Hi all! Here's something that's been bugging me for decades, especially now that I'm occasionally spredrunning the game. Whenever I run towards a door that I want to open, I already start mashing X shortly before I touch the door, so as to open it as fast as possible, but sometimes Harry just bumps into the door instead, stopping his run with his hands, before he finally regains his balance (I'm sure you all know the animation I mean) and X opens the door, while at other times it works perfectly fine and he opens the door without any of this bumping.

Now I feel kinda stupid for asking, because maybe it's super obvious, but... Is this related to the timing of when you press X? Is there a perfect timing for opening doors, so I should stop mashing X shortly before the door and instead find out when the perfect timing is? Or is this "bumping" into doors just completely random and nothing I can control? I mean, technically, it probably doesn't matter that much, but sometimes it happens so often that I feel like I'm definitely losing some precious seconds because of that.

Thanks in advance and keep up the amazing runs, everyone! :)

Well, what do you know, I might have just found the answer myself... I found Punchy's speedrun tutorial video actually addressing this! How did I not find that video earlier? Great video so far!

I'm so glad people enjoy my tutorial video, thank you!

the short answer is that it depends on the individual door, your angle to said door, and your speed running up to it. You gotta memorise a good line for each door to prevent problematic doors from bonking. Everrrryy dang one of them. It's one of the quirks of speedrunning this game.

Best of luck with it all.

3 of the most problematic doors are: school roof, church exit and lighthouse. The first two you can angle, but lighthouse not really? You CAN open these head on but its a specific frame, sometimes you'll get lucky. In the case of lighthouse its pretty much 50/50.

Harry bonks on pretty much any wall/door head on though, IIRC its 6 running steps and then he's able to bonk. Most doors you can just mash X though.

Another door which is 50/50 (I think), is the school hallway right after the courtyard (where there's the first grey child dodge), you can either circle around him and then angle at the door, or cut the corner and you can just open the door head on (less than 6 running steps), but cutting the corner is risky because 50/50 chance of a grab.