This is my first topic on the forum and I hope I am in the right place. I am a huge fan of what all the people here are doing!

I have recently started making videos about Destiny 2 and I want to make one focused on the OOB, in this game it is very common to use glitchs to go out of the map and complete speedruns. Even some mechanics of final bosses are made thanks to OOB (The 99% of the players who use it do not know what it is called or what it consists of. They just do it).

So, to start the video I want to correctly define "What is the OOB" what it consists of and if it has different variables and/or rules. And that is why I come to all of you. I would like to know where I can find out in full detail what the mechanics consist of and what "rules" it is subject to.

I'm going to put an example of my doubt. During a raid (Last Wish) you can backtrack and reach an area where you have already been. This skip is used to farm a chest that you should not reach. I will attach a video to show it. My question is... Could that be interpreted as an OOB? Although you have not used a glitch, you have jumped a natural barrier created by the developers to reach an area where you should not be. What's more, you must go a very specific path or the death zones will kill you.

How far can we say that that is OOB or Skip? How can I know and define it? What rules does the OOB have? Should a glitch always be used? You must always literally "get out of the map" thanks to some mechanics or glich?, or is avoiding a "joining allies" barrier also an OBB?

Thank you very much for your time!

The video:

This kinda reminds me of the EZscape video about "glitchless speedruns", where he talks about the general definitions of what is an exploit and a glitch, the ambiguity in those definitions, and how different people or communities may interpret them.

In a similar manner, I don't think you can find a "true" definition for what is an OOB, because you can interpret the term "out of bounds" in several ways. It can strongly depend on the game and the community (especially for your question, "what rules does OOB have?").

I'll try to answer your questions based on my own personal interpretation, and I will give some examples:

• How to define OOB? I would call OOB as "being out of the playable map". Basically, if the game will have an in-game map (which marks where you can and can't be), I would imagine out-of-bounds to be anywhere where you are outside of the outer bounds of that map. Out-of-bounds might also include being inside a physical barrier where you are not supposed to be, like a wall or a rock. If the playable zone is in a close space, then being above the ceiling will also be an OOB.

• OOB or Skip? A skip can happen in-bounds or out of bounds, there is no contradiction between the two. Sometimes going out of bounds can save time, but in other times it might be slower than normal gameplay, or serve no purpose for the objective of the game; so in those cases it will not be a skip.

• Should a glitch always be used? Probably yes. Since most game developers don't want their players to be out of bounds (from a technical/stability point of view, not speedrunning point of view), they create barriers or mechanics that prevents the players from doing so (that is, if the developers put more than minimal effort in their game). So, it will usually require you to use some glitch or a game mechanic in a certain way, unintended by the developers, to go out of bounds. Even when going through a certain wall where the developers just forgot to put a barrier - this might be considered a glitch as well.

Back to (my) definition of OOB - I said earlier that this is going "outside the map". But that means that any skip, no matter how much minor or major, that happens "inside the map" is not OOB. Clipping through a wall or a barrier that separates between 2 playable zones can cause a sequence-break, but it still happens in the bounds of the map.

In Jak 3, they defined OOB as: "Going out-of-bounds is considered to occur if you go outside the natural zone of an area (into void space that is not meant to be encountered during the ordinary progression of an area) or outside the boundary displayed by the in-game map". The game has a hover glitch, that allows you to go upwards indefinitely with the jetboard. It can help you get to unreachable platforms or skip entire platforming sections, but as long as you stay "in the boundary of the in-game map" they don't count it as OOB. (You can check the Jak 3 AGDQ-2019 video here and here, where they talk about that and laugh about being in-bounds, just really really high).

Based on those definitions, I probably would not call your skip in Destiny an OOB skip, because it looks like you are always in a playable zone, but crossing the sea barrier in an unintended way. Just note that I don't know the Destiny game, or what is the intended way to get to that chest, so you or other destiny runners can disagree with me.

To conclude, when you say "out-of-bounds", usually images like those come to mind :) :

Jak 2:

Amnesia - The Dark Descent:

Super Mario Odyssey:

In general, "out of bounds" refers to a part of the game that wasn't intended, where the rules and logic of the game as a whole may or may not apply. The term itself is somewhat outdated, but we still use it to refer to reaching areas before the game's creator intended or areas that are undefined or not meant to be reached at all. In some games, the bounds are relative.

Imagine a two dimensional screen where your character is displayed at coordinates X and Y. As you move left, the X coordinate decreases and the character is displayed farther to the left on the screen. However, the screen is only so big, so if that number is too high or too low, the character will be displayed off the screen (and may result in an error). To keep this from happening, the game creators will define the "bounds" or the "playing area". If the display number is too low or too high, these games have safeguards to set the number back within the bounds.

"Out of bounds" is (generally) defined as somehow bypassing this safeguard, though its interpretation can change drastically depending on what game it's being applied to. It doesn't need to be done with a glitch, though the two tend to come together since a glitch is also something the game's creator didn't intend.

It can be more difficult to determine what is and isn't "out of bounds" when you use in-game mechanics. If we use backward long jumps to climb normally impassable stairs, are we going out of bounds? What if we use successive attacks to extend a jump to a longer-than-usual distance like in the video?

I'd say yes. Barriers don't have to be walls. They can be disguised as chasms, slippery stairs, locked gates, or just about anything within the game's logic. Even if these barriers can be unlocked or removed later, we are still bypassing a barrier placed by the game's creator specifically intended to keep you from passing. The stairs are supposed to be impassable, like that chasm. They are the creator's "bounds", and you are leaving them. You are "out of bounds".

@oddtom Well, as I see it, I don't quite agree with you on the definition of the going "out of bounds" only as the act of crossing a boundary or a barrier. (Again, this boils down to personal interpretation of what exactly is out of bounds).

I think that in general, when people are talking about the term of out-of-bounds, they are talking mostly about "external boundaries", as opposed to "internal boundaries". Most of the barriers you described are internal boundaries - you are not suppose to cross them according to the dev intended logic, but they still resides in the "playable area".

As an allegory I will take your house or apartment for example. Imagine that we set a hypothetical game that is supposed to be played only in the interior of your house, and nowhere else. Your house is full of physical barriers - walls, floor and ceiling, and some objects like a bed or table. If you use a glitch to clip through the wall, floor or ceiling to the neighbors apartments; then you are out of the boundaries of your apartment (and went out of the bounds of the game). But what if you use a glitch to clip into your table, or cross a wall that separates between different rooms in your house? You did cross a physical barrier, but you are still inside the interior of your own house, and thus can be consider in-bounds.

Some example in gaming terms:

• You skip a series of quests to get a key, by clipping through a locked gate in your village (which you were supposed to unlock much later)
• You cross Super Mario 64 "endless stairs corridor", by building up enough speed to skip its collision check
• You use unintended mechanics to get enough momentum to cross a chasm, a chasm which you were suppose to get across later by using a jetpack (that you don't have right now).

All of those are sequence breaks caused by bypassing a barrier, but I don't consider any of them to be "out of bounds". If the barrier can be unlocked or removed later, this is agreeing with the statement that this barrier was inside a playable area all along.

One exception in my definition I can think of, is about clipping through big walls. If we take the Jak 2 picture I posted above as an example - there is an entire town you can explore (and also get out of its external bounds), but the walls that separate sections in the town are way bigger and wider than your playable character. I do consider clipping through those walls as going "out of bounds", even though you are clearly still inside the town.

I think I understand what you mean, but I don't really like the term "playable area", because what makes an area "playable"? If you can get a character there and play in it with normal controls, isn't that "playable"? Sure the visuals don't render properly, but the game still functions.

The outer-most boundary is not the only boundary. If we take your hypothetical house game as an example, each room is also bound by walls that are not meant to be entered. Even if both sides of the wall are accessible through a doorway between them, if you clip through the wall to get from one to the other, you are leaving this "playable area", if only for a short time. The width of the wall isn't a factor- you can't "clip" without entering a "non-playable area".

Let's say our house is a perfect cube with a single wall. The boundary isn't just the outside of the cube, but extends inward with the wall. This area is within the "external wall", but is also considered "out of bounds".

Your examples in programming terms:

• if you clip through a locked gate without a key, you must exist for some period of time within the wall, a "non-playable area"
• If you build up enough speed in Super Mario 64 "endless corridor", you can bypass the collision check, a boundary meant to keep you from passing
• The chasm is a bit trickier, but it's a classic lock-and-key scenario in disguise. The lock is the chasm and the key is the jetpack. I'm not as sure about this one anymore.

@oddtom Okay, I wasn't thinking that way before, and you got me thinking about re-evaluating my definitions. I agree with you that the term "playable area" was vague and not well defined. I tried to think of a new definition that will cover my thinking of out-of-bounds and in-bounds as I explained it before.

The term "Playable area" conveys any place that you can be in and "play" there. We can say that you still "play" the game, whenever you are inside the bounds or outside. If I'll say instead "The area where you are supposed to be according to the developers" - this matches your definition, that crossing every barrier is being out of bounds, even for a very short time. But it won't match my perspective that some kinds of barriers are still not out-of-bounds.

The length of the walls also has something to do with it... I'll focus on external walls for a bit. As you said, in a perfect cube house, the boundary extends inward with the wall, and the interior area of the wall also counts as out of the boundaries of the room. If the wall is wide enough, than being inside the wall or outside the wall both counts as OOB. But now, let's assume that the wall is very thin, and for practical purposes its width is 0. In that case, there are 3 possible scenarios: you are completely inside the interior of the house, you are completely outside the interior of the house, and you are half-inside/half-outside by standing right at the position of the wall. Let's also assume that the time it takes to cross the wall is very short - because the width is 0, the time to cross the wall is also 0... so I'm ditching the third option for convenience.

With those assumptions, you can only be "inside" or "outside". And if you cross an interior wall or a barrier (with width 0), you actually move from "inside" to another "inside", so no "out-of-bounds" was involved.

Now, focusing a bit on interior bounds. If an interior wall inside the room is wide enough so that you can stand completely inside it, I can think about the interior of that wall as an extension of the exterior wall, in the sense that the interior of that wall was never a part of "inside the house". It's like in math, where you can reshape geometric shapes while still preserving some properties of the shape, and the two shapes are considered "topologically equal". (This is an oversimplification of course).

How about I propose this new definition: First, In-Bounds will be defined as every place in the game where you can physically be at any certain time of the game, according to the dev intended logic. Then, my "Out-of-Bounds" will be defined as any place in the game where another person, standing at any place In-Bounds, won't be able to make eye contact with you. Either because you are too far away from him, or because a solid physical barrier separates between you.

You can probably find many edge cases in that, but I'm too tired to think about that further right now.

Gotta say, @FernandoEsra, It's really an interesting topic to think about. I always took the term OOB for granted until now.

[Quote]The chasm is a bit trickier, but it's a classic lock-and-key scenario in disguise. The lock is the chasm and the key is the jetpack. I'm not as sure about this one anymore.[/Quote]

You got me thinking about that one too. I liked the term "lock-and-key scenario in disguise", I didn't thought like that before. But I think the situation is more complex than that. My point is that even with your definition of OOB, not all sequence breaks can be considered as OOB.

We can make a distinction between closed barriers (like a physical locked gate) and open barriers (like the chasm). With a closed barrier, we can pinpoint the the exact time and place where you crossed the barrier and went out of bounds. But with open barrier, when exactly do you enter the "out of bounds" area? How much time you spend there, and when do you leave that area?

If we talk about the lock-and-key metaphor: By clipping through a close barrier you skip the key; but with an open barrier, my opinion is that you don't skip the key, you use another unintended key.

Instead of the chasm example, I will give another example to an open barrier: Let's say you need to get to the top of a small cliff of a mountain, and you are at the bottom of that cliff. The intended way to get there is to do a long trek on the mountain, which ends on the top of that cliff. Now let's say that due to an oversight from the developers, you managed to get your hands on a ladder (which is used for another purpose), and get it to the cliff and just used that to climb. Therefore, skipping the entire mountain section of the game.

Let's also say that after getting to the top of that cliff with whatever way, you can get down easily by sliding down, as an intended shortcut that skips going through the long path I mentioned, so the player won't have to backtrack.

The act of getting to the top of the cliff is the "lock", the path through the mountain is the intended "key", and the ladder was also a "key" which the developer didn't anticipate.

Can you say that any "out of bounds" was involved in that case?

To give a real example of that cliff scenario, take a look at this Hollow Knight any% run, about 25 seconds from the given timestamp. The player climb on a small cliff that leads to an area (Resting Grounds) which you are supposed to enter much later, skipping about 3 entire areas of the game in the process. You can get to the resting grounds in many other (intended) ways, and that small cliff can be climbed easily with relevant skills, but you don't have them in this point in the game. Instead of acquiring the relevant skill to climb the cliff, the player abuse the fact that you can bounce on a shade created after you die, and use that instead (as the ladder).

Again, can you say that any out of bounds was involved in that case? I still think the chasm example is a similar scenario to this one.

First of all, thank you very much for the answers!

I am going to illustrate my doubts with my great photoshop skill (graphic design it's my passion) to ask in a more “direct” way what we are talking about.

First we explain the encounter. At the end of the BOSS 1 there is a secret chest that we will NOT open. We enter through the portal, it takes us to BOSS 2 and... Oh no! We have forgotten the chest. So we want to go back but it is impossible. So, the previous area is designated as an "Area where the developer does not want you to go." This is how I understand it both as a gamer and as a videogame developer that I am. I agree with @oddtom in his first post.

The normal way to get back is to abuse jumping mechanics to avoid the pit. But we are going to propose two different cases:

Case 1: Instead of a huge pit, what appears is a huge wall. We use a glitch to get through the wall. To make it more fair, the glitch is “running a lot and hitting the wall doesn't kill you, it goes through it”. That way we get to the secret chest that is in an area where the developer does not want us to go. We all agree that it is OOB.

Case 2: No pit or wall appears. But when you're jumping forward a message appears that says "Return to the battlefield" and a 3-second timer force us to return. To cross the abyss we need at least 10 seconds. It is impossible. But then we use the same glitch as in case 1, super speed. And we cross the abyss, we are off limits in an area where the developer does not want us to go. The difference is that we have crossed a PHYSICAL wall or an INVISIBLE barrier. But the result is the same.... Is this OOB?

In case the question to case 2 is negative (That is, it is not OOB) ... What kind of glitch is it? What required conditions must a glitch have to be consider as an “OOB”?

@FernandoEsra I somehow missed your reply and questions. I think you raised a new concept that was not discussed earlier - a "conditional" OOB.

Lets take your example. You are in the area of "level 1", and then you went on a one-way portal to "level 2". You then consider level 1 to be "an area where the developer does not want you to go". I disagree with that statement, as I think this confuses between a sequence break and going to an OOB area; terms that can be and also not be related to each other. In this case of the islands, while the developer indeed does not expect anyone to get back to level 1 from level 2, as there is an intended flow/sequence of events, I don't think that level 1 is now suddenly an OOB area.

In any of my personal definitions of OOB earlier, I tried to define an area where you are not supposed to be (at all times), and is outside the boundaries of the "playable" area which I discussed with @oddtom . Clearly, you are "supposed" to be in level 1 area at some points; or in other words, it is intended by the developer that you can be able to be in that area. So, I consider level 1 area to be in-bounds, and leaving the level's area won't change that. You might define level 1 area to be out of the boundaries of level 2, but I still think the entire level 1 is still in-bounds, and always will be.

An equivalent example to that is a tutorial area of a game. You can only be there at the start of the game, and can never return again once you leave. The developer don't intend you to return to that area, but if you still manage to do that with glitches or whatever, I'd say you still return to an in-bounds area (even if you had to cross an OOB area to get there).

About your question of the different glitches used to move between the two islands, I still stand by my proposed definition from earlier. In case 1, my definition would say you are out of bounds while being inside the great separator wall. In case 2, my definition would say that no OOB was involved.

I think what I said about types of barriers might answer your question - crossing a "close barrier" might be considered as out of bounds, and crossing an "open barrier" might be considered as in-bounds. I'm sure we can find an edge cases to both scenarios, though.