That crazy Warthog jump can spell trouble, but here are two ways to help!

(5:46) Level 10 ('The Maw') on Heroic. The escape drive in The Maw involves a massive Warthog jump, but if you simply gun the hog, it generally nosedives, very often resulting in ejection and possibly health loss too, or simply death. Happily there are two better methods you can use, as covered here. See also my new article for more details. I'm using PAL Xbox as ever. I don't know if the dynamics for NTSC/PC differ significantly in regard to outcomes.

Released April 30th 2020, gameplay recorded April 26th-29th 2020.

00:02 (Gunning it) This opening clip shows a typical ejection for when I simply gun the hog. In some testing I did (on Heroic), I had an outcome similar to this about half the time.

00:58 This time I also lose four health bars. Not uncommon, when ejected.

01:14 As for dying from the impact, such as seen here, my tests gave a death rate of 26%.

01:23 Here's a rare occasion on which I remain seated. I lose health though. In my testing, I always lost health when managing to remain seated - and my rate of doing that was only 10%. In this particular example I make a foolhardy attempt at the second jump and fall short, but that's just an incidental bit of comedy for the movie. I knew it was going to be dodgy.

01:40 (Lifting) So, here's a look at the final section of the ramp, and approximately where to lift off the gas. The subsequent jump goes well, with the hog 'floating' very nicely.

02:36 A similarly nice jump, but I move the camera to show the hog's angle better. As it flies, it angles down only very slowly.

02:51 Unfortunately you do still nosedive quite often. That lead to an ejection rate of 60% in my testing.

03:06 Big nosedive and a nasty impact! I may've lifted off the gas a touch too early as I'm clearly falling a bit short. This clip was a very late addition. When checking through my reserves of footage one last time, I decided it was too amusing to omit, so I inserted it (which meant that I also needed to redo the clip coming afterwards, to get the music to match). My ejected body is out of the hog for only one frame, and is then removed by the game. In my experience (at least with the save I was using here), the game very often removes your body instantly when you die on the jump.

03:17 With this final good jump, I rotate the camera around the hog for fun. The clip also gives me chance to mention that health loss is rare, and I got good jumps over 30% of the time (16 out of 50, to be precise).

03:32 (Spinning) Here's a nice anticlockwise spin to start my sequence of spinning jumps. To get the spin, I do a smallish right jink, then a stronger left one.

03:57 This time clockwise. I prefer going anticlockwise, but I figured I'd use both directions in the movie for variety.

04:10 Anticlockwise, but I'm slightly off course to the right, which takes me close to disaster. As the caption indicates, the main hazard is going off course (on account of the jinking).

04:27 Clockwise now. My first jink - namely to the left) - is a bit too strong and also slightly late. My right jink can't compensate enough to balance things, so I end up going to the left somewhat. The situation is saved though.

04:48 If your jinking is a bit heavy, which was the case here (I was doing it deliberately to make the example), that can tend to wipe too much speed off, leading to falling short. My trouble is compounded by having over-rotated though.

05:01 A nice anticlockwise spin, and I move the camera to give an oblique view in flight, rather than having the camera behind as normal.

05:16 This time I orbit the camera around the hog as it flies to its landing. Quite fun to do that, just to be flashy.

Closing remarks This movie was prompted by the spinning jump I did near the end of a recent movie, BCM422. I thought a quick tutorial about the jump would be worth it, while I was busy with the level. Initially I had actually forgotten about the lifting method, so the movie's focus was just on spinning. I had a movie all ready to go, but then the idea of lifting off the gas came back to me. I think I'd almost forgotten about it. When I fired up the Xbox again to check it out, it became clear that I needed to add a section about that. I've put it before the spinning method because it's simpler and less skilful.

I went to quite some trouble in connection with the music. Within each of the movie's three sections, the music matches up at the clip transitions. To get this continuity I had to be careful about when I started my drives (and I mostly built things up clip after clip, in sequence). That was laborious because I kept having to wait for time to elapse. The main reason I went for this musical continuity was because I realised that the music would become annoying repetitive if my jumps all featured the same passage of music, which they would've if I'd always started my drives at the same time.

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