Saving Kreedz: Preserving the Movement that defined CS1.6

This is a special post of an article I have written regarding the treatment of movement in CS:GO.  This article is my own writing and I may link to it or offer it in discussions in other places on the web, but for now I've included it here as well for ease of access.

Aim and movement, movement and aim – with our keyboards we have always navigated the corridors of virtual worlds and with our mice we have always directed our crosshairs. From the earliest days of first person shooters, movement and aim have been the method of exploration, combat, and control in the virtual arenas of violence and victory. Indeed, practically every method of interaction with the environment in a 3D shooter uses movement, aim, or some combination of both – even in today's modern shooters. These two pillars of the first person shooter are also the foundational skill sets of first person shooter mastery.  Movement is like a language.  It has vocabulary, grammar, and is a means to an end.  It is a means of expressing your power to control and shape the world you inhabit, virtual or otherwise.

In modern shooters that I have recently played, I have often felt as if something were missing. It almost feels as if I am playing half of the game that I used to play.  When I pause to think of what I am comparing the experience with, I think of games like CS, Quake, or Unreal.  It seems that the movement of modern shooters starting with Source based games has been greatly simplified in recent years to create a more accessible and, in some sense, more logical gameplay for players. In Team Fortress 2, for example, your player can do nothing but run at a constant speed while going either forwards, backwards, or strafing side to side, with an incredibly weak jump (subsequent jumps after are better called hop-scotch skips). Thankfully, rocket jumping for the Soldier, pipe jumping for the Demolition class, and double jumping for the Scout class are present – these abilities allow some mid-air maneuvers for these three classes. Thankfully is a bit of an understatement – I think the game would fail spectacularly if they weren't there, because the movement is so completely one-dimensional otherwise. Unfortunately, other Source games without fantastical classes don't include these elements and suffer greatly.  The Modern Warfare games have very quick movement which is a nice feature, but there is little to learn for one player to gain advantage over another. Most maneuvers around terrain are accomplished simply by pressing space (for example, as to climb up a small ledge.) The guns are relatively accurate jumping so Modern Warfare has some of the most interesting movement possibilities of shooters available today – but it still cannot compare to the movement of older shooters.

We now stand at a cross-roads. On the one hand, it is easy to understand the motivation of game developers of today compared with those of 10 or 15 years ago. The audiences are much larger. The appeal of the games is much broader. The skill sets of the clientele vary widely between veterans who have been playing shooters for years, to very young players who weren't born yet when Quake was released. To make things even more complicated, there are two very popular platforms for 3D shooters – consoles and PCs, with varying control schemes and software / hardware limitations. Game developers have to work within these limitations, carefully weighing all of the considerations, so a certain amount of patient understanding is called for with all of the veterans of hardcore shooters who complain about today's games. Making a game that pleases everyone is not easy – it may not even be possible. On the other hand, half of the soul of what makes a 3D shooter a 3D shooter is at stake, and we are seeing the gradual erosion of one of two core elements of the satisfying gameplay that paragons like CS1.6 and Quake Live represent. It would be a tragedy if modern developers get locked into the current movement tropes or even worse, forget paying attention to movement in their games. Fighting and combat cannot be satisfying if it is just a shooting gallery on rails. In the path to mastering a shooting game, movement, aim, and the endless combinations of the two are what combine to create depth and breadth to the learning curve for a game.

The goal of this article is to bring this truth to the forefront of discussions about how to improve CS:Global Offensive. I think it's obvious that any game with the CS brand that doesn't include complicated movement is an imposter – no one who has played any CS game would accept such a game as genuine. From boosting on boxes, to bunny-hopping, to evading AWP shots when peeking corners, the movement of CS1.6 made it what it is just as much as the recoil, the bullet spread, the weapons and their accuracy – in other words, elements of shooting. I think that it takes just a moment of reflection before everyone who has played CS will agree with me how crucial movement is, even though it often feels invisible until it's gone.

In CS1.6, the movement is incredibly complex – enough to almost give you goosebumps considering how much of it was unintentional on the part of the developers. It's so involved that it actually spawned a sub-game called KZ, which comes from a player with the alias Kreedz who created the first climbing maps. Most CS1.6 players have heard of KZ but not as many play it or pursue it actively. I have personally played CS since 1999, and I played on my last serious team in 2009. In 2008 while playing for this team, a teammate showed me KZ and now I continue to play CS solely to explore it's movement. I am astonished at how deep this sub-game is, which is only matched by my frustration to see it disappear in CS:GO. Having played both CS1.6 and KZ, and having achieved a high level of competition in CS1.6 (CEVO-P, CEVO-m, ESEA-m, CAL-i, CAL-m) I can safely say that KZ is just as hard, if not harder, than CS1.6. You heard me correctly. Most of the players in KZ have been playing KZ just as long as the top players in CS1.6 'shooting' have been perfecting their craft. The feats of movement are just as impressive and difficult to perform as any feats of aim in it's big brother game. I wish more people in the CS1.6 community participated and promoted KZ – it is not only intense competitively, but the motion of a skilled KZ player in CS1.6 is almost an art form and a wonder to behold.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhy1D0V8ReQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIoROktfm0A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjgj2u5sPX4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOKdW436nQI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POExZtwEjbQ

The thrill, fear, and rush of adrenaline coming from climbing a difficult map, where a single slip up takes you to the bottom. The obsessive quest for mastery, where you spend hours meticulously honing the tools in your arsenal, improving jump by jump at an enormous range of techniques and tricks, some of which are unintended consequences of player creativity. The art of your craft - the map that you break down and analyze, work on section by section, and put together like a piano piece. The ecstasy of reaching the top and hitting the timer to beat your personal best, or if you are an expert, a national best or world best. Anyone who plays regular CS1.6 can relate to experiences like this one. Currently at this time, in CS:GO you can only move forward, backward, side to side, and jump a very small number of times in a row.

I'm here to advocate that we save KZ, and save CS1.6's incredible movement. It would be in the interest of everyone who wants to preserve the games core elements, and it would be in the interest of future players who would experience these joys as well. I challenge game developers to be creative and think carefully about how movement can be improved in modern shooters and how it can return to it's rightful place as the second pillar of the 3D shooter. If you are with me in this, I encourage you to participate in this debate. The specifics of what to keep and what to drop are certainly a gray area, and perhaps not every movement aspect that was in reality a glitch should be kept.

If you are still reading this, thank you for taking the time to do so. I do appreciate it, and remember:

TL:DR CS w/o KZ is not CS, it's FAIL CS! SAVE KREEDZ!

Long Jumping, Part 1: Introduction to In-Game Technique

Preface

I spent quite a bit of time on a lengthy introduction where I introduced some concepts and theories I will use through the rest of this blog.  Well, that introduction is now over, but I hope those who read it understood why I did it and will benefit from what was written.  The goal of this blog is also the 'why' of things, not just the 'how'.  If I spent only time on tutorials and tips then the "why" could easily get lost.  The ultimate tip or tool in someone's arsenal is an understanding of learning - once you have this, you can discover what works for yourself.

Nevertheless, you can't have too much theory without the practice, and that is why I will now start discussing a specific discipline of KZ which also happens to be one of the most popular.  I will attempt to apply the concepts and theories I've explained thus far to illuminate how long jumping works, why it works the way it does, and how improving to great heights is possible.  This post will focus on the in-game technique of long-jumping - that is, the basic mechanics required to perform it that are a mystery to most normal CS players.  Later posts will focus on learning techniques for improving your form, and out of game techniques for maximizing comfort and control (probably the most important.)  The following is basic knowledge for a KZ player, but none of this information is intuitive or easily discovered on your own - in fact, most of it is nearly impossible to discover without help from other KZ players and these specific mechanics of the Half-life engine are not documented anywhere by Valve.

So sit back while I explain how this mysterious feat of Counter-Strike movement is performed.

I.  Introduction


Before I continue, I will link to an excellent tutorial page on the xtreme-jumps website:

http://xtreme-jumps.eu/page.php?59

Tutorials explaining the basics of long jumping can be found there, but I will also discuss the basics in this introductory post and clarify whatever I feel needs to be clarified with regards to the XJ tutorial and knowledge of long jumping in general.

Long jumping has a very self-explanatory name.  The goal is to jump as far as possible using normal CS settings.  However, there are quite a few different ways of jumping, and long jumping in KZ nomenclature has come to mean the kind where you run and jump rather than bunny hop, double-duck, etc.   Just running and jumping - plain and simple!  Except its never quite that simple, of course :).  Long jumping must not be confused with high jumping, where you are high enough off the ground that the mechanics for jumping off are somewhat different.  Nevertheless, high jumping and long jumping are otherwise exactly the same in their mechanics.

Competitive distance jumping is done on the map kz_longjumps2, which is where all of the screen shots below were taken.  Also, when discussing the measurement called 'units', these are the 'centimeters' of the Half-life engine and are little cubes that are the building blocks making up every Half-life map.

II.  A Word on High Jumps vs Long Jumps

A high jump is simply a long jump where edge friction is in effect.

What is 'edge friction'?  Well, if the edge of a block is 70 units or higher from the floor below it, then a factor in the CS engine called edge friction exists.  To get an idea of how high 70 units is, the high jump blocks on kz_longjumps 2 are 80 units high.  It really isn't all that high!

The high jump blocks on kz_longjumps2 are 80 units high.

Edge friction is a weird property that means you lose speed as you run towards the edge of the block.  The amount you lose depends on how close you get - if you are around 13.6 units away before you jump, you don't lose any speed.  The amount of speed you lose increases as you get towards the edge, so being only 10-12 units away generally results in minimal speed loss, while getting closer than 5 units causes your speed to plummet.  As you can also tell from this diagram, 13.6 units is a pretty subtle distance - only about 1/6th the distance up this block.  Another important thing to note is that running at an angle and jumping helps with high jumps.  As it turns out, running straight towards the edge has the greatest edge friction effect, while running at an angle reduces the speed lost.  Running perpendicular to the edge (or right along it) means you don't lose any speed!  When a jump is a high jump, you generally want to modify the run-and-jump accordingly - either by jumping early, jumping at an angle, or some combination of both.

The 'floor' of a high jump depends on two things - the edge where you are jumping off and how far down the next surface is.  This means that high jumps aren't actually all relative to the same floor, such as the ground floor of the map.  The game determines the vertical distance between the edge of the block and the nearest surface directly below, and if this is 70 units or over, then it becomes a high jump.  Examine these screenshots:

The edge at the top of the measurement is considered a high jump, as it is over 90 units off the 'ground floor'...

...but if you were to jump at the edge at the top of this measurement line, it would be considered a long jump because the surface below is considered the 'ground floor ' and is only about 48 below the edge, which is less than 70.  That means there would be no edge friction, and running to the very edge won't result in losing speed.  Therefore, in this case, you would have different results jumping from the same edge, depending on from where you jumped.

By now you might realize that almost all jumps in climb maps are high jumps, because so many blocks are 70 units or higher off of the ground!  Maybe long jumping is best seen as a sub-set of high jumping, in this case?

It is important to understand that with the exception of edge friction, exactly the same mechanics apply to long jumps and high jumps.  This includes ground strafe technique, first strafe, air strafes, synchronization, air time - pretty much everything that will be discussed in the breakdown below.  Therefore, they are performed almost exactly the same way.  In competitive distance jumping, high jumps are considered separate from long jumps, which are done low enough to the ground that you can jump from the very edge.  High jumps have their own room with their own blocks on kz_longjumps2, as shown in the screenshot.  However, the running, jumping, and strafing in the air involve identical principles and mechanics in both cases - high jumps are only different in that you modify your running and jump off.

The basic technique of running and jumping is the essence of climb maps.  When you jump from block to block on a climb map, you are essentially performing a series of long jumps or high jumps, even though the distance may be 200 units or less, and the only 'prestrafe' you need is around 210.  The map kz_longjumps2 is just a showcase for how far you can push the limit of running and jumping, and so you are given enough room on the block to reach the maximum ground speed.  Otherwise, you are doing the same thing that you are doing in all climb maps.  This is important to keep in mind, because this concept has implications to how we approach recording maps.  This will be covered in a separate post.

III.  Stats Plugin Breakdown

It is now pretty much accepted that a statistics plugin for analyzing your jumps is a necessity to improve in long jumping.  When statistics plugins were created, the limits for all distance jumping techniques exploded.  I will be talking a lot about the various parts of the statistics shown by these plugins when I break down the long jump, so it's important that you understand the basics of these statistics.

First off, I've created a beginner KZ/Bhop/Longjump pack which includes long jump stats that can be downloaded here:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/l0lv5u

Instructions on installation are included (they are pretty simple.)  In addition, Bjormi has created an excellent LJ stat plugin that can be found here:

http://xtreme-jumps.eu/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?223567

It has the advantage over the one in my pack in that it shows your jumpoff and landing edge.

Observe these screen shots from a Long Jump performed using Bjormi's plugin:

Jump performed by Yours Truly

1. Distance: shows how far you jumped, in units.  
2. Maxspeed (gain): the maximum speed reached during your jump, which is calculated by adding the speed gained (and lost) from all of your strafes plus your prestrafe taking off.  The number in parenthesis is the total gain from all of your strafes.
3. Prestrafe: how fast you were at the moment you took off, which is determined by how good your ground strafe was.  
4. Strafes: the number of strafes performed is shown here.  
5. Sync: an average of how well your strafes were synchronized.  This is determined by averaging the sync column of the strafe stats, adjusted for the airtime of each strafe.

E-mazing strafe stats performed by CowOnCrack

Here are what the strafe statistics mean, going from left to right.  Each row represents the stats for a strafe.

1. Strafe number: the label for the strafe, in the order they were performed.  For example, the first row has the statistics for the first strafe.  
2. Speed gained: the amount of speed that strafe got you, which is determined by how wide and how well synced it was.  
3. Speed lost: The amount of speed lost on the strafe.  This is discussed in the long jump breakdown below.  It seems this is already included in the calculation of the gain column, and so isn't included when calculating total gain and Maxspeed.
4. Airtime:  This is how much time you took on the strafe as a percentage of total time in the air.  
5. Sync:  The last number shows how well synchronized that particular strafe was with the turning of your mouse.  

Block: this shows the distance between the two edges that you are jumping.  Consequently, it will tell you what block you are on in the map kz_longjumps2.  

Jumpoff: how close you were to the edge in units while jumping off.  A jumpoff of less than 1 unit is ideal for long jumps, while you usually want a jumpoff of at least 10 units for high jumps.
Landing: how close you were to the opposite edge in units right when you land.

IV.  Long Jumping Break Down

Here are the basic components of a long jump:

1. Starting position.  This is where you are positioned on the block before you get ready to run and jump.  On climb maps, positioning is relevant because it affects the angle of the jump, and most jumps that aren't super easy have an optimal angle that you must follow to land the jump.

   

   Common starting position

2. Ground strafe, also known as 'prestrafe'.  This motion involves using your forward key and strafe keys as well as turning your mouse to get the best speed possible before you take off.  Starting facing about 90 degrees away from the edge, begin by holding forward and a strafe key.  In the screenshot above you would hold forward and right strafe (to head towards the edge).   While doing this, turn slowly to the right or left (depending on which direction the edge is) while holding the corresponding strafe key.  By synchronizing the turn with your strafing, it is possible to exceed the normal engine limit of 250 units a second which would be accomplished by just holding forward, backward, or either strafe key in isolation.  There is an optimal rate of turn which will get you the best possible speed for a ground strafe, which is 275 to 277 units a second.  274-275 with an occasional 276 is a very good range for prestrafe - the best that players can normally achieve.  270 or higher is usually the low threshold to still perform decent quality jumps and not severely handicap your distance.  This optimal rate of turn isn't very fast or very slow, but right about in between these two extremes.  Test it out for yourself using the /speed command, which is a part of my KZ pack and most others.  It is a 'speedometer' which will constantly show your speed in units per second.
3. Take off - this is the moment you press jump and at the same time (or immediately afterwards) let go of forward while continuing to hold down the strafe key and continuing to turn into your first strafe.  There are three important parts of a good takeoff:
1. Timing:  Letting go of forward is mandatory for effective jumping - holding it down while in the air causes you to slow down.  Many beginners make this mistake, but fortunately it isn't that hard to correct.  Still, it isn't uncommon for even experienced jumpers to mistime the letting go of forward.  If you let go of forward too early, your ground speed before taking off plummets like a boulder.  Therefore most jumpers develop the habit of holding it down for a very short period right after they jump.  However, what this can do is mess with the synchronization of your first strafe a bit.  Perfect timing is releasing forward the microsecond after you jump or even right as you jump - and especially before doing your first strafe.
2. Angle: The angle that you take off at is often relevant to climbing and competitive distance jumping.  When you are doing a block on kz_longjumps2, you want to take off at an angle relative to the edge.  This angle is slightly away from the direction you are turning towards.  In climb maps, the angle you jump at can have a surprising effect on whether or not you can make the jump.  On extreme maps, often a perfect angle is required.

   

   Examples of good takeoff angles for long jump blocks

3. Edge:  Finally, the concept of edge is an important part of taking off.  If you jump too far from the edge during a long jump, you are making it harder for yourself to reach the edge of the other block because you are increasing the distance required.  That is why all long jumpers strive for a jump off edge of 0.  A 255 block jumped 5 units too early is in effect as hard as a 260 block - in other words, impossible by current Lj standards.  On the other hand, jumping early on a high jump is almost always mandatory, because running to the very edge causes you to lose so much speed that the extra distance covered doesn't come close to making up for it.
4. First strafe.  Even though your first strafe is hopefully one of many more to come, there are a few things unique to it that are worth discussing separately.  
1. Right or left: The first important thing is that you can either strafe left or right on your first strafe, depending on your ground strafe and take off.  For the purposes of the game engine, these are identical maneuvers.  Actually, using forward and backwards as strafe keys and your strafe keys as forwards and backwards also works - the game engine is 'omni-directional.'  This is how sideways long jumps of various kinds are accomplished.  However, on some climb maps there isn't room to ground strafe in one direction and so some jumps are are way easier (or sometimes only possible) with a certain direction prestrafe.
   

   

   Left Prestrafe Takeoff

   
   

   

   Right Prestrafe Takeoff

2. The most important strafe: Your first strafe is by far the most important strafe for determining the distance of your jump.  The air time, or percent of your jump spent performing this strafe, as well as the speed gained with the strafe, are particularly important.  The more speed you get with this strafe and the first few afterwards, the farther you will go as the speed is maintained through your entire jump.
3. Sets up the rest of the jump: Your first strafe continues from the same direction as your prestrafe and ends when you cross back over the edge of the long jump block in front of you, so this effects the shape of your jump.  A big take off angle will tend to give you a large first strafe and large subsequent strafes.
5. Air strafes.  These are the strafes performed after your first strafe.  There are many aspects of strafe quality, discussed below:

   

   This diagram demonstrates a 6-strafe long jump.  The important thing to look at are the angles of the prestrafe motion and the air strafes afterwards.  Note the desire to keep the strafes evenly moving back and forth until they finally finish on the opposing edge, resulting in a straight jump.  Note also the strafes decreasing in size as you reach the edge, with the last strafe being longer and slower than the rest.  Remember to release W right as you jump or very soon after, and crouch right as you are about to land!

1. Speed Gained - the speed gained from a strafe is determined by how wide and well synced the strafe is with the turning of your mouse.  The game engine uses the X axis of your mouse to calculate synchronization.  It doesn't really matter if you move your mouse up and down or even to some extent in circles when you strafe, as long as that x-axis is synced with your strafe keys.  Of course, in practice awkward motions will often mess up your x-axis motion, but in theory it shouldn't matter.  When you move your mouse a certain distance in CS 'space' while syncing it, a certain amount of speed is gained.  It doesn't matter if you move the mouse fast or slow - the same speed will be gained.  However, doing it quicker means you gain the speed in a quicker amount of time, which will result in further distance because that speed will carry through your jump (see below.)  
2. Synchronization with Turning - There is a theoretical width, or distance in space, that you move your synced mouse + keys through that results in a certain amount of gain, given that your synchronization is perfect - aka, at 100%.  If it is not, then you won't gain that theoretical maximum and instead get less speed for the same width, or less bang for your buck (Yankee expression).   This means that how well synced your strafes are with your mouse turning can make a big difference.  Every strafe you do that is not 100 percent synced didn't give you as much speed as it could have.  This means that strafing at less than 100 percent sync is inefficient.  If there is a limit to how fast you can strafe, then syncing those strafes better provides a way to push your limits even further.  Low sync is a complete handicap on your distance, and doing lots of low-synced strafes is a far less efficient use of airtime than a few well synced ones.
3. Evenness - the strafes after your first strafe should be even with your first.  The explanation will now come for why you take off at an angle - it's so that your first strafe can be performed with some sizable area to strafe in.  See the long jump diagram.  By taking off at an angle you are setting up a back and forth motion over an imaginary line connecting the two edges of the block. By strafing back and forth over this line, and then using your last strafe to even out on it, you are gaining speed in the correct vector, and jumping as straight as possible.  Even in climb maps, when analyzing jumping from one edge to another, this kind of visualization is helpful to finding that perfect path through the air which will carry you straight and evenly to the closest edge of the block you are aiming for.
4. Airtime, or Quick Strafes - Quick strafes means that they are performed quickly in time.  Airtime is just how much time in the air you spent on the strafe as a percentage of the entire time in the air.  Contrary to what some may believe, quick strafes and airtime are the most important factors in determining distance, not the "Max Speed" statistic.  Synchronization, although important, is often less important than strafing as quickly as possible when it comes to serious distance jumping.  This holds true as long as your overall sync is not too low - if you are getting less than 75% sync then you should look to improve that first, but once you start hitting 80% sync or higher on most jumps, the distance gained from better sync hits hard diminishing returns, and this is when airtime often becomes much more important.  The first n-1 strafes (where n is the strafes you are performing) should be done in the fastest time possible with that time evenly spread among those strafes (see Evenness).  The last strafe should even you out, and be as slow and as long as possible.  If you are doing 7 strafes for example, aiming for around 13.5% airtime on every strafe but the last would produce a very good jump.  That means 19% air time on the last strafe.  See the long jump statistics break down for where you can locate the air time of your strafes.
5. Order of Gain - You want to have higher gain on the strafes at the beginning of your jump, and less gain on the strafes at the end.  If you have been absorbing what was written so far, it should be more clear why this is the case.  Speed gained in the beginning of the jump will count for more distance than speed gained at the end.  If two cars travel for a total time of one minute, but the first car takes 5 seconds to reach 60km/hr while the second takes 10 seconds, then which goes farther?  The car that sped up quicker is traveling at its maximum speed for longer, so it travels farther even though both have a maximum speed of 60km/hr.  This explains why the 'Max Speed' statistic is deceptive. 
6. A word on maxspeed - Maxspeed is roughly 'correlated' with distance, in that high maxspeed goes with high distance, but it is a rough correlation and not a causation.  340 or higher maxspeed is unlikely to result in anything less than 250 units distance or higher, but it might just as easily result in 251 as 257.  Likewise, it is possible to get 253 to 254 stats with less than 320 maxspeed in rare cases.  The explanation for these discrepancies is the gain over time of these strafes - big strafes resulting in huge gain are of no use if they occur over a long period of time, and likewise, strafes that aren't as big performed very quickly are of greater use.
6. Landing.  All jumps in KZ with raw distance as the goal should have a duck at the end, which extends your time in the air and thus your distance.  The difference it makes is quite substantial - around 20 units or more if you are going faster.  In an absolute ideal situation, you would finish strafing before you ducked, because strafing while holding duck results in lost speed.  In practice, it's very difficult to avoid holding down crouch for at least a tiny duration of your final strafe.  It is important to crouch as late as possible, because this can actually make a few units of difference.  Not crouching late enough is something that will never show up on stats plugins, and can harm your distance quite a bit if you aren't paying attention.
7. Smoothness and Speed Loss.  Sudden, jerky mouse movements combined with the movement keys will quickly result in lost speed while playing Half-life.  The long jump movement is constrained enough that it's hard to lose ridiculous amounts of speed.  Nevertheless, jerky strafe motions in the air will result in noticeable speed loss.  This loss is the second number in the strafe column, right after speed gained.  If you keep your strafes smooth, then speed loss won't be an issue.  One final note - the same issue creeps up in your ground strafe if you aren't careful.  You might find that your prestrafe keeps plummeting to 250 units/second and you can't determine why.  The reason could be that you are performing the 'flick' motion of your first strafe in anticipation - before you've completely jumped off the block!  This will destroy your speed quite nicely.

V.  Conclusion

This concludes the examination of the in-game technique of long jumping.  This post contains all of the fundamentals and game mechanics behind the long jump that took years for KZ players to discover and are not documented anywhere by Valve.  These tools will help you analyze your jumps to trouble shoot problems, but this knowledge alone won't tell you the best and most efficient methods for improving, or the optimal physical technique outside of the game.  These will be covered in the next two essays.  In the mean time, I recommend taking a breather to absorb this information.

-CoC

Essay: The Three Pillars of Learning, Part 3: Talent (or lack thereof)

A good starting point for this next essay will be to define what talent is.  Talent is often thought of whatever abilities you were born with or innately possess, as opposed to what you've accumulated through experience.  In practice, talent and experience are almost inseparable and attempting to separate one from the other almost always results in problems.  The whole nature versus nurture debate continues and seemingly never ends, because just when one perspective seems to have all of the answers, the other one fires back in a big way and all of a sudden, the roles of who is in vogue are reversed.

This debate is unlikely to ever be settled, and if you think hard about it, you can see why - nature and nurture are ultimately part of the same system, and separating them is something arbitrary that we do.  The human body and all of its parts (genes, brain, muscles, mind, etc.) and it's environment are one continuous system.  Just as a person and their environment are constantly and forever interacting, the individual parts of someone are doing the same.  This is a bit philosophical, but from the perspective of someone looking from the outside, there is no nature or nurture.  Maybe there is a road, or a path through space and time that you travel.  But even this path or space you travel through does not exist in isolation - the universe itself is one open system.

I bring this philosophical point up because it's important to understanding why this debate does not and cannot conclude, but also why it will always be useful.  We make these arbitrary distinctions for a good reason - we notice effects, and we want to know the causes - or, at least, the most important or fundamental ones (proximate causes).  We want to know exactly what role genetics plays because we define genetics to be a certain thing within our explanatory framework of biology, and we see effects that we wish to explain.  These effects might not correspond neatly to our framework, but the framework is far from useless and can only improve in accuracy over time as it is revised with respect to scientific advancement through studying nature and nurture.

But we must always be cautious about making labels and prescriptions, and saying things that we aren't certain of.  This is especially true with regards to talent - we must carefully define it.  If we want to say it has to do with innate ability, we have to tease out all of the ways experience can shape our lives and get to the heart of what we are truly born with.  And when we do this, we find it becomes harder and harder to identify what it is about ourselves or others that was there from the beginning.  But we can go very far by imagining situations where environments are identical, or creating studies or tests where environmental factors are controlled or eliminated by sampling, or studying identical twins (which have the same genetic code).

Physical traits - height, eye color, hair color, skin color, etc. are all completely determined by genetics but are all irrelevant to the honing of a skill.  Other traits like metabolism, lung capacity, physical build and skeletal structure, etc., can  influence physical sports but aren't a guarantee of success.  Even physical sports require a mind that can learn motor skills very quickly.

Learning traits - intelligence testing demonstrates differences in some cognitive abilities from person to person.  The standard IQ test doesn't say much about an individual and what their life will be like, however it has been shown to be a solid statistical tool to examine an aggregate of individuals.  Given that a wide variety of backgrounds and environments are included, the disparities present almost certain lead to the conclusion that some people are quicker learners.  From experience we all know people that appear more quick to learn, or have other intelligence traits like excellent memory and recall, good visual memory and recognition, an ability to calculate numbers quickly or a particular creative talent like writing, painting, music etc.

But these anecdotal abilities suffer a fatal flaw - how does the genetic code have a one-to-one correlation between itself and excellence at arbitrary human behaviors?  The answer is that it doesn't - there must be underlying aspects of physiology in the brain and the rest of the central nervous system that lend themselves to certain behaviors or make other behaviors more difficult - a multitude of intelligence's, instead of one intelligence.  Maybe even hundreds, or thousands.  If there is one trait that we can say at all defines intelligence, it can only be the ability to learn period, which may be the ability to grow neurons, form connections, and condition your brain faster than others.  Anything else runs into enormous difficulties when we try to fit our preconceived notions into a box, and our ignorance on this subject is enormous.

Because nothing else is well established at this time, I will focus on the idea that the ability to learn is the key talent of intelligence, and does vary from person to person.  The most important thing about learning ability is that you learn quicker - in the same amount of time, you can acquire knowledge and know-how quicker than someone else.  This would be all it takes to be forever above and beyond that person.  You are not required to even have a greater understanding of what you learned, or a better ability to analyze it, express it, etc. - simply that you consistently learn faster than others is enough to put you far ahead of someone else when your test results are compared.  So learning quickly is an advantage, and all who possess it are perhaps the most intelligent among us.

Yet, everyone can learn, and almost everyone can learn almost anything.  Learning at a 'normal' pace is not slow by any means.  Even a human of average intelligence can learn an incredible range of behaviors in their life time - humans are truly unmatched in this area in comparison to the rest of the animal kingdom.  Let's suppose for a moment that quick learners merely have time on their side - that means greatness isn't out of reach for the rest, it merely takes more time and work.  They can go even farther by using methods discovered by those out there granted with quicker learning, which is a point of momentous implication discussed in the technique article.  Thankfully, as long as we don't encounter violence, disease, otherwise bad outcomes, we all live a very long time.  Also, one of the curses for those who learn quickly is they tend not end up far ahead of others, because their ability to learn quickly and get the same results as others in less time simply conditions them to put less time in.  It may be unfair to call this laziness, but certainly those who are gifted but not pushed towards using their gifts can easily become complacent just coasting on talent, which is how I felt I spent a large part of my childhood.

The most important lesson I can conclude with about talent is that so much of talent rests on the question of age, as well as environment rather than in-born ability.  It is incredibly hard to tease out these issues and we can't really say at this point whether intelligence and learning are 90 percent in born or 90 percent environment.  Most people when they are young are quick learners, and if exposed to the right environment can become professionals in almost anything.  Young adult learners have plenty of time to improve their methods so that they can enjoy a lifetime of learning and pursuing hobbies and skills.

It is my belief, and I can't say this with any certainty, but here it is: almost anyone can reach the point where they could be considered "very smart".  Genius, maybe not.  But in a world where everyone's basic needs are met, everyone receives a good education and a childhood that encourages learning, everyone is in good health through good healthcare and a good diet / exercise, then there would suddenly be a lot more geniuses around.  In fact, being exceptionally good at multiple skills would probably become the norm.  If this was compounded with widespread knowledge of techniques and practices, which could be made possible by the internet, people would also be able to teach themselves basically anything on their own and the best practices and methods for doing it.

This hypothetical utopian society is used to pose the question - just how much is intelligence determined by something in born?  How much of an innate advantage do some people have?  How many of us really could be the next Nobel Prize winner?

I truly believe that there are many smart individuals who do not have their skills shown on an IQ test because their talents are not recognized on an exam.  I can say for sure (this has been demonstrated) that all humans have an innate desire to learn - our brains are hardwired to reward us for learning something.  That "Ah HAH!" moment of learning something new that follows intense frustration and confusion has a physiological basis - our brains are withholding that dopeamine reward until we learn that new, beneficial behavior.  This is an evolved response and is one more reason why we are the indestructible super predator of earth (indestructible if you don't count ourselves among our enemies).  I think it is our broken system which doesn't create opportunities for some of the less fortunate among us to discover what a pleasure learning is and pursue this passion for life.  Just the simple fact that we have proven that nearly every human can start on that upwards spiral of lifelong learning and mastery is a wondrous revelation - if children in school seem distracted, we haven't made learning schoolwork interesting enough.  They might be enjoying learning some other skill in their environment instead (such as honing those KZ skills...)

Strangely enough, studying the IQ as a predictor of success in life results in little to no correlation.  In addition, studies of Nobel Prize winners shows no correlation between their IQ scores at a young age, and who ends up getting the prize.  Many Nobel Prize winners are of average or even below-average intelligence.

-CoC

Essay: The Three Pillars of Learning, Part 2: Work Ethic

This post will be shorter than the last essay on technique.  One reason is that there is certainly less to say - working hard is something that seems trivial to most people.  However, as I will now expose, a lot of our intuitions and commonly held beliefs about work are also inaccurate or misleading.

The first one I already touched upon in the previous article as it relates to technique - simply working hard at something often isn't a sure recipe for success.  In fact, often in life, hard work gets you nowhere, or at least doesn't get you further than where you currently are.  Society in the United States glamorizes hard work, and the idea that with it one can pull oneself up from their bootstraps, and in so doing come from a meager or humble background and achieve great things.  This is the vision of equal opportunity in America.

You don't have to be a Marxist to know that things don't always turn out the way they are depicted in this idealized version of society.  This doesn't in any way undermine the incredible value and importance of equal opportunity, but it's important to be reminded that sometimes hard work doesn't yield the appropriate payoff we all sometimes think it does or should.  The same is true in competitive hobbies and sports.  In these endeavors it can be especially discouraging to put in a lot of time and effort, not meet the results you want or expect, and then be told by someone that you simply didn't work hard enough.  Or, for example, working much harder than someone else but only seeing one half of the results they do.  Sometimes we expect our hard work to pay the proper dividends, and when it doesn't, we give up in frustration.  We sometimes conclude we aren't good enough for achieving.

That's why I brought up technique in the last article as the solution to this dire problem for anyone who wants to succeed at any endeavor.  It is indeed true that anyone who works hard at something should achieve improvement in their results over time, but sometimes people don't because they are going about it the wrong way.

There are many causes for this.  Sometimes the proper ways are far from obvious or intuitive, and progress is practically impossible without access to a large body of knowledge and an instructor to relate that knowledge to you and make it comprehensible.  There are some people who don't have a good sense of how to work, because they are disorganized in their thinking and haven't been taught to think about method and approach.  I used to be of the latter kind.  When I was growing up, I had a lot of innate ability in everything I tried.  I naturally came to think of things in terms of being good at them, or bad at them.  I didn't pay much attention to my methods of learning, because riding on ability alone I was able to outperform almost everyone else with minimal time and effort put in.  Of course, there came a time when ability alone was not enough to carry me, and unfortunately this was when I was already a Junior in high school.  My usual straight A's slipped into B's and finally the occasional C, and I didn't know what to do.  I had a bit of an emotional breakdown at that point with regards to academics - what was wrong with me?  Was I simply not good enough to graduate high school?  An odd conclusion to someone looking in from the outside.

There are many people who had a similar path through life as me, and there are many more reasons why some of us are not particularly attuned to method, technique, or habits of working that make our time spent much more efficient.  Since high school, I decided I would try to work much harder at the things I do, so as not to repeat the mistake of laziness in my youth and riding on talent.  However, a new problem revealed itself: I would waste enormous amounts of time getting nothing done, because I had no idea HOW to work having not done it before.  This was one of the worst experiences for me - now I WAS putting enormous time and effort in, and I knew I was a pretty talented person - yet still I continuously met with failure.

What was missing?  I hadn't the faintest clue for a long, long time, but gradually I began to discover that there was a big hole in my thinking that had never been filled.  It has taken years to chip away at this issue and think outside my own box to conclude what is wrong.  I finally realized that my methods and approaches, as well as learning habits, were all pretty terrible, and had been since I was young because I had not spent my youth working very hard at things.  I mentioned in the technique article, it is crucial to learn these things when you are young and forming habits.  Or else you'll end up like me - now I am practically an adult learner in my own learning!

However, once I discovered what the weak part of my learning process was, it was an amazing revelation for me.  I've realized that the ability I've had for so long has been largely untapped.  I've also come to understand more about myself, and that the weaknesses I have are more like holes in a giant juggernaut or battleship that, when plugged up, will make a formidable adversary.  Not everyone has shared my particular struggles, but the goal of covering the three topics of technique, work, and learning is that anyone with any particular weakness can analyze their own path through life and discover a way to improve their own approach.

The final point about work ethic is that psychological factors, such as motivation, play a large role in being able to work hard consistently for long periods of time.  The incentive for working hard in this case is the reward of mastery over a skill, which is seen through incremental improvement over time.  There is no end to a journey like this - it is really about the journey itself.  As mentioned, the number one destroyer of motivation is lack of progress, and once this is resolved, motivation problems often straight up disappear and an upwards spiral results which replaces the downwards spiral.  The upwards spiral in particular is a phenomenon that explains a lot of people with great skill in some area.  They have the right approach early on, which leads to quick acquisition of their skill and quick improvement, which improves their self-esteem and confidence to take on more challenges, which leads to more improvement and more esteem from their peers, which leads to increased motivation, etc.  This is a big part of that 'optimal trajectory' I mentioned in part one of this series.

It is important to make your skill fun to keep you interested.  With my piano playing, sometimes I will download a score from an incredibly difficult work that I absolutely love, cut and paste an excerpt from it, and just mess around and see what I can play.  In particular I love watching or listening to live performances, and checking out the sheet music or following along with it.  This isn't very efficient or direct at improving and I realize it, but in the end it's all about the music.  It's all about the passion and the drive, which is a large part mastery.  There is no doubt seeing yourself improve is one of the greatest pleasures. but there is always something more.  There is always something else - just feeling it, and loving what you are doing.  It's about creating something.  In art this is true, but in so many other hobbies it is equally true - in Chess, many players consider themselves artists, and in KZ, there are probably some extremely dedicated players who liken their game to an art form (maybe koukouz?)

-CoC