The following is based on the OTS steam speedrunning community post
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/OTSRuns/discussions/0/535152511359381492/
by rezoons.
If you spend a lot of time in the starting area the game will break. Rezoons says it usually happens when music loops so maybe it has something to do with that (I had music turned off so can't confirm that).
You can see that the game breaks because the smoke from you spaceship disappears and your FPS will drop by exactly 20% (30 -> 24 or 60 -> 48 as measured by steam). At that point level transitions and loading seems to not work so you can go off screen and do stuff without the new level loading. I'm not sure what exactly happens off screen, but if you go left from starting area you can hit the boss fight trigger.
Video of me doing it and getting a 5:16 time:
Technically I suppose this is NG any% WR, but in my opinion we should make a new main category which excludes this glitch as it removes any fun from the game except for the initial run to the gun. Would love to hear what others think though and how we should handle this.
Personally, i totally agree with making a new category. Even if it's the fastest way it makes the run less interesting because it skips the best trick of the game.
Also, since this run is based on a game breaking glitch there is still a risk that it gets patched in the future.
I'm still curious about the way you managed to get to the boss trigger after getting to the left of the screen. It's the part that i have trouble figuring out. I'm also curious about what causes the glitch if people have any idea...
Anyway, congratulation on breaking the game and getting a new WR :p
Maybe I was just lucky to hit the boss trigger quick. I kinda just walked left for maybe 3/4 of a screen and then tried doing some teleport shots as if the hill that is normally there was still there and jumped around a bit hoping to get high enough. I really don't know why it worked, but it did.
Well, i managed to replicate it as well:
I also discovered that if you fail at the last boss the game softlock and you hear both the final boss music and the starting music. (and you get a beautiful crash screen)
It also appears than in both of our run (and in some of my previous run) the glitch appear after staying 2m42s at the starting area. It doesn't seem to be linked to the music since the loop appear at 3m18s.
Moreover, i think i understand why i had trouble triggering the last boss. Because each time i tried i used my previous save but apparently it doesn't work anymore after the first try. I had to start the game over to trigger it in the previous video.
I'm split, honestly.
The basics of speedrunning is go from start to credits, as fast as possible. Most runs in other games accept glitches, even this size. But the thing with this glitch is that it is really boring to do / watch. It's not like other glitches where you stand in a corner, jump 4 times and say shoot a pixel. It's just: wait.
One part of me want's to optimize this game as much as possible, and seeing what times we can reach and the other part wants to watch a super technical run.
My suggestion, rename the current Any% to: Any% glitchless (But would that include green beam glitch?) and make a new section called Any% Glitches Allowed, or similar.
Well one issue I have with this particular glitch is that it stops the timer, but we use the timer for timing of course. So maybe we could have a any% no stopped timer (I'm sure someone can come up with a better name).
I don't like glitchless because glitches are subjective and should be used in speedruns, but I feel this particular glitch breaks the game enough to warrant a new category. any% should of course still be a category, but it doesn't have to be the main one we run.
I've added a new category: Any% IGT Broken - Rules Here http://www.speedrun.com/ots/thread/b8qdt/1#ahe43
You'll have to submit runs for it using splits and a run timer of your own.
Runs start on frame 1 of this screen as soon as you select "new game" on the file selection menu: 
Runs end as soon as Grigoris ship begins to explode.
Thank you very much. I will try to set this up and make a run later.
Also, good news everybody, i found a consistant and fast way of getting to the last boss trigger. I did it 3 times in a row first try. Here is how to do it:
- Go left for about 1~2 seconds.
- Jump to the right.
- Go right.
It's pretty easy once you get the timing. Here is a video where i show it with the buttons i'm pressing:
Also for some reason, i just noticed that the timer get back on when the final battle start. Weird. I also confirm that once you do it, you can't do it again on the same save file, if you want to do it again you have to erase your save then start overa new game.
What I think happens when you go left is the jumping back towards the ship puts you inside the blocks, and when the game doesn't know where to put you, it just pushes you as far up until you're no longer in a block. The trigger being above the blocks would make it push you to the end of the game.
I use a certain setup for this. I start at the broken bottom rock then go left and i use the noise of footstep that goes tac-tac, tac-tac, tac-tac. Between the 5th and 6th step is where i jump. When using the same set-up without the glitch i arrive at the same place your picture show so i think it's pretty coherent.
Ditto I went with the 4 step noise and them jump straight up and walk right.
Also... I don't really understand how my run beat yours by a minute and 5 seconds when you got back to the smoldering ship 6 seconds before my time.
This is going to require some testing for sure.
rezoons: I ran our current runs side by side and this is these are the important data points I collected
rezoons gets the gun and back to "Crash Site" at exactly 2m45s by split timer prettz gets the gun and back to "Crash Site" at exactly 2m51s by split timer
rezoons "Crash Site" bug happens at exactly 5m32s prettz "Crash Site" bug happens at exactly 4m28s
The reasons behind these differences are currently unknown but I know we'll be scrambling to figure them out.
I still don't understand the glitch, but a few observations and thoughts on it:
If I just wait in the starting area I always have to stay there for exactly 2m50s (so it triggers at 2m52s because I spend 2s in space). This is both with the old and updated Adobe AIR DLL, and I get the same result on my laptop as on my desktop.
It keeps track of how much time you spend in the starting area. I waited 2m40s, then left and came back and the glitch triggered after 10s.
If I go get the gun, then the total time I have to spend in the starting area is a little less about 2m46s. If I keep destroying the destructible blocks it seems to go down to about 2m40s.
My guess is that the smoke particles fill some kind of resource buffer, and when that is full loading of new levels fail (or maybe it overflows and overwrites something critical). Some other stuff seems to use the same buffer which would explain why going to the gun cuts down a little on the required time, but only smoke seems to realistically fill it quick enough to be of any use. When you destroy a destructible block it emits these small blue particles which I think is why that cuts down on time further.
I tried going back and forth between Crash Site and the next level very quickly in an attempt to fill the resource buffer faster by respawning the smoke and other particles. The game still made it to the glitch, but it took longer.
Rezoons and I seem to get the same behavior, but prettz gets different behavior which is odd. I would love to hear from other people that timed how long it took for them to trigger the glitch and if there's anything special about their setup (just stay in the starting area and note when the smoke goes out in your spaceship).
My setup is: Windowed Mode Windows 7, 64bit Updated Adobe AIR (same behavior with default Adobe AIR) CPU i7-4790K GPU GeForce GTX 970 Storage standard 7200RPM HDD (no SSD or Ramdisk) RAM 24GB DDR3
I got similar result on my Laptop: Lenovot ThinkPad Edge E440 Windowed Mode Windows 7, 64bit Updated Adobe AIR CPU i7-4702MQ GPU Intel HD 4600 (integrated) Storage standard 7200RPM HDD (no SSD or Ramdisk) RAM 8GB DDR3
I hope others will post some system details. In particular I'm interested in Windowed vs Fullscreen, OS, and whether Adobe AIR is updated. If you don't want to share system specs that is fine.
EDIT: I expect my strange results with saving 3-10s in Crash Site is due to it being NG+ as explained in the follow up post I made after this one. Don't think destroying destructible rocks actually does anything.
I've noticed that the glitch counter carries over from game to game which could be the cause for prettz strange results. So if you first spend 1 minute at crash site, but then exit that run for any reason, then next time you start a run it will take 1 minute less to trigger the glitch (as long as you haven't restarted the game).
To test this:
- Restart Out There Somewhere to make sure everything is reset.
- Start a new game and wait in Crash Site for 2m40s.
- Exit before the glitch triggers (doesn't matter if you saved), but don't turn off your game.
- Start a new game, now the glitch will trigger almost immediately.
So if you run NG any% IGT broken then you should restart the game before every run, otherwise it would be NG+. I think this should be emphasized in the category description. Maybe we should also require that the vod includes the intro screen so we are sure people have actually restarted the game (I generally trust people, but might as well make it hard to cheat). Or if people want we can also change the category to NG+ I don't really have any preference either way.
The following is a NG+ any% IGT Broken I just did where I waited at Crash Site for 2m45s in a game before starting this run. Time is 3:02 (RTA) and that is with some bad execution.
Wow, very good discovery. It explains all the small changes in time for triggering the glitch i saw between different run.
I managed to replicate it easily following your instructions.
So, we have two new possible categories as you said, NG+ broken and NG broken, each one with it's own set of rules. In the end, either we make these two categories or we choose to keep only one of them. I'm really curious about what prettz think about all this.
I'm still not entirely convinced about your explanation about particles because a lot of thing in the game create particules: Blue beams touching a wall, teleporting, landing after a jump, destroying a block, lava, etc... The only difference between the smoke particles and all the other one i mentionned is that smoke particles are round whereas others are squared. Also, after the glitch triggers, even if the smoke particles disappears the others are still here. Maybe these are coded differently? In this case your explanation would make sense. I tried to replicate the glitch in other area and never succeed so the explanation is definitely something linked to the starting area.
But anyway, very intersting discovery. We now have to decide how will we change the categories.
Regarding the particles, I'm almost 100% that I was wrong. I wanted to explain why it seemed to take a few seconds less sometimes and the common feature seemed to be destroying things, but now I just think it's due to the fact that I had a few resets beforehand and therefore had spend some time in Crash Site in a previous run.
I actually tested this by staying in Crash Site for 2m49s (1s less than it takes to trigger the glitch), so the glitch should almost be triggered. I then went to Mirror Mirror and started destroying blocks but couldn't get it to trigger. So I definitely don't believe that anymore.
I don't think you're 100% wrong. As i said it's possible that the smoke particles are coded differently from others and causes the glitch. For the moment i have no idea how to confirm nor deny this hypothesis though.
Regardless of that i just did a NG+ IGT broken run and got a 2:53 time.
I managed to save 10s using a neat trick we all forgot to use. It's simple, as soon as you get the gun, before the character even start to talk, just save and exit then reload your game instead of trying to get to the lava in order to kill yourself. You'll get automatically transported to the last checkpoint (the beggining) with the gun. Since the run is real time and not in-game time this trick is perfectly allowed (i guess).
I've changed the Any% IGT Broken run board with simply Any%.
For the time being I'm not going to be changing/adding the guidelines/rules for runs around until rezoons skip is understood more thoroughly and the community has a chance to talk about it.
This community only recently started up, so there's a lot of room to change and grow. I mostly picked categories which I believed would get runs and since the game has a timer built in to it I didn't think that splits would really be necessary.
It is clear that OTS running is going to be changing due to this discovery and over the course of optimization it will become clearer how it can be used in any/all run types.
This is something that we need to discuss in depth as a community.
Can be NG+ for now, this may change based on community feedback.
I'm currently restructuring the moderation queue for OTS.
Please do continue to submit runs that are within the guidelines: http://www.speedrun.com/ots/thread/b8qdt/1#ahe43
