time while crouched.

3.) Don't really care what happens either way with this. But I doubt the will be enabled by default on most servers.

While it isn't a vanilla function, some public servers (Kansas included) allow you to use the defrag physics, by using the "quick" menu (F9 > Physics).

From what I understand, jump grunts were disabled by default, because the existing sounds are pretty bad and annoying.
But, maybe we can look into enabling them on the duel servers if a specific poll for that is opened (and passes).

A small physics update is being prepared for merge, I will try to fix the crouch sounds in that.

I was about to add that to my message about Most of the Xonotic Player Models sounds are annoying I replaced Mega Erebus with Quake Sounds

No jump sounds has been my only complaint with Xonotic duel gameplay so far.

You hear the footsteps from jump touchdown, but the "grunt" when taking off has been removed, true. I would have to check, but I believe there is a server side setting that can allow clients to enable it again (as it can provide a gameplay advantage if you enable it and other's don't). If you are curious, try to look it up in console (open it with <Shift><ESC>). You can prefix any term with "apropos" to get a list of cvars where the term appears in the cvar itself or its description. For example, "apropos footsteps" will return everything related to footsteps.

The setting is g_jump_grunt 1. "Do you make a grunting noise every time you jump? Is it the same grunting noise every time?"

When I think about it, it is sometimes difficult to pin point where you opponent is based strictly off footsteps or 'jump landing' noises. I feel that enabling the noise on a few of the servers for a test then having a vote about it is not a bad idea. The default noise may be annoying but that can be easily changed in the pk3.

By now I am used to it. However for other serious players coming from games where it is commonplace I can understand the frustration. I'd like to see more of a discussion on this.

After testing it I've actually changed my opinion about the jump grunts. I think they're still cool, but I think there has to be a decision between step sounds and grunt sounds. Having them both will actually slow the pace of the game down, because currently the faster you move the more silent you are. Turn that around and you'll give advantage to the player who stalls for time and hides. With grunt sounds not only do you give more information with movement, but stair glides aren't silent anymore either and you'd have less speedy options for ambushing your opponent. If you don't realize that you're in a vulnerable situation for being rushed then I think in Xonotic it's appropriate that you get punished for it. In OP I talked about the sound feigns that grunts made possible, well that's only going to be convenient if the game doesn't have step sounds.

Yeah, I think that bringing back the ground sound will be so helpful, 'cause it's something strategic, you can hear your opponent, and prevent his movement, and other stuff.....

*I think that you must open a poll for it*

I would be happy if the movement balance was more shifted towards xdf/cpma (no speed limit, reduced or disabled W-only accel, etc), the default xon movement is too casual compared to the rest of the game, and doesn't reward people who can strafe jump well.

It's hard enough as it is to keep up with pesky speedrunners in CTF, let alone if they had the ability to accelerate infinitely without blaster jumps... Strafing still gives an advantage, as you reach the speed cap much faster than someone who just holds the forward button, but it's a good balance that keeps advanced players from completely dominating in modes where speed is key.