Making a thread for potential skips and glitches
3 years ago
United States

I think a lot of areas of the game could benefit from potential skips/glitches to speed things up. Because of this, I'm going to start glitch hunting, so I thought that maybe it would be a good idea to create a thread as a place to share any skips or glitches found. I'll make sure to update here if I find anything. Is that cool with the mods? If not, feel free to just delete this post.

EDIT: Ok, I've been doing some serious digging and I think I might be onto something with Tulshar's Forest. So far, I have found a way to get behind the temple before you collect the sword, shield, and hat. After getting back there, I found a way to move the camera into the temple, allowing you to see the inside. I can jump up at a certain point to make Mac visible. Depending on how this works out, we may have a temple skip. I'll do some more experimenting later.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Lyren and Andet like this
United States

Alright everyone! Big news today. So first, I decided to make a video showing what I found in Tulsahr's Forest. I haven't found a clip or anything, but I figured I'd show you all how it works. Maybe we can find something with it? (By the way, sorry for the frame drops in these videos. I don't know why, but I get dropping frames. You should get the gist of it).

Next is pretty interesting. I found a way to skip the bounce-pad in Watery Factory. I don't know if this will be useful for runs, but I thought I would include it. If it is useful, then it would require us to re-route Watery Factory.

Finally, this is the big one. I think I found a faster variation of the Familiar Forest skip. You use the opposite side of the mountain and I think it will be faster with enough practice. Based on my estimates, it should shave off about 3 seconds, though that could increase with time.

I'll see if I can re-route Watery Factory and I'll also start doing runs with the Familiar Forest skip variation to see if it is faster. Feel free to test these out and see what we can do with them. I'm really hoping we can do something with Tulsahr's, but I'm not sure. We would need to find a clip.

Lyren and VeganOsu like this
Richmond, VA, USA

This is awesome!! I started getting really mad at the game cause my splits all relied on getting good dance floor RNG in Tubular City! I'll try out these strats and start warming up again!

Lv_1_Bidoof and Lyren like this
Richmond, VA, USA

In Watery Factory the fish food for the bounce pad is pretty passive cause you have to go down in that area for two of the bolts anyways. I wanna experiment with it some more to see if it could save some time with a reroute. I'll be trying that out along with glitch hunting in other levels.

United States

Sounds good! Yeah, I figured that the Watery Factory one might not be terribly useful, but I figured that I should share it anyway. No harm in throwing around ideas, you know? And yeah, I say let's keep looking into glitches and see what we can find. :)

But yeah, if anyone finds anything, feel free to bring it up here.

VeganOsu likes this
United States

Update: I did a variation of the Familiar Forest skip and I have gotten the segment down to 28 seconds on my best split. Here it is:

Also, I want to thank SirTroyish for finding the Beach skip. :)

SirTroyish, Lyren, and VeganOsu like this
Richmond, VA, USA

Now that my summer classes will be ending tomorrow, I have decided to start grinding the time down again, and have been talking to SIACTRO on twitter a bit to find some information on how he coded some parts of the game - Especially Mac Race, cause I believe that could have some massive discoveries.

While talking to him about the levels we have been pulling apart, I mentioned that I was trying to find ways to drive a shorter course and hit the lap checkpoints by driving in a smaller circle (Similarly to the way some levels are ran in Mario Kart Wii) and I got some information that could be helpful.

Here's the tweet he sent me: "I think I use around four checkpoints at the obvious spots. I need to check again though. Technically it would be possible to drive in smaller circles, if only the cart wasn't such a tank..."

This makes me believe it could be possible depending on how the checkpoint barriers work, but I have not put much testing into it besides just cutting corners - I will do more with this next week.

This may not result in any sort of finding, or could not save time even if it works, but I wanted to keep you guys into the loop of what I've been trying to do with the game when it comes to glitch hunting.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
SirTroyish likes this
Richmond, VA, USA

I may be over-reacting, but I was very excited when he said "I need to check again though," because that gives me hope that maybe he could help by showing me the level border boundaries and where they meet so we could potentially find even more areas to clip through in levels.

SirTroyish likes this
Des Moines, IA, USA

I had spent a little bit of time with Mac Race myself. That was quite a while ago. I had found that it likely would not have any major skips, like how Mario Kart does. The reason is, Mario Kart is made up of like 20 different checkpoints per level. However, not all the checkpoints are loaded at once. Only the one behind you, and the two in front of you (I think). You can do major skips by going backwards, but skipping the checkpoint loaded behind you. All of the skips in that game require an out-of-bounds to some extent.

Mac Race is much different. The track is very simple: No walls, and very "linear". Mario Kart's tracks go in every which direction, very different than Mac Race. There isn't a way to clip through a wall and skip the checkpoints. And speaking of checkpoints, only one is loaded; the one directly in front of you (aka the next checkpoint you'd pass). Once you pass a checkpoint, that checkpoint is unloaded, and the one in front of you gets loaded. You can see this by doing the race backwards. The race doesn't know backwards from forwards, because after going backwards 4 or 5 times around the track, you will actually find out that you completed a lap. You still go through all the checkpoints, just not in the intended way. A skip would still require you to go through all the checkpoints in order.

If there was a skip, it would probably have to be on the track itself, not in the grass, because you move extremely slow in the grass, and the cart is totally a tank. And being forced to stay on the track is just doing the race the normal, intended way.

The only way I see a skip happening there is if all the checkpoints, for some reason, extend in the middle of the track in the grass, maybe you could do the race by doing small turns in the middle of the track. But again, not sure how likely.

PS: It had also been several months since I've tried looking for a skip on that level, and even longer since I had learned about Mario Kart's whole checkpoint system, so the details might not be 100% accurate.

I might look again at Mac Race later today.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Des Moines, IA, USA

I did just try that level out a little bit, and no, the checkpoints don't actually extend out to the middle. They're actually extended just a little bit into the grass, so if you went off-road slightly, you could still get the checkpoint. Either way, they don't extend that far off of the track.

I'm also trying to find a way to put a texture on the checkpoints, so that you can actually see where they are exactly in the level, but I'm doubting that I will be able to.

..And correction: It actually takes six laps going backwards for one lap to be counted. That means that there are 5 checkpoints in the level throughout the track, not counting the finish line "checkpoint" (meaning there are 6 checkpoints including the finish line)

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Des Moines, IA, USA

You know what, I'll put this here. I hate to be the person to ruin everybody's hope for a new timesave, so I'll say something good for once:

Give this video a watch: (PS: I already showed this in the other thread)

I found this while I was playing the game for the first time, actually. I'm sure I'm not the first to find this, because it was really easy to do, and I did it by complete accident. I thought that maybe it could be used in other levels (cough cough tulsahr's forest), but I would need to figure out how it happened. I tried asking SIACTRO on Twitter, but I didn't get much of a helpful answer

Link: https://twitter.com/SirTroyish/status/1255298313655640067

You can look at the answer he gave from the link. It's not even just the NPC that loses collision, the entire room does. I assumed it must have something to do with him appearing as soon as you enter the room, which would mean it would be exclusive to that specific level, so I gave up on that.

Fast forward to earlier today, where I decided to give it another look. I had nearly forgot that that specific NPC actually appears in one other place in the game, which is after you beat the game (normally). So I tried doing the same thing:

So that would confirm that the character itself is extremely glitched. If you jump on top of him, he loses collision. You keep messing around with him, nearly everything else loses collision.

Maybe it had to do with that NPC being one of the only NPCs that is fixed to looking at the player. Although, that would not explain why things lose collision. IT MAKES NO SENSE!!

Unfortunately that's all I've got. It would be great if that glitch would work in other levels too.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
Lv_1_Bidoof likes this
United States

Maybe we should try and interact with the NPCs in other levels to see if they have any strange interactions? You may have done this already, but I thought I'd throw out the idea.

SirTroyish likes this
Des Moines, IA, USA

I tried a little bit, but I haven't tried all of the NPCs

Basse-Normandie, France

During my first speedrun session on this game, I had this weird glitch on the first level, which just forced me to close the game. I was ready to skip the ending cutscenes after touching the barrel, but I pressed the button too early, and it paused the game. However, for some reason, I still managed to activate the cutscene. It looks like the game didn't like it, and just froze at the very beginning of the cutscene. I tried to pause the game again, maybe the Escape key (I can't remember), but the only solution was to close the game. I don't know if it's a known glitch, but I wanted to share it

Edited by the author 3 years ago
SirTroyish and Lyren like this
United States

That's really interesting. Thanks for sharing this because it can help us to avoid crashes while doing runs!

SirTroyish and Lyren like this
Des Moines, IA, USA

MsTruffles I've had that happen to me a number of times during my runs. I think it has to do with pausing the game right as the cutscene starts. My theory is that pausing the game take 2 frames, so if you land on the cutscene trigger in between those 2 frames, it kinda just gets stuck like that. And yeah, only thing to do is to exit the game and restart.

MsTruffles likes this
Richmond, VA, USA

So I don't know what's going on with me, but I cannot figure out how to do Strangely Familiar Forest skip on Steam version. I have been grinding the game again to try and improve my time, but both routes for it aren't working for me. I reset my PC and had to redownload the game. The "wiggling" isn't getting me up and it's like I hit a wall. This is the easiest trick in the entire game so maybe I'm just tired, but what is going on?

Richmond, VA, USA

I also seem to just slide down off the steeper parts immediately when when matching what old videos used to hit.

United States

Try turning on V-sync if you have it off. I did a quick test with V-sync off and couldn't do the skip, even though I can do it normally

Lyren and VeganOsu like this
Richmond, VA, USA

Alright! I messaged Siactro and he told me to try the same thing. PC hates me at the moment so I am reinstalling drivers to try to fix that. lol

Andet likes this
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