Muscle Memory in SWBF

Started by Mac, March 02, 2009, 04:16:48 PM

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Hey guys,

So I was thinking today after playing a game of SWBF by myself, is muscle memory involved? Like, when I was a sniper in regular multiplayer games and people jumped behind me, I'd swivel around and hit them dead on with a sniper shot. Is this just plain luck or muscle memory?

Is using the WASD keys muscle memory to walk around? Or how about jumping when hearing the sound of a rocket coming from behind? Is this muscle memory, or something else?

Mac

It's instinctual response man. Muscle memory is probably ingrained in the movement keys, but if you hear a rocket, that's more a knee-jerk reaction than muscle memory. As for nailing anyone sneaking up on you, that might be dumb luck and some practice.

"I can has ur goats? pleeze?" (Wikipedia).

Jumping and shooting is just a learned response to what you see. WSAD is also learned, and your brain just converts "I want to move the guy on screen forward" to "Have my middle finger reach to the W key and hit it"

Viruses are like the New York Lottery. "Hey, you never know"

OK, Class is in Session:

Everything we do apparently 'without thinking' involves a certain amount of muscle memory.  Coordination between a keyboard hand and a mouse hand is not due to muscle memory. All muscle memory is, is training certain muscles or groups of muscles to easily perform function. Like muscle memory would allow to locate keys without thinking about the actual movement as you have trained your index finger to hi 'R' to reload for instance!

With regards to you turning round and popping a cap in a dudes head:

The physical action of moving your mouse a certain distance to perform a 180 turn is most certainly muscle memory. You prob have performed a 180 hundreds if not thousands of times and have trained the muscles that deal with that movement to enable them to make this maneuver very easily.  This is also the case for the aim of your shot, your muscles are used to turning while keeping the crosshair at a certain height so that takes care of your aim.  Knowing when to hit shoot is reaction (your brain processing info and reacting accordingly), the physical act of shooting will be using muscle memory to do it as quick as possible!

A lot of folks think that muscle memory is independent of cognitive thought processes, this is wrong...your brain thinks it and your muscles do it! If the muscles do something on their own this is a spasm and isn't very good (especially if you punch yourself in the goolies)! Muscle memory just allows the muscles to do what the brain tells them easily and efficiently (and quickly in some circumstances...like your example).

I am fully aware of how much muscle memory is used in gaming cos I use a wolfking keypad ( http://www.wolfkingusa.com/index.php?op ... 9&Itemid=7 ) and even although it is all the same keys as the regular keyboard because the layout of WASD is not staggered as it is on a regular qwerty keyboard and the layout of the spacebar and various other keys is different I really struggle using a regular keyboard when playing games as my hand is trained to use the layout of they keypad.

Try this little test:  Think about what kind of shooter you are in Battlefront? Do you hold the mouse button down or do you repeatedly tap it?
Whatever one you do try doing the other and see how you get on, eventually you will prob revert back to what your muscles are used to without noticing.  If you don't revert back naturally your probably thinking about firing much more than you usually would, using your brain to overcome the muscle memory! This is the reason why learning a new physical movement can be mentally exhausting and why doing what your muscles know how to do is so easy as you don't need to strain your brain!

Wow, sometimes it's hard for me to stop when I get started! lol