Quake Live strafe jumping basics

In my opinion, one of the most difficult skills to master in Quake Live is strafe jumping. It looks very simple but it’s not that easy if you want to do it correctly. It is often an undervalued skill of gaming. When you have got good movement skills you will be able to move faster to your objectives and even more importantly, you will be harder to hit.

Strafe Jumping step by step

  1. Press forward
  2. While keeping the forward key pressed, press jump and press the move left or move right key. It is important to note that the move left/move right key and jump key are pressed at the same time.
  3. To gain extra speed, you should move your mouse smoothly to around a 45 degree in the direction of the strafe.
  4. For consecutive strafejumps, you should jump again immediately after landing, changing the direction of strafe as well as mouse motion.

Steve’s Quake Strafejumping Video Tutorial

Don’t freak out if it doesn’t work the first few times. Mastering the Quake Live movement takes time and practice. 🙂

32 comments

  • <cite>randomguy123</cite>

    if you want to learn strafe jumping, just google for quake 3 strafe jumping tutorials. there are a fair few floating around. there was a movement focused mod called Defrag, you might want to look up defrag sites/forums too.

    in any case, there are many ways to strafe. single beat, half beat, 2 beat, etc. the basics remain the same.

    first jump is called “Circle Jump”. (google that)
    then the standard way to strafe is called “single beat strafing” (can google that too)

    watch demos of good players to learn the routes they take to get from/to places. no point being able to move fast if you dont USE the faster movement.
    btw, that movie in the post above was made in defrag (quake 3) so yah, just google up defrag quake 3 movement tutorial or w/e.

  • <cite>Malice</cite>

    yea you’re right randomguy. Plenty of info out there. This is just a sloppy quick guide we set up using the information that’s actually already out there.

  • <cite>slack</cite>

    Quake 3/Live strafing is terribly easy and basic. If you want to get good at it just play Quakeworld or CPMA for a while. Then learning QuakeLive movement will be incredibly simple.

  • <cite>sqdtnz</cite>

    I’m new to the Quake series (only played Q4 for a short period, and Q3 in the demo days), I see they use handy tools, like those console commands that add stuff to the HUD, and a special map to practice, but how do I use those commands and that map in QL?

    The commands returned errors (varCommand unknown, others unknown too)

  • <cite>sqdtnz</cite>

    Ah ok, thanks.

    Would be nice of they added them for people that have a different gaming background, such as players from the Unreal series, like myself.

  • <cite>strux</cite>

    Does anyone know what training map he’s using in most of that video? If anyone had a link that would be even cooler 🙂 I just downloaded defrag yesterday and got the Promode-Vanilla map pack, but it’s not in there. Googleing around I only found one other site that had maps and they didn’t have the one in question either.

  • <cite>woeste</cite>

    the map is called opc1, just google it and you will probably find it.
    other good maps are probably
    grid
    xcm_tricks2
    cos1_beta7b
    Good movement can be seen here:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAVsJI2PCiM
    (remember that some of the maps are done with cpm physics (which alter from the physics in QL (vq3))

    And one of the best tutorials is:
    http://www.quakeunity.com/file=2170

    And i agree, there should definitely be a follow up on genesis with not just single beat strafes, but also
    double beat
    half beat
    inverted
    sideways
    backwards
    and so on

  • <cite>Lashknife</cite>

    Since I didn’t know what half beat and all those terms meant, I looked it up:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeFRaG
    At the bottom there are notes explaining what the various jumps mean.

    Even tho I performed such moves already I had no clue there were different names for them. I just do them instinctively depending on how fast I want to go, how much turning I want to add so i don’t bump into a wall :p Turns out each of those jumps has it’s own name 😮

  • <cite>tryhard</cite>

    quote:”Don?t freak out if it doesn?t work the first few times. Mastering the Quake Live movement takes time and practice. :)”
    I am trying to strafejump and circlejump now for years and i still can’t do it.
    I have seen the tutorial video and thought i should try it again on opc1 and did not even get to the second platform (in quake3). And i tried it many many times. Watched the tutorial video about 4 times to find out what i am doing wrong in the beginning.
    I also watched the movie “genesis – the beginning of” quite some time ago and tried to cj in q3defrag then – failed and gave up depressed.
    Only thing i can do is the h2h on tourney4 in quake3. Never managed the b2r jump on q3dm6 after trying it many times as you might have already guessed.

  • <cite>Malice</cite>

    I’d figure you’d get a hang of it after at least about 500 tries 😮
    It’ll come eventually I think :p

    Bt, what’s the h2h on tourney4?

  • <cite>Talman</cite>

    I already have trouble with the recover momentum, i never get to the 2nd platform. The farthest i get is third platform, but with running between my jumps. :/

  • <cite>InFerNo</cite>

    Just keep the jump button pressed in mid-air. When you land you will immediately jump again, then as soon as you’re up again, release en press jump again untill you touch down. Repeat and enjoy 🙂

  • <cite>Wii-Mall.com» FNF Quake Live preperation guide part 1 | Destructoid | Wii-Mall.com</cite>

    […] Jumping in general isn’t used that often, many core players get around with the strafe jump and have thrown the normal jump out all together. However you will still come across some players, including yourself who will do the stupid. For instance, when you are in close quarters battle with another player, and hes got his rocket launcher out against you DO NOT JUMP. You become a much easier target jumping around a room when someones shooting rockets at you, your air control is very limited with a normal jump so it becomes VERY easy to know where you are going to land, thus, by the time you do land back on the ground (which only takes a second to complete a jump) you will have a nice rocket waiting for you to sit on. If you don’t understand what strafe jumping is, refer to here. […]

  • <cite>FNF Quake Live preperation guide part 1| The Game Blog | Daily Fresh News of the Latest Games on Playstation, Xbox, Wii and PC| Coeds.cc</cite>

    […] Jumping in general isn’t used that often, many core players get around with the strafe jump and have thrown the normal jump out all together. However you will still come across some players, including yourself who will do the stupid. For instance, when you are in close quarters battle with another player, and hes got his rocket launcher out against you DO NOT JUMP. You become a much easier target jumping around a room when someones shooting rockets at you, your air control is very limited with a normal jump so it becomes VERY easy to know where you are going to land, thus, by the time you do land back on the ground (which only takes a second to complete a jump) you will have a nice rocket waiting for you to sit on. If you don’t understand what strafe jumping is, refer to here. […]

  • <cite>FNF Quake Live preperation guide part 1 | Video Gamer Now-The Ultimate Gaming and Entertainment Site</cite>

    […] Jumping in general isn’t used that often, many core players get around with the strafe jump and have thrown the normal jump out all together. However you will still come across some players, including yourself who will do the stupid. For instance, when you are in close quarters battle with another player, and hes got his rocket launcher out against you DO NOT JUMP. You become a much easier target jumping around a room when someones shooting rockets at you, your air control is very limited with a normal jump so it becomes VERY easy to know where you are going to land, thus, by the time you do land back on the ground (which only takes a second to complete a jump) you will have a nice rocket waiting for you to sit on. If you don’t understand what strafe jumping is, refer to here. […]

  • <cite>FNF Quake Live preparation guide part 1 | Video Gamer Now-The Ultimate Gaming and Entertainment Site</cite>

    […] Jumping in general isn’t used that often, many core players get around with the strafe jump and have thrown the normal jump out all together. However you will still come across some players, including yourself who will do the stupid. For instance, when you are in close quarters battle with another player, and hes got his rocket launcher out against you DO NOT JUMP. You become a much easier target jumping around a room when someones shooting rockets at you, your air control is very limited with a normal jump so it becomes VERY easy to know where you are going to land, thus, by the time you do land back on the ground (which only takes a second to complete a jump) you will have a nice rocket waiting for you to sit on. If you don’t understand what strafe jumping is, refer to here. […]

  • <cite>floob</cite>

    If you spectate with the speed graph you see that EVERYONE IN QUAKE LIVE STRAFE JUMPS WITHOUT STRAFING, WITHOUT MOVING THE MOUSE, THEY JUST GO STRAIGHT. This is not what this video shows.

  • <cite>petooka</cite>

    Hi guys, i palyer with qauke 3 arena 7 years, it was about 5 years ago xD i wanna strafe jump again, but i dont find quake live strafe servers, and quake 3 arena strafe servers, what cna i do now? i wanna strafe with my friends, any opinion? thx the help!

  • <cite>Andrei</cite>

    Most important of all, pmove_fixed 1 will save you a lot of stress trying to figure out why you’re not getting any better. What it does is it makes jumping not affected by fps variations.

  • <cite>gumball</cite>

    how does one do the wall flicks where you accelerate after flicking the corner of a wall, I see guys do it consistently through the corridor on ztn by the grenade launcher going to the rocket launcher and also on dm6 from the yellow to red

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