How To Hide As Skulks?
biggambler
Join Date: 2004-06-17 Member: 29355Members
Join Date: 2004-06-17 Member: 29355Members
<div class="IPBDescription">without dieing</div> when i play as a skulk i like to hide so marines cant hit me from far away. i like to go in the cielings and above doors so i can drop down on their head and bite them <!--emo&:0--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/wow.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wow.gif' /><!--endemo--> but marines always come by and shoot me so i must be poking out but i cant tell becuz thers no 3rd person as far as i can c. so my question to u is how do u know when ur poking out from a hiding spot and how do u hide so they cant see u???
Comments
1 - can they hear you when you move into your hiding spot - an experienced player will have headphones on... so either get there well in advance, or walk to a slgihtly different place so not sure where you are
2- is it obvious? there are a LOT of places on maps that people always hide, so they will always be checked. some quick examples: above the doors to marine entrance in ns_tanith, in the extended cieling at the top of Station Access in ns_eclipse
3 - look at the spot you are going to hide in before moving there - does it look big enough to fit a skulk in? you have to estimate, and see if it works. if you consistently get shot in taht same spot, assume it's no good, and try some where else.
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some thing else to consider: i can't speak for every one who plays marines, but from my point of view - i *expect* skulks to be either on the cieling or on the floors. when i go around a corner / into a room, i do a quick check on cieling and then the floor. So, hide at head-level - sit just around a corner at the marine waist height
any thing that the marine player doesn't practice regularly will be hard - shooting skulks on the floor is easy. it's harder when they jump. it's harder still when they bunnyhop it's harder again if they bunnyhop, wallwalk up and down, and then bunnyhop some more...
all players can track horizontally fairly easily - old FPS games had very little height alterations - it was mostly ground level or nothing - it's the easiest part to aim in.. only 1 dimension - left to right. put another in, up and down, mix it all about, and it suddenly becomes a LOT harder to kill skulks
if you can, good way is to set up a LAN game with 2 computers - join marine on one, alien on the other. have the monitor for the Marine comp in site, and then go and position yourself as an alien, not move around with marine and see where you can / can't see
to hear where marines are coming from, you need to play with headphones - they are essential if you want to be good at a game like NS - they let you differentiate between left and right for where people are coming from - with time, you'll learn to judge the distance they are aswell by how loud it is - as for how many, you can hear the difference between one and two (because of the footsteps), but it becomes hard to hear exactly how many when more than 2, but you get used to estimating.
as for what they have, HA you can hear, Jetpacks if they use them can be heard, so for guns - wait until they start shooting - if you can get a peak at them in advance, or ask a mate to have a quick look...
hope this helps. feel free to ask any thing else <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
for example: whenever possible try to hide around the organic looking textures as opposed to the mechanical ones
(this means only hiding around hives though <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->)
but there've been multiple times where i've hidden myself at an unclaimed hive. best spot i can think of offhand is right above where the eclipse hive would be in eclipse. just sit around there and ambush any marines trying to lock it down.
or just parasite them if theres a lot; most marines wont look up and will look for a skulk across the room
the marines will never see me again til its too late <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/skulk.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='skulk.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--emo&::asrifle::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/asrifle.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='asrifle.gif' /><!--endemo-->
arf
From first person perspective, your skulky head sticks out a little bit from where your 1st person POV is. So if you're on the ground right next to a doorway waiting for someone, and you're too close, they will see your nose and maybe your claws a little.
You can actually "aim" your body as far as I can tell. I've watched people hang on walls, and the HL engine is pretty predictable in how it renders them. Your skulk body turns in order to make your head face the general direction you're looking. Sometimes this looks funny, and if you're on a wall, you can spin and dance by looking straight away from the wall, and spinning your mouse in a circle around your screen. Basically the engine reads this as you looking in different directions, but your skulk has to stay flat on the wall. So it looks like your skulk is spinning around like crazy without moving it's legs. Funny. You get the idea though. If you want to squeeze your model into the tighter spots and not give yourself away by sticking out, you have to picture in your mind which direction you're facing, and if you're on the wall or cieling. You always stay flat on the roof or wall, but your orientation is based on which way you're looking. If you want your body to be going facing up and down, you look in that general direction without looking left or right too much. Likewise, if you want to orient sideways, look to your left or right while on the wall.
Here's a handy trick you probably didn't know to hang on roofs better. It's a command called +moveup. It works only for skulks as far as I know. When you bind it to a button, holding that button will make you push upward, without looking that direction. It's another way to hang on the roof, instead of having to look at the roof and using the forward key. With +moveup bound to a button near your jump button, you can switch between jumping around and easily moving up walls. While holding down +moveup, you can look down from the roof and move around without falling off. +moveup is kind of like a one-button antigravity for skulks, at least when they have a wall they can crawl up. Since it makes you move whichever direction your point of view considers "up", this means that if you're on the ground looking upward at the roof, holding +moveup will mean you'll start going backwards. From your point of view looking at the roof, "up" is in fact located on the floor behind you. Takes some getting used to, but it's a handy command you should know about. That's "+moveup". I bound it to ALT.
Eventually, marines will get the motion tracking upgrade. Think of it as a crude wallhack. Smart marines will be using their mini-map to look for red dots on the way to their destination, and looking up for blue circles when they get nearby one. The most effective way to cancel motion tracking once they have it is to not move once you get into a position. Even turning your head to look at them registers on motion tracking, so ambushing solo becomes very hard. You have to wait like a spider.
Headphones make it easier to hear noises when playing videogames, as well as giving a person stereo effects which can tell them which direction to turn when they hear a noise. Before they have motion tracking, the only clue they have that there might be aliens around is 1) paranoia and 2) hearing you make noise. Your walk button can be handy for getting into a certain spot very quietly, or if you're feeling brave, you can even try to walk-sneak up behind marines on a wall or roof. Very fun. Just remember that you can't walk forward and strafe at the same time, or you start making that click click skulk running noise. Only use forward to walk, or you could blow your position with a click. Some people have really sensitive hearing and really turned up headphones.
Knowing how close you can get to marines before needing to hide and wait to ambush them is a good thing to learn early. If the marines see you, you'll have ten times more trouble trying to hide, just because they know something is hiding. Don't be seen, and if you are seen before you can hide, depending on how far away you are, odds are good you're gonna get shot at. Plus, any marines who arrive on the scene after the first guy sees you probably know where you are too, just from where their buddy is shooting at. In situations like this, you should just fall back a bit.
Parasite is your friend. I'm sure you know what parasite does, but here's for the new players. Parasite is a distance attack which does 10 dmg (less if they have some armor) to both marines and marine buildings. It also "marks" them for all your alien teammates and yourself with a yellow halo. You can see where parasited marines are through the walls because of the yellow halo. If they move around, you'll know it because you'll see a yellow circle moving around behind the walls. There is no way for marines to remove a parasite other than dying, and after getting parasited, marines don't have as much of a willingness to stay alive. Parasited marines can't hide and ambush YOU, since you can see where they are hiding. Ambushing is a bunch easier when the marines are mostly parasited. You can see about how many there are, and where they are. Because of the slight lag of the yellow halo behind the marine, you have to wait until the yellow halo is just about to smash into your monitor before leaping out and biting, otherwise the marine might still be a little too far.
Ummm, also this is common sense but when you think about it, if you're going to ambush, try to make it so that the moment you jump out of hiding, the marines have as little time to react as you can make it. Camping over or beside narrow one or two-man doorways works so well because everything is so tight, you can practically hold down attack and hit a piece of meat with every bite. The closer you can get to a marine before he can shoot at you, the more effective you are as a skulk.
Playing skulk is kind of like trying to play CS with only your knife and being able to crawl around like Spidey. You gotta hide and cultivate the assassin mentality. Nobody hears you and nobody sees you until you ninja drop upside down on them and eat a hole in the first guy.
When hiding on the wall which connects to a ceiling above the doorway, sometimes being right up against the wall is a bad thing. If HL registers your "ground" as the wall and not the ceiling, if you're looking down, your nose and claws might stick out. Try to walk out onto the ceiling just a bit so HL registers the ceiling as "ground." This way your body will be horizontally aligned against the ceiling, even if you're looking straight down (skulks can't stand on their hind legs), instead of vertically on the wall.
Also, one other great place to hide is insides RES NODES! If you can drop onto the top of an alien resnode, move into the little sack. You'll be able to see out, but marines can't see in. They start knifey-knifey, you start bitey-bitey. It's basically two free bites, especially since you're coming from above (no knockback) and they have to switch to a gun. On the off chance that they do see you before they get there (it's a hard skill to master), most of the bullets will hit the RT and not you. Hax! This also works on Marine nodes - get right up next to them and jump up. Duck-drop a little while moving forward until you can see through the entire body of the RT and only the pump, little spout at the top, and legs are visible. Do that correctly and the marines won't be able to shoot you at all unless they circle completely around.. you'll also be relatively hidden.