DenmarkSorry for just kinda disappearing on the whole community, I guess I should mention what happened. I was a bit burned out and decided to take a break from the game with the intent of getting back to it, but just never really got the urge to resume. It seems like you guys have done pretty amazing stuff anyway. PrettzL was kind enough to contact me to ask what was up and whether I would still like to have a moderator position, but as I haven't really been active it would be pointless. In the future I may do a few runs for nostalgia, but I don't see me getting heavily back into it.
If you want a beginner friendly route I would suggest checking out abbys' 6:52 run https://www.speedrun.com/run/9mrn927y (and look at the stuff busker has been recording). It skips the hardest tricks, but otherwise is pretty much up to date and is well executed. As a beginner I think it's good that you skip the hardest tricks because resetting over 2-3 tricks over and over again isn't a good way to learn. You need to get the general hang of the movement and mechanics. Once you feel up for it you can then incorporate the tricks that you see in the sub 6:30 runs.
If you really want to deal with the "advanced" version of the route right off the bat you can look at any of the top 5 runs or so. The main difference you will find is that some go for 2 hp routes and others go for 3 hp routes (current wr is 3hp route and rezoons and tihmmw say it's faster). There will be other small differences depending on each runner's preference and how hard they find certain tricks.
Most tricks have a dedicated forum thread here or are self-explanatory once you get the hang of teleporting mechanics and green beam jumps. If you have questions you should feel free to ask though.
I was aware of the GBJs, but I didn't know you could jump on the destructible rock in Crumbling Sector. I usually just boost off that particular block. You can see that in one of my old runs:
Here I also destroy the blue block (in an inefficient way) to have a backup in case I had failed.
In Upwards Sector I never go for it anymore. I used to, but for most runs I would lose time rather than gain time because I would fail it 1-3 times. For a very optimized run it's the way to go for sure though.
Interesting. I don't see a problem with pause buffering as demonstrated by rezoons. It is within the rules and unless the category is broken by it (like the any% glitch) I don't see a reason to do anything about it.
By the way, are you using a controller for the pausebuffering? I'm using a keyboard and I'm having a hard time pausebuffering quickly enough to pull this off more than about 25% of the time, but maybe I just suck at button mashing and need to get better.
I probably am mainly an any% (IGT) runner, but I actually started with all collectibles. My first ever run was a collectibles pilot run to try to establish the collectibles category.
I expect I will make it. Don't really see myself devoting a lot of time to this category, but a race in something unfamiliar should be fun.
I've been looking at the flash script to figure out the warp glitch and I think I understand it now. I can control the direction of the warp (but can't trigger it consistently enough yet), at least in the situation where all 4 edges of the corner are free air (there are some complicated push-back mechanics when 1 edge is solid and I don't 100% understand that yet). The important functions are:
game/world/level.as: Level.trackPlayer game/world/level.as: Level.gotoLevel flashpunk2/Engine.as: Engine.setWorld
Engine.setWorld(newWorld): Here world is what we refer to as a level in OTS. This sets a variable called targetWorld to our parameter newWorld. At the end of the frame currentWorld is updated to targetWorld. If setWorld is called multiple times in a single frame only the last call matters because targetWorld is just overwritten on each call.
Level.gotoLevel(x,y,side): Calls setWorld with the level located at (x,y). If side is LEFT or RIGHT, the player's x-coordinate is updated accordingly. If side is TOP or BOTTOM, the player's y-coordinate is updated accordingly.
Level.trackPlayer(): The code of trackPlayer is basically (stuff irrelevant for our purposes removed):
// Going to the right if(this.player.x > this.width) { gotoLevel(this._x + 1,this._y,this,LEFT); } // Going to the left else if(this.player.x < 0) { gotoLevel(this._x - 1,this._y,this,RIGHT); } // Going down if(this.player.y > this._height) { gotoLevel(this._x,this._y + 1,this,TOP); } // Going up else if(this.player.y < 0) { gotoLevel(this._x,this._y - 1,this,BOTTOM); }
Note here that if both player.x and player.y begin to exceed the bounds of the level on the same frame, then gotoLevel will be called twice. First in the x-direction (left/right), then in the y-direction (up/down). The y-direction is the second call so that will determine our final targetWorld.
As an example assume player.x < 0 and player.y < 0, i.e. Yuri is hitting the top left corner of the level. Let's say the level is (9,4), i.e. Lost Mountaintop. On the first gotoLevel (in x-direction) we set targetLevel to the level to the left of (9,4), i.e. (8,4) which is the level above lava pits. We also update Yuri's x-position to be at the right side of the screen. On the second gotoLevel (in y-direction) we set targetLevel to the level above (9,4), i.e. (9,3) which is the level above Lost Mountaintop. We also update Yuri's y-position to be at the bottom of the screen.
Together this means we will go to level (9,3) which is above Lost Mountaintop, and Yuri will be positioned in the bottom right corner. In other words he will be right at the OOB cliff where we can also do a warp (this is the red scenario in the following image).
To understand why we sometimes gets warped one way, and at other times another take a look at the following image:
If we hit the corner of Lost Mountaintop perfectly, then we get warped to the right as we wanted. If on the other hand we first hit the level transition to the empty level above Lava Pits (i.e. level (8,4)), but then turn around and hit the corner while going up and to the right, then we get transported to the left and to the level above the empty level above lava pits (i.e. to level (8,3)). This is the blue scenario in the image.
The following video shows me first following the red arrow a few times and consistently getting warped to the right, then I start following the blue arrow and consistently get warped to the left, and finally I follow the orange direction and consistently get warped to the right. While recording this I didn't get warped in an unexpected direction even once.
In general if we move left while triggering 2 level transitions in 1 frame, then we get warped to the right. If we move right while triggering 2 level transitions in 1 frame, then we get warped to the left. Since we usually want to get warped right, we usually want to approach a corner from the right (i.e. Yuri is moving to the left). Whether we are going up or down is not terribly important since it only makes a minor different in where we end up (see image).
On an unrelated note, we can actually do 2 warps on the Lost Mountaintop OOB route:
I suspect others have had the same idea, but I haven't seen it mentioned so I thought I would share. Might make sense for any%. Unless we get much better at warps I doubt it will ever make sense for the other normal categories though.
I believe the game has a mechanic where if you are stuck in a wall it will push you up until you're no longer stuck. At least we use something like that in any% after triggering the glitch where we if we jump into the left side of a block we get pushed up until we are unstuck (presumably because we get stuck in the block). Rezoons investigated this behavior in the context of the any% glitch in the post: http://www.speedrun.com/post/7ounr
I have never seen it happen on screen and didn't know you could get stuck without triggering the any% glitch first. It would be interesting if it could be triggered in the main levels. For example in The Guard if we could get the big brute to push us into the wall it is standing at we would be pushed all the way up to Deathmatch. I doubt it will work, but some testing should definitely be done on whether there are non-obvious ways to get ourselves stuck in a useful wall.
I'll take part in the race as well. I'm very rusty, but I'll see if I can get a little practice in beforehand.
Screen above strange formation is just empty. It's not faster to cross the top than the usual route. What you would ideally want is to be able to jump of the right of the roof of strange formation and teleport shot into "The Guard" room but you exit the screen before the shot hits, so it doesn't work.
I created an edited Strange Formation to show this:
I don't believe it's possible to get on top of strange formation normally though. The problem is that you're teleported near the center of the green beam rather than to the side of the wall so you have to travel further before shooting your second shot which is supposed to boost you up the wall, but with the extra travel time you don't have enough upwards speed left to get the boost.
This is a fun little challenge. I managed to get 89 (did a useless teleport in Grigori's tower that I forgot to count) on a segmented run:
Very low 90's single segment should be doable with some grinding. This is assuming we don't allow the any% glitch which would of course give way lower numbers.
This is interesting. I always assumed a well executed version of jumping over the brute's shot would be the fastest. However my timing shows that even with my best attempt I couldn't beat a good execution of your new strat. It was closer than a sec though because if you jump the small platforms quickly you don't have to move right at all to avoid the brute's shot (it was about 0.3s slower by my timing). However in a usual run you won't jump the platforms optimally so you will have to move a little to the right or risk dying.
Thanks for sharing. I will probably switch my runs to using your variation 2.
Interesting, I hadn't thought of using it like that. However I'm not sure if it works on actual walls. You can teleport to a blue beam from slightly closer to it than you can to a wall. I think to teleport to a blue beam you need to be 1 block removed from the center of the beam, but from a wall you need to be 1 block removed from the side of the wall.
I have managed to get a few triples on the blue beam (update: have now done quintuple boosts), but haven't gotten a double yet on an actual straight wall. If you manage I would love to see it. It may be possible, just very hard.
Also it seems you need a quadruple chain jump to do the skip in Double Jumping which is pretty crazy. Probably won't be in any% igt any time soon.
EDIT: This is me trying to double jump and failing:
I found a new OOB route from Lost Mountaintop to Forgotten Ruins which saves about 15-16 seconds compared to the old route with Rezoons' recent strategy when both are executed well (Up Down Junction dialogue pops up at 0:51-0:52 with the new strat, and I used to get 1:07-1:08 with the old strat).
The new strat doesn't get the health pickup in Forgotten Ruins. You could still get it, but I don't think the extra damage boosting makes up for the time loss (except for in all collectibles of course).
The following is a video of me doing a 1:32 pickup of the gun with the new OOB. At least 3 seconds can be saved (mostly in Forgotten Ruins). The new part is from 0:20 to 0:45 in-game time. I also added a small optimization in Jumping Over where when I make the 1:01 shot I don't land on the platform to the right before making an extra small jump, but instead just shoots to the left and makes sure to land before the shot hits.
Damn you added a ton of stuff. Very nice. At one point I thought it was impossible to progress, but it turned out I was just not doing it right. I did a quick pacifist run of the levels (took 3m14s assuming it ends when I touch the treeman):
I love the non-linear part you added. Kinda wish you would add at least one of the red containers to each non-linear path so there was something making you try them all out.
Some small issues issues I noticed:
- When the moving blocks with spikes underneath are placed right next to each other the game glitches out and it's easy to die if you walk on top of them. See:
Consider making the middle one a little different like they do in the main game.
- OOB possible in both directions in this level
The left one is fine since it just allows you to go back, but the right one leads to a neverending fall.
- If you end up on the lava island here:
Is there any way to escape without dying? I don't see how.
If you do the start of Amazing Horseshoe quick enough, then the drop-down method is faster because you don't have to wait for the second shot. See:
I'm all the way through the brute by the time he shoots the second shot we would normally be waiting for.
Nice work. One additional application I found for it is to dmg boost on the ghost in Grigori's Tower right away. The timing is pretty precise, both in regards to the initial jump off the ghost, but after that you also need to be very quick to avoid the ghost blocking your path as you ascend. Thought I would share:
So it seems the general consensus is to not to allow this. That is fine by me as long as we're clear about it. A thing I hadn't considered before was that people with controllers would be at a disadvantage and that is unfair.
About the issue of how to verify that people aren't secretly doing this or otherwise programming their inputs, I say that we trust people unless their run looks suspicious. The community is small and I doubt people would stoop to cheating. I also think it would be hard to cheat without it being quite obvious. Cheating has always been possible, and any game faces the issue that people could TAS their run badly and then just pretend they're playing, but I don't know of any games that want video evidence of inputs. Obviously if a run looks suspicious I think it should be at the mods' discretion to ask for proof or similar, but I doubt this will be necessary.
I definitely don't think this calls for abolishing any% igt. That is imo the most important category.
