Guide

Map Submission

Introduction #

Momentum’s map submission system is how maps are officially added to Momentum Mod. Once approved, we host all map files and leaderboards, maps show up on the ingame map selector and website, and players are granted XP for playing them (and rank points, in the case of Ranked leaderboards).

Map submission is open to everyone, but we have higher standard than say, GameBanana or Steam Workshop. Notably:

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Map Porting

Background #

This guide gives an overview of all the steps required to officially port a map into Momentum Mod. There are multiple tools available that accomplish the same things, so it is up to the map porter to decide what works best for them. The general process for porting maps is the following:

  1. Zone the map in-game or in Hammer
  2. Make the required entity modifications using in-game entity tools and/or Hammer
  3. Use Lumper to apply entity modifications to the BSP and remove Valve assets
  4. Ensure the map is following our Submission Guidelines
  5. Upload the BSP and zone .json file to the Momentum Mod website

In-Game Zoning #

In order to use the in-game zoning tools, sv_cheats must be enabled. When cheats are enabled, a button on the tab menu will be displayed that lets you edit the zones. The mom_zone_edit 1 command can also be used to display the zone editor menu:

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Map Zoning

Zoning Requirements #

  • TODO: More stuff!!

  • If a zone region’s location has a map teleport destination entity, we highly prefer that it is used (rather than a custom arbitrary region destination coordinate) so the spot corresponds to a map teleport destination.

  • Make sure each region teleport destination is inside the region.

  • Avoid overlapping or touching regions for the same zone which could just be one region.

  • Make sure points are placed precisely and aligned well with geometry.

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Ahop

What is Ahop? #

Ahop, short for “Accelerated Hop”, comes from the Orange Box versions of Half-Life 2, its episodes, and Portal 1. Ahop comes from Valve’s attempt to remove bunnyhopping in an older version of the game. By either hopping completely backwards or holding/pressing the back movement key while hopping, players can gain extreme amounts of velocity.

Ahop movement can be commonly found in Any% Speedruns for Half-Life 2, its episodes and Portal 1.

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Bhop

What is Bhop? #

Bhop, short for “Bunny Hop”, is a very popular gamemode found in many games, such as CS:GO, TF2, and others.

The core mechanic, “bhopping”, is when the player jumps repeatedly, the moment they hit the ground, allowing them to maintain their current velocity. In order to maximize the likelihood of inputting the jump exactly when you hit the ground, players used to bind jump to the scroll wheel, and then roll their mouse wheel very fast whenever they were about to hit the ground. This is sometimes known as traditional style bhopping. This method has fallen out of favor though, as unless the player can frame-perfectly input every jump command the best the player can hope for is a 50% chance of not losing speed. It’s more common now to rely on autobhop, an addon or mod which inputs a jump on the exact frame the player hits the ground every time. This functionality is built into MomentumMod

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Climb

What is Climb? #

Climb, also known as Kreedz (KZ) in CS 1.6 and CSGO, or Xtreme Climb (XC) in CSS, is a popular community game mode found in every Counter-Strike game.
Climb is a series of platforming challenges that can be best simplified as “trick jumps” which pull from the big 3 movement disciplines in source:
Strafe, Bunnyhop (Bhop), and Surf to challenge players in scaling its maps as fast as possible.

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Conc

What is Conc? #

Conc, short for “Concussion Grenade Jumping”, is a classic game mode from the classic Team Fortress, involving priming a concussion grenade to explode at just the right time to propel the player throughout the map.

Momentum Mod’s implementation of Conc comes from a mix of Fortress Forever’s implementation combined with reverse engineering specific values from Team Fortress Classic.

History of Conc #

Conc comes from Team Fortress Classic, which was based on the Quake mod “Quake Fortress” by the same developers. Team Fortress Classic is the precursor to the beloved Team Fortress 2, but runs on Valve’s Goldsrc engine.

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Defrag

What is Defrag? #

Defrag is considered the grandfather mode for all of Momentum Mod’s supported modes. Defrag is based on the movement found in Quake, specifically Quake 3 Arena, and is broken into two modes, “VQ3” and “CPM”.

History of Defrag #

TODO gotta whip out the VCR tapes

How Defrag Works #

TODO

Parkour

What is Parkour? #

Parkour is the movement from Titanfall 2, which sees players slide jumping, wallrunning and preserving speed.

Momentum Mod’s implementation of Parkour comes from the implementation found in Half-Life 2 Mobility Mod, with adjustments from feedback from the Titanfall 2 speedrunning community.

History of Parkour #

Parkour is an athletic pursuit originating in France in the 20th century. Originally it began as a form of athletic training for soldiers called the “méthode naturelle” (natural method). These exercises were very effective at training balance, strength, and agility. The courses they would run were known as “parcours du combant”, from which the word “parkour” originates. This information has nothing to do with video games, however, and is therefore worthless.

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Rocket Jump

What is Rocket Jump? #

Based on the Soldier class from Team Fortress 2, players shoot unidirectional, fixed-speed rockets and take advantage of the explosion they create to propel themselves throughout maps.

History of Rocket Jump #

The origins of rocket jumping can be traced all the way back to the release of Doom in 1993. Players could sacrifice health to cross gaps not originally intended to be crossed by firing a rocket at a wall nearby and use the outward horizontal velocity emitted by the explosion of the rocket (sometimes called the “splash” or “splash damage”) to strafe across a gap. Other games, like Rise of the Triad (1994) and Marathon (1995), also had similar mechanics, leading to the rise of Rocket Jumping as a “Pro Strategy” for beating certain levels fast or showing off in deathmatch. This was refined in Quake, where the verticality offered by the Quake Engine allowed for players to be able to launch themselves upwards using the rocket launcher, skipping parts of levels, finding secrets, or gaining height advantages in classic Deathmatch gamemodes. Quake is arguably the true beginning of Rocket Jumping as we know it, as it was the most popular early example of rocket jumping, and the first to truly demonstrate how large the skill ceiling for rocket jumping could be due to it utilizing a full true 3D environment. This is also the beginning of players making maps specifically dedicated to practicing rocket jumping.

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