Anyone who's already on the rope ladder, will know about this already, so this is for those of you who arent.

Roping is slow, boring, and newbie-ish these days. its become all about crates, who gets luckier, and bull**** crate rules. i'm sick of playing these games against guys who know their maps like the back of their hand, and have rigged their 1 worm sets so they are pretty much guaranteed the win. its time to bring it back to the old skool way - random maps every game, 2 worm sets, get rid of that newbie wep called "bazooka", and bring back the old skool power weps. wep drops should be important, FD should be important, unlucky crates shouldnt cost you the game. 2 worm brings so many more options to ur strategy...its not just "get crate, attack, hide next to opponents worm, repeat". so check out my new 10 sec, 2 worm, sets. play them on random maps. get some skills back, and show me the rope speed everyone claims to have
http://spadger.uk.ro/10secrope.zip

http://spadger.uk.ro for more details, & post ur comments on here, good & bad!

-Spad

Tempting, but I'm not going to try roping again until I get a real computer. Much less roping on W2 with 10 seconds.

You'd be surprised how similar the situation is on WA; there's debates about how to make the rope scheme less crate-luck-based and more fun all over the First Blood league forums. However, on WA random maps are more or less reality already. And all in all there's talk about less drastic changes than reimplementing the dynamite and sheep and getting rid of the zook. We like skillful zooks!

I suppose playing with 2 worms each again wouldn't be a bad idea for W2. On WA there's enough people and active clans to get a clanner going if you're thirsty for 2v2, though.

So my suggestion would be for you to come see how things are on WA sometime.

well thats exactly the point tho, worms2 is different to WA. WA was made so you couldnt rope, coz at the time, roping was all there was on w2. worms2 roping is much more elite than WA (not necassarily the players, but the coding/gameplay), and our sets need to reflect that. as far as 2vs2 games go, we generally can only connect to 1 other player so thats not really an option. when we used to play 2vs2 games tho, we still did that was 2 worms per team, 8 worms in total. it just provides more options, more strategy, more piles if ur good enough :)

-Spad

Yeh, I know about the trouble with W2 net code. It's a shame because a lot of people find it fun to have someone but yourself to rely on when playing, especially roping.

Guess you have a point about the W2 rope, it's a lot faster and more to the point, but... I'd have to say that the WA rope feels quite a bit more stylish to me. As in you have to put more work into the angles you release the rope at and timing the taps correctly. It's a pro in my book, but this really isn't a W2 vs. WA debate, heh. To each their own.

WA was made so you couldnt ropeThere are loads of amazing WA ropers. The WA rope is definitely just as fast, if you play it correctly. I can rope equally as well on W2 as WA. Really, the rope isn't *that* different. Actually, I get pretty much equal times on rope races in W2 as I do in WA, and I'm an avid rope racer.

the best way to compare to 2 ropes:
-w2 is like wa exept the worm has relativly no weight. Therefor you can swing a lot faster

The best way to compare them is by noting the actual mechanical differences, so that ropers reading this thread are not misinformed:
-a worm on a rope is more bouncy on W2 than WA
-the rope is shorter in W2 than WA
-there is no bounce sound on W2, while there is on WA
-the rope shoot and attach sounds on W2 are different from those on WA
-the weight of the worm on the rope (the pull of gravity on the worm) is exactly the same in W2 as in WA

-the weight of the worm on the rope (the pull of gravity on the worm) is exactly the same in W2 as in WA

I disagree lex :P The reason the rope moves faster on w2 is because the worm on the rope has a lesser weight than the one on wa.

Your disagreement is wrong, Marc! This is not a matter of opinion; it's a matter of fact. Ask Deadcode if you *really* don't believe me. If the worm weighed less on the rope, it would take longer to fall to the bottom of the rope circle, as if roping in low gravity. It would feel really strange.

W2 roping is better hands down, its just the glitches and the lag that get in the way of making in the best. With WA roping is a lot harder to make mistakes. Btw, 10 sec roping is not catching on at all, mainly because there are too few people who can actually do it, and 4 sec retreat is just not normal. I think more WA people should come back to w2, atleast play both games, I do.

i argee with flamie in that the worm on wa is more heavy. w2 roping is much better.

Could you guis explain what's better with the W2 roping [since we can't resist not staying on topic for once]?

The way I see it, the only possible reason for anyone to favour the W2 rope is the fact that it takes less effort doing tricks of all sorts with it. While maneuvering the rope so that a worm flies over a chunk of land [as in the start of tricks such as Arches, Mexis, Dragons to use WA vocabulary] the worm's turning speed stays practically constant, so there's hardly any trouble doing it right every time. On WA the worm starts slowing down sooner, making it vital that you actually bounce off land as hard as you can to get some length on the tricks. Hence pumps have evolved so much on WA.

Another thing that makes it easier on W2 [for me] is the speed at which the rope flies trough the air when you shoot it. On WA you actually have to time your keyboard presses correctly to make your roping look smooth, whereas on W2 it hardly matters if you miss a button press or two since you can correct it in the next 5 ms.

So to conclude, the WA roping seems to me like an advancement; tricks are harder to pull off not due to the rope being worse, but because of an attempt to make it feel more realistic [to a certain degree, I think we agree that neither game is too much of a simulation of anything]. In all, it's harder to get used to all the little details the WA rope offers, but to me it felt a lot more rewarding once I've mastered it.

Oh and the fact that you can easily do 12-second Ropers on W2 and you can't really on WA [unless the map is a double T] is in my opinion not sufficient proof that that roping itself is better.

It isn't to me, but then I'm keen on listening to anyone's opinion.

i'm not the most experienced at WA...i played the demo, the roping was slow & boring. your arguments about smooth roping have no foundation, you cant just pause the game to make ur roping look smooth...if you miss the space once...its gonna cause u to fall, or u'll have to double bank.
i rope in 10 sec, and i do it alot faster than you ever could on WA. in w2 you can rope faster, show off more, and pull off multiple tricks consistently, at speeds you couldnt even dream of in WA. WA was built so roping wasnt going to be popular, they made it that way...roping completely overtook worms2, its all we played for a long time. WA roping isnt meant to be as good or as fun as worms2 roping, and its not.

-Spad

Really, Spadger, you should try playing WA before you say things like that. Jeez. The maximum speed (16 pixels per frame) is exactly the same on both games, so don't tell me that either rope is faster overall. The roping is only slow if you don't know how to bounce with precision.

WA roping is easier and trickier, in a way. It's easier to maneuver in tight spaces in WA, which is why Stratovarius' and Hermit's rope races became so popular when they appeared. It's trickier to perform the best speed-gaining maneuvers, which makes a WA player have to master that sort of thing. That's why so many WA players who come to W2 find it so easy; they can maneuver the rope with more precision because they've had more practice with it. Then again, that could be argued the other way: since the W2 rope is bouncier, it would be harder to time many moves, and therefore, they'd find those tricks easy on WA. However, I've found that the latter argument is not the case, from my experience of the W2ers who came to WA recently, like Noodles, Crescens, and Parasite.

I have found the difference between W2's rope and WA's rope very small. I can do a pump equally as well on W2 as WA, because it takes the same number of frames (holding up and toward-the-wall) on either game. Most of the difference is based on the rope's sound effects, it seems. The lack of bounce sound on W2 makes the bounce seem that much bouncier. I am going to try WA with W2's rope sounds some time, to see how that affects the feel of roping.

really lex, i didnt expect you to get out the blackboard & give me the formulae for roping. you say the maximum speed is the same...therefore the overall speed is the same? thats just plain wrong. overall worms2 roping is, on average (for the top players) FASTER. WA may well be more precise coz its easier to control as you said...but worms2 is faster on average. the problem we are faced with, like i've already said...are these horribly slow & boring sets that are designed to slow the game down, and not provide any challenges. i love the w2w game in wwp, you cant just get an easy crate...and easy attack, without really having to rope. you have to rope, and fast...to get an attack. worms2 roping is a lost art, guys today are shït compared to the speeds we used to rope at, and the tricks we used to perform back in the day. i dont really know who you are, so i dont know if you play w2 much, particularly on cases...but i never see anyone spike, rarely see shadows, and never see dragons (which i still lay claim to inventing, even before the shadow existed).

i dont think coming to worms2 now & looking at the way we rope will give you a reasonable idea of whats possible.

Is Worms 2 faster on average? I get slightly worse rope race times on W2 than I do on WA, not because I suck at bouncing, but because one must slow down to perform the correct maneuvers to get through a rope race at maximum efficiency (due to the frame intervals), and WA is better for that. I bet you rarely play rope races, Spadger, though I could be wrong. Do you? I play them a lot more often than ropers.

Well, you're right that players don't perform nearly as many tricks in roper games nowadays, but you'd also be right if you said that if the top ropers from nowadays went back seven years ago and played against the top ropers from then, the winners would be the players from 2006. People stopped doing as many "tricks" in ropers because they just waste time and are risky.

Watch Mir or FlowingWater play a match, and you'll see that they are not necessarily moving at the maximum speed most of the time, but they are much more efficient than someone who would. The methods used by them, and a handful of other top ropers, are those involving no time-wastage. For example, Mir would never rope back to the wall just to bounce off it, because with the right improvised technique, he could gain the same (or the tiniest bit less, which would be insignificant) amount of speed in a much smaller timeframe.

Roping has evolved from its early, immature, "Look how fast my worm can fly through the air! Oops, I messed up! Which of us will mess up the fewest times?" days to its, "I will move slowly but efficiently, like a dreadnought, and hit you every single turn. If you mess up once, you lose." days. At least, that's what I see on WA. Last time I played W2, nobody wanted to play a funner, so I didn't get the chance to see what's going on. Have W2 ropers changed in the same way?

Post-Script: W2W is not only on WWP. :p Plus, I'd say that a scheme that gives you 30 seconds for roping around the map in a relatively open space is not very hard at all. Wall-to-wall seems like it was invented as an introduction to rope racing.

I dont have much time to post, i have to get to work. I'll keep this short.

You seem to be contradicting yourself, firstly talking about how WA is faster, now saying how WA play slower? Who cares whats physically possible, if you guys arent striving to achieve it? In worms2, yes, most players are slowing down to the slowest possible speeds...but some of us arent, some of us can rope at high speed, high effeciency, and still get attacks every turn. That is the old school way, except with a few years more practice.

Back as early as 1999 i can remember playing MANY players who had slowed down, and based their strategy around the 'hit every turn' philosophy, its nothing new. The skill is being able to perform tricky maneovures and high speed roping, without falling...every turn its required. I dont know if you do that on WA, sounds like you dont, but thats what i try do.

-Spad

Just like on W2, there are people who value speed and style over safe roping on WA. Don't have time for essays either, so there!

I dont have much time to post, i have to get to work. I'll keep this short.

You seem to be contradicting yourself, firstly talking about how WA is faster, now saying how WA play slower? Who cares whats physically possible, if you guys arent striving to achieve it? In worms2, yes, most players are slowing down to the slowest possible speeds...but some of us arent, some of us can rope at high speed, high effeciency, and still get attacks every turn. That is the old school way, except with a few years more practice.

Back as early as 1999 i can remember playing MANY players who had slowed down, and based their strategy around the 'hit every turn' philosophy, its nothing new. The skill is being able to perform tricky maneovures and high speed roping, without falling...every turn its required. I dont know if you do that on WA, sounds like you dont, but thats what i try do.

-SpadHow often do you actually pull off a roper with absolutely no falls? Do you do it 5 games in a row? 10? Mir has a ridiculous 60-wins-and-2-losses roper record in FB because he is safe and efficient. Trying to rope with moves that have a higher chance of slowing you down than speeding you up is not the best way to win.

I mean, a lot of the time, in those moves, you have to press the space bar within a 0.04-second or 0.02-second margin to retain your speed (I'm thinking of fast spikes, pumps and tiny kicks in particular.), which no human can perform consistently (I mean, consistently enough to not fall once in 10 games.), and one of those two frames doesn't give you as much speed if you pressed space at that point than the other. Sure, speed is good once you have it, but there are safe ways of getting that speed, and that's what the top ropers of WA have discovered.

Players who attempt intensely fast tricks and expect to win most of the time with them are in for a disappointment. I know, because I used to be like that. I know exactly where you're coming from with the speed-before-everything idea. I tried, for many years, to perfect my pumps and speed-spikes so that I could perform them completely consistently (100% of the time), but I finally realized that it's impossible, at least in the years of practicing that are available.

I haven't discussed the differences between WA and W2 roping in this post because I truly believe they are inconsequential. Moving between the two games simply requires a tiny adaptation which takes only a couple games, until one is equally as good as they were in the other game.

you're just wrong. its easy to play 10 games without falling...no-one falls these days. people lose thru not getting as much fd as the other person, or going for crates when they dont have time to get back for an attack. i never fall on my spikes, but i do many spikes every game when the map allows it. ppl dont fall anymore...

you're just wrong. its easy to play 10 games without falling...no-one falls these days.
...
i never fall on my spikes, but i do many spikes every game when the map allows it.I was talking, in particular, about performing moves that allow you to retain your scroll speed while sending you in another direction. A slow spike would not do that. Actually, a better move to perform than a slow spike would be releasing the rope, falling, then attaching onto whatever is down there, without taking the extra time to hit the ceiling first. The only way a spike can be an efficient trick to perform is if it's unsafe (where the space-press margin is 0.04 seconds, and the worm is going at 16 pixels per frame). Can you really perform those consistently (100% of the time)? If so, wow.people lose thru not getting as much fd as the other personWhat? So, to win, you must get more fall damage than the other player? How does that make sense? Or, do you mean, "through not giving their opponent as much fall damage as their opponent gave them"?or going for crates when they dont have time to get back for an attack.In WA, there is a crate-before-attack rule. In the situation that a crate you can't get back from appears, you go and get it, then use a weapon and use your retreat time to get to a good hide.

spad does not lose speed from falling... rather he loses it from miss-timing spacebar... he never falls, only in the rarest of all occasions he may misstime spacebar and result in reduced speed but will still be in the air.

[font=9]im a bit unclear and i know i said this as tho its a fact it may not be... i dunno.[/size]

whats the font tags?

So, if he never falls, he may as well take the parachute right out of his scheme. ;) I doubt that he never falls. Everyone falls. Humans can't not fall. My warmer scheme depends on the fact that every human falls, considering it has an 18-hour-something turn time.

Also, mistiming the space bar with tricks like pumps and maximum-speed spikes results in a fall.

i didnt read the rest of ur post, this part just jumped out at me...& i didnt want you to be embarrassed further by me continuing to read.

>> What? So, to win, you must get more fall damage than the other player? How does that make sense? Or, do you mean, "through not giving their opponent as much fall damage as their opponent gave them"?

No, i mean what i said. If i get more fall damage than you, i will beat you...coz i have taken more of your life through good drops, and good planning. its simple, it really is.

So, you did mean what I asked if you meant. I think you forgot to interpret the end of the sentence.

I thought you had meant, "Players win by receiving more fall damage, and therefore, losing more health, than their opponent.", which wouldn't make any sense. Losing health does not make a player win. However, I did suggest an alternative thing to say, which you have proven that you meant.

The only person at risk of being embarassed by misinterpretation around here is you. ;) You may as well read the rest of the posts, considering I have no reason to be embarassed.

Help me, I don't know how to setup a roper game !! I play games made by others and I see worms starting with 450HP and infinite rope swings. I tryed to reconstruct that but ... max starting HP is 250 and max rope swings 9 ... What to do ?? :(

ahh dont use 450 health points mate, use 2 worms, with 250 each :)
http://spadger.uk.ro
you can download rope settings from my site, in the downloads section, at the top of the list :)

Thx ... may I ask a question ? Why .ro ? Are you from Romania by any chance ?

Later edit : D'oh ... Location Melbourne ... that's not in Romania ... my mistake :D

u guys are arguing about roping and who gets wins because he is slow and efficient and all that stuff when the most important thing in roping is to have fun and try your best to beat the other guy :)

You may want to note that the argument ended on April 13 and today is June 19.