RuneScape name(s) : Timome, Isamond, Vinterhymn, Anand Wa Neo, Location : North-Norway Join date : 2012-03-29 Posts : 167
Subject: Attempting introduction to GOP Fri Jun 14, 2013 11:43 am
The image above shows a regular game of GOP, where green team competes against yellow team for the highest score.
For an orb to be scored it has to touch the altar. There are always 3 orbs each colour in play. When an orb is scored, a new orb will spawn in one of about 200 fixed spawnpoints specific to that altar. There is always 2 minutes from when the first orbs spawn until the altar ends and the last orbs disappear.
When you click an orb with the attractor wand, the orb will move towards you, unless it's stuck behind a barrier or a small stone (or someone else's influence is still on the orb), at a speed of one tile per tick (a tick lasts 0.6 seconds). Every tick a player holds an orb, they can see a blob of green or yellow energy passing in between the orb and the wand. Counting these can be a good way of knowing how many ticks the player holds the orb.
All of Runescape is divided into fundamental units of time, running on a clock common for all on that server, called "ticks". Every action you register within one tick will start to take place when the next tick arrives.
Each tick you repel or attract an orb, you send an instruction to the orb to move two tiles. The orb moves at the rate of one tile per tick, and the instructions do not stack, so when you stop attracting/repelling an orb, it will move 2 tiles further, unless obstructed. Moving an orb for the least amount of time possible, a tick, is called a "tap", and it sends the orb two tiles. Attracting an orb for 2 ticks will send it 3 tiles (if unobstructed).
With the attractor wand, you can reach all orbs 10 tiles away from you in all directions, but only if there are no obstacles in the way. With obstacles in the way, you have to find the right position to attract from before you click the orb. Folks will refer to angles when they mean that specific tiles can reach other specific tiles. All angles are the same throughout the altars (and throughout RS). Good goppers have learned very many angles by heart.
The image below is a diagram of the Air Altar. The black dots are where orbs can spawn (spawnpoints). One can reach over the grey stones but not walk over them. One cannot reach or walk over the black stones. The letters indicate the "centre positions": West Centre, East Centre, South Centre and North Centre.
The Centre Position The centre positions are the best places to stand while gopping, as you can reach and score most orbs from there without having to move. For example: from the Centre West tile, you can attract and directly score orbs from 68 different spawnpoints without having to move, while you can only do that with 58 different spawnpoints in the tiles adjacent north and south to Centre West. The two diagrams below show which orbs you can directly score, without moving first, from the two centre positions: West Centre and East Centre.
Noticed how the reach patterns of the two centre positions are different, while the obstacles around the positions are symmetric. The way to reach orbs (angles) is different for when the orb is east of you and when it's west of you. That is important to know when learning angles for GOP.
The diagrams below show reach of different positions, and where orbs get stuck if you try to attract them from there. In diagram one and two, the angle is too sharp to unhinge the orbs from the little stones, so you have to stand in centre to get them all. The shaded tiles show what tiles are reachable when standing where the smiley stands.
Teamwork coordination: "Coord" When playing two or more folks on a team, there is a strategy for good teamwork called "coord". The principle behind coord is that you want to be able to score as many orbs as possible without wasting time moving your character about: a tick spent on moving the character is a tick not spent on attracting orbs into the altar. The two players stand on opposite sides of the altar -- for air, most commonly on the East and West centre positions -- and score orbs that can be scored from their position.
An orb is scored when it touches the altar. That means that if you attract orbs from the same side of altar as you are on, you are in between the orb and the altar, blocking it from scoring. That's why, in coord, the orbs that you can score are on the other side of altar, and on the lines straight right and left* of you (*assuming you are facing the altar). You can't reach all orbs on the other side of altar, though. They may be behind pillars, or too far off, or similar. In these cases, your coord partner (who is already on the other side) should "feed" you the orbs, so that you can score them from your position. The amount of ticks you both spend on moving to reach the orbs using this strategy is much less than what it would be if you went over to the other side to fetch them, yourself.
When you're moving an orb, no other player on your team can move the orb until a short while after you stop holding (attracting or repelling) it. So, when feeding, try to let go of the orb quickly, so that your coord partner can take over and attract it sooner.
When coording from East and West with two players, each player has orbs on their "tasklist". The orbs that are on West's tasklist are those that are easiest to score or feed from west, so unless West is very busy, East should not take them. When there are no orbs currently on one of the coord partners' tasklists, they may wait until an orb spawns into their tasklist, or they may try to pull closer or score orbs that are not ordinarily on their tasklist, since his or her coord partner is busy and cannot take those orbs yet.
Below is a diagram of the reach of east and west centre positions, and what spawnpoints are on their respective tasklists. Cyan spawnpoints are on West's tasklist, burgundy spawnpoints are on East's tasklist and purple orbs are on the tasklist of both. The orbs that spawn on the spawnpoints that are marked with an "F" have to be fed by one player before his or her coord partner can score it.
When in larger teams, such as trio, quartet or quintet, you want to take up the 4 centre positions, W, E, S and N, and then continue with orbs on your tasklists. When in small altars in larger teams, you should almost not be moving at all.
Some examples of good teamwork and gopping: Duo:
Quartet and solo:
Orb movement The diagram below shows how the orb (yellow) will move after you tap it from various tiles. When you stand on a diagonal shared by the orb, the orb will move two tiles diagonally towards you when attracted for one tick, as shown by the red tiles and arrows. The other colours indicate similarly how the orb will move when attracted with a tap from tiles of corresponding colour.
Notice how the L-shape is important here. If the angle you're attracting the orb from is narrower than the L-shape, the orb will move two tiles straight east. If the angle is wider than the L-shape, the orb will move in a L-shape, from all the positions until the angle is so wide that it becomes diagonal.
This L-shape explains why orbs get stuck behind obstacles sometimes, and it won't move towards you, even though you attract it. The diagram below explains why some orbs get stuck in an example mentioned earlier.
Graphics and Interfaces for GOP Hit the ESC button and click into 'Edit Mode'. Select '3D World Editing', and in there, drag the top of the screen down (or up), so you get a black area above (or below) the 3D World screen. This is where you place all the interfaces, so they don't block screen (see image at the top of this article). In 'Minigame HUD Editing', drag the HUD to cover all the RS screen, so that your scoreboard will take up the corner and not be in the way of orbs.
In 'Interfaces': Slim Windows Skin.
In 'Controls': For camera, you may wish to reduce Keyboard Sensitivity, horizontal and vertical. Zoom out completely using PgDn. Check 'RS3' camera, because it's more smooth and less misclicky.
In 'Graphics': Hit Direct X (unless your computer works better on OpenGl), 'Min' settings, and then hit Custom and these settings are good for GOP: Cpu Usage to Maximum, Custom cursors, Character shadows, Lighting detail to High (makes orbs more dense in colour), Textures on, Ground Blending on, and then Bloom on (bloom makes the orbs shiny, and it has to be put on last) and Max screen size any. Though this is very dependant on what your computer can handle. If you have a slow computer, try minimum settings with Character Shadows on and Lighting detail to High.
3D World Screen:
Useful GOP Resources
The Emmulator ! You can practice and explore GOP in Icy001's most amazingly wonderfwl GOP Emulator. It has identical spawnpoints, angles and ticks are still 0.6 seconds. Practising on it will practise your IRL gopping.
Here's a playlist of good GOP guides on YouTube. Watch out, though. There are plenty of anti-educational GOP guides on YouTube, but this playlist should be safe (though very, alas, incomplete).
Subject: Re: Attempting introduction to GOP Fri Jun 14, 2013 4:42 pm
Why is the L reversed so it looks like a J in the picture? (tr0l0l0l)
Zelda
RuneScape name(s) : Meh Age : 29 Location : Southern-Norway (Sørlandet) Join date : 2012-04-26 Posts : 43
Subject: Re: Attempting introduction to GOP Sun Jun 16, 2013 9:52 am
Oh wow.
In my opinion, this guide is so good that in a perfect world it would've already replaced the GOP beginner/strategy guides on all the major RuneScape fan sites. It's a well written guide with nice, simplified explanations and wonderful correlating diagrams/pictures to go with it. It's currently around the perfect length as well, not too long (too detailed and complex), but not too short either (no vital information seems to be missing besides the defensive side of the gameplay).
Hopefully a well presented and easily understandable guide like this one could make more people eager to learn more about the beauty of GOP. But then again, one can only dream...
Anyhow, once again: Amazing guide, Timo, good job!
Tea 
Subject: Attempting introduction to GOP 
Fri Jun 14, 2013 11:43 am
Oh wow. 
