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What are your thoughts on crouch jumping?

For the uninitiated, crouch jumping is a mechanic where you can increase the height of ledges you are able to jump on by holding crouch after jumping, like a simulation of pulling your legs up in real life.

I never really thought much about it growing up, some games had it, some didn’t, but it always felt natural/intuitive, and today I feel like it is a way to increase the ceiling of player movement by a simple combination of two existing movements.

However I’ve heard that some people dislike it, and some actively hate it. Some of the arguments I’ve heard is that if a player needs to be able to get somewhere, then ledges should be lower and not gated, and that the whole mechanic is useless and just introduces an extra button press for no reason.

I can see the merit in some points, and others I feel like are nitpicky, but I’m interested in broadly knowing how Lemmy feels about it.

Mwa ,
@Mwa@thelemmy.club avatar

I find myself accidentally using it

mindbleach , (edited )

I made an FPS that runs on 1980s hardware and you can get onto any surface you can see over. You just walk. Halo 4 or whatever introduced “mantling” and it was like, oh, why didn’t everybody think of this? Its absence now highlights any game with unimpressive obstacles. Even the Half-Life machinema series Freeman’s Mind highlights how Gordon should be able to chin-up over some ledges and skip whole chapters.

Another example specific to Half-Life: the PS2 version’s long-jump module is a double jump. You just jump in midair and it fires off. No wonky crouch-then-jump command. Movement isn’t any less deep or complex. It’s just simplified to the point you can do it by pushing a button twice instead of playing piano.

Molecular0079 ,

I’ve always hated it and thought it was a stupid untuitive mechanic that didn’t map to anything in real life. It also looks equally stupid in multiplayer when you see player character models spasm their way up a ledge during a crouch jump. It’s an old school mechanic that I am glad is going out of fashion due to better vault controls.

like a simulation of pulling your legs up in real life.

You don’t pull your legs up in real life though, you use your hands to vault onto something. You can’t just swap stances in mid air without holding onto anything. Even if you were talking about box jumps, like the kinds you normally do at a gym, it still isn’t anything remotely like a crouch jump. Also anyone doing a box jump in an actual combat situation just looks goofy.

Any time a game explicitly has a tutorial for crouch jump, my immersion is completely broken. I am instantly reminded that it is a game.

Xavienth ,

The highest standing jump world record looks almost exactly like a crouch jump, except they start the jump crouched, uncrouch, then end up crouched again, so I don’t think it’s fair to say there’s no real world equivalent.

yuri ,

I love it and I notice when it’s absent. The coolest thing about games as an art medium is player choice and the potential to “break the game”. Playing in a way the developer didn’t intend is probably consistently the most fun I have in games, and advanced movement tech like crouch jumps almost always creates unintentional whackiness.

pyre , (edited )

one of the main reasons i hated half life, along with slow as fuck intro and slippery platforming. super unnecessary and awkward.

GENTLEMANNEofLEISURE ,
@GENTLEMANNEofLEISURE@lemmy.ml avatar

skill issue

pyre ,

agreed, game design is indeed a skill. half life has some good examples of it, but in these aspects it failed miserably.

warbond ,

Do you think your age when you played it has anything to do with disliking it? It was leaps beyond anything else available at the time, and I was young and impressionable, so even for its faults it was amazing.

pyre ,

i wasn’t very old but i was experienced enough i guess. i was used to games starting immediately for example. while the first time going through the intro is an impressive tech demo, it becomes quickly obvious that it’s not meant to be replayed. similarly to Bethesda game intros, it sucks and it’s bad for a videogame.

physics were also impressive at times but it led to slippery controls which wouldn’t be so bad if the game didn’t require platforming. it’s frustrating and unforgivably so in my opinion. compared to much older games like quake and doom which had incredibly precise controls, it just felt floaty.

but the absolute worst was the crouch jump. Jesus Christ what were they thinking‽ unnecessarily complicated, unintuitive, badly implemented and barely even used so it was also unnecessary in general.

there were lots of technical feats and design choices that were good, mind you. level design was pretty good. enemy designs were cool. the mystery elements were very cool.

Regrettable_incident ,
@Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve been trying half life for the first time recently and I’m struggling to enjoy it.

AngryMob ,

Depth to movement mechanics is one of the differences between mediocre and great first person games. Look at counter strike movement over the years. Players have extracted everything from the quirks of that engine, the game is better for it, and the skill ceiling for movement alone is enormous. That skill ceiling is important. Crouch jumps in particular have been in pretty much every game i can think of since i learned halo on the og xbox. even if they aren’t explicitly used by the game designers, there is often tricks you can do to exploit campaigns in fun ways, or maneuver the multiplayer with a higher level of expertise than others. Thats fun. Competitive but fun.

Compared to games where every mechanic is dead simple and everyone can do it, its more just rock paper scissors at that point. The designer gave a specific movement ability, you counter it with some other ability they designed. Its boring to me.

CodexArcanum ,

It never bothered me in Source games, but I don’t really care for it as a mechanic. Specifically in Half-Life, I don’t like how it overlaps with long jumping either. (Jump then crouch to crouch jump, crouch then jump to long jump.)

But I wouldn’t want it in other games because manteling is a superior mechanic. Mantelling is usually when you can hold down the jump key close to a ledge to grab it and pull yourself up, rather than jumping. In most games that have it, mantelling into a smaller space (a vent or pjpe) auto-crouches as you enter.

It allows for making longer jumps, exciting last moment saves, pulling yourself up into small spaces, simpler climbing mechanics, and more. It’s just a better, more intuitive mechanic that replaces long jumps and crouch jumps and requires no extra key presses.

Fizz ,
@Fizz@lemmy.nz avatar

I actually really dislike Manteling it feels like a quick time event, it’s easy and takes away any skill from the jump. The animation quickly gets repetitive. In some games where cinematics and being epic are the focus it definitely shines.

Crouch Jumping isn’t great either. It’s janky and should remain in source games only. However I’m so used to it that I try crouch jump anytime I jump onto a crate or something.

If you want two seperate jump distance have normal run speed jump and sprint + jump. Or slide jump

Zahille7 ,

I like that Black Mesa changed the long jump to just double-pressing the jump button

kate ,

In counter strike it’s just a game mechanic, and if you can’t do it there are certain positions you can’t get into, or you’d have to go a longer way round. Past a certain rank pretty much everyone can do it reliably but it’s definitely a barrier for new players

krolden ,
@krolden@lemmy.ml avatar

I play on a 1.6 server full of boomers and theyre constantly banning people for doing this. Theyre completely unhinged and will ban you if you kill them too much.

Thats the only time ive ever had anyone get angry about it. Its been part of the game since the beginning and was always used it competitive play.

kate ,

Are they just mad because they can’t do it? I haven’t been playing as long as 1.6 (I picked up counter-strike around 2016) but I can do it and pretty much everyone I queue with has figured it out. I always felt like counter strike mechanics are fairly in-depth and compared to things like counter-strafing and recoil control this was fairly easy to figure out

krolden ,
@krolden@lemmy.ml avatar

Theyre just old and cranky old guys “just want to play casually” but are always trying really hard. The only reason I play there is because its active and its not full of awps

kate ,

Heh, I know a few people that say they want to play casually, just because it helps save face when they’re not very good (not to say that’s what your guys are doing but yk)

xavier666 ,

Wait till they hear about kz servers…

Shawdow194 ,
@Shawdow194@kbin.run avatar

Was it ever intentional or was it just a side effect of the Source engine?

arefx ,

I would like to know the answer to this. Half-life 1 is one of my favorite games of all time

conciselyverbose ,

There are some with finite ammo where you lose the rest of the magazine on a reload.

dandi8 ,
@dandi8@fedia.io avatar

I'm fairly sure the crouch jump is part of the Half-Life 1 tutorial level.

Shawdow194 ,
@Shawdow194@kbin.run avatar

Yeah but that doesnt mean its intentional

I'm too lazy to google it

mindbleach ,

Debatable. Half-Life’s early development was a hot mess until they started building around how things actually worked. Like, they had the soldier AI, and it completely fell apart outside of some corridor-heavy environments… so they remade all the soldier encounters to take place in hallways and crate mazes.

The crouch jump was almost certainly an accidental invention. But its inclusion in the game was surely devs going ‘this is neat, let’s make it a whole thing.’

tetris11 ,
@tetris11@lemmy.ml avatar

I think we need a Plank button, for those times when you need to sniper shot someone in the prone position whilst in midair. Think of the possibilities:

  • Jumping into a tunnel completely ready to snipe
  • Other examples
Applejuicy ,

I dont know why I find this so funny.

JoeKrogan ,
@JoeKrogan@lemmy.world avatar

Bridging a gap for your team mates 😄

tetris11 ,
@tetris11@lemmy.ml avatar

thank youuuu

HubertManne ,

thats a thing? Now im wondering if some games I played expected me to do this?

Quetzalcutlass ,

Half-Life, and more recently Abiotic Factor (which is basically Half-Life reimagined as a survival crafting game).

Zozano ,
@Zozano@lemy.lol avatar

It feels completely natural to me, but I think it is unintuitive, and games which feature it without explaining it are disadvantaging people with less gaming literacy.

It’s similar to the mechanic in shooting games, where reloading while there is at least one bullet in the gun results in a faster reload (because the gun doesn’t need to be cocked).

It’s realistic, but I feel that it should be ignored, in the same way each bullet from the old mag magically transfers into a new mag.

mkwt ,

Now I want an fps game where you have to stop and load each round into magazines for a while.

AngryMob ,

Some do this, tarkov is a popular example.

AngryMob ,

It shouldn’t be ignored full stop. It depends entirely on the game. A purely arcade shooter should probably ignore it and most do (halo, overwatch), but a sim certainly shouldn’t (tarkov, arma). And a mixed game can decide for themselves (battlefield, cod).

Zahille7 ,

Or even leave it up to the player.

AngryMob ,

Only in single player though.

Multiplayer reload speed is a knob for balance.

mrfriki , (edited )

It’s something I’m glad it is not longer being used anymore and run+jump or long press jump or double jump are used instead. It was a pain to pull the move on a keyboard, at least for me.

JadenSmith ,

When I was much younger and CoD4 was the latest, I thought I was rather good and so entered a competition.

Everyone was crouch jumping (we called it “bunny hops”), and I couldn’t hit them at all. Left absolutely defeated lol!
I don’t have an issue now, however every time someone does it today it’s like I have flashbacks to that horrible defeat 😂

It’s all a bit of fun though. If the mechanic exists in a game I can’t be angry or hurt at someone taking advantage of it.

Klear ,

I always saw it as a quirk of the way the game is programmed (they didn’t bother disabling crouching while mid-air) that they just ended up somewhat legitimising by teaching it in the tutorial. AFAIK you only have to use this once or twice in the entire game, and don’t recall it ever being useful when not forced (maybe except for climbing where you shouldn’t to sequence break).

It’s not part of the core gameplay. You learn in in the tutorial, forget about it, get stuck in the middle of the game, remember this is a thing, use it once and then forget about it again.

At least that’s how I remember it. It’s been a while since I played HL1.

Zombiepirate ,
@Zombiepirate@lemmy.world avatar

HL1 had the long-jump upgrade where you had to do a crouch jump to use it.

Klear ,

That’s not the kind of crouch-jump that’s being discussed here. In source games you can crouch while you’re in the air and it allows you to reach slightly higher ledges. It’s got nothing to do with the long jump upgrade.

Zombiepirate ,
@Zombiepirate@lemmy.world avatar

I mean, you use the long jump to reach some crouch-jump spots. It’s a type of crouch-jump.

conciselyverbose ,

That sounds like bad design to me. It’s not realistic at all.

In real life you’d do some kind of mantle. Box jumps are a good workout that no one ever uses for anything else.

mkwt ,

The long jump sequence is crouch, then jump. Close enough together that it registers and turns into a single long jump move.

The crouch jump sequence is jump, then crouch. And it’s really just a regular crouch in mid air.

Zombiepirate ,
@Zombiepirate@lemmy.world avatar

But my point is that the long jump reduces the hitbox. They’re both crouch-jumps, just different forms.

You had to long-jump into little spaces that would be too big to fit in normally.

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