Ricochet is a Goldsrc engine game where you hop around on platforms via jump pads and hit people off of them with your discs.
It's very simple in concept, but there's a few complexities which make the game much more exciting.
This manual intends to teach you as much as it can about Ricochet and it's gameplay.
This guide is written implying you know the basics of playing a Goldsrc game.
Ricochet is an average first-person Goldsrc game, using WASD and left click and right click.
Although, there are two things to keep in mind for this game. And they are very important.
1. THERE IS NO JUMP KEY.
2. TURN ON RAW MOUSE INPUT.
The first is a mistake a lot of newbies make, and the second has the game literally not function without it.
But once you know those, you should be good to go.
All of your jumping is done on the various jump arrows
that reside throughout the map. You can airstrafe to make
some more slick movements and to correct a jump that you
accidentally made and/or messed up, but that's out of the league of
this guide. Check a youtube video on Goldsrc airstrafing for that.
If you wanna get to a pad that's farther down, I reccomend holding the forward and a singular strafe key and walking at it at an angle.
There's some weird jank with that where it makes you go faster.
If you came into this expecting a rooty tooty point n' shooty, you thought wrong.
The gameplay is quite different, but also easy to understand in general.
Your goal is to kill the other guys by either pushing them off the edge with
your left-click discs, or decapitating them with your right-click discs.
You get a point for a direct hit kill with a push disc, and also one
with a decapitation (or "decap", as we'll be calling it from now on) disc.
Don't worry about having to aim for the head, decap discs always kill no
matter where they hit on a player's hitbox.Decap discs fire every frame. Make use of this info how you'd like, if you ever find yourself in a situation where you can throw out multiple.
Left: Killing with a regular disc. Right: Killing with a decap disc.
The real bread and butter of point gaining are ricochets.
If you bounce a disc off of a wall, and kill a player with it, you get two points.
The more ricochets with one disc you get, the more points you get.
A disc can bounce for a maximum of three times before it returns to you.
You get a point for every bounce, alongside one for passing a disc through a teleporter.
In short, you can get a total of 5 points per kill. No more.
As for limits on discs, you can have a maxmimum of three discs at play.
Using a decap disc will use up three entire discs, so use it wisely!You're all gonna be doing a lot of jumping around, so predicting where people will move is very important.
Now, there are two official gamemodes in this game; Arena and Free-For-All.
Arena is a one-on-one arena fighting experience, using ancient Hammer wizardry
from the year 2000 in order to have multiple matches going on at the same time.
First one to get three points wins, and is kept in the arena.
The loser gets booted out to the arena queue to fight someone else next.
Free-For-All is what you expect. Bounce around in a larger map and try to get as
many points as you can with as many players as the server allows. The reccomended
player amount is usually 8. This mode usually doesn't have a frag count, and will
usually run for the current server's set map time. So if you wanna play 'til
a map change happens, enjoy having 30 minutes taken out of your life.Arena is where Ricochet is at it's most competitive. If you wanna get better, I suggest going here.
You see those up there? Those are the discs we've been talking about.
And that's what your hud looks like when you're holding all three discs of yours.
When they're glowing like that, that means they're ready to become a decap disc.
And when they aren't, that means you can't throw one. You're going to have to wait
for all of your discs to come back. Discs generally come back by flying towards
you after the maximum amount of ricocheting, or by teleporting into the void.
If they disappear in a white flash, that means they're back in your possession.Discs that decapitate do not instantly fly back to you at decapitation, unlike regular discs. They fly right through.
But that's not all the fun that you can have with the discs, because
you can also collect Powerups. Powerups are in every official
map, and usually spawn in the middle area, wherever that is.
There's four in total, and they spawn quickly and frequently, but
are highly sought out for the power they have.
Let's introduce you to them, shall we?Before I forget to tell you; powerups stack! Make good use of this power by not throwing your discs around nilly willy.Speaking of not throwing around your discs nilly willy, powerups only disappear when you use up all three discs. Conserve 'em and you'll thrive!
Power Discs are collected by touching the red spiral.
It's purpose is simple. Your regular discs decapitate when close, and knock back hard when far.
This allows you to have three decap discs in play, which is powerful if you know
how to use 'em well. This is a incredibly useful powerup, so use it wisely!Getting this powerup will automatically refill your discs.
Fast discs are collected by touching the green circles.
This allows you to spray speedy discs around for a second or so.
There a point filled to the brim with players? Throw some fast discs their way,
preferably ricocheting, and they will never know what hit 'em! Just make sure
they aren't ready to jump, because this powerup, while fast, usually
isn't faster than the average (good) player's reaction time.
They either return to you or get deleted after one bounce, based on
if the disc fired was given to you via the powerup or not.Getting this powerup will give you nine discs. It also takes priority over every other powerup when it comes to disc count.
Triple discs are what you expect. They shoot three discs out
instead of one, and don't abide by any discs-in-play restrictions.
This powerup helps you cover more ground, and is useful when shooting
at a crowded platform.
And by the by, the two extra discs from this powerup simply disappear when they hit their fourth bounce.Getting this powerup will automatically refill your discs.
Freeze discs slow whoever gets hit by it to a crawl.
This leaves them basically helpless at the mercy of your discs.
This also leaves them at the mercy of other people, though, so be quick.
However, a catch is that the discs home in on players,
and I still have no sweet clue how it chooses a player.
So if you're unlucky or playing with a lot of people, this can be
more of a hinderance than a powerup.
As for what you should remember when you're frozen, however, is that you can still move.
Albeit, very slowly. But keep in mind that jump pads don't discriminate frozen people,
and will still launch you at normal speeds. Good for making a getaway while you're waiting
for yourself to thaw out.Getting this powerup will automatically refill your discs.
The extra discs also home in when using Triple and Fast shot, but not Power.
Left to right: A demonstration of Power, Fast, Triple, and Freeze discs.
Now you're ready to Rico some Chets. Get out there and make us proud!
