Hey everyone.

This post is to announce that we have two additional moderators in the form of CptPie and myself (Denim_AK). There’s been an increase in submitted runs lately and we want to make sure everyone’s runs get to be acknowledged in a timely manner.

Other actions we will be taking this week are providing a clarified version of the rules. As of yet no actual changes to the rules are being made, there are just a couple points that we felt deserved clarification.

We will also be reverifying a handful of runs from a particular category that we discovered an oversight in how that category has been timed.

We would encourage anyone who wants to play a role in shaping how we move forward to join the Ace Combat 7 Speedrunning Discord, as we occasionally have discussions and polls there to make sure that any changes that get made reflect the desires of the community at large.

We are excited to have an increased number of active runners and encourage community members to check the leaderboards every few days as we aim to make future run verification time decrease to only a day or two so we can watch the competitions play out in real time. Since we now have enough moderators to do so, we will also be enacting a “no self verification policy” just to increase future transparency and integrity. Good luck everyone, feel free to message us on Discord if you have any questions, comments or concerns.

Thank you.

Hello. I casually fired up RR64 this morning and made another discovery relevant to the strategies laid out in this thread. It’s pretty simple. JoeDamillio, you made a break through with these shortcut strategies when you started using the clouds in the game as reference points while traversing the difficult grass sections of shortcuts. It blew my mind when i first read your post in this thread about the clouds cuz i had never noticed the clouds before and that seems like such an obvious reference point. Turns out i never noticed them because on my game they weren’t there. By the time you had posted the information about the clouds i had stopped making runs as my life got busy and i haven’t really been back since. I did try to utilize your cloud strategy once and was bewildered by the missing clouds in my game, i even wondered for a moment if you were using an emulator or something but this morning i figured out the discrepancy.

The clouds in RR64 only show up when playing the game with the 4MB Ram extension pak installed to your N64. I didn’t instal the expansion pak or even know about it until a few months ago when i needed to get it to use the USAMUNE practice rom for super Mario 64 Speedrun practice. It kind of blew my mind, none of my speedruns for SM64, RR64 or Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater utilized the expanded RAM and all of those games perform much better with it. And in addition to the increased frame rate performance, occasionally certain features are added to the game with the expansion pak installed; in this case the clouds.

So if anyone reads through this thread and wants to utilize JoeDamillion’s cloud reference shortcut strats, know that you need to buy and instal the N64 4MB RAM expansion pak, you’ll be happy you did though as it makes all of your n64 games more enjoyable. I will have to start brushing off my RR64 skills and try runs again soon now that i have access to the clouds. If this game had a bigger Speedrun community id argue we need separate catagories for with and without expansion paks as its definitely a different playing field but im not sure that’s necessary yet. Should probably look into whether the increased frame rate alone provides enough advantage to warrant the separate category; with a Speedrun of multiple hours the difference could be several minutes just because of your hardware.

That is all. ✌️

I usually use a timer on an ipad next to the tv when i film it, would that count or do i have to have live splits? The ipad timer method has so far been fine in SM64.

Ah, cool. I kinda figured but had to know for sure. Hadn’t considered using it on the front of bowsers sub, makes sense and explains why i could never get that to work in the past. Thanks guys.

I was messing around in HMC today curious if i could find a way to climb the hill in the middle of the water area with the star since i still havent gotten the hang of the box triple jump trick. I ended up figuring out how to jump up the slope. Im not a scholar by any means so others may have figured this out and it doesn’t save anytime over the triple box jump but im still curious if this is a new discovery cuz i didnt think you were supposed to be able to get up that slope. There may be other uses of the logic behind this even though this trick itself doesn’t save any time.

Awesome. Another couple days and I can finally start running this again.

Nice.

It’s nice to meet someone who gets it, figuring this shit out is one of the coolest things I’ve ever done but so niche nobody gets it.

It didn’t occur to me to use clouds as reference points, I usually used the high spots of little hills just when they load in, the make a sort of gun sight before the terrain behind them loads in.

I’ve never really tried insanity tracks, have you tested these techniques there?

For real, life’s in the way for me too. I’m like 20 seconds from bronze and I think my route would be 1h36m if I can grind it out long enough to get a no lose run.

Can respect that, to me there is just something satisfying about beating the whole game in one sitting even though its way more frustrating to do competitively. Is there any reason we cant do both? I know goldeneye levels are split up individually like that but id way rather watch a full game run through that shows mastery over the whole game. On the flip side, individual levels would make more difficult shortcuts or other exploits justifiable in runs. I dont see why we shouldn’t be able to have individual and full game runs, they are both fun and interesting in their own way.

Hi everyone. I just finished up a week and a half grind discovering shortcuts and other mechanics in the game. This Speedrun community is pretty small and ive found it hard to stay motivated when it feels like im just racing myself (im not even in the top 3, i just mean i dont think anyone else is actively trying to apply shortcuts to push what’s possible with this game. I love this game and i know other people do too so im trying to understand why so few people actively Speedrun it. I imagine the main reason being the amount of luck it seems to take to put up a great run with no loses (at least for me), but if so i think the addition of shortcuts really help with that. They allow you to get away from the other players and have more control. I hate getting an hour into a run and losing a race at the last second because of the tiniest mistake or freak accident. It makes the game feel RNG based even though its not technically RNG i think. So basically i want to see if i can muster up some competition and collaboration in the community to make speedrunning this game a bit funner. Im sure part of the reason for the lack of active runners is they are just focused on other games but with the addition of shortcuts we have a frontier of possibilities most games dont have as much of. I love Mario 64 for example, but with hundreds of runners trying to break that game open they’ve done a really good job and now the opertunity for new discovery is slim. RR64 however is just scratching the surface. I broke the shortcut mechanics down in about two days of trial and error, i think there is plenty more left to be discovered and i find that exciting. So i dont know if my words make anyone feel like firing up this game again but i id feel a lot more motivated if there was a sense of competition and collaboration and activity in the community. To that end, i started a Discord Page for RR64 Speedrunning. Im actually kind of a noob when it comes to discord so im happy to let someone who knows what they’re doing run it but i wanted to get the ball rolling. Its attached to my “Denim_ak” discord account and thats linked to my profile here on Speedrun.com so if the link below expires then you should be able to find it off my profile i think.

https://discord.gg/pggk4GDR

Im going to try to get some of my gamer friends who’ve never tried speed running this game to give it a go. I think some more competition around here would be fun.

Over the last week I’ve found out how to use major shortcuts on almost all the races between level 3-5. So I think you are right, it’s time for a new category.

There are so many shortcuts in this game now. Wanted to share a new piece of info about forced respawns. Actually crashing your bike has been surprisingly the least consistent part of these shortcut techniques. I use the crotch rockets in levels 3 through 5 to make it easier to dodge other players and weave through traffic, unfortunately though they have so much handling it can be hard to try to get them to crash when doing a respawn. A wall usually works but even then sometimes you can just do a big flip and end back on your tires unscathed. Here is a pretty consistent solution when the terrain allows for it. If there is any decent incline near by, you can hold a wheelie at slow speed when entering the incline and continue holding that wheelie. Speed up once on the incline and time it so you’re about 3-4 seconds into the wheelie when on the incline with a little bit of speed and it will buck you off the bike backwards. I know everybody already knows about this Mechanic, but on the street bikes in the later levels it’s often not enough to cause you to crash, the bike will find a way to correct itself, but doing it on an incline makes it consistently buck you off. This is mostly handy when you’re performing a reset away from the city since there aren’t any walls to crash into, trees work but you can glance off to the side or not be fast enough or even hit too fast and potentially end up too close to the road at the wrong angle and trigger the cheat fail, using the wheelie reset you can pretty consistently get the same results. I’ve only had one time where it’s failed so far, and I think that’s because I was too close to the top of the slope when The bike trued to buck me off. So if I had timed it better it likely would’ve worked. Good luck guys, I’ve been streaming every day and I’m trying to make YouTube videos with isolated tutorials on these concepts, just last night I found five new shortcuts in levels that were previously hard for me to beat consistently. I’ve only got a few more levels to find consistent ways of winning in Before I feel like a first place contender, I’m getting pretty close and I’m excited. I’m happy to share anything about what I’ve learned in this game, check me out on Twitch if you want to see some more real time discoveries. Thanks everyone.

Hi everyone, the plot continues to thicken. It’s now become apparent that Getting the game to update your position into first place and thus moving your respawn point to your current location has more to do with The angle of your bike than it does with your distance from the road. So I described how I had a breakthrough yesterday, how I got the game to update your location to first place when I would creep up to the road, but eventually I would start turning and end up more parallel to the road so that I didn’t get too close and trigger the cheat fail. It finally occurred to me that the game would update my location when I was changing angles to be more parallel with the road. So you don’t have to get as close to the road as I thought, you have to travel in the progressive direction sort of parallel to the road for a second or two within it seems like around 80 feet from the road, and then it will update you. This has made it much easier, because you don’t have to get that close to the danger zone meaning you can go much faster, in fact in certain situations, you can even get the game to update your position to first while on a trajectory into a wall or some thing else to perform a forced respawn. This makes it possible to perform forced respawns at high speed under the right conditions. ✌️

In the future I think I’ll refer to the act of getting the game to update your position to first place while also updating your respawn point as just “Performing an Update”. So I’d just say, “follow that road left until you see the flashy sign, perform an update, then a respawn.”

Hi guys, I go into more detail on these exploits on the thread “Open Season for Time Saves”

Today I had a break through with the Forced Respawns while practicing for today’s speedrun. They are totally usable now. 100% reliable.

I mentioned in the above post that I thought there would be a way to get the game to update your position recognizing you in first place and moving your respawn point to your current location. That ended up being true. During one of my practice runs I was driving along side the Course Road when I noticed my position in the race updated to first place. The lightbulb went off in my head, so I went into the woods and crashed to test my theory, and it respawned me in first place with the lead I gained from the shortcut. It worked. You just have to get close enough to the course Road without getting close enough that it activates the cheat fail. Once it updates you into first place, turn away from the road and go crash somewhere. Ironically that ended up being the hardest part, because I use the crotch rocket bikes with really good handling and they never seem to want to tip over without actually smacking into something, sometimes I was able to do was sort of E-break turn and lay the bike down, but usually I ended up having to drive a number of seconds away to run into a tree. you want to do it away from the road because if you’re too close you run the risk of triggering the cheat fail. If you follow those parameters, the forced respawn works 100% of the time. After I made sure it worked on all of the maps I have Shortcuts for, I began a speed run. The shortcuts worked flawlessly except for one where I lost focus and did something stupid, but I need to work on my level four and five races that don’t have Shortcuts. I took 30 minutes off my best time and brought it down to 2h9m ish but first place is still half an hour away. I had to repeat far too many races to be a first place contender, but I’ll work on that. I’m sure one of you guys has what it takes to apply these techniques and destroy the world record. Good luck.

Hi. Don’t know if im the first but ive discovered how to beat the mechanic in the game that fails you in big game races when you “cheat” by taking huge shortcuts. I will recap the discoveries i talked about in my last post “questions about shortcuts” while filtering out what is no longer relevant. Here is everything ive learned:

The “Cheat Fail” as ive come to calling it can be circumvented allowing for giant time saves on certain levels. Normally if you try to take a big shortcut, the second you emerge back onto the road (thats actually a part of the course or is some cases directly adjacent) the game brings your bike halting to a stop and chastises you for cheating with a message that says “cheaters never prosper” before taking you to the “Wrecked” screen and asking you to cough up 1-3 thousand dollars. This mechanic can be beaten allowing you to trigger the end of the race without being labeled a cheater. I’ll explain what you need to know to accomplish this but first let me define a few terms:

Cheat Fail - When the game decides you’ve cheated and ends your race and demands your money

Course Road - a section of road that is a part of the designated path for that race. These roads will trigger the Cheat Fail if re-entered wrong after going off road for a lengthy shortcut.

Non-Course Road - roads not on the race’s designated pathway, can drive freely on these without the risk of triggering the Cheat Fail

Progressive - The direction you would need to travel on a Course Road to be making progress towards the finish line.

Regressive - The direction you would need to travel on a Course Road to be losing progress towards the finish line.

Flashy Crash - The name i gave to a maneuver where you purposely crash into one of the big yellow or orange flashing arrow signs in order to respawn yourself on the Course Road with a huge lead and the ability to once again drive freely on the Course Roads without triggering the Cheat Fail.

Forced Respawn - Basically any other version of crashing yourself into a specific spot on purpose with the goal of respawning back on the Course Road with the lead you acquired from a shortcut.

Win Zone - The area inside and outside of the finish line that when driven across in the Progressive direction triggers the end of the race. The Win Zone extends quite a ways outside of the poles of the finish line, I haven’t measured it but feels like maybe 80-100 feet in the game

Danger Zone - The area on either side of a Course Road that if driven inside of in the Progressive direction, the Cheat Fail will be activated. This feels like about 50 feet in the game. The fact that the Win Zone is about double the width of the Danger Zone is one of the keys to defeating the games anti cheat programming.

Ok, here’s how to defeat the anti cheat programming:

The “Cheat Fail” only gets triggered when you renter a Course Road traveling in the Progressive direction. So if you renter that same Course Road facing the Regressive direction, the Cheat Fail will not be tripped. At first glance this doesn’t seem very useful since we need to drive in the Progressive direction to finish the race but we can use this mechanic when crossing course roads or to temporarily drive on a course road in the Regressive direction to get to a Forced Respawn point.

Let’s talk about Forced Respawns. If you can crash your bike close enough to the Course Road you want to respawn on WITHOUT accidentally triggering the Cheat Fail in the process by pointing the bike in a progressive direction, then you will respawn just meters from where you crashed keeping the huge lead you gained from your shortcut and you be able to drive freely on the course road again without risking the cheat fail. But there’s a catch, the game still tracks your bike when its flying around during the crash. (i think the cheat fail is activated by tracking the bikes direction but im not 100% sure, the riders position during the crash could factor in too, ive only been at this a day and just using trial and error.) so if in the chaos of you ramming your bike head on into a tree, fence or flashy sign it happens to point in a direction the game doesn’t like, it will label you a cheater and end your race. This is the hardest part of defeating the anti cheat programming.

Its also possible to fail a forced respawn by not being close enough to the course road (or some other unknown factor) when you crash, if this happens, you wont necessarily trigger a cheat fail, you’ll just be teleported back to where you deviated from the path to start your shortcut; this usually makes the race unwinable. I want to find a way to have the game update your position to first place before performing a respawn so this problem is averted but I haven’t found out how to do that yet.

Not all shortcuts require Forced Respawns but the ones that do are currently the bane of my existence. There are four shortcuts ive worked out so far that require Forced Respawns, i got to hitting them about 75% percent of the time in practice but during my Speedrun attempt today with these new strategies under the pressure and fatigue of having fought lunatics on motorcycles for an hour just to get to my first attempt, i failed both of my first two Forced Respawns and ran out of money and got a game over ending my run. Unlike losing a race where you just lose time, activating the Cheat Fail will cost you the money you need to by your next bike or end your run completely so there is risk. However, i really think performing these shortcuts is easier than surviving or staying in front of the onslaught of the other riders constantly trying to beat you to death right before the finish line. If you successfully complete a shortcut, you get away from not just the other bikers, but most time you get away from spawning cars. So you can haul ass because there is no one in your way but the game also runs faster because its loading much less content and has no reason to lag.

Ok. I better get to the point. Basically, successfully using a shortcut as a time save in this game means triggering the end of the race without triggering the Cheat Fail (despite deserving it). Since the Win Zone that triggers the end of the Race is roughly twice the size of the Danger Zone that will end your race with a cheat fail, if you drive in the progressive direction through the the part of the Win Zone that does not overlap with the Danger Zone, you will win the race without being called a cheater.

There are three ways of doing that ive found.

1. The Off Road Method - On maps where the course is layed out so you can drive off road to the finish line faster than the other riders can finish the race, you can drive straight there as long as you dont enter the danger zone. I use this on 3:2 and it save about 15 seconds. Its also pretty easy since there is no forced respawn, you just cant drive too close to the course road or you’ll enter the danger zone and trigger the cheat fail.

2. Forced Respawn Method - this describes shortcuts that wouldn’t be viable if you couldn’t get back onto the course road traveling progressively to finish the race. I use this on 5:7 “Crash and Burn” and others. Sometimes the shortcut involves going off road, other times it involves using Non-Course Roads but either way you need to do a forced respawn to be able to finish the race with a time save. Once a forced respawn is successfully completed you can just play the game like normal exempt you wont have people trying to beat you to death every 5 seconds. You dont need to do anything fancy at the finish line, you just cross it like normal.

3. The Roundabout Method - Some races you can use Non Course Roads to drive to the finish line from THE OTHER SIDE. This takes a bit of maneuvering when you reach the finish line since just driving through it wont trigger then end of the race. You have to drive off to the side far enough away to be able to turn around without crossing into the danger zone and then drive through the win zone just like you would in the Off Road Method. These are the easiest and my favorite. The hardest part is remembering the right combination of non course roads to take to arrive at the finish line. MARATHON falls into this catagory and you can beat it in around 1m21s easy this way. Thats the single best time save i have to offer here and hilariously its the easiest. I use to kinda dread marathon but now i laugh my ass off it.

So thats it. To make a shortcut work you have to trigger the end of the race by driving through the Win Zone in the Progressive direction and you have to do that without triggering the Cheat Fail by driving through the Danger Zone or by entering a Course Road in the Progressive direction. If you cant drive straight to the finish line from the other side or take a off road route, then you can find a shortcut route that cuts off some time and then figure out where you can do a Forced Respawn that is consistent enough to be worth it. At first i always crashed into the flashy signs since they are at all the intersections i would be coming back onto the course road from and they are close enough to the road to usually work but lately they’ve been super inconsistent and ive opted for driving regressively to a fence or corner of where two buildings meet instead. If we figure out a consistent way to do them the game will be ours. For best results ive been limiting my speed to 100km per hour but too slow and you might not crash. Angle matters too. Im trying to design setups where i can hit it the same every time but its hard.

Good luck everyone. Id love to take first place but this game is mentally demanding and i dont usually do well on second attempts in a day and Im running out of time before the real world keeps me from attempting these speedruns for a while. I feel good with the idea that i helped push the boundaries of what’s possible in one of my favorite games.

Ok… one last thing.. probably. If you crash your bike basically on the road super ahead of everyone cuz you just took a shortcut and you haven’t triggered the cheat fail, then apparently you can be respawned about where you crashed keeping your lead and allowing you to now drive the course road again without risking the cheat fail. Don’t know how consistent that is, learned it by accident but considering the alternative to a respawn is driving slowly on the dirt, might be another huge time save.

Ok, this game is about to get destroyed, decided to go for bigger fish and analyzed the level 5 maps for possible worm holes. I just beat marathon in 1m23s on my first try. It’s a different game beating levels this way and I love the old game so it may be time for a “no major shortcut” category or something. Gonna stop posting now and get to work preparing for runs tomorrow. I’m not the best player here but there are huge time saves here for the picking.

Found a route through 3:1 twisty land I finished in 1m43s. It’s more convoluted than 3:2 but currently saves 37 seconds. More optimization possible.