Circlestrafing

In video games, particularly in first-person shooters (FPSs), circlestrafing is the technique of moving around a target in a circle while facing it. It allows a player to fire continuously at a target while simultaneously dodging attacks (as the target remains roughly in front of the player, while the player rapidly circles the target, presenting a moving target). Circlestrafing is most useful in close-quarters combat, where the apparent motion of the attacking player is greatest, and thus the chance of their opponent becoming disoriented and "losing" track of them is highest. The effectiveness of the circlestrafing maneuver is mitigated when the opponent's weapon fires projectiles that travel instantaneously, or fires a large number in a machine gun-like fashion.

Manual circlestrafing is achieved by walking sideways while turning smoothly. On PC games such as Quake, the popular control combination of using the mouse to control angle and the keyboard to move the character makes circlestrafing fairly simple to perform, although the inevitable (and often panicked) "pedaling" action of the mouse can give the circling avatar a jerky, febrile path.

Some games feature a system to handle the turning automatically, which means that the player only has to move sideways to travel along the perimeter. A prominent example is the "Z-targeting" system of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which locks the character's viewpoint onto an enemy when the Z button is pressed.

Many players of first-person-shooters circlestrafe continually for most close-quarters battles, often combining this with unpredictable changes of direction and transverse dodging. Two skilled players fighting in this manner will frequently attempt to circlestrafe around one another, their movements describing intricate and complex patterns like spirals and figures-of-eight. Circlestrafing is an effective means of lessening the advantage held when one player has a more powerful weapon than the other, and by closing to melee range and circling, an attacker with an otherwise puny weapon can defeat an opponent whose powerful explosive weapon (such as a rocket launcher) cannot safely be used at such close quarters.

Some players also combine circlestrafing (and similar rotary dodging motions) with dodge-jumping, in the hope of avoiding splash damage from rockets fired at the ground at their feet, while simultaneously affording them a better (i.e. steeper) angle at which to fire such ground-directed shots of their own (with the rocket being fired at the apex of the jump's trajectory). There is also some additional dodging value due to the jumper's added vertical motion. In older FPS games which allow air control (where the simplistic in-game physics allows a player to change direction mid-flight) this enhances the unpredictability of the player's position. In later FPS games, which largely remove air control, this maneuver is, if not entirely ineffective, at least much less effective, and thus more rarely seen.

When the attacked player merely stands still and tries to turn to track his attacker, he will be defeated: the circlestrafer presents a moving target, the victim a static one. In such cases, circlestrafing is a highly effective technique. Countermeasures do, however, exist: