Second Life Dive Roll Movement Enhancer Comparison

Xah Lee, 2010-01-03

There are several movement enhancers used in sl military community, variously named dive roll or dodge roll. Since i scripted my own, so i have taken sometime to research other similar products, here's a short report.

Comparison Of Products

[Operations] Tactical Dive/Roll

https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=901273
Scripter: Poon Voom. (sold by Anthony Lehane)
Distance: 14 to 20m.
Direction: forward.
Dive skyward: no.

Valycion Evasive Maneuver

Scripter: ? (seller: Christoph Naumova)
Distance: ?
Direction: ?
Dive skyward: ?

Xah Combat Dive Roll Hud v1.4.3

https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=1833427
Scritper: Xah Toll
Seller: Xah Toll
Distance: ≈11 m.
Direction: forward, sideways, backward.
Dive skyward: yes.

New Jessie Rolling Dodge

Freebie used to be at New Jessie in early 2009. The first one at new jessie that shows a Shield with snake.

Scritper: Ducky Chesnokov
Distance: ≈11 m.
Direction: forward, sideways, backward.
Dive skyward: No.

[AekoLabs] Mini HUD

Freebie used to be at New Jessie, in mid 2009. The second one at new jessie, the one comes with kill report.

Scritper: Aeron Kohime
Distance: ≈11 m.
Direction: forward, sideways, backward.
Dive skyward: No.

How To Test Dive Roll

Testing Distance

• make sure you are wearing only one dive roll. Also make sure you are not wearing any other AO or movement enhancer. Best to detach EVERYTHING.
• Pick a empty sim. Stand on a flat surface. Preferably at edge of a region.
• Look at the menu bar on top, to the right, for the coordinate you standing on.
• Do a dive in directly in East direction (positive x-axes) or North (positive y-axes).
• After a dive, write down the new coordinate.
• Compare the distance.

Do the test many times. Usually the distance will vary by 1 or 2 meters.

Also, it appears that, for some dive rolls, the distance dived depends on your avatar size or attachments.

Test Timing

There are 2 timings you can test. One is the duration of the time from start of dive roll to end of dive roll. The second is the time delay when the last dive roll ends and the new dive roll can begin.

To test them, be sure you have a watch with the second hand. And again, for any sort of testing, you want to be in a region that's as much empty as possible. Also, you need to do test several times.

Other Differences

Also, depends on how the dive roll is scripted, different ones have different quirks.

• Badly scripted dive roll will let you do dive roll in mid air, or, perhaps intentionally scripted that way. (Due to the way LSL works, you have to put in more code to prevent dive in midair. )
• Some dive roll can let you dive skyward while in mouse view. (Xah's)
• Some dive roll can let you do a jump at the end of dive, so it's like a mid air jump after dive. (“New Jessie Rolling Dodge”)
• Some dive roll, after you dive into open air, has momentum, and lets you use arrow keys to move slowly to effect your landing spot, similar to when you are falling. (One of the New Jessie ones)

Note: dive roll is a movement enhancer. There are probably hundreds of movement enhancers of all different sorts. The functional essence of dive roll is that it moves your avatar in a short distance in short time. Many dasher, tele-dasher, breacher, all do this. What we call a “dive roll” product typically means it also have a animation that makes your avatar simulate the acrobatics movement of a dive roll.