Beginner's Guide to MI2:SE Any%

Hi friends- I've made a guide for folks new to speedrunning Monkey Island 2: Special Edition. It should include many of the strats and tricks used on the top runs at the moment and should act as a good place to start if you are just picking the game up. I used Docs to help with the formatting as I find it a lot easier to read than it would be here.

Additionally I did a run and recorded some commentary over the top explaining the tricks outlined in the text guide as they apply to the route as of this guide's posting. I hope between these it may encourage some new runners to try out Monkey 2/Adventure game speedrunning! The video is linked in the text guide, and I'll also link here. 

VIEW THE TEXT GUIDE HERE: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17ZcCIXDQ4MBJxH7VnVxHn7F_a5Co0jMKiqNGH9olWBQ/edit?usp=sharing

VIEW THE VIDEO W/COMMENTARY HERE: https://youtu.be/6DKC_-f6Yvs


If you have any questions or want to learn more, feel free to post in the forum, hop on the Speedy Adventures Discord, or drop by my Twitch stream. Would be happy to help a new runner! Good luck and hope to see you on the leaderboard!

Updates:
1/26/21 - Updated text guide to include some missing stopManips from the routing video. Added an update to cover the switch to IGT and how to set up your timers. Added a pinned comment to the video guide with the same data.

Horn Strats

So let's talk about 'Horn Strats'. Back when it was discovered that the Horn could be used to entice the Chef out of the kitchen instead of the old strat of messing with the trash can, we looked into a reroute of the Mansion on Booty 1. At first it seemed like the strat might not actually save time because you were stuck with a Long Chef animation, however, with help from runners aWay0fLife and Leolitz we were able to find a way to drastically cut down on the time you had to wait for the chef. This animation skip helped the new route save about 5 seconds over another potential route(side note: even without horn strats we still save lots of time by not doing fish first, which was the route at the time). Unfortunately getting the best time save isn't so simple because there are 4 different outcomes you can get from the Chef depending on your timing. 2 of the outcomes will save time, while the other 2 will lose time over not going for the strat. I will call the 4 different outcomes Long Chef, Box Chef, Perfect Chef, and Glitched Chef.

So how can we control which outcome we are going to get? It can be a bit tricky because there are a couple factors that will determine your outcome. The main factor is which line of dialogue the chef is on when you exit the screen. My assumption is that the Chef's animations are tied into his dialogue. The key is the second line of dialogue. If you exit BEFORE the second line of dialogue has been skipped you will get Glitched Chef and lose about 10 seconds(compared to non horn strat). If you exit in a window WHILE the second line is being skipped you should get Perfect Chef and save 5 seconds(I estimate this would be about a 3 frame window at 30 fps). If you exit BEFORE the third line appears you should get Box Chef and save 3 seconds. If you exit after line 3+ you should get Long Chef and lose about 5 seconds. This is my understanding after hours of testing, but there may be a little bit more to it.

To get the best possible outcome is a small window, but with some practice it can be consistent. So to setup the strat the first step is to 'use' the horn soon after entering the screen behind the mansion. The next part is to leave and to skip the text, although not necessarily in that order. So now comes the trick. Once the chef pops out you want to leave the screen, but the timing of the text skipping will need to change depending on Guybrush's position. If you are REALLY close to the exit, completely behind the mansion for example, you should text skip just before you click to leave the screen. If Guybrush is out a little further, you can click to exit first and then time your text skip for when Guybrush is just leaving your view behind the mansion. If you get the timing just right, you will get the perfect chef. So to put it another way, you wanna react to Guybrush's position, then time your text skip in relation to leaving the screen after the chef pops out. If you skip your text too soon you are likely to get Box Chef and if you skip too late you are likely to get Glitched Chef.

Some final thoughts. The safest play is to NOT go for horn strats, but if you are going for horn strats it is a little safer to skip the text on the earlier side because you will get either Box Chef or Perfect Chef which both save time. Just make sure to not be too slow leaving the screen because you will likely get Long Chef and lose time. If you do get Glitched Chef you are prevented from entering the kitchen, so the back up(for no reset scenarios) is to hit the trash can and leave out the left side of the screen while skipping the chefs text, then go back to the kitchen. If you are a brand new runner I would hold off on learning horn strats at first. I have personaly had the most success by letting Guybrush walk out just a little to give more of a visual cue for the timing on the text skip. Quick note for runners of the Special Edition, everything here will still apply, but the guide here assumes you have set the default text speed to the slowest. Because the special edition resets the text speed to MAX you just have to keep in mind not to be too slow or the text could advance and ruin your setup, but this shouldn't be a problem. Also for special edition runners, one thing you can do is buffer a stop manip when you enter the room to have Guybrush be right next to the exit. I haven't spent much time with this setup to know if you can consistently get perfect chef, but it is something for you to potentially try out.

In-Game Timer Installation Guide

I've put together a quick 1 minute video to cover how to install the in-game timer (IGT) used for the leaderboard. 

You can see it here on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/887128880

Or here on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ijOLurJ_O6s)

I've also added a blurb on this in the Beginner's Speedrun text guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17ZcCIXDQ4MBJxH7VnVxHn7F_a5Co0jMKiqNGH9olWBQ/edit?usp=sharing

frozenspade

thewoofs

Monkey Island™ 2 Special Edition: LeChuck’s Revenge™

Slathe

nad_chario

Please note if you have uncapped the FPS for your run. If you have, please display your FPS on screen.

Namn	Författare
Beginner's Guide to MI2:SE Any%	thewoofs 4 years ago
Horn Strats	frozenspade 4 years ago
In-Game Timer Installation Guide	thewoofs 4 years ago