History Main / DiagonalSpeedBoost

* Similarly, in tactical combat of ''VideoGame/{{XCOM}}'' series, time and energy costs (including terrain penalties) are multiplied by 1.5 and rounded up.

* ''[[VideoGame/GalacticCivilizations Galactic Civilizations II]]''

** ''{{Quake}}'' stopped Doom-style straferunning by capping a player's running velocity (by default, to 320 units/second). However, the fix applies gradually, and only applies on the ground, meaning strafing and jumping at the same time preserves the momentum gained from strafing. You can also strafe and turn while in mid-air, speeding you up even further. Some Quake ports have a feature that will have you jump the first moment you hit the ground when you press and hold the jump key. Combining all of these, it's not surprising to see people hurtling around maps, going more than double the normal max speed, and jumping around like... rabbits. It's pretty obvious where the term "bunnyhopping" came from.

TheOtherWiki calls this [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chebyshev_distance Chebyshev distance]].

* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9ti_endgame_study Réti Maneuver]] in TabletopGame/{{Chess}} (published in 1921, but based on a 1914 game) is a candidate for TropeMaker. The white king is able to chase black's pawn on one side of the board while simultaneously approaching his own pawn on the other. The trick is that black's pawn can only move vertically, but white's king can move diagonally.

* ''SidMeiersPirates'': Land battles allow diagonal movement in this manner. When combined with the flanking bonus a unit gets for attacking from the side it can allow for victory against overwhelming odds.

Not just a problem with grids; most older first-person games implement diagonal movement in a similar way: moving forward in any direction gives normal speed, while a combined sideways movement adds to the speed.

* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'': This how it works in 4th edition. Earlier editions increased 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% slower rather than +41% faster).

* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9ti_endgame_study Réti Maneuver]] in TabletopGame/{{Chess}} (published in 1921, but based on a 1914 game) is a candidate for TropeMaker. The black king is able to chase white's pawn on one side of the board while simultaneously approaching his own pawn on the other. The trick is that white's pawn can only move vertically, but black's king can move diagonally.

** Speed runs of ''VideoGame/GoldenEye1997'' and its SpiritualSuccessor ''VideoGame/PerfectDark'' pretty much require you to strafe-run everywhere.

* Similarly, in tactical combat of ''VideoGame/{{X-COM}}'' series, time and energy costs (including terrain penalties) are multiplied by 1.5 and rounded up.

* Oddly present in ''VideoGame/{{Halo}} 3'' and ''VideoGame/HaloReach''. Picking up a turret normally causes you to move slower, but moving diagonally negates that speed decrease entirely.

** ''VideoGame/DoomTheRoguelike'' uses the so-called {{Angband}} metric; the distance between two points is the length of the long axis plus half the length of the short axis, rounded down. That's still a speed boost within the Moore neighbourhood used for movement (1 + 0.5 rounds down to 1), but it has consequences when determining range for weapons.

* ''YoujuSenkiAD2048'' has an odd variation: moving one space diagonally is considered the same as moving one space vertically or horizontally (counted as one space when moving or shooting), 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).

* ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'' applies this not just to moving around areas, but also the BulletHell attack-dodging interface. This can take a little getting used to if you play scrolling shooters, most of which avert this trope.

Common in square grid based games, the diagonal speed boost is when it takes the same amount of time or turns to move to a diagonal square as it does to a horizontal or vertical square. This means that diagonal movement is about 40 percent faster[[note]]specifically, it's √2, or approximately 1.414[[/note]] as movement in a straight line. This allows whatever's moving on the grid to cover more ground in the same amount of time.

* The prototype ''VideoGame/NinjaGaiden'' for the SegaGenesis was a belt-scrolling BeatEmUp where Ryu could only move diagonally unless hemmed in by the top or bottom. This was likely a bug which would have been corrected had it received a final release.

* ''SecretOfEvermore'': Running diagonally is visibly faster.

** Speed runs of ''VideoGame/GoldenEye1997'' and its SpiritualSuccessor ''PerfectDark'' pretty much require you to strafe-run everywhere.

* ''TabletopGame/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% slower rather than +41% faster).

** Averted in ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'' for the x-y plane: diagonal movement takes 362/[[UsefulNotes/PowersOfTwoMinusOne 256]] times as long as orthogonal movement, which is as close as the game engine can get to the square root of 2. Z movement, however, will just add the extra axis movement space.

* Inverted in ''VideoGame/HeroesOfMightAndMagic IV-VI'' on the combat screen, where diagonal movement takes 1.5 times the amount of movement points for horizontal and vertical movement. (The first three games used a hexagonal combat grid.) Played straight on the overland map, like in most TBS games.
* Similarly inverted in tactical combat of ''VideoGame/{{X-COM}}'' series. Time and energy costs (including terrain penalties) are multiplied by 1.5 and rounded up.

* ''TabletopGame/LupinIII'' averts this by making diagonal movement illegal.

* ''[[GalacticCivilizations Galactic Civilizations II]]''

* ''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% slower rather than +41% faster).

** Averted in ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'' for the x-y plane: diagonal movement takes 362/256 times as long as orthogonal movement, which is as close as the game engine can get to the square root of 2. Z movement, however, will just add the extra axis movement space.

** One of the earliest creatures in NetHack, the [[MeaningfulName grid bug]], cannot take advantage of the diagonal speed boost. The "grid bug conduct" is an unofficial SelfImposedChallenge to voluntarily apply the same limitation to your character, which is much more important and potentially lethal than it sounds.

** ''{{Descent}}'': Took this into the third dimension. To travel fastest, combine a diagonal slide (eg, up+right) with forward thrust. This gives a 73% speed boost, not counting the afterburner added in Descent 2. Possibly justified as using several of your ship's thrusters simultaneously.

* In both ''PlanetSide'' games, the [[MachineCult Vanu Sovereignty's]] [[HoverTank Magrider tank]] moves significantly faster when strafing and moving forward - to the point where a Magrider can actually keep up with a [[TheEmpire Terran Republic]] [[FragileSpeedster Prowler tank]]. Aircraft in ''[=PS2=]'' likewise can fly much faster when the nose is angled down, and the vertical lift thruster is engaged.