I finally got around to updating my list of the top Natural Selection movies — in other words the Natural Selection movies that are worth watching. Quite a few newcomers on the list, while some old ones have dropped off. Go check it out yo.
I should also mention that the work on what’s probably going to be my last Natural Selection movie ever is still moving forward, if a bit slowly.
First things first: Make no mistake, I love bunnyhopping and I’m biased as hell. This post is an argument for implementing bunnyhopping in NS2.
For a few months now there’s been a debate regarding bunnyhopping in NS2 on the NS2 forums. At first it looked like it was going to be the usual name calling contest with occasional attempts at serious but uninformed discussion. This time however, several intrepid posters made sure the debate got taken to another level. The debate has mainly concerned the viability and balancing of bunnyhopping in NS2. Considering the awesome posts made, I don’t think I can add anything to this. Therefore I’m going to start off by quoting some of the most important points.
Quoting the posts in their entirety would take too much space, so I’ll have to boil it down to the bare essentials. I highly encourage you to read the full posts though, especially the ones by TeoH. They’re probably the most well written and thought out posts I’ve seen on the subject — ever. I’ve provided direct links to the posts I’ve quoted.
You’ve got many who see it as a way to gain an edge via skill, increasing the skill ceiling and allowing better, more dedicated players to gain an advantage. It’s also a very smooth skill-to-performance system. You can progress about linearly in bhop skill and get about a linear gain in performance.
In order for melee vs ranged to work at higher levels of play in a FPS, it’s necessary that there is some skill quotient to the melee side that will properly scale all the way up with player ability, in order to match the wild scaling of people’s aiming ability when using accurate weapons. Since aiming really isnt relevant at all to a melee class, a complex and very deep movement system is ESSENTIAL to making these fights work at all skill levels.
If all the skulk has to work with is incredibly basic ‘push forward to go forward’ movement, and a leap button with no quakeworld bananajump control, along with the ability to stick to walls which is exactly the same form of motion as being on the ground… While the marines have precise aiming while moving to develop… The inevitable result is that if you balance skulk vs marine at any particular skill level, your balance will be wildly off at skill levels significantly higher or lower than that.
NS has fairly accurate rapid fire hitscan weapons. The thing about fairly accurate rapid fire hitscan weapons is, in the absence of more interesting movement techniques, the most effective way to dodge against them is to spaz left and right in as random and meaningless a pattern as possible. As it happens, spazzing left and right in a random meaningless pattern is not much of a deep skill. However, if you add techniques such as bunnyhopping and quakeworld air control into the mix, which may be preferrable to random spazzing because of the speed advantage they have in closing a melee vs ranged fight, things become more interesting.
To clarify something for people who haven’t necessarily played at a higher level: Once people start to be able to aim properly, jumping is not an evasive advantage against a hitscan machine gun. Practically any form of movement that locks you into a particular path is bad, jump arches can be tracked easily. Bunnyhopping while closing distance is viable as a result of the speed advantage it gives, inspite (not because of) the disadvantage of a more rigid movement path. As i’ve said, the most effective way to dodge an accurate hitscan weapon is randomly mashing left and right, because tracking becomes inpossible, prediction goes out the window, a lot of the skills that players with good aim develop become null and void. If you increase skulk base movement speed and stick with generic forward/back/left/right movement, all that happens is people mash left and right quicker.
The speed boost from moving through the air is the lure that encourages players to adopt this form of movement instead of the brainless alternative that would be adopted if it had no speed advantage. The result is the skulks practice to develop their advanced movement skills, speeding up in the air while intentionally hitting good lines of attack, instead of mashing strafes randomly – and marines develop the aiming skills of reading and tracking skulk trajectory through the air, getting familiar with the curves they’re likely to take to maximise speed and the limits of their air control. This is good for both players, and results in interesting and indepth combat that scales well for both sides.
I’m afraid i don’t have an alternative to hopping that serves the same gameplay function through different means, in 15 years of FPS games nobody has developed one yet. Intentionally creating such a thing is incredibly difficult, it took the early quake players several years just to fully explore the physics and the implications of all the little tricks they could do in that engine. It is a very simple set of physics quirks that cause all the hopping, acceleration and air control techniques to work, incredible complexity arising from a few simple rules, developing such a thing from scratch would take some real effort.
Phew, now that that’s out of the way, I’ll get on with the point I want to get across. I’m going to quote a few more posts to set the mood.
mastery is what you want to have in the game, it’s what keeps people playing beyond the initial novelty of being in some sort of aliens movie spaceship scenario and looking at a big fleshy rhino monster. Mastery motivates people, and it results in player satisfaction from accomplishing something that they knew took substantial skill and effort. That’s a feeling you can’t get from Mario Party or snakes and ladders.
My belief of what makes NS great is its unpredictability. A relevant to topic example being the way people can surprise eachother even after playing it for 8 years because perhaps the marine does a little but fast silent crouch hop onto a railing and flys over the others head.
Its exactly the skill-based movement that keeps melee vs ranged interesting
My point is this: Bunnyhopping is FUN!
Bunnyhopping…
1. Rewards time spent practicing, giving an incentive to keep playing.
2. Gives a great feeling of mastery.
3. Encourages creativity.
4. Opens up new possibilities in combat.
5. Makes it possible to create ace players on the melee side of combat.
6. Can even create a game within the game.
I’m going to elaborate on these points in the following, using videos from Natural Selection gameplay to exemplify.
Bunnyhop example 1: Sub-sector rails
This is a fairly easy but efficient jump combination to take out marines building the RT in Sub-sector on ns_veil. This is a good example of bunnyhopping creating new possibilities in combat. Without bunnyhopping, there would be zero viable opportunities for the skulk to attack the marine once he’s gotten to the RT. Just straight jumping over the rails and running towards the marine is too slow and he’ll be able to disconnect from building the RT and shoot the skulk down with ease. It’s still a risky move though, half the time against equally skilled players, the marine will kill the skulk. Teamwork between two skulks doing the same maneuver or one distracting radically increases the chances of success.
Bunnyhop example 2: Maintenance jump
This is a bit more nuanced example. This isn’t the only way viable way to frag a marine building the maintenance RT — it isn’t even the safest way to do it. The safest way is to go through the vents below the RT and sneak up to the marine. However in this scenario bunnyhopping creates an additional opportunity for attack. An attack option that’s also spectacularly flashy. Without bunnyhopping it’s impossible to get enough speed to cross the gap. Now, one could simply make the gap smaller or the skulk faster and the opportunity would be there without bunnyhopping, but that’s disregarding a very important part of the equation: mastery.
If it was possible to do it by just jumping normally over the rails, anyone could do it. There wouldn’t be anything special about it. When it becomes difficult to do, it also becomes more interesting to do. Now you have to practice to be able to do this particular attack. This gives incentives to keep playing the game and rewards time spent practicing.
This particular video is a very good example of that. Many years ago I practiced for weeks just to be able to do that jump once on an empty server. It took further months to be able to do it every time and even longer to master it in a combat situation. But it gave me a great feeling of mastery, great satisfaction, to be rewarded for my efforts. Tricks like these are why bunnyhopping makes melee vs. ranged combat more fun.
Bunnyhop example 3: mu vs. Levitacus
This is an example from an actual match, from the first season of ENSL back in 2005. Knife, a tournament favourite, was playing against Levitacus, the tournament dark horse, in a match that would likely decide which team got to the final. At the time Levitacus had one of Europe’s best shotgunners in Talis and their marine round was highly centered on him succeeding in taking out alien RTs and skulks quickly. Obviously Knife had to stop him somehow. The original plan was the usual one: to ambush the marine offence team while they were trying to kill the RT. This is usually a 50/50 situation for both teams, but with Talis’ shotgun skills they had a clear advantage.
Mu however, thinking on his feet, managed to take out Talis through very creative use of bunnyhopping and wallwalking before they even managed to get to the first RT. That gave Knife a vital advantage in the early game and they eventually won both the round and the match. Mu was rewarded both for his time spent mastering bunnyhopping and also his creative thinking using an opportunity only available because of bunnyhopping. Pulling off something like that is the height of fun for many players, including myself.
Bunnyhop example 4: wltrs vs. Levitacus
This last example is also from an actual match — the ENSL season 5 final between nL and Levitacus. In this situation wltrs was alone against two marines waiting for the RT to drop in Sub-sector, after they’d chased away the Lerk. Usually this would be a lost cause: two highly skilled marines in a large open area are almost impossible to take out for a single skulk and wltrs would’ve had to wait for some of his teammates to arrive. Unfortunately they are all busy defending alien RTs on the other side of the map, leaving him with no other choice but to attempt to do something by himself.
Taking advantage of the first marine being distracted, wltrs makes his move. The problem is taking out the second player, Inva, who is on the other side of the room. Normally this would be an easy frag for Inva if wltrs tried to rush. wltrs is also aware of this, but he knows that Inva isn’t expecting him to do something so foolhardy and exploits it by using bunnyhopping to fly forwards and bounce over the rails to take him out. Taking out both of Levitacus’ RT cappers is a big blow to their economy and nL eventually wins the round and the match. An almost impossible frag, made possible by bunnyhopping and great skill by wltrs.
This is a perfect example of how bunnyhopping makes it possible to have ace players on the melee side of the game. Just like Roger Federer, Lionel Messi, Tiger Woods or Kobe Bryant captivate audiences by doing the impossible, doing what nobody else can, players like wltrs could take control in NS matches because there was a movement system that rewarded skill and practice. Giving skulks the ability to leap from the start will never be able to replace this. Leap by its nature is not something that truly rewards practice — it’s something anyone can get big results from without practicing much. If everyone can do it, it becomes commonplace. Nobody finds commonplace interesting.
A game inside the game
Lastly bunnyhopping is itself a game inside the game. Not just because practicing it is a metagame, but also because one can have fun doing it without actually playing the game.
A few years back, myself and many other players had a lot of fun just running around on maps and finding jumps that were only possible to do through clever thinking or perfect bunnyhopping. Sometimes to get to places otherwise inaccessible, other times just for the hell of it. This culminated in several trickjumping movies that were a great success at the time. With bunnyhopping you’re basically getting a free second game with the game — is that really something you can say no to?
Natural Selection Jumped 2 trailer
Natural Selection Jumped 2
Natural Selection Jumped
Without bunnyhopping none of these movies, or the many others created by other moviemakers, would’ve been possible to make. Without bunnyhopping we wouldn’t even have been able to have fun jumping around on maps trying to find new and clever ways to use the geometry. Bunnyhopping adds immensely to the game and that far outweighs the slight negative impact it has on the atmosphere and learning curve.
In my opinion Natural Selection had the perfect combination of free alien bunnyhopping and very limited marine bunnyhopping (bear in mind that most of the marine jumps in the trickjumping videos posted above are only possible if you throw away all your guns first). I pray to every deity that exists that a similar system will be implemented in NS2. That said, even just bunnyhopping for the skulks would make a huge impact in terms of gameplay, even if it ruins most of the fun in trickjumping.
I would also like to point out a very common fallacy in the argument against bunnyhopping. Many opponents of bunnyhopping claim that it hurts the ambushing game. What they don’t take into account is that ambushing is still a very important part of skulk play in NS, even for those who have mastered bunnyhopping. Bunnyhopping and ambushing are not mutually exclusive. In many situations, ambushing is still the best way of taking out the marines. Sometimes bunnyhopping even promotes ambushing: Hiding spots that would otherwise be too far away from the expected marine path can now be used because bunnyhopping allows the skulk to close the distance in time when the marines go past.
Bunnyhopping creates alternatives, so that the game isn’t only about finding somewhere to hide and pop out when the opportunity arises. Such gameplay would quickly become boring for the majority of the player base.
In conclusion (tl;dr): The positive aspects of bunnyhopping outweigh the negative aspects by such a large margin that I’m absolutely convinced it should be implemented in NS2 — similarly to how it was implemented in NS.
Obviously things have been pretty quiet around here the last few months. The reason is simple: I’ve been really busy with exams. With the last one finished earlier today, I’m ready to get back into NS again. I’m not really sure where take over stands at the moment, or if there’s even going to be another ENSL season on NS1, but in any case I intend to keep playing in preparation for NS2.
Some assorted news and thoughts:
I’m going to start working on two new NS1 movies very shortly. These are going to be my last NS1 movies EVER, so this should be interesting. I’m not going to release any details about it just yet, but rest assured this will materialize.
I’m not sure what’s going to happen with 9L.ns2. I/we had originally planned to try putting together a 9L reunion of sorts, but I doubt this is going to materialize. To be honest the season 13 reform left me a bit disappointed. Of course playing with the dudes again was fun, lots of fun actually, but I also realized that life is really starting to catch up with most of us. Priorities change and most simply don’t have the time or motivation needed to play at the top level. I guess we’ll see what happens — I don’t even know if NS2 is going to be worth playing yet.
Take Over got destroyed by BALLS in the ENSL Season 14 semi final a few weeks back. Big disappointment. It was a fair win though; we got outplayed at every turn. Unfortunately the team wasn’t able to prioritize at the moment when it was the most needed and almost a full month of lackadaisical practice left us helpless. I’m sure the players in question had good reasons, but it’s still very frustrating. This isn’t some great new development though — the team with the greatest stamina and will to win usually comes out on top in the end. It just feels a bit strange watching it from this side. In the past I’ve usually been on the team that hunkered down and kept practicing until the end no matter what.
I’ve also realized a few things about leadership. No offence to x-man and Danny, they’re good guys, but they simply didn’t put in the time that was needed to shepherd this team to the finish line. Again, I’m sure they had very good reasons, real life tends to override computer game commitments, but this is essential to the winning formula. Having a good leader who knows his shit and always puts in the time needed to rally the troops and get stuff done is a rare but very important commodity in NS. I’m not going to claim I was some great leader, because I certainly wasn’t, but I’ve known a few in the past. They really do make the difference between a half-assed group of players and a sharp team.
Hopefully we’ll see a resurgence of strong leaders in NS2.
Quoth MSN conversation:
esJ: WHERE IS MY NEWS POST OYVIND!?
Fana: THERES NO Y GOD DAMNIT
esJ: ;D
esJ: you only need to copy + paste :S
Fana: that’s not exactly accurate
Fana: and considering you’ve kept me waiting for four months, you should survive for one day
esJ: has it seriously been that long?
esJ: fuckkk ….
Fana: no, it’s been five months even
Fana: ahahaha
esJ: fml
Yessir. But hey, it’s here and it’s good, so let’s not complain. esJ certainly doesn’t waste words, but his picks are good. All great movies, although our lists are very different. Just goes to show how big of a difference personal preference makes. Check them out!
Cattuthaj Jhana
Yet another freestyle tricking video, this time from the hands of LSD. It has quake trickjumping, it’s made by shaoprod and it’s really, really good. I don’t know what else to say really.
Kaleidoscope
Another ShaoProd freestyle defrag movie. Another awesome watch. I shouldn’t even need to explain why you need to watch this; it’s directed by mrks…
Fucking French Frogs
If you’re looking for a movie which just oozes style and originality, this is it. Hailing from the producer/player pez, it has some mindblowing frags, a brutal electro soundtrack and the kind of energy that just leaves you wanting more.
DevilMC the movie
It’s a movie, it’s by Electry, it’s about a top UT2004 player. The frags are sick, the soundtrack is sick, the editing is sick. This movie is sick. Go get a bucket before you watch it, thats the amount of sick we’re talking about here.
Maxxurected
By the time the intro finishes, and the first frag clip kicks in, you know you’re in for something special here. Crazy frags by Maxxur set to an energetic, pumping psytrance soundtrack, and fantastically smooth, relatively minimalist editing which seems to be the staple from french moviemakers Easy Productions.
onepointsix
Proving that cRZYFST still has some aces left in his sleeve, this minimalist movie shows off some of the more famous (and more commonly known) frags of recent years, from a number of international heavyweights.
lunatic-hai – against the whole world
One of the surprise hits of 2009, Against the Whole World was an overnight wonder after being featured on sk-gaming.com’s news. Nice editing, nice frags and a soundtrack used fully to its potential.
Eve
Pretty much the defining fragmovie of 2007, if you haven’t seen it there isnt much to say. Go download, and prepare to be blown away.
Hoooo yeah baby!
This is the improved version of the ENSL 2009 Movie contest winner, Army of Wltrs. Featuring some of the best frags and editing ever seen in an NS movie.
It’s taken a lot of effort, but I think it has paid off. While you may not notice them all, the changes are too many to list. I especially tried to improve on the things that got commented on when the original movie was released. Specifically that the movie was too dark, too blurry and that the intro was sloppy. There’s also about 25 seconds of new footage, mostly in the first part of the movie. The most easily recognizable changes are also in the first part of the movie.
If you missed the original Army of Wltrs, this is a great time to see it in improved form. On the other hand, if you have seen it, this is a great time to rewatch it. I’m glad to finally be able to release this, I hope you enjoy it. Drop some comments and let me know what you think!
Click on the poster or this link to go to the release page where you’ll find more information and download links.
The youtube stream doesn’t work at the time of this posting. It has to be processed first. It should work in a couple of hours.
It’s been a long way coming, but I’ve finally managed to man up and get down to it.
For those of you who live in a cave or something (how are you even on the Internet if you live in a cave!?), Army of Wltrs won the ENSL Movie Competition in May 2009. It was universally lauded as one of the best NS movies to date and I was fairly pleased with it. That said, it was far from perfect. Unfortunately I had to rush it through production to finish it in time for the contest deadline and it shows.
Part of the reason why I haven’t been spreading it around after winning the contest, is because I wanted to patch it up first. I haven’t quite had the motivation for the past year, but finally I’m back in business. Barring any unforseen problems, the improved Army of Wltrs will be released sometime this weekend. Probably on Sunday.
The changes I’ve made are too numerous to list and this time around I can finally say that this is the movie I wanted to release. It’s still the same movie though, so don’t go expecting the second coming of Christ. Many of the changes you probably won’t even notice, while others are pretty obvious. Without revealing too much, the introduction part of the movie has received particularly much attention.
Stay tuned!
Having started out relatively boring the first couple of weeks, season 14 is finally getting exciting. We’re now in week 4, which means most teams have two matches left to play before the playoffs start.
At first this seemed like the boring group, the easy prediction being take over taking the top seed and newstyled grabbing the second seed. Since then, things have changed however. While there’s little doubt take over will take the top seed, the fight for the second seed seems a lot more open now. Judging from roster strength, newstyled seemed overpowering for all the other teams. But that was only until I realised that their ex-flatline carry players are only roster filling and the team doesn’t seem to practice outside of officials. With that in mind, the Professors now seem like a viable challenger for the second spot in the playoffs. They’ve got players with both experience and skill and seem to be practicing, at least more than newstyled.
The last two weeks will be key for both teams. The Professors need to take at least one round from take over to be on even ground with newstyled, who managed to steal a round from take over in week 3 with a daring shotgun rush. That’s not going to be an easy task and take over will be expecting shenaningans like shotgun rushes this time around. Even if they lose 4-0, they still have a chance though, because in week 5 they’ll face newstyled to finally decide which of them will grab the second spot in the playoffs. Winning a round against take over is important because that means a tie with newstyled will result in a tie breaker for the second spot, instead of the dreaded third place. The situation is more straightforward for newstyled, who only need to avoid losing rounds to New Team and then either drawing or winning against the Professors.
Originally the most exciting group, but now less so in my mind. A lot could still happen, but right now it seems like RAMBOS will take the top seed and BALLS will get the second spot. That means BALLS will have to face take over in the semi final. Not a pleasant prospect.
RAMBOS and BALLS tied in a very close match in week 3 and they seem pretty much even at the moment. The reason why I’m predicting RAMBOS for the top seed, is because BALLS slipped and lost a silly round against Stray Dogs earlier. All RAMBOS has to do now is win 4-0 against their remaining opponents, which shouldn’t pose any big difficulties for them. If they manage to do that, they’re pretty much guaranteed a place in the final. I can’t even imagine the possibility of them losing against either of their two possible semi final opponents.
After a few months of break since the conclusion of season 13, the ENSL is back in action with season 14. As usual, the participating teams are getting fewer and fewer every season, with season 14 coming in at 10 teams spread over two divisions. I’m still playing with take over, the current tournament favorites. We’ve been placed in Group A, arguably the easier one of the two. Our biggest challenge is going to be newstyled, who has a few scary names on their roster. Unfortunately for them, neither they nor their ex-flatline carry players seem very active.
In Group B we’ve got the other two top contenders this season: Balls and RAMBOS. Both are very decently skilled and could take the title if they play their cards right. As it is right now, there’s not much doubt about who’s going to go through to the semis. The only real competition is the fight for the top seed. This is most important for the teams in Group B, where the top seed will probably get a much easier opponent in their semi final.
There’s no doubt we’re teetering on the edge of the league finally dying — until NS2 is released at least — but I’m still having fun playing. Strange. If you’d have told me two years ago that this is what I’d be doing in 2010, I would’ve laughed and called you a loon.
I guess I’m the real lunatic.
As I’m sure most interested parties know by now, details and a short video of the Natural Selection 2 Lerk were released yesterday on the NS2 website. Unfortunately, at least for my part, the released information was very disappointing. Instead of building on the 3.x style Lerk, which has been a huge success in every way, they’ve decided to revert to the 1.0x style Lerk with a 3.x flight model. Now sure, pubbers had a lot of fun sitting in vents shooting spikes, but I’d like to think we’ve moved on in the six years since then. No matter how you look at it, the 3.x style Lerk promotes much deeper gameplay and adds a lot of excitement to the game.
Unsurprisingly, there was an uproar on ENSL when people starting realizing what was happening. I personally said something along the lines of “I’ve lost all faith in NS2″ which perhaps was a bit harsh, but still described my feelings at that exact moment. [EDIT: I guess I should clarify this. I haven't actually lost all faith in NS2, it was just a way to vent my frustration. Perhaps not the best way, but I can think of many worse ways too.] Since then, I’ve tried to start a discussion in the thread on the NS2 forums. Right now I seem to be the only one voicing my concern unfortunately. Even a prominent Australian competitive player (shame on you, Sir!) came out and stated that he preferred the new Lerk concept to the 3.x “flying skulk”. I’m not sure how that makes me feel about the Lerking quality of our Australian brothers, but it seems like they’ve missed out on something important.
In any case, if you’re reading this and you agree with me — and you damn well better you useless slags — please try to voice some reasonable concerns about the Lerk in the thread. Maybe there’s a chance we can still turn this ship around.
If you can’t beat them, join them! Sound logic for me, as I joined take over when 9L folded after ENSL season 13. I’ve been playing with them for a few weeks now, and I have to say I’m positively surprised. They’ve got a good mix of old school and new school, carry players and work horses. They’ve also come across to me as a nice bunch of dudes, which is very important to me. They actually remind me a lot of 2004 Knife, which really is one of the greatest superlatives I can give.
This last weekend we participated in the 16th Night Cup, with great success. After easily defeating Team Fantasy and Russian Standard, we faced the formidable RAMBOS in the final. According to the popular vote, they were the favourites to win, although I think take over was the top seed judging from roster strength. That said, RAMBOS has a very solid roster too, featuring carry players like Almaty and aA. The match itself was very tense, especially the first round where heavy pressure and SGers constantly harassing our Hive gave us big problems. We were able to overcome those difficulties and take the round however. We played the next two rounds flawlessly, winning the match in convincing fashion. The last round was a bit of an afterthought as our comm left and the RAMBOS won a consolation round.
What’s especially interesting about this tournament from my point of view, is that I’ve basically come full circle. The InNox cup was my first tournament win, way back in 2004 with KTDM. Just like this Night Cup, we played three matches. Two were easy, one was difficult, and we won them all. Both KTDM and take over had a mix of grizzled veterans with many trophies under their belts and new players for whom this would be their first championship title. There is one big difference however. During the InNox cup, I was the up and coming player, hungering to reach the top, climbing on the shoulders of more experienced players. This Night Cup however, I was one of the grizzled veterans, supporting a cast of new talent. I can’t help but find some special significance in that. Perhaps this would be an opportune moment for me to quit, while still on top?
Hell no. It’s over when it’s over.
I’ve uploaded the HLTV demos from the take over matches, the match against RAMBOS is well worth watching. I’m also planning to make a quick frag highlights movie from the NC — any help in finding frags would be appreciated!
As the last season of ENSL has finished, at least the last season as far as 9L is concerned, it’s time for a quick recap. Once again, we were enticed to rejoin the dwindling Natural Selection community, for one last kaboom. At first I was skeptical, I doubted we’d even be able to get six 9Lers to return. I was wrong. It didn’t take long before old friends started mysteriously connecting to IRC and announcing their returns. How they knew we were even making a comeback, I will never know. After our miraculous Season 10 comeback, expectations were high. Too high. The competition was fierce and our chances slim, but we threw ourselves into the fray.
…mop’s back — HELL YEAH!? :D
ENSL Season 10 was a once in a lifetime event. So unlikely, so ridiculously unlikely, that I personally feel that expecting the same results this season — with even less time to practice — is strange. So many different and even in themselves unlikely events conspired to make that victory possible. I’d be surprised if anything like that ever happens again, to any team. Still, I can’t deny that I’m a little disappointed. Not with our results, they were quite decent considering our inactivity and short time to get back on form. I’m disappointed with the fact that we didn’t even really try. Still, playing without having any real ambitions was relaxing in its own way.
Cue five weeks of “wltrs gets a shotgun” predictions.
I must also take some of the blame for our mediocre performance. While I was able to effectuate some clever strategies, they were symptomatic of our condition. I’m not entirely sure why, but I just haven’t felt comfortable leading the team this season. As a result, my performance as team leader slumped. Badly. We used to be the most professionally organized NS team around, but this season we were one of the least. Poor motivating, in game leadership and roster management failed to give us the solid foundation we’ve had in the past. It could be time to recruit some new leadership talent — or maybe I just need a break?
Oetel decides to take justice in his own hands when sherpa jumps the CC.
That said, I still had a lot of fun playing and talking shit on vent. The screenshots in this news post don’t even come close to representing all the hilarious moments we had. Coming one red bar away from taking Saunamen to a tie breaker map in the semi final certainly isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Neither is taking a shared third place with take over. The rage levels were also almost non-existant, surprising considering our history of rage — even when we were winning! Big, big shoutout to b1, dux, evilness, JustMe, morphz, mu, Oetel, pantsu, sherpa, Sublime, vax, and wltrs for making our last NS tournament a very enjoyable one. See you around in NS2 yo!
Sublime eats nade, blames friends for “shouting in my ears”.
As this is the last time we’ll ever play NS together, let me take this opportunity to say thank you. Everyone. Thank you for all the matches, the great laughs and the camaraderie. Thank you for the memories.
9L has gone back into hibernation. Hopefully, we’ll be back for NS2, but the future is hard to predict. Some of us are still playing NS however, for different teams. Wltrs has joined the Tuxedo Men and I’m playing with take over. The community may be in a sorry state, but playing NS is still fun!
As the title says, this is a list of my top 10 favorite fragmovies. It follows, that I’ve made no attempt to use any sort of objective standards to pick the movies. This list is 99.9% subjective. While some of the descriptions include criteria that could be used objectively, they are not intended as such. They are simply attempts at describing the movies, not the reasoning behind their inclusion and positioning on the list.
Relatively unknown movie maker releases a movie and disappears. Who cares right? Well in this case, I do. I don’t know why he stopped making movies after releasing VirtuositY, but it’s a damned shame. Amazing editing — fragmovie porno even — and frags. I don’t even like most of the soundtrack, but I still get all funky watching it. That just proves how incredible it is. Picking and positioning the other movies was very difficult, but this is a no brainer.
The grand daddy of Counter-Strike movies made a surprising comeback with this gem. Retracing his steps since the last Weicker bombshell in 2005, he once again collaborated with mousesports with astounding results. Jaw dropping visuals, superb frags and orgasmic syncing. This is it lads.
Team Fortress? You’re kidding right? Negative. This movie is so good; APM was picked up by Shaolin Productions shortly after releasing it. Nice syncing throughout, but what really makes this shine is the perfected use of what we can call “macro sync”. By that I mean syncing the flow of the video to the flow of the audio — as opposed to micro sync, which is syncing beats and other more “immediate” sounds to visual events. The content suffers from a bit of filler, but has a decent amount of jaw dropping action.
By the legendary Shaolin Productions. Perhaps less renowned than some of their other movies, like Tricking iT 2, but in my mind their best work. One of the visually sexiest movies ever, yet still manages to keep a superb level of sync and content focus throughout. A bit late to the psychedelic soundtrack party, but a good selection none the less.
Weicker’s second movie on this list, and well deserved at that. Technically starting to look a bit dated, but the editing and action is still f-ing awesome. Watch out for the remarkable clutch blooper with commentary, it’s worth watching several times over.
Can’t really put my finger on why, but I’ve always held this in high regard. One of a select few movies improved by the addition of 3D rendered scenes.
Pure, unadulterated, visual pornography. To truly enjoy this movie and do it justice, you need a good monitor with properly calibrated colors.
Zaknafein’s masterpiece, a proper old school movie. It still remains the only fragmovie that evokes not only happy feelings, but also sad ones. It’s a very old movie, and by todays standards it looks pretty bad. It more than makes up for any such deficiencies with an abundance of charm however.
Great concept, solid execution. The term “clutch” in Counter-Strike refers to when a player manages to win a round against seemingly impossible odds. This is a movie dedicated to such events. Some of the most amazing clutch-ings in the history of the game, with hilarious bloopers to boot. Proof that editing isn’t everything and content really does matter.
Uniquely entertaining. Featuring frags that are also bloopers at the same time, from the stunt team Pubmasters. Both impressive and hilarious at the same time. Don’t expect much in the way of editing though.
Status: Finished
Match: 9L vs. Saunamen
Date: 13th of December 2009, 20:00 CET
Maps: ns_veil, ns_origin
9L: Fana, morphz, sherpa, Sublime, Pizza, wltrs
Saunamen: enigmatic, Kuitmo, leipa, Peacham, Talis, Tane, vartija
Result: 1 – 3
Downloads: HLTV demo
It was fun.
This should be fun.
This article was originally published on New Year’s Eve 2006. It was an attempt at summing up the events of the year in our small community, from my (Fana) point of view. I think it does a fairly decent job at that, so I’ve cleaned it up and reposted it for historical purposes.
It would’ve benefitted from some images and screenshots, but it’s a bit too late for that now. Reading it really does bring me back though. Memories!
Status: Finished
Match: 9L vs. Turning Point
Date: 6th of December 2009, 20:00 CET
Maps: ns_tanith, ns_eclipse
9L: dux, evilness, Fana, morphz, Oetel, sherpa
Turning Point: Air, Almaty, CoBvsCoF, kranky, LS, noway, Pyromatic
Result: 3 – 1
Downloads: HLTV demo
Another week in inactiveland. We managed to get evilness to step in at the last moment so we could actually play the match. Big thanks to him. This is a match I’d rather forget as soon as possible however. I don’t think I’ve ever played this bad… and I’ve played bad. Kudos to Turning Point for putting up a good fight though, it turned out to be a pretty exciting match, even though mostly for the wrong reasons. Groovy commanding from sherpa, safe lerking from Oetel and mop carried. GG.
On paper, this should be an easy 4-0 for us. However, we’ve been having some activity problems lately due to massive inactivity from certain players. Turning Point on the other hand have recently strengthened their roster by adding past UGO player macpersil to their roster. In addition, we may not have an actual comm for the match, as sherpa isn’t sure if he can play. b1 is busy making Christmas food and JustMe is — apparently — not playing with us anymore. Should be fun!
Status: Finished
Match: 9L vs. 250 de ping
Date: 29th of November 2009, 20:00 CET
Maps: ns_metal, ns_tanith
9L: dux, Fana, koetje, morphz, Pizza (vax), sherpa
250 de ping: BatraxJr, cond0r, CrovaX, fitoX, Herrsheimer, Hitman, Hudson, LaTOO, Snail
Result: 4 – 0
Downloads: HLTV demo
Fortunately Pizza was able to step in, as we were unable to field six from our regular roster. Embarrassing.
As expected, the high pings resulted in awkward gameplay. Nothing game changing however. 250 de ping put up stiff resistance on our metal alien and tanith marine especially, but we prevailed in the end. Our metal alien started out tragically bad. No teamplay and poor individual choices let them get a big early advantage. Morphz fortunately pulled out his oldschool fading skills and we managed to get the second hive up. They camped PGs and defended res until they had JPs and HAs, but once we managed to get the third hive building they had to push — that’s when we devastated their res and won the game. Split MOTM to sherpa and morphz for cool commanding and reliable fading.
Judging by the results so far, this should be an easy one for us. However, we’ve never played against this team and we don’t really know what to expect. Add to that the high pings, as Europe plays against Argentina on an American server, and suddenly there’s a volatile mixture in the pot.
It’s been a few weeks now, so it isn’t really news per se, but I thought I’d give a shoutout to wltrs and pizza (aka. växjo) — current and past 9L.ns players — who recently won a TF2 LAN tournament. Together with the rest of their team, Power Gaming, they claimed the top spot in the i38 TF2 tournament. It was a fairly high profile tournament with decent prizes and some e-rep on the line, so it’s nice achievement for them.
For those of you who don’t know, wltrs and Pizza have been playing TF2 at the highest level for a while now. After our ENSL season 10 comeback and subsequent fold, they created a TF2 team called coolclan with sherpa, Admirable, Altbst and several other familiar faces from NS. They eventually worked their way into the top 10 TF2 teams, before folding this September. Wltrs and pizza had a reputation as one of the best Scout duos in Europe and were quickly picked up by a fledgling MGO called Power Gaming. Since then they’ve been fighting for the top, being rated as one of the top 3 European TF2 teams. i38 is part of the i-series LAN parties, the biggest in the UK and one of the biggest in Europe, and wltrs and pizza got expenses paid to attend. Pretty cool!
According to pizza the level of play at the tournament wasn’t very high, with only six teams in attendance. Fortunately for the players and spectators, two of those were top 3 teams. Power Gaming and Team YoYoTech duked it out a total of three times, before Power Gaming could climb the podium. First in the group stages, where Team YoYoTech came out on top. Then in the upper bracket final and grand final, both of which Power Gaming won. Very close matches and good fun from what I’ve heard.
Tournament coverage can be found on resupply.eu, for instance this article about the grand final. The coolclan website also has a bunch of pictures from i38, featuring wltrs, pizza and more.
Congrats dudes!
Status: Finished
Match: 9L vs. take over
Date: 22nd of November 2009, 20:00 CET
Maps: ns_veil, ns_metal
9L: Almaty (merc ns_veil marine), dux, Fana, koetje, morphz, pantsu, Sublime
take over: beefcake, Danny, franky, king_yo, s4druid, Scale, x-man
Result: 1 – 3
Downloads: HLTV demo
Not a good day in 9L land. With three commanders you would imagine we have it covered, but unfortunately that isn’t the case. Sherpa lost his connection to Steam and couldn’t reconnect, while our two other comms were nowhere to be seen. And if that wasn’t enough, the plugin malfunctioned and refused to let Sublime join on our ns_veil marine round. We tried our best to cope under the circumstances and I think we did fairly well, but it wasn’t enough.
I’m actually pretty happy with our alien rounds, even if the score doesn’t reflect it. We lost both rounds, but it was mostly due to specific mistakes. Our scouting was abysmal, letting them get PGs up all over the map without any opposition and my Fading was worse than ever. There’s a good chance you’ll be seeing me do something else in our next matches. With some more practice I’m confident we can work out these issues and more however. Taking on Saunamen in the semi final is going to be a monumental task, but we’re going to give it our best shot.
As for a quick and dirty recap, here goes: We started out as alien on ns_veil, with a spunky new strat. We controlled the game fairly well early game, but let them get a PG up in C12 unopposed. They quickly reacted to the Hive being dropped and with me completely failing as Fade, it was game over. Second round marine we decided to shotgun rush, as we didn’t have a comm. Unfortunately the plugin malfunctioned and refused to let Sublime join the team, so we had to do it with five players. We made a good effort, but failed to kill the hive. After a quick map change, take over agreed to replay the last round. After a lengthy debate between the teams, we got Almaty from UGO to merc as commander. We tried to play it properly, but as is often the case when you play with a comm you’ve never played with before, things got very confusing. We pretty much got rolled and the score was 2-0 to take over.
Change of scenery to ns_metal, with 9L starting as aliens again. This was pretty much a repeat of the ns_veil round. Solid control early game, followed by horrible Fading and confusion mid to late game. On marines we once again opted to go for the cheesy shotgun rush, after some group therapy on vent (read: rage). Take over quickly realized what we were doing and dropped SCs. Hilarity ensued, but in the end we managed to come out on top through mixed skill, luck and OP mines. Round very much worth watching.
Thanks to take over for replaying the round where the plugin malfunctioned and to Almaty for stepping in as merc one round.
This week’s top match and Group B’s deciding match, as old school meets new school. We’ll be facing take over, the recently formed clan that stole franky from us earlier this season. We’ve been slowly but steadily improving lately, while they’ve been simmering on a reliably high level since day one. There’s no denying that they’re the favourites going into this match, but we’re going to do our best to put those predictions to shame.
Not only is this going to be a very exciting match to play and watch, it’s also of great importance to both teams. The winner of this match is likely going to win the group, and thereby getting the number one seed for the semi finals. A likely prediction would be that the winner of this match faces UGO, while the loser faces Saunamen. While both Saunamen and UGO are formidable opponents, UGO seems like the easier route to the final. I’m sure both teams are well aware of this, and the combination of prestige and rewards should make it a very tense match indeed.
Status: Finished
Match: 9L vs. Tuxedo Men
Date: 15th of November 2009, 20:00 CET
Maps: ns_origin, ns_veil
9L: dux, Fana, morphz, Oetel, pantsu, sherpa, Sublime
Keen Edge: Dw, Hanzo, jiriki, Maxx, psyc0mus, scary_jeff, Sonder
Result: 4 – 0
Downloads: HLTV demo
Another rough performance that still left us with all the points. The forfeit timer actually almost ran out the first round, as three of our players were having connection problems. From there on and out it was a rollercoaster of good and bad. We got some good teamwork going at times, but constant small mistakes kept holding us back. Still, it was a fun and at times challenging match to play, and that’s really all you can ask for.
The last round of the HLTV demo got cut off, but you’re only missing a couple of minutes of spawncamping after I run into the hive. Not entirely sure what happened, but I’m guessing the HLTV disconnected from the server before it was able to catch up to the HLTV delay.
Status: Finished
Match: 9L vs. Keen Edge
Date: 5th of November 2009, 22:30 CET
Maps: ns_eclipse, ns_origin
9L: dux, Fana, JustMe, morphz, Sublime, wltrs
Keen Edge: Arj, Chb, Cursed, huhuh, marmotte, Meyfarth, Terra
Result: 4 – 0
Downloads: HLTV demo
This was a bit of a strange one, as it was played entirely on a whim. We’d been struggling with arranging a date and time for the match, as kE was unable to field a team on the default time, and we didn’t have any commanders available on thursday, friday or saturday. On thursday however, it just so happened that we had JustMe — of late BM fame — practicing with us. I noticed that kE were also playing, and decided to give it a go. JustMe isn’t formally on our team, but kE allowed him to play (fair play gents). A bit of a risky move since we’d never played with him before, but that didn’t turn out to be a problem at all.
Rusty we may be, we were still the overwhelming favourites. This turned out to be an accurate description, as the match was pretty one-sided. It wasn’t very exciting, so I’ll spare you the details. JustMe did great as comm, especially considering neither him nor us knew what to expect from each other and wltrs brought the ownzor. Our Alien teamplay was also pretty decent — definitely improved in the last few weeks. Sublime’s Lerk was especially deadly. In the end I think wltrs deserves MOTM for his Marine on origin, but Sublime was only a hair behind. My Fading was terrible, but at least I didn’t die this time. Improvement!
Nec0, from the Korean team Demonic Soul, made a short highlights clip from the match. Great idea, so creds to him for that. There were some problems with the HLTV demos on ENSL, but that should be fixed now. The file on ninelegends.com contains both maps and all rounds in any case. I’d also like to thank x-man for reffing on very short notice, even when he didn’t have a proper computer available.