Bunny hopping

Bunny hopping, or bunny jumping, is a term used in video games to describe the basic movement technique in which a player jumps repeatedly, instead of running, in order to move faster.

Concept

The term is most used in first-person shooters to refer to act of pressing the jump key while holding crouch and a movement key to move faster (especially when going down a slope) and/or to evade attacks more effectively. In several games based on Quake engines or their derivatives moving in a zigzag pattern while bunny hopping (see strafejumping) is the fastest way to move around and increases length of jumps, making the player an even more difficult target. While a zigzag movement pattern may not be the fastest way to get from one point to another in other games, players may feel that the protection provided by bunny hopping more than compensates for this disadvantage. Bunny hopping might also be required to gain speed to perform a trick jump or to provide better movement control while in mid-air (especially after performing a trick jump).

Variations

Traditional bunny hopping is possible in many games such as Tribes, Tribes 2, QuakeWorld, Quake II, Quake III Arena, Half-Life, Team Fortress Classic, Natural Selection ,Nexuiz, Enemy Territory Fortress, Kingpin: Life of Crime, Dystopia, Half-Life 2, Battlefield 2, Soldat, Painkiller, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Counter-Strike, and Counter-Strike: Source. Bunny hopping was also an integral part of the game America's Army, but jumping has been removed from the current version.

The execution, effectiveness, and limits of bunny hopping varies across different game engines and mods. For example, in Team Fortress Classic, the way to begin the jumps is much different from the Quake series: it begins by strafing, then aiming in the strafe direction, then jumping and so on.

In Thief: The Dark Project, bunny hopping can be used to reach incredible speeds as the player's speed increases with each consecutive hop, enabling them to out-pace even the fastest of enemies, or kill themselves spectacularly, depending on whether they collide with anything. As a result, the bunny hopping bug was removed in later Dark Engine titles. In Starsiege: Tribes, bunny hopping is remarkably effective at generating speed when performed on a downward slope due to an unintended effect of the game's physics model; the practice, known as "skiing" in the Tribes series, was so popular that the two sequels officially incorporated skiing as a simple held keypress and a part of basic A.I. movement.

Use in tactical shooters

In the tactical shooter sub-genre, the lack of realism introduced by this ability is often compensated for by limiting the effectiveness of consecutive jumps or by the introduction of limited stamina. For example, in America's Army, every jump consumes a large portion of CEM (in comparison to sprinting, which consumes it at a slower pace), and lower CEM results in slower, smaller jumps, and less accuracy. CEM is often confused with stamina in America's Army, though there is no actual stamina in the game (for example, unlike stamina, CEM has no effect on running speed). Thus bunny hopping can still be seen in those games, but it is much less effective and therefore, less common. Another way of limiting this ability is to slow down movement speed after landing. This technique is used in later versions of Counter-Strike. It has also been implemented in Team Fortress Classic, so that touching the ground while the player's speed is 170% or more of the normal speed, the player's speed will be set to the normal maximum run speed. Armed Assault takes the extreme approach of not having a jump ability at all which is more realistic in combat situations but makes crossing obstacles or barriers, even small ones, all but impossible. This approach was also taken by the latest installment of the America's Army series, America's Army 3.

Bunny hopping in Counter-Strike is still recognized to be a very useful skill once the exact timing of the jump button is mastered, which is harder to achieve compared to other games. It allows the player to become a very difficult target to hit (besides, the AI always target the head, so this can reduce damage). By jumping in a zig-zag motion, the player can cut corners extremely fast, which also gives an advantage of surprise over the enemy. It can also be used to reach places usually not easily reachable by normal jumping.

In Quake engine and GoldSrc engine games

QuakeWorld, Counter-Strike and Team Fortress Classic use derivatives of the Quake engine, so the techniques used to perform bunny-hopping in these games are nearly identical. QuakeWorld has "pogo stick" jumping (you can release and repress the jump button while flying in the air), while in the other games you have to jump right as you hit the ground. An acceleration is experienced in-air while uniformly turning in the same direction as the player is strafing- The act of timing your jumps to the exact moment when you hit the ground prevents the player from decelerating to normal walking speed. The strafing should also be timed in a particular way to the jumping for greatest effect. Using this technique unbroken, allows a player to gradually accelerate to speeds many times the typical running speed.

The speed at which one can bunnyhop is effectively limited by the turning radius: if too sharp a turn is made at high speed, speed is lost. In the old versions of Counter-Strike, the degree to which a player can make sharp turns while bunnyhopping without losing speed is regulated by the sv_airaccelerate server value. This value could be set to 0 to disable bunnyhopping, and had a maximum effective value of 20.

As of Counter-Strike version 1.6, bunny-hopping has been made harder to perform. Some players use scripts and even hacks to bunny-hop.

As a result of the incredible speed bonuses achieved by a competent Counter-Strike bunny-hopper and the very significant advantage it provides, many players consider the technique to be a cheat. Opponents of bunnyhopping claim it is an exploit unintended by the developers which probably explains why it was removed in the 1.1.0.8 patch (even though supporters still claim that it is simply a clever way to use the game's physics). In its day many Counter-Strike demos were recorded to demonstrate its incredible effectiveness in the form of trick jumps. Huge jumps could be performed, such as from building to building on cs_assault (sometimes sv_airaccelerate would have to be modified to perform such jumps, to allow higher speeds to be attained with smaller turning radii).

The sv_airaccelerate command was blocked in The Orange Box Source engine branch.

Bunny hopping/strafe jumping is very effective in Quake III Arena and some other games that use its engine, such as Jedi Knight 2.

In the Battlefield series

Within the Battlefield series, there are several variations of bunny hopping depending on the game.

The exact purpose and benefits have evolved as EA has released patches and fixes for this tactic. A player could come around a corner, and, coming across an enemy, jump in an unpredictable direction while firing their weapon. Combining this with the far range a player could throw a C4 charge and the splash damage of the grenade launcher, the tactic gave huge advantages to the Special Forces and Assault classes. It was eventually seen as an unsporting and unfair tactic and also a kickable/bannable offence on many servers. This technique was eventually abolished with a game patch.

A similarly unsporting tactic was used with the Support class, with its light machine gun, which is meant to be very powerful, but with the drawback that it is very inaccurate unless the player goes prone. This drawback could be negated by "dolphin diving", in which the player goes prone in mid-air, in order to gain the accuracy advantage of being prone. These techniques thus caused large balancing issues.

Due to the huge balancing issues the tactics caused EA has made attempts to reduce the use of this in Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142. With each jump a portion of the player's sprint stamina is reduced and a player is not able to fire while jumping. However, it still remains an effective way to evade fire, although believed to be unrealistic.

In Soldier of Fortune 2

Although not considered true bunny hopping by many people, this technique, only possible due to the unique crouch-lean movement available in Soldier of Fortune 2, is a mid-level technique specifically used by SOF2 players to take advantage of the hit box issues present with some weapons within the game (MP5, USAS, M590). Its done with a command in console /com_maxfps 333 . Thus increasing fps makes graphics smooth. These weapons, unlike the other weapons in the game, calculate damage based on the location of a hit box, rather than the actual body, meaning that the actual target would not correctly match the visible model during leaning. By combining the traditional zig-zag pattern of bunny hopping with a period of crouch-leaning after each jump, it was thus possible to combine this visual confusion with the drastic vertical and horizontal movements of bunny hopping to make it much harder to get a good hit on a player. While this movement was also effective against the game's other weapons, with the increased vertical and horizontal changes possible with crouch-lean, the effects were noticeably less disorienting. While attempts to fix this issue were attempted by several mods (most noticeably OSP), these fixes never smoothly solved the issue within the game, and no official fix was ever forthcoming from the game's producer, Raven Software.

In Crossfire

In the multiplayer online computer game, Crossfire, in its 'ghost mode', players are able to bunny hop or 'B Hop', when playing as a ghost on the Black List team. Players use this as an advantage to move around while still be remaining invisible.This gives players huge advantages, being able to reach close enough to the Global Risk team and 'knifing them' or can be used as a quick manoeuvre to get away. There are many ways to 'bunny hop' in Crossfire. Some players hold 'crouch', 'back' and repeatedly press 'jump', this increases the length of the jumps every time you touch the ground whilst still remaining invisible, by having a speed increase. Others prefer doing it 'slowly', holding crouch whilst tapping jump and 'back'. Bunny hopping also can be used to get to higher places impossible to get otherwise, by jumping slightly before you hit the ground, and crouching while you're in middle air. Bunny hopping has been adopted as a 'skill' in the game's ghost mode, and not an exploit.

See also

• Exploit (online gaming)