General Knowledge and Techniques Overview

This guide works as an overview of the general speedrunning knowledge of the game, as well as for advanced techniques that are used in this game to go faster.

**[Windowed vs. Fullscreen]**
Playing in Windowed mode has a substantial difference compared to playing in Fullscreen: Loading Times are faster. If you're using the GOG or Steam version of the game, you can play the game in windowed mode. To do so, just press Alt + Enter once you launched the game. This will only be useful to reduce your RTA, since an autosplitter is soon to be implemented and runs will be timed in IGT anyway.

**[Controls and Input Devices]**
The input device you're using influences a lot how fast you can go. By default, there's no difference between Controller and Keyboard in terms of handling, because they all behave in the same way, by smoothing the steering inputs. But if you're using a controller, you have the option to set up the controller as a Steering Wheel. This gives you the advantage of being able to steer instantly in a specific direction and with the desired angle, completely removing smoothing. This works with a real steering wheel as well, if you feel comfortable in using one for this game. Using an input device as a Steering Wheel also allows you to set up the deadzone for it, which could be helpful for keeping a neutral position when needed. For Keyboard users, an alternative to get around this issue is to either use a software like x360ce, or an analog keyboard (Example: Wooting Two HE).

**[Transmission]**
In this game you can choose between Automatic and Manual transmission. Manual is to be preferred over Automatic, because the way the game automatically shifts gear based on your speed is not optimal, and will cost you several seconds. Using Manual transmission also allows you to initialize drifts during a turn, which I'll explain further in this guide.

**[Perfect Start]**
To achieve a perfect start, you need to fully accelerate during the countdown. As soon as the announcer says "Go!", shift into first gear. When the speedometer reached the red bars area, shift into second gear. From there onwards, listen to the engine sound and look at the speedometer bar to judge when shifting is necessary.

**[Drifting]**
Drifting allows you to close corners better and with higher top speeds by losing your rear while still keeping control of the front, allowing you to go faster. To initialize a drift, the best technique is to shift down your gear before a turn. To keep the drift stable, you need to accelerate on and off based on how much you're losing your rear, while keeping in mind the racing line. Accelerate too much and you'll completely lose control of the car, usually ending up flying outside of the track. Accelerate too little, and your speed will drop quicker, losing precious time. Although it's situational, you can also trigger a drift by shifting up instead of shifting down.

**[Air Time]**
Managing air time in this game is crucial to achieve faster times. When you're leaving the road into a jump, your speed momentum will be kept for the entire duration of it. Generally, you need to understand if keeping your previous top speed before a jump is better than trying to accelerate earlier by landing earlier on the ground. The first jump in The Pole is an example where landing earlier on the ground by letting go of the accelerator is faster, due to the leap being short and due to the road being a downwards slope, allowing you to achieve a faster speed by staying on the ground. The big jump in Metro City Medium is an example where landing as far as you can is faster, since it's slower to slow down and stick to the road due to the leap being long.

**[Flying Start]**
It is possible to do a flying start on the first lap by going backwards on the track and respawning by gaining enough space to reach the top speed before crossing the finish line to trigger the first lap. This is only possible in Time Trial mode.

**[Respawn Abuse]**
When you get off the track, the game will respawn you back on track. This can be exploited by willingly getting off the track in specific spots, usually where there is a tight turn, to get respawned on track facing the turn you need to take. This is faster only on specific turns of a few tracks and could also be used to skip portions of a track by tricking the course completion tracker into thinking you're into a further section of the track right before getting respawned. Red Planet is the best environment that works as an example for this having the most exploitable spots for this technique to work.

**[Out of Bounds]**
It's possible to get out of bounds on a track without being automatically respawned by the game on track, allowing you to complete laps way quicker than normal. Bantaris already made a well detailed guide about exploiting OoB, which you can find [here](https://www.speedrun.com/dethkarz/guide/anhf4)

**[Early Race Finish]**
It's possible to finish a race in Arcade or Championship mode before crossing the finish line at the last lap. First method consists into killing all your opponents. This is very unlikely to happen, but on some tracks it could happen that the CPU hit each other with powerups or hit walls unwillingly, highly reducing the number of opponents. If you have no more opponents, you automatically win.
Another method is to take yourself out of the race by willingly destroying your vehicle. This ends the race earlier, but it's only allowed in the Any% category.

Miscellaneous Information

Figured I'd write up a guide on all the random information I've learnt about the game, if anything is incorrect message me on discord

[Boosting and the Anassi]
When using a boost and using the Anassi, keep in mind that the max speed of both the Iridium and Titanium class have a higher max speed than the boost bonus, this means that if you use a boost while close to max speed, you will actually decelerate and lose speed instead of gaining speed, on tracks like MC Long it means it can be worthwhile to not just use boosts and rather use them as a tool to fast accelerate 

[Pulse Cannon vs Plasma Laser]
In a full game or Arcade run, you'll want to use the Pulse Cannon (the green one) as this does more damage, the main reason for this is that if you charge your shot up you can destroy mines, meaning you don't need to charge as long to get that result.  The Iridium Astor/Blitzwagen and the Titanium Astor/Blitzwagen/Hyperon can destroy mines with an uncharged Pulse Cannon shot, making mines non-problematic. 
Unfortunately the Anassi in all forms is unable to do so.

[Faster Respawns]
When you fall off the track and respawn normally you spawn back at the last checkpoint you passed through and lose 50% of your speed, however if your car touches back down on the track, you'll immediately respawn and only lose 25% of your speed, this is most notable on the super sharp corner on GK Long where you can cut the corner, begin to phase out, touch back on the track and immediately respawn 
Sometimes touching the side of the track also gives a quick respawn but the collision will cost you addition speed making it often not worthwhile

[30 FPS vs 60 FPS]
Unlike many games, Dethkarz will only run at three different framerates, 15, 30 or 60 FPS which you can select in the graphic settings, however aside from visual differences, there is physical differences between framerates

AI Cars:
AI Cars on 60 FPS seemingly accelerate at twice the speed on 30 FPS, while their max speed seems to stay the same, this is super noticeable at the start of the race, however depending on the track this can offer advantages (as well as disadvantages), I suspect this is an oversight on the developers part

Collisions:
Dethkarz checks for collisions on each frame and then applies the collision mechanics on the following frame if a collision is detected, this means if you're going fast enough you can clip through solid objects in-between frames, and the time you have to do this is doubled by playing on 30 FPS
This is crucial for doing the Red Planet OoB setup as that requires clipping through the tunnel wall, making it worthwhile to use 30 FPS when doing an Any% run
The MC Short OoB setup is also much easier on 30 FPS, I suspect it's to do with you driving through a gap on the respawn barrier and the game is less likely to register the sides of your car clipping the barrier but I don't know for certain
Sidenote: It is possible to do all current OoBs on 60 FPS, but is unfeasible

Checkpoints:
The game updates your location by the checkpoints you drive through, if you fall off the track you'll respawn at the last checkpoint you hit.  When doing corner cuts, skips, shortcuts etc. you won't hit a checkpoint until you're around the track, if you fail to hit a checkpoint before you respawn, you'll respawn all the way back at the part you attempted to do the skip.  Checkpoints function as invisible barriers so the collision aspect I previously spoke about does apply to them, meaning you can clip through them without the game recognising you did drive through one.  This makes skips such as the one on MC Long and the jump skip on all RP tracks much easier to fail when you play at 30 FPS, so in general, if you don't need to use 30 FPS for OoBs, it's better to run the game at 60 FPS
The RP Short U-Bend skip (which you can see in my Arcade run of the track) seemingly can only be done on 60 FPS

Turning:
For some reason on 30 FPS your car turns a lot sharper, I imagine it's to adjust from the fact the game only picks up control inputs at half the speed on 30 FPS.  Either way it's worth keeping in mind that some tracks may drive better on 30 FPS (if you can tolerate the low framerate), however I've done many attempts at matching my lap times on MC Short and found 60 FPS to be faster, I suspect you're losing a lot more speed with the sharper turns.

[OoBs]
When doing OoBs, to check whether you've driven through a checkpoint, be sure to use visual clues like the "Wrong Way" message, your position and the "Incoming" message. The "Wrong Way" message only shows up when you're facing the opposite direction of the checkpoint, it'll disappear when you've driven through a checkpoint facing the same direction as you so this is the best indication that you've hit the necessary checkpoint, sometimes it won't show at all if you hit the checkpoint immediately, if the message doesn't go away then it's likely you've missed the checkpoint and the lap won't count

[MPH and KPH]
The game will show the speed in either MPH or KPH, while I don't know what causes the game to show which one (and cannot be changed), I imagine it's likely due to the location set in the Windows settings, KPH offers a slight advantage when using manual transmission but overall the advantage is miniscule and not worth worrying about
The conversion between MPH and KPH appears to be the same as real life

[Vehicle Stats]
The stat screen is very misleading, the acceleration stat I believe is based on time from zero to max speed, so despite the game showing the Astor as having the fastest acceleration, the Anassi accelerates faster in practice due to it's faster speed

Approximate max speed on a flat surface
Astor: 412 KPH
Blitzwagen: 430 KPH
Hyperon: 459 KPH
Anassi: 520 KPH
Templar: 585 KPH

You can jiggle your joystick back and forth to increase your speed most notably with the Templar (works with the other vehicles slightly) to as high as 620 KPH (whether or not this actually increases speed is hard to say) which may be worth noting when doing OoBs however this hasn't got much use realistically as the Templar is banned and it's much more difficult with the other vehicles

For complete optimisation there is no reason to use anything but the Anassi currently

[Difficulty]
It may be a consideration on what difficulty to play as, currently there's no agreed upon consensus on what difficulty is the most optimised so I'll go through a few points.

Lapping slow AI:
On the shorter tracks its basically inevitable you will lap the AI regardless of which difficulty you play on, this can be quite detrimental as they can drop mines before you pass them which is very bad, especially when it's in the tunnel on The Pole, playing on all difficulties doesn't prevent this but, the longer tracks you can avoid this completely by playing on harder difficulties, most notable is The Pole (Medium) which you will lap the AI on Easy, but not on Hard, Red Planet (Short) is another track this happens on.

Rubberbanding:
Hard AI you'll find rubberbands like crazy, and will likely constantly be on you especially on slow segments, even with perfect driving this will still be a problem.

Damage:
Easier difficulties cause the AI to do less damage to you, while this may seem like a good thing, keep in mind that this is necessary to quickly destroy your car if attempt an Any% GLF run.

Boosts:
On some tracks playing on easy difficulty will guarantee you will be able to pick up certain boosts and not be at the mercy of RNG, however the flipside is that later on you may end up lapping the AI and will steal the boosts from you.

Overall: 
All in all I personally prefer normal difficulty as you do lap AI on less tracks but don't have to put up with the excess rubberbanding, however in GLF Any% runs you definitely will want to run on Hard, while Soy King Stake runs are most likely best done on Easy difficulty

[Glitches]
Metro City incorrect load:
When you initially start a cup where the first track isn't MC, sometimes MC will load, if you finish the track you'll be awarded points but continuing will cause MC to keep loading.
This usually happens when you go straight from the Main Menu into the cup selection screen, if you back out from the car selection screen and re-enter it, it should avoid this glitch altogether
Currently this has no benefit as it will loop MC endlessly, however it's potentially possible this could have practical use if a way to break the loop was found

Out of Bounds

Just like every game that involves speedrunning, oob tricks are almost always present. While we agree that they would defeat the purpose of a Level Leaderboard, for Full Game runs there is a category for them.
So far, (somewhat) reliable strats for oob runs are known for the following maps: Metro City (Short), Grand Keys (Medium) and Red Planet (Medium/Long). Due to similarities in the map layout I suspect there is also one on Metro City (Medium), although I have yet to find it. The One for Red Planet was previously very inconsistent, steamuser AgentGinpu brought a reliable setup to my attention.

Let's get into the setup. The following clips show examples on how to get oob. Of these two, Grand Keys is certainly the easiest. Metro City requires a bit of experimenting to get somewhat consistently, so it's best used in the first track of Full Game runs.
https://youtu.be/aL6YfEIT6WQ
https://youtu.be/z71dPbQYGUQ
https://youtu.be/I_QaYYlILPQ
The Red Planet one is especially easy with a booster, however this will drain quie a bit of your car's health.

Now a few things have to be explained for this to be used to achieve a fast time (in the case of MC (Short) even a time that can't be beaten).
In order to keep track of you're progress along a track there are many different methods. Most games use some kind of checkpoint system. Dethkarz however keeps your progress as a constantly increasing value between 0 and 1. A percentage of completion so to say. In the case of MC (Short) this looks as follows:
https://i.imgur.com/a4Tv61s.png
As sometimes, during normal gameplay, small skips are unavoidable, the game has a certain threshold of how much of the track you are allowed to skip at a time. Luckily this is at exactly 50%. So while you are not allowed to drive from 0 -> 80-> 100/0, you can go from 0 -> 30 -> 80 -> 100 or 0 -> 50 -> 100 (This also means you can drive every map, where the layout allows it, in reverse. This is especially fun in arcade/championship races).
In the case of MC (Short) you can simply drive in a big oval between the 50% threshold and the finish line.

Lastly there is one more point that has to be mentioned, which explains the unbeatable time of MC (Short). This simply is, that every lap at or below 20s will not complete. This means the fastest time theoretically possible is 20.01s. In the brief time I have invested in this on my current setup, I've managed to complete a 20.47s lap (I think my previous one was 20.17s). Once you have a ghost on the track, you can drive a lap that is too fast, and the slow down until you are just a bit ahead of the ghost. After enough attempts a pretty low time won't be hard. A full lap would look roughly like this:
https://youtu.be/GMggcRLi_VI

Namn	Författare
General Knowledge and Techniques Overview	Brionac 3 years ago
Miscellaneous Information	Scylaceus 2 years ago
Out of Bounds	bantaris 3 years ago