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Designing Target Motion

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Motion is the single biggest design decision in a scenario. Target size changes how hard a shot is. Motion changes which skill the shot belongs to.

  • Readable and unreadable train different things. Pick one on purpose.1
  • A learnable path becomes recall. That is useful, and it is not reading.1
  • Mixed behavior costs comparability. Weighted evenly, a run's difficulty is luck.
  • Travel time is motion too. A projectile has to be led. Hitscan does not.

Readable against unreadable

A fixed path can be learned. Run the same route enough times and you stop reacting to it. You recall it, and your crosshair leads the target because you know where it goes.

A reacting target is not predictable enough to track by anticipation alone. It responds to your movement, so you have to read it as it happens.1

Two panels with a moving target and its path drawn behind it. The predictable target traces a smooth repeating figure, the same every cycle. The reactive target jumps between directions at irregular intervals, so its drawn path is a record of one run rather than a prediction of the next.Bassel Bakrhttps://github.com/Bassel-Bakr/aimPredictablelearn it once, ride itthe path it will takeReactivecannot be anticipatedthe path it took once
The left path is a prediction you can ride. The right one is only a record of what already happened.

Both are worth training. The failure is building one and believing you built the other, which is what happens when a path is nearly repeatable.

A half-predictable target teaches guessing. Guessing works until the pattern shifts, and then it fails all at once.1

Deciding how much the target notices you

Whether a target reacts is a design choice with a setting behind it: Waypoint Logic decides how much attention a bot pays to the route it was given.2

If you want Choose
A route the target repeats, ignoring you entirely Seek Waypoint2
A route it abandons the moment it finds you Seek Combat2
A route it walks while tracking you Seek Target2
No route at all, just dodging Ignore2
Two panels with the same three waypoints and the same player. On the left the bot walks the three waypoints in a loop and never approaches the player. On the right the bot leaves the route after the second waypoint and moves to the player, then stays there.Bassel Bakrhttps://github.com/Bassel-Bakr/aimSeek Waypointignores you, repeats forever123youSeek Combatbreaks off when it finds you123you
The same three waypoints, two settings. One loops forever. The other abandons the route on contact.

Seek Waypoint is the setting for a repeatable tracking drill. Seek Combat turns the same map into a scenario about the moment contact happens.

Mixed behavior costs you comparability

A bot can carry several dodge profiles, each with a weighting.3 That is how a target mostly does one thing and occasionally does another.

Weight it heavily and runs stay comparable, because nearly every rep is the same rep. Weight it evenly and which drill you got is decided after you pressed play.

Two panels showing a bot running four strafes per cycle along a short narrow track and a long wide one. Weighted ninety to ten, nearly every strafe is the narrow one. Weighted fifty to fifty, narrow and wide strafes alternate unpredictably.Bassel Bakrhttps://github.com/Bassel-Bakr/aimWeighted 90 / 10one behavior, mostlynarrowwideWeighted 50 / 50a coin flip each timenarrowwide
Weighted hard one way, a run repeats. Weighted evenly, the difficulty of a run is luck.

Neither is wrong, but only one of them gives you a score you can read across sessions.

Travel time is part of the motion

A projectile weapon turns every shot into a lead. Where the target will be matters more than where it is, and that is a different skill from putting a crosshair on a thing.

Two first-person views down a weapon at a target strafing across the screen. In the hitscan view the crosshair sits on the target and the shot resolves along that line. In the projectile view the crosshair is held to one side of the target, ahead of it, and the round is shown in flight toward the place the target is moving into.Bassel Bakrhttps://github.com/Bassel-Bakr/aimHitscanhold the crosshair on itthe shot lands where you pointedProjectilehold the crosshair ahead of itthe round arrives after the target does
Down the sights of each. The projectile player's crosshair is not on the target, and that is the point.

Match this to the game you play. Training leads for a hitscan game adds a skill you never use. Training hitscan for a projectile game leaves out the one that decides fights.

Common mistakes

  • Building a path you meant to be unpredictable, then learning it within a week.
  • Stacking dodge profiles at similar weights then not knowing why scores vary so widely.
  • Setting an elaborate route and leaving Waypoint Logic on Ignore, so nothing follows it.2
  • Training projectile leads for a game where every gun is hitscan.

In practice

Decide first whether the target should be readable. A tracking drill usually wants a repeatable path. A reaction drill wants one you cannot anticipate.

Do this next. Open a tracking scenario you play, find its dodge profile, and set Waypoint Logic to Seek Waypoint so the target stops reacting to you.

Resources

  • Tracking: the category motion design affects most.
  • KovaaK's: the trainer these settings belong to.

References

  1. Aimlabs, Stop predicting and start reacting: get better at reactive tracking · REF-15 ↩↩↩↩

  2. KovaaK's, KMC: frequently asked questions, KovaaK's Wiki · REF-91 ↩↩↩↩↩↩

  3. KovaaK's, Bot Profiles, KovaaK's Wiki · REF-82 ↩