Learn to move

Lesson 0Set up before you start

Most of movement is smooth, steady mouse turns. Settings that make those comfortable matter more than anything else.

Sensitivity

You need to turn 90° in a single smooth sweep without lifting the mouse, and still make small corrections. Most Quake players land somewhere around 20 to 40 cm for a full 360° turn. The trainer uses Quake's scale, so if you know your number from Quake, Defrag or CS, use that. To work out your distance:

cm per 360° = 41,564 ÷ (sensitivity × mouse DPI)

800 DPI, sensitivity 2.5  →  about 21 cm
800 DPI, sensitivity 1.5  →  about 35 cm

If you overshoot turns or your crosshair jitters out of the green, lower it.

Field of view and jumping

• Field of view around 100 to 110 lets you see where you're going while you look off to the side. The setting is Quake's horizontal FOV at 4:3.
• Auto-hop (jump again while holding jump) is on by default, so you can learn strafing first. Turn it off for lesson 2 to learn timing.
• Mouse wheel jump: each notch is a short jump press, which is how many Quake players bunny hop. Scroll several notches as you land.

Lesson 1Why any of this works

Quake limits your speed only in the direction you're pressing, not your total speed. Every trick on this page comes from that.

125 times a second, the game does this:

1. It works out the direction your keys point, relative to where you're looking. W+A points 45° left of your view, and A alone points 90° left.
2. It measures how fast you're already going in that direction. That's your speed multiplied by the cosine of the angle between your movement and your keys.
3. If that number is under the limit, it pushes you in that direction, but never past the limit.

Press straight ahead and you hit the limit quickly and stop gaining. Press at a wide angle to the way you're moving and the speed along your keys stays small, so the game keeps pushing and your total speed grows. You turn the mouse so the angle stays right as you speed up.

Try it below. Drag the angle and watch the push arrow. It only appears while the tip of your velocity is behind the orange limit line. The speed change is biggest at the best angle and turns negative past about 90°.

Things to notice:

• In Quake 3 the best angle is the point where the limit starts to bite, about 37° at 400 ups. It gets wider as you speed up: about 58° at 600 and 69° at 900.
• In Quake 1 and Surf the limit is so low that you only gain at almost exactly 90°, which is why you strafe with A or D alone.
• Past about 90° you push against your own movement and lose speed.

along   = dot(velocity, wishdir)
room    = limit - along
if room <= 0: return
push    = min(accel × maxspeed × frametime, room)
velocity += push × wishdir

Lesson 2Bunny hopping

Friction only works on the ground. Jump again on the exact tick you land and you skip it completely.

Each tick on the ground costs real speed. In Quake 3 at 500 ups, friction takes about 24 ups every tick, so landing two ticks late costs you almost 10% of your speed. Bunny hopping on its own doesn't make you faster in Quake 3. It stops you losing what the strafing in the next lessons gains.

1. Turn auto-hop off in the trainer's settings.
2. Run forward and jump. As you come down, press jump again just before you touch the ground, or scroll the wheel several notches.
3. Watch the speed graph at the bottom of the screen. A clean hop keeps the line flat. A late one shows a small dip.
4. Holding jump doesn't help with auto-hop off. You have to let go and press again, as in Quake 3.

Lesson 3Air strafing

Hold one strafe key, let go of forward, and turn the mouse the same way. This is how you gain speed and turn in Quake 1 and Surf.

The air limit is only 30 ups, so the push only works at right angles to your movement. Holding A pushes at right angles to your view. So if you look where you're going and keep turning left, the push stays at right angles to your movement and keeps adding speed.

1. Pick Quake 1 physics. Run forward and jump.
2. In the air, let go of W, hold A, and move the mouse smoothly left. Not a flick, a steady sweep for the whole jump.
3. Keep the crosshair in the green zone of the guide. In Quake 1 the zone sits close to where you're moving, so you mostly look ahead.
4. When you land, jump again and switch: D and turn right. Swapping every jump zigzags you down the Runway in a roughly straight line.

How fast you turn sets how fast you gain. Turn faster and you gain faster and curve tighter, as long as you stay in the green. Turn too fast and you cross the sharp edge by the white line and stop gaining.

Lesson 4Strafe jumping

Quake 3's signature move: forward plus one strafe key, a slow steady turn, and a switch every jump.

Quake 3's air limit is the full 320, but the push is weak: 2.56 ups per tick. That makes the best angle much narrower than 90°, about 37° at 400 ups. W+A pushes 45° left of your view, which is close. So you look almost straight where you're going and turn slowly.

1. Pick Quake 3 physics. Run forward and jump. A circle jump (next lesson) starts you faster.
2. In the air, hold W+A and turn the mouse slowly and steadily left, about 30° to 60° over the jump.
3. As you land, jump again at once, switch to W+D, and turn right.
4. Keep the switch tight: the key change, the change of turn direction and the jump all happen together.

As you get faster

The best angle widens with speed, so your view drifts further into the turn. At 400 ups you look a few degrees to the outside of where you're going. By 900 ups you look about 24° into the turn. The guide shows this, so just follow the green. The gains also slow down at high speed, which is normal.

Lesson 5Circle jumps

A fast first jump. Swing the mouse on the ground before you take off, and you leave at about 400 ups instead of 320.

Ground acceleration is strong enough to beat friction for a moment while you turn, the same way air strafing does. In the trainer, a clean circle jump in Quake 3 leaves the ground at about 397 ups.

1. Stand facing about 90° to the right of where you want to go.
2. Run forward with W for a moment. Then hold W+A and swing the mouse left about 90° in roughly a third of a second.
3. Jump as the swing finishes, now facing the way you want to go. Carry on strafe jumping from there.

Lesson 6CPMA: mixing it up

CPMA gives each key combination its own job in the air. Good players switch between them in the middle of a jump.

• W+A or W+D: Quake 3 strafe jumping, for straights.
• A or D alone: a 30 ups limit with a strong push, like Quake 1. Use it for sharp turns.
• W alone: air control. Your velocity turns toward where you look without losing speed. Use it to line up with a doorway or a jump pad.
• Pressing backwards against your movement brakes harder, which helps you land on small targets.

A common pattern is to strafe jump down a straight, switch to A alone for the corner, then tap W alone to straighten up before the next jump.

Lesson 7Ramps

Ramps turn forward speed into height and height back into speed. Where you jump and where you land decide which.

Ramp jumps

Running up a ramp tips your velocity upwards. In CPMA, Quake 1 and Surf, jumping adds the jump on top of that, so jumping on the slope sends you much higher. In the trainer, jumping on the Ramps kicker peaks at about 210 units in CPMA but only 148 in Quake 3. Quake 3 replaces your upward speed with the jump instead of adding to it.

1. Come at the kicker as fast as you can, straight on.
2. Jump while you're on the slope, close to the top edge. In Quake 3 this still gets you higher than jumping on flat ground, just by less.
3. Keep strafing in the air. You can still gain and steer.

Landing on slopes

When you land on a slope, the game slides your velocity along the surface instead of stopping it. Land on a slope that goes down the way you're travelling and your falling speed becomes forward speed. Land on one that faces you and that speed is wasted. On the Ramps map, jump off the top of the hill and land on its far side going down.

Banks

The slopes along the Ramps walls are banks. Ride up one at an angle and the surface curves your path back toward the middle without you losing speed. It's a way to turn at high speed in Quake 3, where air turning is slow.

Too steep to stand on

Anything steeper than about 45° isn't a floor. You slide on it, can't jump off it, and the speedometer shows "surfing". That's the next lesson.

Lesson 8Surfing

On a steep ramp you're technically in the air. Hold the strafe key toward the ramp and it holds you up while gravity pulls you along.

Gravity pulls you down the slope. Your strafe key pushes you sideways into the ramp, and because you can't go through it, that push turns into movement up the slope. Balance the two and you glide along the ramp, picking up speed as it drops away beneath you. This is how CS surf servers set it up: a 30 ups air limit with a push of 150, which is what the trainer's Surf physics uses.

1. Pick Surf physics and the Surf map. Run off the start platform onto the first ramp, which is on your right.
2. As soon as you land on it, hold D, toward the ramp. Don't hold W: it moves your push away from the ramp and you'll slide off the bottom.
3. Look along the ramp. Move the mouse a little toward the ramp to climb, and a little away from it to dive.
4. Stay in the upper half of the slope. Height is your safety margin.
5. At the end of the ramp, let go and fly to the next one. It's on your left, so hold A once you touch it. Aim for the upper part of the slope, not the ridge.

Going faster

• Diving down the ramp gains speed but loses height. Dive late, near the end of each ramp, so you don't run out of height.
• Small mouse movements. Big turns on a ramp throw you off it.
• Leave each ramp high and you'll have more room to land on the next one.

The Ramps map has a small surf ramp at the far end. It's good for practising a single ramp without the drop.

Lesson 9Common mistakes

Lesson 10A practice plan

Ten to fifteen minutes a day beats an hour once a week. Muscle memory comes from repetition.

1. Days 1 to 2: air strafing with Quake 1 on the Runway, to learn the key and mouse sync. Aim for 600.
2. Days 3 to 5: strafe jumping with Quake 3 on the Runway. Aim for 500, then 700. Add circle jumps.
3. Week 2: auto-hop off. Clear Gaps in Quake 3, then beat your own time.
4. Week 3: CPMA on Ramps: laps of the hill, kicker jumps, bank turns.
5. Any time: Surf. It feels different from the rest, and it's a good break.
6. Then: turn the guide off and see if your speed holds. If it does, you've got it.

Open the trainerBack to Strafe Trainer