Just for archival purposes - I accidentally observed something similar when trying to find a way above Strange Formation (which, by the way, wouldn't be useful anyway - measure once, cut twice, right? Kappa ). However, I don't think it's the same thing, just something screwy with loading transitions in the ¤rough approximation¤ of two borders. Along the Blue Lake/Strange Formation transition, it sometimes spits you out back at the beginning of Blue Lake. I don't 100% remember the circumstances in which I produced this, and I can't stream/play for another five days still, but I can try to demonstrate it if anyone is curious, and nobody finds a way to put it to use before then.

EDIT: By the way, I'm sure that as we find useful things, we'll post the results here, but Kobe and others, I highly suggest joining the OTS speedrun discord! That will also make it easy to schedule and plan races when we get those started again. :)

The spirit and attitude you convey in this post are exactly why I love speedrunning so much. The goal is self-improvement, but everybody is in it together! Have fun!

So, this happened on my stream today (magic starts around 15 seconds):

https://oddshot.tv/shot/beardedbusker/UzomZdZomZdHa7822t0mOboU

It was in one of Natos's levels. Unfortunately, I am 95% convinced it has something to do with either the water, or else Yuri's proximity to the wall as he takes damage. But what if it has to do with how the wall is treating Yuri BEFORE the shot?

Does the game "store" collision the same way it stores y-velocity for a few frames after the shot? If so, it seems like we could actually make use of this in Grigori's Tower. Otherwise, just enjoy this amusing blooper. :)

An Untitled Story sure looks like it would fit the bill. Available on http://www.mattmakesgames.com/

Sounds like once you dove in, you got busy pretty quickly! Nice to meet ya.

Hi guys! I am a TOTAL rando - just happened upon this forum section - but I really like my speedgame and have been thinking about trying out the marathon experience if someone will have me. I'll do both my submissions in this one post:

GAME: Out There Somewhere CATEGORY: Any% IGT ESTIMATE: 10:00 (real-time) VIDEO: http://www.speedrun.com/run/pzg251jy AVAILABILITY: Early morning on the 17th and 18th is a safe bet; as of now I'm free all weekend. INCENTIVES: True Any% - a five-minute run with three minutes of dead time. I could read poetry or copypasta, or play the viola. MISC: This game defines "short but sweet." There are physics exploits to skip obstacles and passages, but most of the speedrun is fluid, beautiful, and akin to simply playing the game at a high level. It fits like a glove to learn as a speedgame, but there is a subtle irony for viewers - the easy tricks look hard, and the hard tricks look easy. For detailed commentary, I just recorded a one-take video introducing all three main categories here, for another marathon:

GAME: Out There Somewhere CATEGORY: Collectibles% ESTIMATE: 14:00 VIDEO: http://www.speedrun.com/run/nz1ldggm AVAILABILITY: Early morning on the 17th and 18th is a safe bet; as of now I'm free all weekend. INCENTIVES: True Any% - a five-minute run with three minutes of dead time. I could read poetry or copypasta, or play the viola. MISC: This category is the OTS equivalent of 100%. For better or for worse, the game has "points of no return" early on, meaning proper backtracking is not fully possible. This category then becomes treacherous, as advanced skips must be performed while avoiding all early-game checkpoints to allow savewarps and deathwarps. This is a more complete tour of Planet: Unknown, but even this category leaves out a few sectors of the game. I diverge in my route from the top two times, but my time loss comes from the latter half of the run, which plays identically. For detailed commentary, I just recorded a one-take video introducing all three main categories here, for another marathon:

Out There Somewhere, Polarity, Camera Obscura, and BEEP are often sold as a bundle on mega-sale. Whenever I get the chance I rant about how good OTS is. I'll spare you here, but check it out!

I am the Double-Post King! MORE RACING!

WHO: The OTS Community

WHAT: OTS Any% IGT Races

WHEN: 27 May 2016, @ 20:00 UTC

WHERE: SpeedRunsLive - join from either SRL chat or LiveSplit.

WHY: Because Tim made those awesome YuriThump and OTSlove emotes on FFZ, and we need to use them more!

HOW: Register on SpeedRunsLive IRC following their instructions: http://www.speedrunslive.com/faq/

Learn a few of the commands for how to join a race channel, enter, etc.: http://www.speedrunslive.com/faq/commandlist/

MAKE SURE TO PROMOTE OUR COMMUNITY PAGE TO YOUR FRIENDS! http://twitch.tv/otscommunity

Make sure to be in the SRL IRC at race time! One of us will make the new race, then you can join the channel. Use .enter to enter, .ready when you're ready, and .done when Grigori is toast!

¤¤EDIT - PLEASE READ¤¤

We also need someone to host the race multicast, like we did last time! Basically, we need someone with good Internet, who is willing to have OBS running and either speedrun.tv or kadgar.net with up to 4 of the racers. Then, window capture or monitor capture yourself watching the runs with the stream key that we give you, and it will be broadcast to twitch.tv/otscommunity for viewers to see!

I've talked to the Out There Somewhere community - if none of them submit, I sure will!

Without knowing it, I speedran THPS on the N64 back in 2008 and 2009. Then, at some point, I found a few ad hoc speedruns of favorite games online, still with no idea how widespread and all-inclusive the hobby was in terms of the gaming "repertoire." It wasn't until right after SGDQ 2014 that I learned, if the game exists, there are probably speedruns. I toyed around with Paper Mario and Pokemon Puzzle League, but couldn't record my runs. In October 2015, I started speedrunning Out There Somewhere, and it's been my primary mode of gaming ever since!

Funny you should ask! TL;DR please consider Out There Somewhere! Sales pitch below. :)

I just finished a stream of Out There Somewhere, a 2D platformer available on Steam. Standard price is $2.00 US, but it often goes on sale, and in a bundle with Camera Obscura, Polarity, and BEEP.

The game has three main categories, all under 15 minutes real-time. (One is timed using the IGT to kind of implicitly ban a glitch that makes true Any% kind of boring to run.)

It is screen-based, so you can treat each new room as a new level, and focus on saving time one room at a time. That means that you'll be getting PB after PB in the early learning process!

The main category has a huge leaderboard, because it is very accessible and a great place to start, but I really want people to start running Collectibles%. I am soon going to make a Beginner Route video of that category, which doesn't include the advanced skips shown in the top four times. Both categories are quite fun, because the gameplay is beautiful and fluid. Please give it a look! :)

DK64 is one of my favorite games to watch, and one of the games I find most consistently entertaining across the categories! Good luck finding a set-up that works for recording runs!

I waxed philosophical in the "Underrated Speedgames Thread," so I'll spare you guys here. But there's this nifty game bundle on Steam that includes four clever puzzle-platformers:

BEEP Camera Obscura Out There Somewhere Polarity

I currently run Out There Somewhere and have started learning Polarity. Eventually I'd like to have a submitted run of all four of these. If I ever get a capture device, I have my eye on some Nintendo 64 and GameCube games as well.

At your suggestion, I checked, just to see how long "long" is... oof. The shortest category still over three hours! I think I recognize you from the Introductions thread - is that what you're going to run? Look forward to seeing your submissions!

Hello! Good luck getting started! What game(s) do you think you'll focus on?

It's that time again - ANOTHER RACE!!!

WHO: The OTS Community

WHAT: OTS Any% IGT Races

WHEN: 11 May 2016, @ 20:00 UTC (an hour earlier this time!)

WHERE: SpeedRunsLive - join from either SRL chat or LiveSplit.

WHY: Because you haven't lived until you lose a perfect run at Triple Crossed.

HOW: Register on SpeedRunsLive IRC following their instructions: http://www.speedrunslive.com/faq/

Learn a few of the commands for how to join a race channel, enter, etc.: http://www.speedrunslive.com/faq/commandlist/

MAKE SURE TO PROMOTE OUR COMMUNITY PAGE TO YOUR FRIENDS! :D http://twitch.tv/otscommunity

Make sure to be in the SRL IRC at race time! One of us will make the new race, then you can join the channel. Use .enter to enter, .ready when you're ready, and .done when Grigori is toast!

Basically because I'm cheap. I kid, but the ability to juice replay value out of a game is great to me. I have almost a sentimental attachment to games, and when I exhaust the possibilities, it almost feels like drifting apart from a high school friend. Meta-gaming of all kinds is great because it shifts the focus, and any game can be made into its own full hobby.

Hello OTS runners,

Before tonight's races, one of Prettzl's friends made a great suggestion - a community Twitch channel. When more than two of us are racing, a spectator with good Internet can stream all of them at once in Multitwitch (or another service) and broadcast that back out.

So, it is with pleasure that I announce our community Twitch channel! http://twitch.tv/otscommunity

If we do a lot of races (and I hope we do), we can send people to this one channel, which will make it easier to grow the conversation about the game. Then, if one of us streams on our own, we can use this channel to host, and hopefully we can pick up some new viewers that way!

Obviously, there is not much there right now. I forgot to tell it to archive broadcasts before the races... whoops! Next time, we will have the broadcast saved. We also need a profile image and a banner (offline screen). I kind of like the game image and background that are used here... does anybody have a copy of the background image? I can't seem to extract it from speedrun.com.

This channel will be best if we can all log on to it, but I don't want to just post the password in a public forum. (What if those guys from VVVVVV or Wings of Vi come here and hack our channel? Kappa ) Message me on Twitch, Twitter, or Discord and I will give you the password. :-)

Hello one final time, runners! The races are in just over 7 hours! This is just a reminder to get on SpeedRunsLive.com if you want to track your stats for the race. I am writing some instructions below for anybody who is new to SRL.

If you don't have an account and don't want one, that is fine too! Just start at the same time as the people using SRL, and it will still be fun.

SpeedRunsLive handles races through an IRC server. You can join directly through an IRC client or Web browser. The SRL team suggests an IRC client, and I agree. You can ALSO participate in races directly through the current version of LiveSplit. It will automatically start your timer when the race starts, and when you stop the timer, it will automatically mark you as "done." Sometimes I get errors with my SRL nick, though, so I just use IRC.

If you use IRC, here are some full instructions: http://www.speedrunslive.com/faq/#whatsrlraces You can get in the server and the #speedrunslive channel just by picking a nick, but BEFORE YOU CAN RACE, you have to register that nick and link your stream. Steps 4 and 5 explain this. So, the first time I joined, I typed /nickserv register buskers-password busker@example.com. Now, every time I join, I type /nickserv identify buskers-password. The first time I joined, I also typed .setstream twitch/beardedbusker.

Races are made as new channels on the SRL server. I will create them today, but so you all know, the command is .startrace outthere (outthere is SRL's abbreviation for OTS. Super Mario 64 is sm64, as another example). The server will generate a channel with a name like #srl-7dje9. In the #speedrunslive channel, use the /join command to join the race channel. (In HexChat, I can also just click on the channel name from the main channel.)

When you are in the race channel, here are the commands to remember: .enter (to enter the race!) .ready (when every entrant has typed this, the race starts automatically) .done (to show that you have finished)

I recommend getting your New Game file completely ready, with your cursor on "New Game," before you enter .ready. I also recommend pre-typing .done, so that when you finish, you can just switch to your chat window and hit Enter.

This looks like a lot, but it should only take 5-10 minutes to set up. Feel free to ask questions here, or on Discord, or on Twitch chat! :D

Hello everyone!

Here is an Instant Invite link to the OTS Discord server: https://discord.gg/0ZzyucBRM2eGWQcn

This is only active for 24 hours from this posting, so join on up!

Discord has many features specifically for gamers, and uses far fewer resources than Skype. So, we can use it to communicate while in-game! And, of course, there are voice chat servers. I think this will be the best way to talk on race days.

E: Special thanks to Prettzl, who got this thing in motion!