"Two Tanks" Pyramids-to-Jumpers Shots Chart

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Agatha
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"Two Tanks" Pyramids-to-Jumpers Shots Chart

Post by Agatha »

Hey,

I am moving soon, and when organizing my papers, I found my notes on Two Tanks jump shot angles. They're old and bad and paper, so I wanted to toss them—but not before making a replacement!

So, I made a thing (note: links to high-res version):
Image

There's an explanatory blurb, but basically, you should shoot at pyramids (their centers, unless otherwise marked) with angles given. The angles record how you can hit tanks jumping across through the cannon from either the near or far side of the map, from either blue's or red's perspective. I've checked the chart, but there may be small errors; also note: angles will differ slightly when the jumping tank jumps evasively!

Everything's given with nearest ¼° precision and significantly improves accuracy/scope over my paper notes. How could I be so precise? I wrote a plugin that dumps tanks' positions into a file, then recorded tanks jumping across from either direction. Extruding those positions by tank hitboxes gives the swept volume one should shoot. I then modified bzflag to display that volume:
Image
I also modified bzflag so it shows me the pyramid faces' centers on radar and gives me readouts of ½° heading (I want to commit the latter to main so everyone can be so precise). Then, it was just a matter of tediously testing every pyramid and recording which shots hit the tracks, with the exact intersection fine-tuned by a separate observer window.

Hopefully my chart will help drive interest for the "Two Tanks" map. Particularly since it seems that there's a misimpression that Two Tanks is actually a "campy map"??? You ask me, within reason, maps can't be campy. Inferior players can be campy. It seems like most players try to camp from the treads and get frustrated when they then (quite predictably) die? Like . . . why would you do that? Two Tanks has the richest parameter space of any map currently played, as I think this chart of just one small aspect of it thoroughly demonstrates. You should go rail or ground, where you can fight the good fight!

-A
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Zehra
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Re: "Two Tanks" Pyramids-to-Jumpers Shots Chart

Post by Zehra »

Well done Agatha. I'm impressed by your work.

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For those who may be interested, you may add some shootthrough/drivethrough objects at the positions given as a way to better reference where you need to be to make those shots as they would provide a good positional guide.
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To turn this into a practice map:
The following may be added to the map:

Code: Select all

world
freeCtfSpawns 
end
Simply add that and add in zones for tanks to spawn in the turret and add in a few physics drives/platforms.
You may add in some death objects at the end.
Set a single team slot to 1 player and join that team with the -solo bots option and amount of bots wanted.
Adjust the _explodeTime to control spawn rate and it becomes a practice map for improving your aim.
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Side notes are simply ideas which may be added to extend upon the original idea or make use of the analysis of Two Tanks provided in the above work.

-Zehra
Those who are critical of me, I'll likely be the same of them. ~Zehra
The decisions we make are the ones we look forward too and the ones we regret. ~Zehra
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