History Main / DiagonalSpeedBoost

* Some [[RacingGame Racing Games]] have an unintentional technique called "snaking" in which zig-zagging left and right across a straightaway causes the vehicle to move faster than if it just went in a straight line. This is due to to how these games give out boosts for drifting in certain ways. The MarioKart series and FZeroGX are examples of games with snaking.

* GalacticCivilizations

* This troper develops games as a hobby and has experienced a version of this when the diagonal movement of a character is a literal addition of the Vertical and Horizontal vectors (I move 3 to the left and 4 up, my overall distance of travel is 5, basic trigonometry). The result is that diagonal movement is faster. The solution is to define the speed of travel seperately from the direction.

** ''{{Quake}}'' stopped the boost for most ground-pounding FPS games, by keeping player movement a maximum distance. However, a second limitation affects objects that move very fast (but this won't happen in normal gameplay).

* This troper develops games as a hobby and has experienced a version of this when the diagonal movement of a character is a literal addition of the forwards/backwards and the Left/Right vectors. the result is that diagonal movement is faster. the solution is to define the speed of travel seperately from the direction.

Not just a problem with grids; most older first-person games implement diagonal movement in the same way.

* ''{{Doom}}'': Strafing and running forward at the same time is faster than just moving forward or strafing.

* ''DungeonsAndDragons'': Played straight in 4th edition. Mostly averted in earlier editions by increasing the movement cost for every other diagonal tile to 2, i.e. a diagonal move counts as 1.5 squares (making diagonal movement about +6% faster rather than +41%).

* ''{{Deadly Towers}}'': Played straight in the first place, but their is also an item (called the Hyper Shoes) that increases your move speed...but only if you're moving diagonally.

* {{Youju Senki AD 2048}} has an odd variation: moving one space diagonally is considered the same as moving one space vertically or horizontally (counted as one space of movement), but the characters cannot move like this if the spaces next to them are occupied by enemies or obstructions (to put it simply, if you can't move there without diagonal movement, you can't move there period). However, this limitation does not affect attacks (meaning that even if a character can't move diagonally into a space, they can still shoot that space if they're in range).

* {{Pretty Soldier Wars 2048}} has an odd variation: moving one space diagonally is considered the same as moving one space vertically or horizontally (counted as one space of movement), but the characters cannot move like this if the spaces next to them are occupied by enemies or obstructions (to put it simply, if you can't move there without diagonal movement, you can't move there period). However, this limitation does not affect attacks (meaning that even if a character can't move diagonally into a space, they can still shoot that space if they're in range).

** Speed runs of GoldenEye pretty much require you to strafe-run everywhere.

* {{Chess}}: Averted for the bishop since it can't turn while moving so it takes two *turns to get to a position that the rook could reach in one. Played straight for the king.

* {{Chess}}: Averted for the bishop since it can't turn while moving so it takes two *turns to get to a position that the castle could reach in one. Played straight for the king.

* ''{{Civilization}}'': The first four games. Civilization V fixed this by changing squares to hexagons.

* ''{{Civilization}}'': Though 5 is changing to hexagons so it's not quite as bad.

* ''DungeonsAndDragons'': Played straight in 4th edition. Mostly averted in earlier editions by increasing the movement cost for every other diagonal tile to 2, i.e. a diagonal move counts as 1.5 squares (making diagonal movement about +6% faster rather than +100%).