CDranzer
Member
This may be a little divisive, but here goes.
Instant Air Dash is a relatively well known(?) "movement tech". The premise is simple:
A fairly standard form of movement is to perform a jump into an air-dash into a slide. It's easy to perform, and fairly benign. If, however, you jump and then air-dash with as little delay as possible (i.e. "instantly" air-dash), your resulting slide will be slightly faster and carry more momentum. If you can chain these over a long distance, you can get movement speed increases of around ~20% over standard air-dash sliding.
In order to pull it off, you have to essentially jump and dash at the same time. It does seem to be frame-perfect input - even being slightly off will result in either a ground dash, or a regular jump dash.
So what, exactly, is going on here?
A standard air-dash works as follows: Gravity and air friction are disabled, you get a burst of speed, and then after a short delay gravity and air friction are re-enabled. You start falling, and your forward momentum quickly returns to normal.
But there's also the issue of slides. With slides, there are actually two kinds: Ground slides, and air slides. Ground slides seem to cap your forward momentum, and you can't seamlessly jump or dash out of them. Air slides on the other hand (that is, slides that happen when you fall from the sky) preserve forward momentum and can be cancelled out of by jumping or dashing. This is one of the main reasons why the jump-dash into slide is generally faster than just slide-dashing in general.
Now, If you examine the IAD without the slide, you may notice something that appears to be an animation cancel of sorts. Your air-dash animation seems to stop a little early. That's not the issue, but it does give us a hint as to what's happening: The animation cancel is the result of your character hitting the ground.
Essentially, when you IAD, what's actually happening is you're air-dashing very close to the ground. The moment you come out of it, gravity starts taking effect, meaning you hit the ground almost immediately, before your mid-air momentum has a chance to go down. Therefore, if you start sliding the moment your air-dash ends, the majority of your air-dash momentum will be carried into a slide before it has a chance to be reduced by mid-air friction. And keep in mind, this is an air-landing slide, which can itself be cancelled into another IAD, preserving and even boosting your momentum even further.
So why did I post this on the bug forum instead of making a youtube video?
Because I believe this is not an intentional mechanic, and for two main reasons:
Firstly, all other mechanics seem to want to prevent your maximum dash momentum from compounding: Ground slides have stronger momentum cancelling and can't be chained, and air-dashes lose momentum very quickly while airborne.
Secondly, while the execution requires extremely precise timing (and is somewhat stressful on the hands as a result), it is absolutely trivial to write a macro for.
I expect to be told I'm complaining about nothing and that this is something that shouldn't be removed because it's a fringe mechanic that doesn't have any significant impact. I am also expecting to be told this is a critical movement mechanic that should not be removed because it's key to high-end gameplay. I expect to be told both these things, at the same time, by the same people, in spite of them being directly contradictory to one-another.
Personally, I think that if this mechanic were to be kept, (and I can see an argument for it,) I'd rather see sliding and chain-sliding be normalized so you can still do the whole zooming-around thing with just ground slides, if only to mitigate the RSI risk.
Instant Air Dash is a relatively well known(?) "movement tech". The premise is simple:
A fairly standard form of movement is to perform a jump into an air-dash into a slide. It's easy to perform, and fairly benign. If, however, you jump and then air-dash with as little delay as possible (i.e. "instantly" air-dash), your resulting slide will be slightly faster and carry more momentum. If you can chain these over a long distance, you can get movement speed increases of around ~20% over standard air-dash sliding.
In order to pull it off, you have to essentially jump and dash at the same time. It does seem to be frame-perfect input - even being slightly off will result in either a ground dash, or a regular jump dash.
So what, exactly, is going on here?
A standard air-dash works as follows: Gravity and air friction are disabled, you get a burst of speed, and then after a short delay gravity and air friction are re-enabled. You start falling, and your forward momentum quickly returns to normal.
But there's also the issue of slides. With slides, there are actually two kinds: Ground slides, and air slides. Ground slides seem to cap your forward momentum, and you can't seamlessly jump or dash out of them. Air slides on the other hand (that is, slides that happen when you fall from the sky) preserve forward momentum and can be cancelled out of by jumping or dashing. This is one of the main reasons why the jump-dash into slide is generally faster than just slide-dashing in general.
Now, If you examine the IAD without the slide, you may notice something that appears to be an animation cancel of sorts. Your air-dash animation seems to stop a little early. That's not the issue, but it does give us a hint as to what's happening: The animation cancel is the result of your character hitting the ground.
Essentially, when you IAD, what's actually happening is you're air-dashing very close to the ground. The moment you come out of it, gravity starts taking effect, meaning you hit the ground almost immediately, before your mid-air momentum has a chance to go down. Therefore, if you start sliding the moment your air-dash ends, the majority of your air-dash momentum will be carried into a slide before it has a chance to be reduced by mid-air friction. And keep in mind, this is an air-landing slide, which can itself be cancelled into another IAD, preserving and even boosting your momentum even further.
So why did I post this on the bug forum instead of making a youtube video?
Because I believe this is not an intentional mechanic, and for two main reasons:
Firstly, all other mechanics seem to want to prevent your maximum dash momentum from compounding: Ground slides have stronger momentum cancelling and can't be chained, and air-dashes lose momentum very quickly while airborne.
Secondly, while the execution requires extremely precise timing (and is somewhat stressful on the hands as a result), it is absolutely trivial to write a macro for.
I expect to be told I'm complaining about nothing and that this is something that shouldn't be removed because it's a fringe mechanic that doesn't have any significant impact. I am also expecting to be told this is a critical movement mechanic that should not be removed because it's key to high-end gameplay. I expect to be told both these things, at the same time, by the same people, in spite of them being directly contradictory to one-another.
Personally, I think that if this mechanic were to be kept, (and I can see an argument for it,) I'd rather see sliding and chain-sliding be normalized so you can still do the whole zooming-around thing with just ground slides, if only to mitigate the RSI risk.
