How to Improve Combat Skills?

I'm wondering if people might be willing to share some strategies and techniques for getting better at combat games in SL. Some areas for comment might be: how to get better by means in addition to sheer practice; technical/system considerations; separating fact from myth about reducing lag; how to detect cheating, etc. If there's enough substance I'll notecard it for free distribution to anyone interested.

I ask because in the combat I'm learning, which uses swords and bows, I pretty much suck at it. Not the roleplay aspects but the actual fighting. Partly I find mouselook disorienting, which I suppose is a practice issue, which I'm working on. It's dispiriting, though, when I see others running, shooting and talking all at the same time while I'm getting flattened two minutes after arrival on the scene. Heheh.

Thanks!

I know what you mean, Scott. Maybe try and find someone who's at the same level as you in group chat. Practise together. I also don't understand how some of them are able to run, shoot and type at the same time.

roleplay a wimp?

LOL sorry - I have no idea how to get better.

My guess is you have no chance against the 20ish uber-gamer geeks who live in their momma's basement.

Are you guys ever lucky I stumbled into this thread. lol

I run a combat league in world, where some of the best weapons fighters, unarmed fighters, and marksmen come to prove their worth in weekly tournaments. We also get together and practice every week, trading pointers and offering help to new fighters. Get a hold of me in world, and I'll be happy to give you some pointers, and maybe get you seeded in one of our upcoming tournaments.

RAGE: Extreme Circuit, RFC: Sport Circuit, and Constrictor Combat are my three groups I run out of Constrictor Combat arena in Baku. We use DCS2 for our armed combat, and we use Combat Evolution for our Mixed Martial Arts competition.

Drop by and have a look, and get a hold of me if you're interested.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Baku/86.069/250.156

scott i think it's mostly practise, also in the area where your doing your combat they often have a social area in a safezone, have a chat to the people there for some tips

you've just reminded me that it's been some time since i'v been to pure combat, time to lock and load!

-Crunch

ROTFL

Agreed...practice, practice, practice

I have been playing first person shooters since Doom came out in the early 90's so going into mouse look is a necessity for me.
When in mouselook I can be extremely fluid while moving and jumping but its because of the years of practice.

I don't getting into any combat in SL because its just too damn laggy and slow. With that in mind...don't forget that you may be up against some peopel with uber computers that see mimimal lag...so you may be aiming at a ghost image on your screen while the real avatar is already behind you.

Wireframe.

Assuming the opponent isn't also in wireframe: many prim flexi hair, floods of full-alpha particles, animated full-alpha textures.

If all else fails, gibberish on channel 20.

may help a bit, but at Enky things, if you wish to practice with a bow/ cross bow type weapons , there is an archery set up complete with bow and arrow, or check out Hex's sim where she sells a complete archery tourny set that is simply awesome! a bit expensive but awesome! and worth the Ls. but as always practice practice practice.


side question: are there any archery competitions happening in SL anywhere? would love to know!!

yep Avillion has one or two a week, i think they use the same board your talking about. Send an IM to Musa David, she's the leader of the rangers and will keep you updated as to when the next tournament is

/me throws the ranger gang sign

-Crunch

thanks Crunch!!

/me attempts to throw back ranger sign and sprains her finger, then concoles herself with the new wardrobe shopping she will be doin for this!

Since the SL browser is open source, couldn't someone develop a combat browser to make this all a little easier?

I read the post title on this as "How to Improve Combat SILKS" and went "WTF? Combat Silks....this I gotta see."

If only the archery range worked for dragon's fire breathing... We need somewhere that we can practice because I think the furries are getting tired of me setting them all on fire.

/me throws Dragon Gang sign.

Wireframe! I learned about this only a couple of days ago, reading Aimee Weber's book on advanced content creation. Didn't make the connection to combat, but it makes good sense.

Thanks for all these suggestions, I'll be checking them out!

Is going to wireframe in order to see behind things? Or is it to stop from loading textures? Because it doesn't stop textures from loading.

Can't prevent textures from loading, but in wireframe the GPU doesn't have to render faces, overlap alphas, etc.

That might work for a few combat systems, but not many, I'd guess

Side note: on my machine, wireframe is phenomonally slow, and actually results in getting *half* the FPS I'd get otherwise. I'm sure that's due to my particular video card, but I also know I'm not the only one to experience that.

@OP:

Many of the people that I know into melee combat turn down draw distance to minimum (some even use debug settings to go to 32meters), set object and flexi sliders to minimum, turn off cloud rendering, turn off trees, etc.

The biggest piece of advice I can give are to talk to the members of the combat community you are in and solicit advice on getting the best FPS and settings. Once you squeeze the best performance you can out of the viewer, you start fighting SL less, and fighting your opponent more, and that opens the way to develop your reaction times and combat skills. Those same people will also be able to give advice on the ins and outs (and quirks) of the weapons used by the community, which can be tremendously helpful.

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Turning off velocity interpolation can help with that somewhat, and I strongly recommend it when using swords. Go to the Client Debug menu, select Network, and uncheck "Velocity Interpolation".

This has the unfortunate and disturbing effect (especially in Havok 4 sims) of causing avatar movement to occasionally appear to stop and resume, which is not so nice when not in combat, but also means that when you encounter a lag spike during combat, you are not surprised by the 'rubberband effect'. Just keep focused on the unmoving opponent, and when the lag spike ends you still know exactly where they will be.

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