Saturday, July 3, 2010





SWAT teams in urban CQB contexts use a movement technique called "slicing the pie" (image to the left stolen from that link) to maximize coverage and minimize risk to the assault team. The idea is that you use the corner as a "pivot point" for your line of fire. FPS players use this technique all the time, albeit on a more subconscious level, perhaps.

Line of sight is essentially important in high-octane arcade contexts, like Quake 3, because your opponent likely has her railgun aimed at head-height as they slice the pie.

On Neorganic Epiphany (and, to a lesser extent, some of the curvier Covenant-themed levels in Halo multiplayer too) this technique is much more difficult to use because there's no "corner" to pivot on. Perhaps this explains why a lot of players liked this map for rail-only servers -- longer sight-lines, more danger, a sort of balance between a corridor-crawl and a space floater.

And again, in an age of desaturated brown FPS's, here's one that utterly thrives on the use of color. Seriously -- magenta! When was the last time you saw magenta in a big budget commercial FPS that wasn't Halo?