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Testing a Scenario

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A new scenario has no leaderboard, no benchmark and no history. Your score on it means nothing until you give it something to mean something against.

  • Test without saving. Profile changes apply from the pause menu.1
  • Session Manager is a sandbox. Nothing you set there survives a save.2
  • Anchor to a scenario you know. A familiar drill in the same session is your reference.
  • One run proves nothing. Two or three reps give a fuller read.3

The fast loop

You do not have to save to test. With the scenario editor open, clicking Play on the pause menu applies profile changes immediately.1

That makes the edit-and-play loop short enough to tune by feel. Save once the version is worth keeping, not after every change.

The Session Manager is for the test run only. It swaps the player character, adds or removes bots, changes bot profiles, sets teams and toggles invincibility. It also changes the map, the map scale and the time scale.2

None of it is saved into the scenario. To make a change stick, set it in the scenario editor's Challenge tab instead.2

Two panels, each looping between an edit step and a play step. On the left the edit is a profile change and the outcome on save is kept. On the right the edit is made in the Session Manager and the outcome on save is discarded.Bassel Bakrhttps://github.com/Bassel-Bakr/aimEdit a profilePlay applies it, no save needededitplaykepton saveEdit the Session Managerthe save drops iteditplaydiscardedon save
Both loops feel the same while you are in them. Only one of them survives the save.

Time scale is the most useful of these for design work. Slowing a scenario down shows you what the motion actually does, without rebuilding it slower.

Give the score a reference

Play a scenario you already know in the same session. Your own score history on a familiar drill tells you what kind of day you are having, which a new scenario cannot.

On the left a familiar scenario with five runs of history and today\u2019s run below its average. On the right a new scenario with a single run and nothing to compare it against. A note concludes that because the known run was low today, the new scenario\u2019s score is not evidence about its design.Bassel Bakrhttps://github.com/Bassel-Bakr/aimOne session, two scenariosthe known one is the readingknown scenariofive runs of historytodaynew scenarioone run, no historyknown run low todayso the new one is notthe design's fault
The known scenario is the reading. Without it a bad first session on a new drill means nothing.

Without that anchor, a bad first session on a new scenario is unreadable. It could be the design, or it could be you.

A single run does not settle anything. Two or three reps give a fuller read than one.3 Scores also move from day to day.4

Twelve scores from the same scenario appearing one at a time, scattered up and down so that neighbouring runs disagree. Once all twelve are shown, a rising line through them appears, which no single run would have revealed.Bassel Bakrhttps://github.com/Bassel-Bakr/aimTwelve runs of the same scenariothe trend, not the runrun 1run 12
Any two neighbouring runs disagree. The trend only exists once all of them are on screen.

Ask what the run actually demanded

Watch a run back, or check the stats. Closing a session by looking at what happened turns repetitions into feedback you can act on.5

For a scenario you built, the question is narrower than usual: did you fail in the way the design intended? Failing for some other reason means the drill is measuring something else.

A drill that is comfortable immediately is usually set wrong. Either the difficulty is too low, or a shortcut exists and you have already found it.

Two panels, each showing nine clean hits in a row. The first is labelled as difficulty set below you, the second as a shortcut you have already found. Neither is a drill working as intended.Bassel Bakrhttps://github.com/Bassel-Bakr/aimEvery rep cleandifficulty is under youClean a different waya shortcut you already found
Nine clean reps is not a drill working. It is a drill asking nothing, one way or the other.

When to stop changing it

Freeze the scenario once it reads clearly. A drill you keep editing has no history, so it can never show improvement.

Two panels of nine runs. On the left the scenario is edited twice, so the runs form three short unrelated climbs and no overall trend. On the right it is left alone and the nine runs form one rising line.Bassel Bakrhttps://github.com/Bassel-Bakr/aimEdited every sessionthree runs, then nothingediteditno trend, three timesFrozen after the buildnine runs of one thinga trend you can read
Every edit restarts the history. Three short climbs are not a trend.

Retire it when the weakness it was built for stops being your weakness, rather than when you get bored. A scenario played for too long measures the scenario.

Common mistakes

  • Saving after every small change, which fills your list with near-identical scenarios.
  • Tuning in the Session Manager, then saving and losing the change.2
  • Judging a new scenario on its first session, with nothing to compare against.
  • Editing a scenario you also train on, so its score history means nothing.

In practice

Separate the building session from the training session. Build and tune in one sitting, then leave the scenario alone and train on it in the next.

Do this next. Take a scenario you built, play it in the same session as one you know well, and write down both scores before you change anything.

Resources

References

  1. KovaaK's, Intro to Scenario Creation, KovaaK's Wiki · REF-79 ↩↩

  2. KovaaK's, Session Manager, KovaaK's Wiki · REF-84 ↩↩↩↩

  3. Aimlabs, How to build a well balanced aim training playlist · REF-8 ↩↩

  4. Aimlabs, How to develop your own aim training regimen · REF-9 ↩

  5. Voltaic, Constructing an improvement based mentality · REF-51 ↩