Wall Running Experiments

We’re dissatisfied with the current wall run due to the strain it puts on people’s hands and keyboards, and the infinite wall climbing it gives knights. We’ve been looking into fun, no nonsense, no keymashing alternatives.

Here’s one I came up with today:



Note that I wasn’t mashing the keys the whole time, and the distance from contact with the wall to not being able to run any more is finite - around 3 blocks (give or take vaulting).

At the end, when I fall into the spikes, I hit the wall too early and ran out of steam before I could make it to safety - while I could have walljumped at that point, I didn’t think of it in time :^)

Happily, this makes chimneying a breeze, even with funny corners. As long as you remember to keep swapping sides, you can chimney up anything - you have to swap sides because of the height limitation, but thankfully you can do this by tapping A and D as you hold W.



You know sometimes you just miss the edge of a jump, and get that sour taste in your mouth of knowing your dude could have clambered the extra tile if he just put his back into it? Well, if you’re making a somewhat sensible jump, that works with this new type of wallrunning:



Overall its a lot more predictable than the older walljump and wallrun system, involves no mashing of keys and is pretty consistent between classes - no more infinite jumping up walls as knight, but you can use slash to get a few extra tiles of height and maybe catch that pesky archer.

I’ll be working on it more after fixing some “interesting” spawn bugs in CTF - I’m not sure about the rotation but if it’s not there, it’ll probably need a dedicated animation. Thoughts on all this are welcome :^)

Max/Geti

Original DevBlog post.

 

There we go, no more Knights seeping up the walls, and it makes archers less prone to chaining bs wallruns and creative grappling to rocket up surfaces... but I wonder if this allows archers to do that in a more reliable manner now...

 

Do we really need wall running though? Builders can ladder or build stairs everywhere, knights can shield boost each other or bomb jump, and archers can arrow climb or grapple.

All of the above options are a lot more dynamic than simply being able to walk around structures, requiring the expenditure of resources like wood or team mates like with shield boosting.

Even aside from class abilities we have a wealth of options for over coming obstacles like trampolines, catapults, or even creative stuff like stacking crates. Not even mentioning our options for destroying obstacles. Wall running seems like a redundant mechanic that takes away from our other much cooler modes of transportation as well as from the meaning of stuff like forward builder line pieces. You also look goofy doing it.

edit: this is in no way an endorsement of wall humping :v

 

Sounds like the best game mechanic for my carpal tunnel Contrary, and seeing how it's the only mechanic without wasteful keystrokes, it seems as if it's not redundant at all.

Further more, I believe knights are vulnerable while wall running, so you should have no complaints about knights abusing their shields to wall climb.

 

I definitely like this system. Much more predictable and gets rid of infinite wall-climbing and finally makes 200 metre tall buildings without an overhang actually stop people.
Also: The animation looks fine and completely serviceable but another custom animation by the master himself wouldn't hurt :)

 

The animation just seems to be a rotation of the sprite... which was entirely possible back then, if Contrary's "chriss roll" video is to be believed. Pretty neat, but I fear about archers. :vvv

 

This changes nothing about archers.. Also it would be very lovely if you could find the effort to stop your shitposting.

Contrary's post reminded me that maybe the bridge block should cost only 10 wood and be more reliable to stand on, i.e no falling off 1 block wide bridges. It would give frontline builders a bit more lasting impact on the battlefield even if they die, as bridges are way harder to destroy than ladders, which would still remain very useful inside structures themselves.

 

The bridges [the platforms?] , as far as I see it, it'd make the issue of people like me jamming doors, or erecting superfluous walls twice as affordable.
I don't know about the sound of that, but they can block fire arrows and bombs quite nicely...

The more reliable wallrunning as far as I can see is triggered via wall-contact, and nothing says an archer can ham it hard by rappelling with the grapple, if anything it makes it a lot easier compared to the current build.

[Also, I could include doge pictures, if I get around to seeing if the spoiler tags still exists]

 

Wallclimbing is already pretty broken lol. It allows knights to completely omit slashjumping and makes using the grapple even easier.
Honestly I think wallclimbing should be removed altogether with the exception of builders. They sort of need it to quickly retreat from the battlefield. Also, it would allow them to assault towers more easily.

 

KAG so far away.

 

do you also intend to remove shield sliding spam pressing up?
E: I find it best described in this instruction.
1. hold down 'D' (key to move left or right)
2. hold down 'U' (key to jump)
3. hold down right click while mouse is below character.
This is the general concept to shield slide.
however if you spam the jump key you can move much faster then normally.

 

To frame it in better words:
"Even though you have this neat Wallrunning thing, will it stop All instances of knights using the Wallhug-Walljump-Shield Glide Exploit? Because knights could still conceivably hug a wall, sapm jump, and shield glide at the same time."

 

My head is full of fuck.

On another topic, if I'm correct there is this archer bug with grapple that allows you to squeeze through 1x1 holes.

 

I probably shouldn't say this, but wallrunning doesn't prevent slash, jab, or shielding in the test build (at least right now). You can combine wallrunning and slashing to get up one additional block, so wallrunning actually lets you go up any flat wall 8 tiles high or less. In addition you can also use that slash to do a slash-stomp from 7 tiles in the air which gives you a huge combat advantage (just FYI). Combine wallrunning and slashing upward with a bomb jump and you can get about twice as high.

I like the simplification of the controls a lot, but I'm seeing a trend in beta where walls are becoming more useless with every update. Building a useful structure on the front lines is a headache-inducing process that usually consists of placing a few blocks, dying, and coming back to place a few more blocks in hopes that nothing happened to your progress. The builder used to be a class that was pretty enjoyable to everyone because you could do useful things for your buddies on the front lines without worrying about getting trampled in an instant. Now that the time-to-kill has decreased in favor of more fast-paced gameplay, we are left with a squishier builder than classic that is still clumsier at placing blocks. All-in-all my point is that builders have it pretty bad; don't make it worse.

Suggestions:

• Remove wallrunning or at least shorten the wallrun distance (that way we can keep the simplified walljumping controls).
• Use the block placement system from classic for builders in beta. In classic, even if your cursor was pointing at a location behind a wall you could still click LMB and place a block on your side of the wall. This is what happens in classic:

....and this is what happens in beta:

As you can see, placing blocks in beta requires too much mouse precision to be user friendly. It would be a small change to fix this, but I think it will make a big difference.

• On an slightly related note, please highlight blocks you are jabbing as a knight. I know if your cursor is in range it will have a white box briefly appear, but it won't appear at all if your cursor isn't in range. Just make it work like beta builder mining does.

 

Why not stick with Ej's suggestion and only allow builders to wall run? Knights already have charge slash for jumping a bit higher along with bomb jumps, archers have grappling hooks and arrow climbing while builders must use ladders in most cases and those ladders don't exactly help them in losing pursuers (unlike the archer and knight).

 

I find block removal and block placing in classic a perfected mechanic, in beta however you can sometimes hover over block to remove it and instead even if it's highlighted it will remove something totally different which is not accurate, so I agree with Chrispin about the points he wrote too. Builders now are really squishy even drills don't help anymore to even protect yourself as they are very nerfed, builder needs overall buff to survival ability using some sort of tricky mechanic or item that can be crafted like handheld tower shield that has limited amount of hp but protects the builder from oncoming normal arrows but still vulnerable to other types of arrows, explosives could also be shielded at the cost of damaging it, it needs to be an item only builder can use.