Four Hours of Airshot
I’d imagine quite a few readers downloaded tr_airshot_v0 after Secret Agent Clank!’s article about being a great drunken bomb-hazard. Some of you may have it already. I know I did. Because I’m a crazed idiot hardcore, I decided to force myself to play on it for four hours straight.
No, really.
It’s a map where dudes continually soar in a looping wave, you need never reload, and it’ll take you less than an hour to be dominating them all. Join team blue, grab your pipe-launcher, and get to air’sploding people; simple. But is there more to this map? Can I wind it around my fingers and wring every last drop of awesome from it? And are there any ways to maximise my training on there? Let’s find out.
Basic Training
Every class, I think, has one or two professional strategies; this is what makes those Huey Lewis, OMFGNinja-esque skill videos so compelling. It’s the secret shit. I knew the Axtinguisher could be used to improve my W+M1, but I would never have developed the puff + sting on my own. These are gaming Gods, and we are their acolytes. This is as it should be.
But we’ve all been playing for a while now. We know how to shoot rockets at people’s feet. We know how to heal from behind cover. We may not be pros, but we’re adept at the game’s nuances, at least when playing as our class of choice. I may not be able to tell you what kind of hyper-skilled nonsense the 1337 Engies are going to get up to in the next skill video smothering youtube, but I can point you at tr_airshot_v0, and advise: “You could do worse than playing on this map for a while”.
For a start, every class needs to hit dudes that are moving quickly. The Spy has a new gun – why not bust that out and try some mid-air headshots? Some more things you can try:
I’m sure you’ll come up with more for your preferred class, but that’s the obvious way to use this map – it’s a training map. With hours left, I had to try something a little more inventive.
Why So Serious?
Of course, the really fun things to do, by yourself, involve a bit of light hearted fun (and sv_cheats 1). Try rocket jumping to shovel the blighters in mid-air. As a Heavy, stand so that you block a whole bunch of them at their jumping point, then kill 7 of them with the KGB. Switch to Sasha. Laugh loudly. Bring Sandviches.
I was getting pretty bored around the two-hour mark, so I put noclip into the console to pass through the level and have a look around. Turns out, the bots spawn in this little corridor behind the map. They edge sideways, then teleport once they reach the end. This means they can all spit out evenly, so you’re not scoring 19 crit-kills at once.
I quickly put a stop to that. I stood with my body and blocked them – it took ages, so I used host_timescale 5 in the console to speed things up. Soon, all 19 of them were standing in a cluster, occupying the same space. Returning to the arena, I had a blast doing exactly that – turning off noclip, I started firing pipe bombs into the lot of them, creating a spray of bodyparts TF2 hasn’t been able to produce since Meet the Demoman.
Then I got a little more imaginative. I rolled spy. I typed thirdperson into the console, switched to my knife, and then entered cl_drawhud 0. Then I returned to the spawn corridor. After I’d let them build up, I set host_timescale to 0.4, which makes the flying speed about the same as normal walking speed. Then I returned to the main area for the boss fight.
I zoomed around, gradually thinning the layers of Aussie hats and flamethrowers from the Chimera I’d created, tasking myself with killing each of them before they died from fall damage. It was great. It felt like a different game. A much less challenging game, sure, but The Adventures of Noclip Spy sounds like a mod I’d play, nudge nudge. I can only imagine how cool it’d be to do this competitively online.
In retrospect, I could have done something fancy with gravity here, and there are probably a ton of ways you could improve the map itself specifically to cater to my demented sandbox mode, but I think it was a successful exercise in utilising my creativity to… waste four hours of my life. At least I got good screen shots. Now it’s your turn, Gentlemen: can you think of anything else to do on this map?
Stumble it!
Corporal Kiwi responded on 04 Jul 2009 at 12:37 pm #
frst cmnt!!1
You could put a sentry up and enjoy the show
Wilson Obedejiah responded on 04 Jul 2009 at 1:12 pm #
uhh. what is this crap.
Adoring Fan responded on 04 Jul 2009 at 1:56 pm #
I like building a sentry in the middle and seeing how many kills I can get it to. Last time I got well over 200 before getting bored.
Have you ever seen a sentry rocket being fired into a huge cluster of bots? It’s a thing of beauty.
jasonz777z responded on 04 Jul 2009 at 2:43 pm #
I downloaded this map… but it doesn’t spawn bots! Help!
Toakal responded on 04 Jul 2009 at 2:58 pm #
My bro and I speed up time, then set up a sentry. Was fun.
Corodan responded on 04 Jul 2009 at 5:03 pm #
Noooo! My 128 backstabs!
+1 if you get it.
Jazmeister responded on 04 Jul 2009 at 5:34 pm #
Dude. You will LIKE my crap.
Paper Shadow responded on 04 Jul 2009 at 8:26 pm #
@Jason: Did you set the number of players allowed on the server? It needs to be big, or the bots won’t spawn. I’d go with 32 players allowed. This won’t fill the server, but will most likely work…
Oh, and set a password while you are at it…
Zorgulon responded on 04 Jul 2009 at 11:23 pm #
I finally got round to downloading this when I watched the recent Soldier tutorial, and after a brief and largely unsuccessful attempt at airshots, I started messing around with the other classes.
The bots are programmed to teleport back to the start on hitting the ground, and if you stand in the right position, you can get a stack of bots standing on your head.
The new and improved Flare Gun makes an interesting challenge- hit the same guy twice and he’ll usually die from the minicrit.
As others have said, level one sentries are fun too.
randombaddie responded on 05 Jul 2009 at 1:31 am #
@Jason: Ditto Paper’s advice on maxplayers, but you don’t need a password unless you’ve got haters on your LAN or you screwed around with server settings. (specifically sv_lan, which defaults to 0)
Here I thought this could be a cool article about how you overcame sheer boredom and practiced your rawkit lawnchair for 4 hours, then immediately joined a pub and destroyed every pyro you met… but a noclip ramage is fine too
RealLifePudding responded on 05 Jul 2009 at 7:52 am #
isn’t playing this map ruining your stats? dont know…
are stats counted, when you play offline and in lan???
would like to try out these maps, but also dont want to mess with my stats.
RAGEQUIT Dinosaur responded on 05 Jul 2009 at 8:36 am #
Your stats won’t be ruined by this map if you create your own server and play it.
Zorgulon responded on 05 Jul 2009 at 10:38 am #
@RealLifePudding
tr_airshot has cheats activated by default (so the bots can be spawned), and so won’t record stats or count towards achievements. If you create a local server and run the map you should be fine.
If you’re unsure, just open the console and type ’sv_cheats 1′
jasonz777z responded on 05 Jul 2009 at 3:39 pm #
@ papershadow: Thank you!!! Ive always liked airshotting but my computer often plays TF2 at 4~6 fps.
xeno responded on 06 Jul 2009 at 12:17 am #
Your stats are ruined unless you type sv_cheats 1 into console.
Also, practicing airshots on this map will only (sadly) get you so far. It’s nothing compared to practicing in realtime gameplay against opponents that actually move in their jump.
Good article though.
anonemouse responded on 06 Jul 2009 at 5:47 am #
I always lol whenever someone does this, I’ve had about three friends that have played this map for hours upon hours. My only question is why, there are many other things you could be doing such as finding a 24/7 bball server, an ammomod server, or even just finding a friend and playing cp_spireking. This map doesn’t really do much except learning how fast the rockets/flares/pipes go. Go tr_flinger if you want a single player airshot map, and one of the servers I’ve recommended above for actual practice like what xeno said.
FlyingHat responded on 06 Jul 2009 at 11:46 am #
Jaz is kredit to UC.
Comissar Cain responded on 06 Jul 2009 at 12:21 pm #
@Xeno. Not exactly. Playing on an airshot server can, in bursts, give you an idea of how you’re supposed to be doing it mechanically, particularly if you deliberately try to make things difficult (fire from odd angles, fire while strafing, retreating, charging, etc.), though it is necessary to start practicing in game time as much as soon as possible. I’ve been practicing about 20 minutes a time whenever I have the extra time for it, and I already feel like my Soldier game is improving (but I’ve always had bad timing with airshot, so, meh). The trick is to try and replicate situations as often as possible (don’t spam, in fact try to pick one target and hit him with the *first* rocket you fire, keep moving like you would be in-game, etc.)
jasonz777z responded on 06 Jul 2009 at 3:10 pm #
Go engie. Add sentry. Upgrade sentry by host_timescale 5~10. Wutch.
Combyne responded on 07 Jul 2009 at 3:15 pm #
I DLed this map, and may I say that I frustrate myself even more every day.
So after hours of failed airshots, I decided to break out that ol’ Huntsman and hunt some birds.
Also, FaN skeet shooting. Not as entertaining as you think, but still amusing.
Davie responded on 14 Aug 2009 at 3:56 am #
Here’s a fun one: As a scout, get your bat out and play baseball with the bots. Run around (no jumping) and try and bonk as many of them as you can before they hit the ground. Also, if you do it right, the spawn corridor is a great place for taunt kills.