Some now organized musings on how dashes/short boost/running works

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to make a short post about how dashes and short boost work (I haven't played for too long, so feel free to point out inaccuracies or explain how it applies to other command dashes like sway; haven't tested those at all). Again, I'm not sure how much of this is actually new and interesting stuff; I just know that I personally was really frustrated with the control scheme for short boost because I thought it was just "double tap to short boost"; it's actually more complicated, and now that I understand it better, I enjoy it much more.


--1. Introduction
The CB ingame tutorial says that double tapping a direction causes a dash in that direction, and after that dash you will continue to run in that direction. This isn't actually the case; the control scheme behind dashing and running is actually much more intricately designed. I don't think that understanding how this control scheme actually works is that important, though, outside of people who use short boost (and maybe sway; I haven't had the opportunity to try sway yet.)

So what's special about short boost? Because short boost ends with your bot doing a land animation before going into the run, sometimes you'll find yourself walking after a short boost instead of running. Based on the CB ingame tutorial, I was inclined to double tap forward to start running again, which would inevitably start a short boost up. Sure, I'd be running after said short boost, but what if I didn't want to short boost again?


--2. How the control scheme for walks, dashes, and runs works in this game
Basically, there's a tiered system to movement in this game.
Tier 0: Standing. Not moving at all.
Tier 1: Walking. Not running.
Tier 2: Running.
Tier 3: Dash/Short Boost/Sway

Pressing a direction (let's say forward, or for most players the 'w' key) transitions your bot from a lower tier to a higher tier. That is, pressing forward doesn't necessarily make you walk, nor does double tapping forward make you run. Both just move you upward a certain number of tiers. Let's illustrate by example.
Your bot is standing. You press forward and hold it down. Your bot starts walking.
You are now holding forward, and your bot is walking. If you quickly release forward and then press it again, and continue to hold afterward, your bot will start running. There's no "double tap" involved here whatsoever; whenever your bot is walking, if you want to make it run, then just press forward again.
Your bot is now running forward. If you do the same thing--quickly release forward and then press it again--your bot will do a dash/short boost/sway. Again, this will work any time your bot is in a running state, regardless of how long you've been holding the direction to run. At this point, if you hold the direction you just pressed to start the dash, you'll continue running after the dash. If not, you'll reset to Tier 0: standing.


--3. How Short boosting complicates this
When you short boost, you add in a landing lag animation to the end of your dashes. This results in certain situations where you might end up walking where you normally would have been running after a regular dash, and becomes even further complicated because, with the short boost cartridge, you need to know how to run without doing the dash; otherwise, you'd need to do an additional short boost in order to start your dash, something which is really annoying and just might end up getting you killed. I've explained in the last section how to enter run without doing a dash; I'll now explain when you might end up walking after a short boost.

Its been very consistent for me so far that I end up walking after doing a diagonal forward dash. Here's what used to happen to me:
I would be running forward, and then I would double tap side (let's say left) to do a short boost diagonal forward left. I need to double tap left, rather than just press left once, because the first left press would start me running diagonal forward left; I need the second one to indicate to the game that I want to dash. After doing the diagonal forward left short boost, I would release the left key, attempting to continue running forward after landing. However, instead of doing so, I would start walking forward instead.
As far as I can gather, this happens because the game expects me to continue to hold forward and left after the short boost if I want to keep running; because I only hold forward, the game reads a directional change, but I'm also in landing lag from the short boost, so it reads me to be in tier 0 standing state, and the held forward bumps me up to walking.


--4. Solutions to getting stuck in walk after short boost diagonal
Now that I've figured out how to enter run from walk without doing a dash/short boost, this problem is severely mitigated, but it gets even better: you can circumvent the aforementioned problem altogether with a couple ways (probably more; here's just what I've found).
a. You can release and then repress forward mid-short boost. This buffers the forward input, resulting in the game not reading a directional change at the same time as the end of short boost land animation, meaning you can continue running forward. So my inputs here would be: hold forward while running, double tap left to begin diagonal left short boost, release forward, re-press and hold forward, end short boost and continue running forward
b. You can continue to hold forward and left as you land, and release left as you start running--you'll run diagonal left as you land, which the game will let you do because there is no change of direction during the landing lag, but then you are free to change direction during the run animation, since the game allows you to do that freely.


--5. Additional short boost anomalies
a. From a standing state (tier 0), you can start immediately running by double tapping forward and holding. This makes sense, because it bumps you two tiers, from 0 (standing) to 2 (running).
However, if you double tap forward and do not hold, this makes you short boost. I'm not exactly sure why, since this doesn't corroborate with my tiered view of how movement works, so there must be something else going on here. But that's more of a mechanistic concern rather than an actual relevant gameplay concern, where you can just remember that double tap forward and holding bumps you two tiers like normal; double tap forward and not holding makes you dash/short boost.
b. From a standing state, if you mash a direction, you seem to do a shorter short boost.
If I mash forward like 3 or 4 times from a standing state, I'll do a shorter short boost than if I just double tap and release. This seems to hold true for any direction.
c. From a running state, if you re-press forward to bump up to tier 3 (short boost/dash), but then immediately release, you'll do an even shorter short boost. You can still continue running after this short boost by pressing and holding forward as you land. This short boost is slightly shorter than the "mash from standing" one describe in b, and much shorter than the standard short boost (accessed with a double tap and release from standing position, or a single re-press and hold from a running state).

I'm not exactly sure how any of these different length/height short boosts work, but they're definitely there. There may be other ways to do them, but these are the ways that I've found I can consistently do the short boosts of different heights.


tl;dr
You don't double tap to dash. Most of the time, you only need a single button press

Edit 3:
Updated with COLORS and nice formatting

ARSTNEIO wrote:

Also, no feedback yet? Hopefully this means that I didn't say anything blatantly stupid.

Most people probably don't bother reading when they see the massive text.

Also, most of this "information" is completely useless IMO.

Honestly, you find out how to control your bots just by playing the game. In my opinion, this doesn't help at all, no offense.

It's like somebody making a thread saying "Hey guise when u r flying and turn to da right, your bot will turn itz body!1!!1"

Rather than write a long guide with the main points spread out which make people not interested in reading it, write a short and concise summary which is compact and let people figure it out themselves. Much more worth the time and effort to read it.

So long story short...

Normal Dash - The boring normal dash, it does the basic dodge and that's just about it.

Short Boost - Does a "hop" motion which makes you very hard to hit if you performed it correctly. Never back hop, always side hop, forward hop or diagonal forward hop. It also creates a longer distance between you and your enemy if you manage to dodge an attack, giving you more space to shoot your opponent.

Sway - Makes your dashes faster. This basically turns your "dash" motion into a quick sidestep that allows you to perform almost instantaneous counterattack.

Float Dash - Allows you to fly close to the ground which makes aiming so much easier since you're closer to the enemy. It is also used to dodge, and rush out of sticky situations.

During the delay after Sway, weapons fire as if you were standing still. Since you can't move anyways, this works well for burst-fire weapons with spread. Just putting it out there~

LXE wrote:

Explanation of how dash, short boost, sway, float dash work

I wanted to focus a bit more on how the control scheme actually worked, rather than what each of these dashes actually does, since I was personally a bit confused by how the transition between dashes, command dashes, and run worked. I think the ingame bits already do a great job of describing what each of the different command dashes actually do, but when I first picked up short boost, I found that my lack of understanding on how dashes and the running state interacted from a control scheme point of view meant that I often found myself walking and moving around clunkily.

CB's tutorial said that double tapping a direction caused you to dash, and that after you dashed you'd start running--this isn't problematic at all without short boost, since doing a regular dash never will result you in a walking state, and because even if you are in a walking state, you can freely just dash to get into a running state.

This changed for me when I picked up short boost, because certain short boosts (i.e. the diagonal forward short boost) caused me to end in a walking state, and I wasn't sure how to start running again because my impulse was to dash to start running, but dashing from a walking state would cause me to short boost, which I didn't want.

I'll reorganize the text (edit: done)--it's definitely not very readable at this point--but what I wanted to address was this method of control, so that other people who are just starting won't have the same reaction I did when I first picked up short boost (i.e. "lulwat why am i always walking how i run without doing short boost gg this cart sux D:"). Also because I find the design of this control scheme quite interesting, because it's not at all a "double tap to dash" system.

u can use negative edge for maximum

Oh dang is there actually a negative edge system? I didn't even consider that. That makes the control scheme even more intricate than I thought. Time for some more tests.

i prefer float dash....sometimes shoort boost o boost run,it depends of my or you game

@OP - How long have you been in the game?