Hello, and welcome to my giant dump of random little optimizations, techniques, and discoveries that I have found while playing Mutant Mudds. Each topic is contained in its own paragraph, so feel free to peruse at your own pace :)

My first tip is remembering levels. You may not think about it, but remembering what level you’re entering, whether it be a normal level or a secret level, is very important when speedrunning this game. Because of the short load times (which are great), you don’t get much time to think about what level is coming and what you need to do at the start. It’s good to start thinking about it as soon as you can so that you’re prepared when you go in. A lot of the memorization comes with practice, but I would also recommend just going through each level in a run in your head and seeing if you can remember all of them.

Next, entering doors. When approaching a door from the side, you can enter it a lot sooner than you might think. I would recommend playing around with it to find out exactly how far to the side you can be and still enter it. If you use it well, you can shave off some hub time. Another good thing to know with doors is that if you are falling on top of one (like for Secret 1-2), you can simply hold up and you will enter the door on the earliest frame possible. On a related note, if you die in a level, you can simply hold down your select button, and you will retry the level on the earliest frame possible.

Another thing is that if you are in a normal level and are in a situation where you are guaranteed to die, feel free to quit out yourself and reenter the level. It’s a lot faster than dying and restarting. HOWEVER: Never do this if you have gotten a checkpoint or if you are in a secret level. Be careful not to let this become habit, as it is a significant timeloss if you do it in these situations.

The big grey stompy mudds can be a problem when speedrunning. Obviously, if you're waiting for one, you want to start moving past it as soon as possible once it jumps back. There is one way to make this a little easier, however. When the mudd is in your layer, he alternates between two positions, one more down and one more up. The mudd always jumps back when he would switch to his more "up" position. So he always goes up, down, up, down, up, down, jump. You still have to remember the timing a little bit, but this helps so that you can move as soon as possible.

There are three categories that require you to collect diamonds: 20 levels + diamonds, Any%, and, of course, 100%. There are a few good things to know when collecting diamonds. One pattern of diamonds that occurs quite a lot is when there are diamonds on either side of a launchpad. The fastest way to collect diamonds like this is usually to jump up one side, glide across, and fall back down the other side. Another pattern that often occurs is a group of 5 diamonds in a square, 4 on the corners and 1 in the middle. It is possible to get the exact right height to pick up all the diamonds in one glide-through. Unfortunately, this trick is pixel-perfect or close to it, which makes sections like the one after the checkpoint in 1-2 very hard to optimize. When attempting, keep in mind how the jetpack boosts you a bit.

Ice physics! Ice can be a pain to navigate at times, but if you understand how the ice physics works, it’s not nearly as much of a problem. When you are normally running on ice, you accelerate and decelerate gradually, as opposed to instantly on normal ground. Simply jumping on the ice does not affect this. However, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, jetpacking in the air allows you to move normally until you land on ice again. The important thing to know about how ice works, however, is that if you are not moving, land on the ice, and jump off the ice again without actually moving on the ice, you retain normal movement. Another way this is useful is that if you start a level on ice (like in 2-3), but jump right away, before you move on the ice, you get normal movement right from the start. Likewise, if you have ice movement and use your jetpack, but don’t move until you are done jetpacking, you will keep ice physics. These aren’t necessarily useful for any specific situations, but they are good to know. Another thing with ice is that if you are partly standing on normal ground and partly on ice, you will have ice physics. It doesn’t really make sense, but that’s how it works. EDIT: on the Switch, this all goes out the window.

Spikes! Spikes are very weird in Mutant Mudds. The majority of spikes in the game have actually very small hitboxes, which make it so that you can actually stand on the sides of the spikes. Most of the time doing this isn’t even particularly precise; there’s quite a bit of leeway. However, there are a few sets of spikes in the game that do have full-size hitboxes, so it’s not always safe to improvise this way. The spikes in Ghost 3-3 actually have fairly large hitboxes, as do the ones at the end of 2-2. Play around and figure out which ones you can use.

If you jetpack at exactly the right time, you can jetpack along ground and be low enough to shoot a normal muddy that’s on the same level. Usually, this is not very useful, since it’s very hard to pull off. However, often you want to shoot a muddy on a thin platform and immediately land on that platform. In situations like these, it’s a little less precise because you can be at the same level as the ground or even a little bit lower. Additionally, sometimes there’s a setup that makes it easier to get the right height, like when the right height is right at the peak of your jump. This happens at the start of 2-2, at the end of 5-3, and even with the muddy in the back layer of 1-1. Getting this perfect height is often useful so that you can keep moving instead of stopping, shooting the muddy, and then jumping across. Another easy setup is when you are going across a gap with a normal muddy on the other side. You can simply walk off the platform, jetpack as soon as you fall off, and shoot the muddy while you are gliding across.

You may have noticed how when you are shooting an enemy that is far away with the normal gun, you can’t shoot very quickly. However, when you are closer to the enemy, you can fire shots much more quickly. You might not have realized exactly why this is. It’s simply because with the normal gun, you can only have one bullet existent at a time. Of course, there’s still a maximum fire rate. Thus, the gun powerup only increases the maximum amount of bullets that can exist at once, to 3 (and allows you to destroy orange walls, of course), but does not affect the maximum fire rate. This isn’t really useful for any specific situations, but it’s good to understand.

Next, cornerboosting. This is the name I've come up with for a weird trick that Ohvi showed me while I was streaming. I'll try to explain it. Basically, whenever there is a corner that points down and to the left or right, like this: | or like this: |, you can jump or jetpack right on the corner to get a 1 to 3 pixel boost. It's hard to explain, so play around with it until you figure it out. You can usually use this trick whenever you are coming out of a hallway. My guess for why this happens is that for some reason your upper hitbox is a little thinner than the space between the side hitboxes (3 pixels in on either side). Thus, when you jump up into a ceiling when only a bit of you is under it, your upper hitbox doesn't sense the ceiling, so it lets you move up into the wall. However, then your side hitboxes sense the wall and shove you out. That's why (I think) this works.

Here's a nice little glitch in the game that I was finally able to recreate: in certain spots, when there is a block moving left and right that can squish you against a wall (like right after the checkpoint in 3-3), you can simply sit there running against the wall, and when the block would squish you, you will instantly teleport to the top of the block. It's not hard to do. For example, for the one in 3-3, you can just sit in there holding to the right, and it will work. If you jump right before it hits you, you will teleport below the block. So there's the glitch, now here's my speculation: my guess for why this works is that perhaps when you are moving in a direction, your hitbox opposite that direction goes inactive (so if you are moving right, your left hitbox is inactive). And since your bottom hitbox is wider than your top hitbox, that one senses the platform first and puts you on top of the block. This theory also works with the second case of jumping right before you're squished. If you're moving up, your bottom hitbox is also inactive, so your upper hitbox senses it first and puts you below the block. Also, this glitch doesn't work everywhere, so I really don't know :P

Normally, if you jump on a launchpad, you jump forward or backward a layer. However, if you crouch on the launchpad and then jump, you just jump normally. This is useful in places like the second launchpad in 3-4, where you need to collect a diamond directly above the launchpad.

Just in case you weren’t aware, you can drop down through most moving platforms. For example, you can drop through the platforms at the start of 1-4. Certain platforms, however, have full collision for some reason, like the one underneath the sword mudd in 3-2.

That's all for now! I'll post more when I think of them.