ESF Gameplay

The greatness that is ESF can be a rather complex game to learn for new players.  The following aims to explain some aspects of ESF 1.2.3 to help you get started. Be warned though, the learning curve in ESF is rather steep but once you get to know it you'll definitely love it!

Basic Movement

This section aims to teach you basics of movement in ESF.

Swooping

Swooping is the most basic way of traveling in the game.  To perform a swoop, simply double tap any direction key and hold the key down on the second tap. 

Chain Swooping

You can perform a chain swoop by double tapping another direction while swooping. 

Teleporting

Teleporting is used to quickly escape any incoming dangers (such as melee) or reposition yourself in the map to better attack your opponent.  To perform a teleport, press G (by default).

Jumping

To perform a jump, simply press the spacebar key.  The longer you hold the key down, the higher you will go.  Jumping uses ki, but very little ki

Advanced Movement

This section aims to teach you some more advanced forms of movement in the game

Wall Jumping

To perform a wall jump, simply move into a wall and hold jump.  This will make your character grasp the wall.  Letting go of the jump button will make your character jump.  The longer you hold the jump button, the further he will go. Note that you can use walljumping when smashed onto walls or directly into the ground.

Beam Jumping

Beam jumping is the fastest way to travel ingame.  To perform a beam jump, fire a beam at the ground and hold your jump button.  You travel much faster if you perform a beam jump while turbo is on. 

Gliding

To perform a glide, simply swoop in any direction, stop the swoop, then turn off fly mode.  You will still be traveling at the same speed as you were while swooping, but now you’ll be using up no ki and freefalling.  A player can also swoop into the ground, release the swoop button and press jump.  Note that holding block while gliding can be very useful.

Ki and Powerlevel

This section aims to explain ki and powerlevel

Everything you do in ESF uses up ki.  Ki is represented in the hud by the blue bar.  Think of it like ammo.  If you want to teleport, you need to have a certain amount of ki, if you want to swoop, you need to have a certain amount of ki, etc.  Ki can be replenished by pressing the recharge button, default "E".

Another important concept to understand is Powerlevel.  Powerlevel (PL for short) is the determining factor for how much damage your attacks do and how much damage attacks do to you.  PL is represented by the number in the kibar of the hud.  You gain pl by dealing damage to other players.  Dealing damage to people with higher PL's nets you more PL.

It should be mentioned that powerlevel is dynamic, meaning that damage values will change depending on the powerlevel of everyone else.  The server takes the average PL of everyone in the game, compares your powerlevel to the server average, and uses that to determine how much damage your attacks do and how much damage attacks do to you.

Beams / Balls

Beams are fairly self explanatory.  Simply select the beam attack that you wish to use and hold left click to charge it.  The longer a beam is charged, the more damage a beam does.  To release a beam, release left click.  To detonate a beam in mid air, press right click.  The more powerlevel you have, the stronger your beam is.  Please see the character page for a list of beam attacks

When two beams collide in mid air, a powerstruggle starts.  To win a powerstruggle, turn turbo on, hold left click, and pray.

Melee

This section aims to teach you the basics of melee in ESF

Simple Melee

Simple melee is the crux of ESF; If one is good at simple melee, one is good at ESF. 

To perform a simple melee hit, swoop into someone while holding down right click.  This will cause the opponent to be knocked back.  You can also initiate a simple melee hit while standing still if you’re within range.

Simple melee hits can be linked together to form combos (not to be confused with advanced melee combos).    You can link two simple melee hits together by swooping or teleporting into an opponent after the first hit, but you only have a few seconds to pull this off.  If you want to perform 3 or more hits, the opponent needs to come into contact with the ground, walls, or ceiling.  

The goal of a melee fight is outmaneuver your opponent so that you can hit him while preventing him from hitting you.  An effective way of going about this is to hit the opponent from the side / the back.  Generally speaking, you should never swoop head on at an opponent unless it’s a guaranteed hit.  It requires practice, but the art of simple melee is to outmaneuver your opponent by using swoops, teleports, and any other means deemed fit. 

You can use a block to stop a simple melee hit.  To perform a block, press Q (by default).  Blocking will stop a simple melee hit if you are hit head on, but will not work if you are hit from behind / the side.  Having turbo on while blocking reduces any damage to 0, however you will take 1 or 2 damage if you don’t have turbo on while blocking.  Generally speaking, blocking is very useful while gliding.  You can often trick an opponent into thinking he hit you if you block while gliding.  You can usually follow that up with a quick swoop towards him for a hit.  To get around a block, one must hit the person blocking from the side or from behind. 

Advanced Melee

Advanced melee isn't as effective or as popular as simple melee, but it also isn't as hard to become good at. 

To start advanced melee, swoop into someone while holding down no mouse buttons.  You'll now begin to 'prepunch' them.  You can do up to 12 punches before breaking off.  Holding left or right click (note that you actually have to hold one of them, not press) while prepunching will go into advanced melee.  Holding right click (Again, note that you need to hold it, not press) will go into throwing.

When advanced melee is initiated, a bar on the bottom mid screen will show up.  You'll need to hold down left or right click while pressing directional buttons on the keyboard to chose the attacks.  As you do this, the directions you press will show in the bottom mid bar.  The longer you hold a direction, the stronger the hit will be (Green is a weak hit, blue is a medium hit, red is a hard hit.  Holding left click down does a punch, right click a kick.  There is no difference between punches and kicks).  You'll get more time to charge up attacks depending on when you end the prepunch - You generally want to do six prepunches for the most time.  After you're done choosing the directions, the directions you chose will appear on the opponents screen and he will need to press them in order to dodge.  Arrows that are every direction are randoms, meaning you need to guess.  The harder the hit, the more likely it will be that a punch/kick is random.  After he's done dodging attacks, it will be his turn to charge up the attacks for you to dodge.  The system is very similar to DDR.

There are two advanced melee combos.  Basically, you enter a certain combination and if one of the hits hits, you do a combo which does extra damage / looks cool. 

On the other end of advanced melee is the throw.  To perform a throw, hold right click while prepunching. 

If two people collide head on with advanced melee, a head on occurs.  The characters will go into a cool looking animation and arrows will appear.  Press the arrows as they appear, the one who gets the most right wins.