Juste Run
6 years ago
Texas, USA

Hey All,

Just getting into speed running and was looking to do a Juste any% run. Are there any resources that y'all know about? I have already downloaded the videos of the top runs, but there are only 3 runs listed. Any help would be appreciated.

United States

Hi, I'm the main Juste runner. I made the route and everything, so I'm the one to ask about anything Juste-related. Juste isn't nearly as popular as Maxim and the 3 runs listed are the top times of the only serious runners. Chihilon made a run a long time ago on nicovideo, then I came and pushed the time down a lot, and PK recently copied my route. There's more resources in a thread on Speed Demos Archive and in descriptions and comments on my youtube channel, but there's no comprehensive guide on how to do anything. I've been meaning to make one, but it would be really complicated with lots of small tricks, and the route kept changing for a while so I didn't get around to it.

If you're just getting into speedrunning then I recommend you steer clear of Juste honestly. The run has a lot of inconsistent skips that depend on subpixels, small frame-window tricks, and potential hardlocks. And you need to get every skip right to even finish a single run. I also made the routes with only getting the fastest time in mind, not getting any decent times, so unless you're good with all the skips a different route would be better, but I didn't make any routes for that. There are 2 older routes that are easier you can try on my youtube channel, which are the 28:34 and 41:05 runs, but they're not optimized with newer techniques. The 28:34 probably resembles a lot what a more beginner-friendly any% Juste route would look like if I made one, and the 41:05 probably resembles what would be a No Out of Bounds route. There's also a Bad Ending route which is basically the same as any% but ends halfway through, which makes it easier.

If you're still interested despite my warnings, I can answer any questions. I should make a guide for these things anyway, so it's not any trouble.

Texas, USA

This will be my first game to attempt to speedrun, but I love the game so I think I'll stick with it (at least for a while). I'll check out the routes on youtube and maybe put some work into the 28:34 one. So far I have been playing on my GBA or virtual boy advanced, but I see that most of the runs are on emulators. What emulators are "allowed" or recommended?

Edited by the author 6 years ago
United States

I used VBA-RR because that's what the TAS community used, but Bizhawk is more recommended. I couldn't personally tell any difference between them in terms of timing, but maybe there is something.

If you're playing on GBA, you can't use the Double Pack version for Juste because the door glitch and cutscene glitch don't work on it, and save-warps take longer. You're going to need a lot of save-state practice anyway so you're going to get used to the emulator controls and want to do runs on that.

Texas, USA

yea, i had a few save states set up on VBA for the first handfull of rooms and am using the original HoD cartridge on the GBA. Thanks for the support. Ill probably check out Bizhawk next week. Thanks for the help getting started.

Michigan, USA

Hello. So on my search to find all info Juste related I've found difficulties finding explanation for some of his precise inputs. Without understanding exactly how some of these mechanics work I feel left in the dark about some of his techniques. I comprehensive guide would be greatly appreciated or even a list of notes. Due to maxim being so popular I feel Juste still has a fair amount of undiscovered potential in his runs

United States

I still haven't gotten around to that guide. I should try to do it in small parts so that I can get it done piece by piece, eventually. There's some more specific documentation you can find on tasvideos, both in the forum and in comments on some submissions, but it's not very well documented exactly how anything works.

I can explain how the mechanics of the whiplaunch work since I have a very good feel for it and how all the different launches probably come from the same oversight in the code. So let this be a draft for part of that guide:

The way I pieced it together is that for most of Juste's horizontal movement, the game sets the current speed to the starting speed of that kind of movement and a direction of that speed. The current-speed variable is a positive or negative integer, and the direction variable is one of two possible states, left or right. When you stop continuing the movement, the game applies a constant deceleration of some amount to your speed. On the ground walking, it's 1/4 pixels per frame per frame; in the air or on the ground dashing, it's 1/8 pixels per frame per frame; and in the air with floating boots, it's 1/32 pixels per frame per frame. The deceleration is just acceleration in the opposite direction of the direction of movement, and it keeps being applied until the speed becomes 0. The game presumably checks for speed being >= or <= to 0 to the set speed to 0 and stop the deceleration, and it picks out of the two depending on what direction it previously set. The way whiplaunching works is by making the game accidentally set the direction-of-speed variable in the opposite direction of the real direction of the speed variable (whether it's positive or negative); in other words, the direction of acceleration is in the same direction as the direction of speed, instead of in the opposite direction as it usually is. This way, instead of decelerating to 0, Juste indefinitely accelerates in the direction of the current speed. How fast this acceleration is depends on which constant acceleration value was set when the acceleration started (1/4, 1/8, or 1/32).

This needs a glitch in the code to happen, which I'll get to, but first I need to explain some terms. Juste has "movement-states," which the game keeps track of and applies speed, acceleration, and direction-of-acceleration depending on which you're in. Some of these movement-states are "direction-locked," where the previous direction-of-acceleration is not reset when going into them. Though it preserves both the direction-of-acceleration and the constant acceleration to be applied, it doesn't apply this acceleration during the state. Even if acceleration is not reset by going into some state, it is always reset if speed ever becomes 0. In these direction-locked states, the game typically freezes speed and either carries on the previous speed or sets a new one, and it typically limits your abilities to move.

Now for how to make the glitch. For the standard whiplaunch off of a ledge, first you walk to the right and stop. As you slow down, the speed is to the right starting at 1.5 pixels per frame, but an acceleration is being applied to the left at a constant 1/4 pixels per frame per frame, and the direction-of-acceleration is to the left. You have 6 frames (1.5 pixels per frame / 0.25 pixels per frame per frame = 6 frames) before the speed becomes 0 and acceleration is reset. Before then, you can backdash to the left, which is a direction-locked state. In the dash, the speed is to the left at 3 pixels per frame, with the same constant-acceleration of the previous 1/4 pixels per frame per frame to the left though not currently being applied, and with the same direction-of-acceleration to the left. After some time (~12 frames) the dash will start to slow down, at which point the constant-acceleration will change to being applied to the right by 1/8 and the direction-of-acceleration will change to being to the right, and your speed will gradually fall. To preserve the acceleration, you should go off a ledge, which goes into another direction-locked state. This off-ledge state lasts 6 frames, and speed starts to the left at 1.5 pixels, with constant-acceleration being applied to the left by 1/4, and the direction-of-acceleration being to the left. (The direction-of-acceleration being wrong here is important because it checks for speed being >= 0 before resetting acceleration, while the speed is currently -1.5 and increasing.) It will only increase up to 3 to the left before going into the normal air-state and starting to decrease, unless you go into another state that doesn't reset acceleration before then. If you've tried backdashing, jumping, and whipping really close together, you can see that you decelerate to 0 horizontal speed while whipping. This time, since that deceleration is set to the opposite direction and the direction-of-acceleration is opposite too, whipping will accelerate every frame. Going into the air-whipping-state from the off-ledge-state keeps everything the same while acceleration continues being applied for the ~40 frames that the whip lasts, and an extra 6 frames of an after-action-in-air state. From the speed of about -2 that you started whipping at, those 46 frames of 1/4 acceleration being added every frame brings the speed at the end up to about 13.5. From there, you can keep chaining whips or subweapons in those 6 frames after each one to preserve the acceleration. If you land without a whip out, you will start to decelerate by 1/4 every frame. If you jump, you will start to decelerate by 1/8 every frame.

You can see how this works generally by hopping in one direction away from a ledge while far away from it, then dashing back to the ledge after you land from the hop before your speed goes to 0, with dashing again and again each time before you start to slow down, then try whiplaunching off of a ledge that way. You'll see that it works.

Besides launching off of a ledge, you can launch from hitting with a divekick. Here, you slow down in air, divekick to hit something, then whip during the 1 frame of going backwards off of the hit. That single frame allows the deceleration that happens during slowing down in air to be transferred to the other direction to make it acceleration. Though from a divekick the acceleration is 1/8 instead of 1/4 since it's in the air.

There's also different kinds of launches that come out of using a super-jump off of the ceiling, which I haven't documented well yet. I tried rerouting any% using them and it turned out to be slower. They would only be good for longer runs.

I tried lots of other ways to launch from all sorts of things but couldn't find anything else, so I'm satisfied that there are no other possible launches.

As for Juste's potential, I put a lot more time into exploring all the possibilities than just my finished runs would indicate. I think I can pretty decisively say what his potential is. In general, Juste is more optimized than Maxim, not less. There's a few more minor, slightly useful glitches that I haven't documented yet and I've searched all over for different zips and warps, and I doubt there would any more human-possible major glitches that I'm not aware of that could be discovered. The biggest thing would be new places to cutscene-glitch from and new things to get out of the cutscene-glitch, like a credits warp.

From this, I've pretty much determined how all the categories that could be worth doing would be like. I'll maybe post it in more detail later since this post is getting very long. Just for Juste right now: -Juste Any% route isn't improving any time soon, but the time is improvable. -Juste Furniture% has been on my list of things to do for a long time, and it would take a long while to get a good route for it. I could still run it with a bad route maybe. -There's Juste Low% which would be a complete mess. It's better suited for TAS and might take 6 hours of repeating inconsistent and hard things, but I want to do it eventually anyway. -Juste Boss Rush is improvable by a decent chunk of time, I'm not very happy with it.

I haven't done all these things because the way I approach speedrunning is that if it's not fun for me I stop and do other things, so I start a lot of things and don't finish them. Hopefully I'll get around to more in the future.

Michigan, USA

Thank you so much for the info, that post is very helpful. I was having trouble chaining the whiplaunch and maintaining momentum. And was unsure exactly what mechanics that allowed the whiplaunch from a dive. Also thank you for the frame data it answered all the questions I could possibly have in the matter. From the way it sounds I should invest time In an all furniture route.

United States

If you mean making an all furniture route, you don't have to. I already have a not great, but not terrible route to start with that I posted a long time ago on SDA.

To make a good route you would need to know the details of what kinds of warps to different rooms you can do when out of bounds. This involves more details about specifics of Juste's movement. I should make another long post about it later, but basically: Getting stuck in the wall zips you up. Jumping into the wall with a whip out approaching the top of your jump zips you down for a little while, before zipping you up if you're still in a wall at the end of it. Zipping down with the whip out while also holding forward will zip you diagonally down and backwards for a little while. There's more weird stuff with holding different directions to get different results, and I'm not really sure how it all works. At some point these warps get really inconsistent, but that's just the nature of speedrunning Juste. There's no way around some inconsistencies and you have to put them into the route so that maybe only 5% of your runs even finish, because anything else would be much slower.

To make an optimized route for All Furniture and for Maxim All Bosses, I've been working on marking a complete map of all the different warps from one room to another I could do, without special things like floating boots. I got about 25% of the way through it before stopping. I would want to pick that up again and finish it to make good routes.

I'm reposting my previous route that I posted almost 3 years ago. It goes off of the 28:34 Any% route I mentioned in the second post as a base. I cut out some old notes and added some new ones. It's pretty good for beginning. More optimized routes will all get much harder.

I grouped the pieces of furniture: A- Chair, Side Table, Stuffed Stag (Treasury/Skel Cave B ) B- Sage Statue, Silver Dishes, Strange Mirror (Cavern B ) C- Gold Trinket, Silver Trinket (Walkway A) D- Antique Table, Lucky Cat (Clock Tower A) E- Tall Clock, Raccoon Figure (Clock Tower B ) F- King-Size Bed, Rocking Chair, Old Radio (Walkway B ) G- Castle Drawing, Chandelier, Closet, Teacup, Teapot (Top Floor/Treasury A) H- Phonograph, Bookshelf (Skel Cave A) I- Pretty Vase, Ancient Urn (Entrance B ) J- Silk Curtain, Candleholder, Smiling Statue (Gallery/Wailing Way B ) K- Candlestick, Wine Glass (Top Floor A/B ) Ungrouped: Hero Statue (Chapel B ) and Wizard's Urn (Skel Cave B near summoning tome)

Part 1: 1- Do the usual route to get double jump except pick up the furniture in group A and enter and exit Cavern once. You need the sign to pop up so that you can do a zip later. -> [Save warp back to Entrance.] 2- Activate Entrance warp, get Hint Card 3 and Platinum Tip -> Fight Giant Bat to open drawbridge -> Get Drac's Ring -> [Save Warp to Entrance A] 3- Do the candle zip to Skel Cave A while activating Top Floor warp -> Save at Skel Cave A -> Get floodgate key -> Box zip to summoning tome and wizard's urn -> [Save Warp to Skel Cave A] 4- Box-zip to Chapel A while activating Cavern warp. (this takes sliding to the left off the screen around where the drumstick is; you can't do this if it's the first time visiting Cavern) -> Grab Drac's Eyeball -> zip sequence into Aqueduct B+moon physics (by way of walkway A tower) -> Lower crushing tip in ClockTowerB -> zip in room left of the save to the right to ClockTowerA [[Note: This means zipping up the right wall of the AqueductB room left of the save on the map.]] -> Save at ClockA and reset to disable moon physics

Part 2: 5- [[Beat Max Slimer here]] Activate ClockTowerA warp -> [warp to EntranceB] -> Get Lure Key and a whole of money bags. 25 bags = $10,000$$$ should be enough for 40 potions and one of the best armor sets. Could get by with less [[I would personally skip all of it, but it doesn't take very long to do.]] -> [warp to TopFloorA] -> Beat Pazuzu (This pazuzu fight is going to be pretty hard since you're vastly underleveled and will die in one hit. To make it easier you could get the guardian armor set first and possibly get crushing tip and bible in ClockTowerB early here also.) [[I wouldn't bother with crushing-tip early, but the sequence I had in mind was to go back to the harpy room in ClockTowerA after saving but still with moon-physics and zipping to the crushing-tip, then getting the bible from the candle next to the ClockTower warp.]] -> Buy bunch of potions and equipment at shop below Pazuzu -> Go down into treasury getting group G also activating the center warp and getting Moon Armor. -> [warp from TreasuryA to ClockTowerB] 6- [[Get the bible from the candle next to the warp.]] Save at ClockTowerB -> [[Beat Peeping Big here]] Get Crushing Tip -> [[Beat Legion here]] group F and Drac's Heart in walkway -> Beat Shadow -> [Save warp] 7- Group E by smacking the guy to open the wall [[Note: This is the room with the hammer in ClockTowerB]] -> [Save warp] 8- [Warp to ClockTowerA] -> Save at ClockTowerA -> Get group D and Drac's Tooth -> [Save warp] 9- [[Beat Devil here]] Group C (can get some medicine jars) [[I recommend them]] -> Maxim's Ring -> [Save warp]

Part 3: 10- [Warp to CavernA] -> Save at CavernA -> Open floodgates -> [Save warp] (Also can get level ups on Talos here) [[I don't recommend it]] 11- Fight Death and get the wing -> [Save warp] 12- [Warp to CavernB] -> Get group B ending with mirror [[fighting Golem along the way]]. (Into mirror is a 30 second autoscroller. You might be able to skip it by super jumping with medicine jar at the left edge. But getting Drac's Nail this way means not skipping it) -> go back to the autoscroller and zip into Aqueduct A-> get Drac's Nail -> [Save warp to cavern A] 13- [Warp to EntranceB] -> Save at Entrance B -> Get group J (can take detour to grind at jp bonepillars) [[I don't recommend it]] -> get Crush Boots -> [Save warp] 14- Go down to Drac's Rib and get group I -> Save at Entrace-basement B -> Warp to TopFloorB and then TopFloorA getting group K -> Open Maxim's door from the left in castle A [[Note: I have a vague recollection that this might be impossible. If so, a simple patch is to warp to the center warp in castle A and go SkelCaveA instead of doing the zip.]] -> zip from ChapelA to SkelCaveA (by way of minotaur) [[That is, from how you get moon-physics, but doing a different warp instead.]] -> get group H -> [Save warp to BasementB] 15- [Warp to TopFloorB] -> get Hero Statue [[Again, this may be impossible from TopFloorB, I forget. If so, you could try box-zipping from SkelCaveA to ChapelA and maybe there's a warp to ChapelB somewhere around there.]] -> Zip sequence to FurnitureRoomB [[This goes through the chapel B OoB, maybe through the left of the center room A, I forgot.]] -> Walk to DraculaB -> Destroy the entire castle with all the furniture you collected [[Note: You have to visit the Furniture room after getting all the furniture to trigger the hidden best ending. It's hidden because nobody notices that it's different from the good ending.]]

Since this route goes pretty much all around the castle, it can be used with minor edits to fulfill getting any combination of all furniture/spellbooks/relics/bosses and it's not a bad route for any of those.

Edited by the author 6 years ago
Michigan, USA

Thank you, I will start by familiarizing myself with the route. I will message you if any questions arise.