FPS Basics : Movement + Firing styles

After finishing up their character creation, Joseph continued his lesson with Mona yesterday and introduced to her the basic movements in FPS game. "Try strafing while shooting." Mona moved her character in game from side to side in the same custom training map from yesterday while firing. The bullets flew all over the training range, some even hit the roof of the arena. Mona said to Joseph : "For my bullets to be accurate I need to stop moving and shoot afterwards."

Joseph affirmed her statement and introduced Mona to the concept of counter-strafing. "When you move to the left, hold the right key to counter your movement to the left. This will stop your movement immediately, allowing you to shoot accurately." Mona tried out counter-strafing and she tried alternating irregularly, it took a while before she could fully grasp the movement. Mona moved about more and eventually encountered a predicament involving diagonal movements and asked Joseph : "How about diagonal movements?" Joseph replied to her quickly : "If your holding the forward and right key to move diagonally, you counter it similarly by pressing the back and left key." Mona tried to execute the move taught to her by Joseph but she found it really difficult to do so, her fingers could not get used to it. Joseph saw this and instructed her : "To stop, you can also let go of your movement keys." Mona listened to Joseph and after pressing the diagonal keys, she let go of the keys she was moving in and quickly pressed the keys in the opposite direction. This allowed her to quickly stop in every direction. Mona continued her practice as Joseph instructed her : "After stopping, one tap the targets on the head."

Joseph left her alone after feeling reassured that she was progressing in the right direction, he turned his gaming chair to face his PC and started to practice in the same map the movement techniques he learnt yesterday. After a while, Joseph stopped Mona and introduced her to the different styles of shooting.

"One taps, like what your doing now which is firing one bullet. It is mostly used for long distance engages and if the precision needs to be perfect. "

"Burst fire which is firing a few bullets from the gun. The first few bullets that you shoot will be accurate to your crosshair and allow for adjustments if need be. You do have to account for the slight recoil that you will face."

"Spraying. I have not much experience in this as Strike Two does not require spraying but-". Luna interrupted Joseph as she overheard their conversation and took over : "Monaa~, if you miss your flick, you can start spraying near your opponent's body with the intent to land a bullet to the head." Joseph let Luna continue as she went on cheerfully : "Learn the spray patterns to control the recoil and you will get an intuition of where the bullets will go to at any point in time when spraying."

Joseph asked Luna curiously : "What's the spray pattern for the Taker?" He asked as he took out the Taker in the practice map. "Let me take over your PC for a sec." Luna told Joseph. Joseph obliged and left his seat, Luna proceeded to spray at a wall after taking over his PC. She held down the left mouse button on the mouse and followed a movement that have been ingrained into her muscle memory. She started off by moving the mouse down slightly, then it curved to the left before a sharp turn to the right, it ended off with a smooth curve back to the left before all 30 bullets have been shot out from the Taker. Shockingly, all 30 bullets are gathered together on one point of the wall, they were all perfectly controlled onto that one spot that Luna was targetting with minimal error. Luna explained proudly in front of her sister and Joseph as she faced the both of them: "If you spray normally without controlling it, the Taker will go up, then it will curve to the right, then a sharp turn to the left and afterwards a gradual curve to the right. Basically counter the recoil of the gun with your mouse."

Luna left shortly after as her ranked game with Ellie and Danny was about to start, she was called back by Danny loudly : "Hey! Luna the round is about to start." Joseph and Mona went back to their practice instantly as she left, Joseph tried out spraying with all of the rifles that are available in the shop namely the Taker, Tracer and X-523. Arsene and Burster were weapons that allowed only for single-fire in the case of the former and both single-fire and burst fire in the case of the latter. Mona informed Joseph as she explored the shop more : "Hey, it seems like the SMGs, LMGs and some of the Pistols have recoil as well." Joseph despaired at the amount of patterns they have to learn as he heard that and they spent the next two hours just practicing as much as they could before Joseph shaked her shoulders once again to get her attention. Mona took off her headsets as she stretched a little while Joseph spoke : "Let's get into a map together, I want to show you how peeker's advantage work."

They got into the map 'Station' and Joseph instructed Mona to stand at a corner. Mona stood at the corner while holding her crosshair at head level, she now had the habit to always instinctively place her crosshair at head level. Joseph smiled witnessing this and he thought to himself : "She must have practiced at home as well." Joseph told Mona : "I will now peek you okay? From your left side." Mona readied herself to shoot Joseph when he comes out. Mona saw Joseph's figure appearing and before she could fire, she was already shot in the head.