KenyaA bunch of new skips have been found fairly recently. I already showed them off to Chris but I wanted to document them for anyone else who finds this thread.
First, we have a few skips in Great Brain Robbery. A way to skip the Rufus cutscene, A skip for the last bunch of enemies in Shego's second car second a way to skip the last couple of elevators in Kim's last section:
Next, is a bunch of smaller skips on various levels, saving anywhere from 2 seconds to up to 10 seconds:
Lastly, we have a big one. A way to skip 2 Shego sections in Monkey Doo. I think this saves around a minute and a half. The only downside is that this skip is NTSC only from my testing since you can't gain nearly as much height from the proxy on PAL. PAL might still be faster for a full game run due to the PSN release with much faster loads but this definitely evens the playing field between PAL PSN and NTSC PS2.
I mainly wanted to put this here as documentation. This was originally found by DarkShadow Nemo (MegaSpeed Xtreme) a couple of years ago. Going to School has an IL OOB which only works in the NTSC-U PS2 version. However, there is another OOB which works on all versions:
This version of the skip works in all versions with it skipping finding Pearl and everything else up to the race. You first have to hit the cave cutscene trigger before doing this OOB as the trigger is enormous and it will put you in the cave which is unfortunate. After hitting the cutscene, you can go back and do the OOB where you can then traverse under the stage and past the rocks. I believe this would save close to 10 seconds if done perfectly. It is slower than the US PS2 skip but the natural advantage is that it works in all versions. The main issue with the skip however is that it is very precise and inconsistent. I think it could maybe be incorporated into a full game run but one would definitely need to put a good amount of time into the skip in order to do so.
I have found an absolutely massive exploit in this game. One which quite literally cuts the game in half and it would result in the game needing a new category without the exploit.
Basically, it is possible to skip entire chapters by selecting an unlocked chapter and then immediately moving right on the menu to the next chapter. If done correctly, you will be playing that next chapter, even though you have not unlocked it. Once you have finished that chapter, you will then unlock the next chapter where you can then do the exploit again to skip that chapter. You will know when you get the exploit as you will hear the menu moving forward after selecting a chapter (and you can see the chapter counter increase if you pay close attention).
With this exploit, you can pretty much skip half the game, only having to play chapters 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 which in a game as long and RNG heavy as this is absolutely enormous. It is finnicky, precise and inconsistent but you can easily tell when you get it and you can easily re-attempt it if you fail.
I noticed that this game only has one leaderboard which presumably covers both GBA and DS. GBA and DS should definitely be split as they are two different games. Any% in the DS version even require you to complete all chapters which is not the case on GBA. The simplest way to set this up would be to have sub categories, one for GBA and one for DS.
Not too long ago, I realised that the WR for this game was shorter than the TAS which was on TASvideos. Because of this, I decided that I would make a new TAS for the game and here it is:
I also have a TASVideos submission where I go into detail about the run: https://tasvideos.org/8949S
Big props to all of the runners of this game for finding strats and eventually overtaking the old TAS. All of your efforts heavily inspired me to make this TAS.
I wanted to ask a couple of questions/bring up some points regarding ILs. Judging from the current IL runs on the boards, I'm assuming that you can play earlier levels using any of the powerups you gain later on, since the current IL runs use double jumps in the earlier levels (although they do not use the dash ability). I'm not 100% sure if this is ok but I'm guessing it is based on the current runs on the leaderboard.
For ILs, should we allow starting a level with a full meter or should we require the meter to be empty? The current IL runs do have a full meter but they don't use it. Having a full meter allows the player to start off a level with plenty of dashes, rather than having to build up meter to get dashes.
I just wanted to make sure what would be ok for ILs before I start doing runs.
I would like to become a moderator for this game if that is ok. I am fairly active on speedrun.com and I do plan on sprucing up this leaderboard as it is pretty basic currently.
It has been known for quite a while for runners of the game that the way the PC version of the game handles loads is weird. But recently, numerous discoveries have been made regarding the loading times. This is going to be quite long winded but I do feel that this is an important thing which needs to be addressed. Here's the rundown:
''How loading works:'' So in most games, the game loads the assets into memory during a loading screen and once all of that is done, the game loads and the game starts. Pretty basic stuff.
The Incredibles on PC however does not work like this. How the loading screens work is that the wireframes in the loading screen are set to spin a certain amount and once they reach a certain point, the level starts. It doesn't matter whether you're running the game on a Pentium III or a Ryzen Threadripper with the latest RTX 90 Ti series GPU, the point the wireframe has to spin to is the exact same on any machine.
This is strange because the game isn't actually loading data while it is doing this. The only indication of the game actually loading data is when the wireframes freeze, which simply does not happen on newer computers running the game off an SSD. Why were the load screens designed like this? I have absolutely no idea. So that raises another question. How fast do the wireframes spin?
''What determines the speed of the loading screens:'' So how fast the wireframes spin is directly dependent on the framerate. So if the loading screens are running at 60FPS, the wireframes will spin at a certain speed. If the loading screens are running at 30FPS however, the wireframes will spin at half the speed and the loading screens will literally be twice as long (yes, really).
The maximum speed the wireframes can spin is dependent on the refresh rate of your monitor. The main game is locked at 60FPS but the main menu and loading screens for some reason are not. Instead, the game uses VSync (which cannot be disabled in game) to set the framerate of the loading screens. If you are using a 60Hz monitor for example, the loading screens will be at 60FPS but if you are using a 120Hz monitor, the loading screens will be at 120FPS (and will subsequently be twice as fast). Keep in mind that the longest loading screens in game can be over 10 seconds long with 60FPS loading screens.
A weird complication with this is that for some reason, Windows may limit the refresh rate of your monitor in game (this might only be an issue with newer versions of Windows but I can't say for sure). From my personal experience, I currently have a 165Hz monitor but if I start up the game normally, the game will be running at 40Hz for some baffling reason (which immensely slows down loading times and locks the whole game to 40FPS). This can easily be worked around however by playing the game with a programme known as "DXWnd" open in the background. It's an easily accessible programme and it allows users to play in windowed mode so it has never been a point of debate among runners.
I could definitely go on and on about how dumb this is but the key takeaway from this is that higher refresh rate = faster loads. Here is a comparison video which shows what one load screen looks like 120Hz, 60Hz and 40Hz:
''Turning off VSync and its complications:'' As I said before, the load times being the way that they are is because of VSync and I also mentioned that there's no way to natively turn off VSync in game. So what if you disabled VSync with an external tool (such as the NVidia control panel)? Well, the framerate in the loading screens becomes uncapped and... the game can load pretty much instantly, regardless of the monitor refresh rate. Here is a video showing off loads with VSync externally disabled:
This sounds really nice but there are some complications. First of all, you might require an external monitor to achieve uncapped framerates. I have had machines where I could get uncapped framerates on my primary monitor but on others, I needed to use an external monitor, and others who have tested this have had similar experiences.
Secondly, disabling VSync may not be possible depending on your setup. With an NVidia setup, VSync is easy to disable and in a worst case scenario, you may need to use a secondary monitor. With an AMD setup however, disabling VSync simply may not work at all as VSync is quirky on AMD GPUs to say the least. It's also possible you may not even be able to disable VSync externally depending on your setup.
If you've seen one of the faster any% runs, you are most likely aware of menu storage. It is a trick where you collect a special/stat point and pause the game on the same frame, which allows you to cancel out of the pause menu and skate around with the save menu open. This basically allows you to skip the end cutscenes after every mission, which saves a lot of time throughout the run.
Unfortunately, menu storage is the kind of glitch which has turned people off from running the game. It is an annoying trick which is not only stupid to perform optimally for a number of reasons (and can easily go wrong) but it is also generally arbitrary and doesn't really add skill to the run, outside of being an annoying barrier for entry. It just makes the run significantly more difficult for beginners to learn and it makes it more annoying to run for high level players. It would also be an absolute pain to re-route and then execute All Missions and especially 100% using menu storage. It's not even all that visually interesting and it doesn't make the game particularly more enjoyable. It is pretty much the main reason why the game has not seen many runs in the past couple of years.
Because of this, I want to propose the idea of adding a new No Menu Storage category for Any% (and possibly the other main categories, although menu storage hasn't been incorporated into their routes yet). It would essentially be like Any% was before 2020, with menu storage being banned. I'm hoping that this will encourage more new runners to try the game out and do runs and possibly bring some interest to former runners to try the game again. I do think this would be a good thing to add but I would like to make sure that this would indeed be wanted.
So recently, the community found out that you can skip the Zurg cutscene in Zurg's world (with the use of menu storage), which saves quite some time. Video: Because of that, the community has conceived a new any% route where you do Toy Story before Tarzan.
So here's a timing overview:
The Tarzan cutscene (where you free the Apes on Clayton's ship) takes 10 seconds.
The Zurg cutscene takes 10 seconds and then you have the Rex cutscene which takes 7 seconds (17 total).
With Zurg cutscene skip, it takes 2 seconds to skip the cutscene (with perfect menu storage and good menuing) and then you have to watch the Rex cutscene (which takes 9 seconds total).
This is essentially means that if we do the Zurg cutscene skip (and it is executed very well), it saves 8 seconds over not doing it. If we do Toy Story before Tarzan and the cutscene skip is executed very well, it will save one second compared the Tarzan first route.
The issue with this is that the Zurg cutscene skip is pretty hard to do and usually requires a setup. Setting up the skip too slowly loses time and flat-out missing the cutscene skip loses 7 seconds compared to the Tarzan route (even more depending on how long your failed setup was).
Because of this, it is best for newer runners to do the Tarzan route as it is much easier and less risky. The Toy Story first route should only really be attempted by top runners and even then, it is a high risk low reward route which may not be worth it.
So a run was recently rejected because there's a possibility that it was spliced. There was no audio in the run so it's pretty difficult to tell if it was legit or not. If anyone wants to look at the original video in more detail and determine whether it truly was spliced or not then feel free.
For anyone who is unaware, the reason why Gonnarockthishouse's runs were removed was because he had disabled all of the pre-rendered cutscenes. The way he had achieved this was by changing a setting in the game's in2.ini file which disables all pre-rendered cutscenes. Many settings can be changed by using the in2.ini file such as making it so the game loads you into the final boss after starting a new file. Obviously that's a lot more extreme but what he did was still basically cheating. The only way to disable cutscenes on console (excluding emulators) would be to use a cheat device such as Action Replay. This would save even more time on consoles due to longer loads and the fact that some versions make you wait 2.5 seconds to skip cutscenes but I think you could see why that's cheating if it wasn't already clear. Because of what he had done, his time was removed from the leaderboards and despite the fact that he was told what he was doing is cheating, he completely lashed out calling us stupid for thinking that and refusing to run with cutscenes enabled. He also insulted multiple people in our discord to try and prove that he wasn't cheating as well as calling himself "The God of the game" due to the fact that he had WR, found the most useful strats and had spent his whole life playing the game more than anyone while he continued to insult us for not agreeing with how good he is at the game. This was not the main reason why we removed his runs however but it was a contributing factor. Any future runs he (or anyone else) submits with cutscenes disabled will not be verified and unless he starts running with cutscenes enabled, his runs will not be appearing on these boards. If Gonnarockthishouse appears in any other communities, be weary because of what he did when he ran this game as well as while he was in our community.
So here's some info about languages in this game. The NTSC version only has English but the PAL version has six languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Dutch. Out of all the languages that aren't English, Spanish and Dutch seem to be the fastest from the small amount of testing I've done. Either language can be faster in boss ILs depending on the boss (Dutchman is fastest in Spanish for example). As for full game runs, it can't be said if any language is faster than English yet as there's a lot more text to examine and nobody has looked into it yet. If anyone is willing to do in depth testing to time each language, that would be highly appreciated and then I can edit this thread with extra info.
I've wanted to mention this for a while but I never did. Of course, the PC version of Shrek 2 is a different game and it has seperate leaderboards but there is a PC game called Shrek 2 Team Action which is a PC port of the console version. Pretty strange but the console version of Shrek 2 did make it's way onto PC under a different name which could be added onto these leaderboards possibly.
So I installed the game but it says that I can't play it unless I have admin privileges even though I am an admin. Does anyone know how I bypass this?
