Spedemix's Spooder Manouver School

[Spedemix 4,907]

I've been thinking about doing a Guide thread for awhile now about how to move with the Mechanical Legs. People sometimes ask me about my leg movement (or just compliment it). Today I had someone ask me if I was using controller "because your movement is so fluid". Also I see people grossly underutilizing the potential Leg movement offers.

 

So here it is: Spedemix's Spooder Manouver School!

 

This thread will be dedicated to material about all legs and their movement. I'll be adding stuff like jumping over ledges, climbing steep hills when I have the time to. I'll try to provide both "educational material" while also showing some footage of me utilizing these things in actual combat scenarios.

 

If you got some questions I'm more than happy to answer them. This thread isn't necessarily about how to build ML 200 crafts but I can talk about especially if the building aspect has something to do with moving the craft.

 

So here's the first topic in a video format: Decoupling your movement from your orientation:

 

 

TL;DR version is:

 

You want to able to change direction without changing orientation of your craft. You practice this by doing circles using only forwards, backwards and strafe buttons.

 

You want to be able to change orientation without changing direction. Basically expoing a sifferent side of your craft while going the same way as you were before. You practice this by doing pirouettes (both clockwise and counter-clockwise) while moving in single direction. I suggest you check closely the button combinations I'm using to get a full picture of this manouver.

 

These two combined will let you move in any direction while facing any direction. It's useful on offense when you need to push forward but there's any enemy to your right you need to take a shot at. It's also super useful in tanking enemy fire. The closer to death you are the more you want to use your sides (and in case of Tsunamies, guns too) to tank damage so you'll live longer and people won't just shoot your cabin to quickly finish you off.

[lsabeIla 1,049]

Bwaha, you sound like my dance teacher from 20-15 years ago 
Well explained and people should listen to your advice on this, i see many spooders stopping before changing their direction and losing their momentum.. 

Edit: Came to my mind, if using strafe keys Q & E simultaneously with turning keys A & D is awkward, change strafe keys to shift and spacebar where your little finger and thumb lay naturally, that's what i use  

Edited November 24, 2018 by lsabeIla

[Spedemix 4,907]

12 hours ago, lsabeIla said:

Edit: Came to my mind, if using strafe keys Q & E simultaneously with turning keys A & D is awkward, change strafe keys to shift and spacebar where your little finger and thumb lay naturally, that's what i use  

Hmm, maybe I'll try that. So far pressing multiple keys with one finger hasn't been a problem for since my fingers are huge (I aso do that when playing guitar: press two string with one fingertip if necessary).

 

Currently my free look is mapped to shift (so I can lock weapons when using underslung stuff) and currently I'm trying to figure out any uses for the brakes on legs.

[Spedemix 4,907]

How to jump from ledges:

 

In order to jump from ledges with a Spooder and land on your feet you need to approach the ledge diagonally. You then need to begin to turn just as you exit the ledge. The idea is to make 180 degrees while in the air so that once your face touches the ground because of the tilting the forward force will then pull you over back on your feet instead of on your roof. Even 90 degrees is enough in which case you'll simply do a somersault when your legs touch the ground.

 

It's a bit tricky to time it right so the best way to approach is to practice each ledge in the game individually until you have it right. This will become much easier when Custom Battles become available to everyone.

 

Here's a textbook example:

 

And here's couple of jump examples in combat situations with an on-screen keyboard:

 

 

Too bad jumping off ledges is rudimentary for wheeled builds and hovers so you can't shake them off like this.

[ChopChopChop 1,791]

Very nice....!!!

[Yurker 421]

Will see which of these also apply to meat grinders, since that's what I'm using.

[Big_Fundamental 66]

nice idea

i've try with xbox1 controler with my spider/tsun  and my spider/fortun

movement work nice with controller except for straff and not accurate for aim mostly with tsunami

no problem with fortun or another weapon who don't need accuracy

Edited April 5 by Big_Fundamental

[Spedemix 4,907]

^^I see.

 

I remember experimenting a bit with a controller by using Caucasus Spider in raids. I remember liking the Race control setup (where you forwards and backwards are bound to triggers) most. That way moving diagonally is much easier since you don't have tilt and press analog stick at the same time.

[eTo_LsD 265]

Thanks for the tip about jumping, I'm bored of landing on my back ^^
I really like your contributions on this forum.

[Yurker 421]

On ‎3‎/‎12‎/‎2019 at 11:59 AM, Yurker said:

Will see which of these also apply to meat grinders, since that's what I'm using.

Guess what, it's s**t compared to legs. Who would've guessed.

[blablabla78987 144]

Very helpfull, thanks Spedemix.

[lucashc90 2,512]

Tanks Spoodemex I reahle likeed wr tutoriuhl !!!!11!

[XR57 419]

is playing WASD spider not the norm or something?

Also...

Get some of these buttons. Less uncomfortable ones, of course. Very intuitive for rotation since they don't face upward, so it feels like you're properly twisting the vehicle about its up/down axis, I guess. Plus, it's easier on my brain to have them on the aim hand, so my left can just focus on WASDing around. Console controls being bad was the main reason why I switched over to PC honestly. I still use a controller for wheels though.

But again, I'vde thought that basically anyone who's played any other third person shooter (I guess you can call this that?) before would immediately go for A&D strafe. Ideally on a controller I'd want forwards/backwards/strafe all on the left stick, and then the bumpers as my rotation buttons.

Edited May 25 by XR57

[Spedemix 4,907]

^^I wrote this guide as response to the fact i see lot of hover players utilizing the potential of their movement but I don't see spider players doing the same. Most of the spider players (at least until recently) have driven their crafts like cars with only occasional strafing. They don't attempt to hide their burning cabins from enemy fire etc.

 

I actualy have a mouse like that with two thumb buttons. One of them I use for cloak (wpn grp5), the other for push-to-talk in Discord. My middle mouse button is Kapkan (wpn grp3) and I also have what they call a "gesture button" accessible by the thumb too which I've configured to be my self-destruct. All the weapons in my right hand so my left hand can fully focus on the movement (and opening up the map).

 

The biggest difference between XO and other third-person shooters is the fact the avatar's relationship to the camera is different. If you move the camera in a 3rd person shooter, you also turn the avatar. That doesn happen with Crossout and hence a better comparison would be a racing game (with full controllable camera) where A&D are used for steering. The few times I've played with a controller I've actually considered the Racing control schemes to be the best; I even use them for spiders if I play, say raids with a Caucasus spider.

 

Maybe I'll try binding the steering on my thumb mouse buttons just to test it out anyway.

 

This just popped in my head but you could use something like XinputPlus to remap your Xinput controller internally. The site is in japanese but the app itself is english. You could bound your left analog stick X-axis to your triggers to achieve steering with triggers. If there was a control scheme which had strafing configured to one of the analog sticks or triggers (I can't remember if there were), use that scheme and rebind the strafing to X-axis. If there wasn't then you probably have to suck it up and configure deadzones so that the digital inputs work reasonably in the analog stick. It wouldn't be perfect but at least your forward-backwards and trigger steering would be full analog.

[XR57 419]

On 5/26/2019 at 8:26 PM, Spedemix said:

Xinput

I was just about to go try this but thought of a potential issue. 

Joystick angles, triggers, etc are gradient inputs. I can push the gas pedal just halfway down, all the way, or not at all, depending on my choosing.

Stick buttons are not. Pushing my left stick in to strafe is on/off, and nowhere in between. So if the game is expecting me to strafe with a stick press, but then it gets fed a gradient input... isn't it going to know something's up? I would not wanna risk getting banned for that, considering how touchy devs were with the synth macro. Yes, I know Xinput itself can't be detected, but if it causes an otherwise impossible event to occur, then its presence can be deduced.

Alternatively, the controller itself might just reduce the gradient input into a boolean one. Which would feel kinda jarring on a joystick, but whatever.

Edit: I'm also not sure what would happen to your suicide button. Normally holding both strafe buttons at once is what does it. If you move those functions both to one analog stick, you won't be able to turn it two ways at the same time to detonate.

Edited May 30 by XR57

[Spedemix 4,907]

You can just configure a deadzone for an analog stick. Once you cross the deadzone the game registers a button input. SImple as that. Like I said the strafing wouldn't then be perfect since it's on/off but at least you'd get the control you want.

 

I honestly don't know if EAC picks something like that up or not. I do remember using Xinput+ with Crossout long time ago to tweak some stick parameters (wanted to reverse camera x-axis) and that ran without any issues. But that before EAC was implemented. I guess you could ask that question in the Q&A forums. My limited understanding is programs like Xinput+ or x360ce are whitelisted by most anticheats in the name of accessibility.

 

If you have the keyboard in front of you when you play with a controller, I'd just bind the SD to keyb spacebar or smth for a quick solution.

[XR57 419]

It probably is harmless, but having to turn my nice smooth joystick into an on/off button is a little depressing. I guess that's what you'd doing with WASD anyways though/KB in general.

[Spedemix 4,907]

I did a bit of digging with EAC's relationship to x360ce (which is a more popular software) and the worst-case scenario seems to be that if EAC doesn't like what you're doing with a controller rebinding software it'll simply prevent Crossout from launching. Most likely this will happen if the game is forced to load a custom dll file like a custom xinput1_3.dll or whatever. If there's a way to get Crossout launch happily with the controller rebound, the EAC doesn't care from that point onwards.

[Spedemix 4,907]

When your cannon spider is detetiorated to a state it can't fire forwards anymore, you can use the recoil of one of your cannons to stabilize it momentarily and the second to take a shot at enemy. It's generally easier to do it with a Steppe Spider cabin (since it's a lighter cabin) but here I managed to pull it off with a Bastion Spider:

 

Spoiler

 

 

Also in order to keep your build stable even when it's down to two legs is to put something under the middle legs. Even something simple as an engine will work:

 

Spoiler

 

It will eventually get shot off but it might keep you in the battle just a little bit longer to make a difference.