Sure, you can bind the keys however you want. That kind of thing tends to get banned only if it's an emulator doing something the original system couldn't.

You can press C to go prone and because it puts your hitbox underneath the floor you become invincible. Besides that you can pick up some Mountain Dew® or Doritos® as you're running to restore your helth hp. Next to the explosive in the first big room is a good place for it.

If it splits inconsistently early then it's going to make it more annoying for me to time it, so I would prefer if people wouldn't use it then. Actually, is there a way to make the script delay the split for 3 frames after ammo updates? That would make it not annoying so I would put it in the resources page, though I still wouldn't put it on the official list. It's 3 frames in 30fps recordings and I assume this game has a variable frame rate so maybe it's not possible though.

Thanks for making this and doing the testing either way.

I tested it and it's working fine for me. But I did some testing with 60fps recording and print screens, and it looks like the ammo doesn't update immediately on shooting in the game, so it's slightly late. I can't tell yet if it's always consistently late the same amount though. If it's consistent then it won't matter that much. Either way it's a very small difference.

Just in case you want to try finding the pointer to Shrek's health, it's a float of 8000 and the sniper rifle does 400 damage.

Sure, I'll test it. Good idea to use remaining ammo instead of Shrek's health for the split, since that sounds a lot easier.

Sorry for taking awhile. Here's the frame data for some of the TASes and the 60fps WiiU VC video. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LWuBBZI2n42-9yXrHN0UYlBLPQERUZq4_k1BEacYPeM

I took a base TAS and edited it for different emulators. So far VBA-RR v24 without bios, and the newest version of BizHawk (2.2.2) for mGBA and VBA Next cores, both with bios. I added and removed frames of input in the TAS during screen transitions so that the TAS would sync and be as fast as possible. This change in frames of input turned out to be exactly the same as the change in black frames, so I think we can safely consider black frames to be making up all the difference in loading times. I can upload the TASes if anyone wants them. I also downloaded the 60fps video sorp mentioned and counted the black frames of the video.

The totals in my results: VBA RR v24 (no bios) - 151 frames of black loading screen BizHawk 2.2.2 mGBA (yes bios) - 180 BizHawk 2.2.2 VBA Next (yes bios) - 184 WiiU VC - 166

By these results sorp's run should get +15 frames, which is 0.25 seconds. And interestingly, mGBA and VBA Next turned out to be very similar.

There's some differences between this data and what charleon had. It could be due to BizHawk updating, counting loading times differently, or something else, besides the more precise 60fps counting I used.

So if there aren't any objections we can use this for conversion. The other runs need a little more work though.

@sorp About part 1, I'm going to count the frames besides the lag just to make sure. About part 2, I forgot about the 60 fps video. Maybe getting data from one 60 fps video would work instead of taking the average of six 30 fps videos. We can look at more than one 60 fps or check it against some 30 fps videos to make sure there's no weird differences between runs, but I think just one would probably be good enough. About part 3, I think if we're taking the average we won't need exact video capture, so it can work with even bad camera recordings. The start and end of the loading times shouldn't be systematically early or late, so I think all those inaccuracies will cancel each other out. About part 4, it's only VBA-Next and original hardware that might have the damage-lag. So you should try that test for VBA-Next.

And something else I forgot... There are possible slower screen-transitions from Chapel1 to Chapel2 for the easier route, and the flickering transitions between Aqueduct and Clock Tower. So these loading times will have to be timed too. I suspect that the transition frames for entering are different depending on if it's the first time you enter the area or not, so we can't assume it's the same. Since Wii U VC is the standard we should do it for that, but for others the slower screen transitions only need to be timed if there are runs doing them.

To get started with part 1 I need to know the emulator setups. It should be fine to only convert the ones that are sub-40. I'll do it for the newest version of mGBA and maybe also VBA-Next too.

sorp: VBA-RR v24, no bios charleon: BizHawk v1.1.0 VBA-Next, yes bios richterfans: ??? me: VBA-RR v24, no bios VB: ??? Miridia: ???

@richterfans, @VB, @Miridia: Please tell me your emulator setups, including the emulator used, version, and if you used a bios file from the internet or not. It will probably be a .bin extension.

It'll be a pain to check if the bios file is the right one or not so I'll just assume they're all good.

Here's a plan for doing the conversion. Tell me if you think there are any problems with it.

1- Loading times for TASable emulators: To get an exact comparison of loading time between different emulators, I plan to record a TAS starting from when timing normally starts up to the earliest frame you can attack in the Dracula fight. There's no need to kill Dracula to do the comparison. For different emulators, I'll do the same TAS but add and remove idle frames to make it work with the different loading times, and the difference in the number of those frames will be how many frames are added or subtracted in the conversion. I think this will account for sorp's worries that the screen black-out time might not reflect the actual loading time, and we'll be able to tell if there is any difference between them. Since to play Maxim you have to clear a Juste file I'll do this part. I don't really want to do the other parts though.

2- Loading times for Wii-U VC: 30 fps isn't the best, but I think if there's a large enough sample size of videos being measured it shouldn't be a problem. Charleon's method of doing it should be fine, it should just have more samples, then take the average of the total loading time. I feel like about 6 would be enough but more would be better, so I'd say 6-12 or something. (I just made these numbers up.) There's enough of those those on the leaderboards for Wii-U VC. Also, every frame in a 30fps video should count for 2 frames of game time to make comparison easier. If I don't encounter the problem sorp mentioned in doing part 1, then we probably don't have to worry about it here and everything should be fine. If the black-out time really isn't the same as the loading-time, then it might still be always off by the same amount when doing the same transition from one room to the other, so it would be fine then too. But if it's off due to subpixels or something then I think we're screwed. My plan is to just hope it's not a problem.

3- Loading times for original hardware: I guess the best way is to record more samples and take the average like with Wii-U VC, but that will be annoying. Can anyone play on original hardware and record some Maxim runs on it? I only have the double pack version and a cell phone camera, and I don't want to do this at all. Also the original GBA doesn't have a backlight, so that makes things harder. Maybe as long as there's just one original hardware run it's not that big of a problem? DS Lite is backward compatible with the GBA, so I think it can count as original hardware rather than an emulator.

4- Damage-glitch lag: First figure out which things have the damage lag and which don't. I guess VBA-Next has it and mGBA doesn't, but it would be nice to make sure with a TAS. I don't know how to make sure for original hardware or to check if the lag is exactly the same, but I think it should be fine if we confirm it by feel and assume that it's the same amount of lag as VBA-Next if we decide there is any. Then since Dracula always has the same amount of health and the number of critical hits tends not to vary too much, for simplicity we can assume that it's the same number of lag-frames each time for the whole battle, and this number of frames will be the amount added or removed for the conversion. To find out the number of frames we can make a TAS without the lag, then change it to run with the lag by adding idle frames until Maxim is at the same pixels before doing the next input.

That's my plan. There might be some imprecision in the conversion, especially in the damage lag, but I think this should be good enough.

The current rules I see are "If running on Emulator, Bizhawk 2.2.1 or later with the mGBA core is a must, otherwise your run will be rejected. Current runs using other emulators will have their time converted"

For now, I'm going to change them to "If running on Emulator, please specify what emulator you used along with its version, whether or not you're using the GBA bios, and what core (VBA-next or mGBA) you used if running on Bizhawk. If this information can't be easily found out, your submission might be rejected. Bizhawk 2.2.1 or later with the GBA bios and mGBA core is preferred since its accuracy is consistent with Wii-U VC and is closer to original hardware in terms of loading times. Current runs using other emulators will have their time converted." ...which is a long mishmash of everything suggested so far. Hopefully it can be shorter in the future.

I don't know if these rules were supposed to be for Maxim any% only or for all categories. Currently it's for all categories but those are not so much of a frame war that they matter nearly as much. It's also much easier to convert times for Maxim any% than for other categories, which I wouldn't personally want to do. I'll remove the "your submission might be rejected" part from other categories since it's not a frame war and the "current runs will have their time converted" part since I think it was only meant for Maxim any%.

It also holds off on banning certain emulators which it's still too early to do if at all with the limited data we have. First, there's a setting in VBA-RR that lets you use the GBA bios, which based on a little early testing I did makes the loading times closer to the mGBA core with GBA bios. Potentially, VBA-RR with GBA bios could be closer to WiiU VC than Bizhawk with mGBA core without GBA bios. I'd still like to do more testing though.

Second, Charleon: "DSLite hardware can be included based on this +/- 1 frame rule." - It shouldn't with just one trial. The transition frames often only differ by 1-2 frames, so just one trial of original hardware doesn't account enough for the random variation of your method. It might be better with more trials, but it still wouldn't be as good as doing it in 60 fps. Since most of what you're comparing are emulators anyway, it's not that hard to record TASes frame by frame for them.

The method I used to compare the GBA with emulators is to repeat easy screen transitions and see if the GBA desyncs from the emulator. First, I moved Juste through the door between Entrance and Marble Gallery, which gave me enough time to move back toward the door on the first possible frame. Since I did it on the double pack version and I know the door glitch works differently on that, I tried two more setups. In the second, I activated the two warps in the Entrance with Maxim and held down to warp between them. In the third, I candle-zipped into a wall in the Entrance with Maxim which is from the start two rooms right and one room up, which warps you around to the same room continuously until you slide out. The results are: 1: VBA-Next with bios > mGBA with bios > original hardware > VBA-RR v24 without bios 2: VBA-Next with bios = mGBA with bios > original hardware > VBA-RR v24 without bios 3: VBA-Next with bios = mGBA with bios = original hardware > VBA-RR v24 without bios (longer transition > shorter transition)

This was just a quick and inconclusive test to make sure that the original hardware isn't the same as any of the emulator setups. I'd like to pin down exactly where the original hardware is compared to the others more, but I've been busy with other things recently and I'll continue to busy for a few weeks, so I won't be able to do that very soon.

(Also, my runs have been mostly made on VBA-RR v24 without bios, and Maxim All Bosses has been made on Bizhawk v2.2 mGBA without bios. Depending on things, maybe that run is actually slower than PK's on the leaderboards.)

Good idea to get frame data and convert times to some standard. I'm fine with WiiUVC being the standard.

But I think something is wrong with your frame data. I don't believe that your time is as fast as NOVel's based on the different Dracula kills. You walk back to get into position for the damage glitch and NOVel doesn't so his should be faster, but on your chart you list both frame counts as 88. If I remember correctly VB mentioned in the discord that VBA-Next and original hardware have slowdown for the damage glitch that most emulators don't, so maybe that's it.

Based on the frame research I've done, VBA-Next and mGBA are BOTH inaccurate compared to the original GBA in terms of load times. But I haven't done much testing yet so that could be wrong. Also comparing different emulators, the biggest difference in load times in BizHawk seems to depend on whether or not you have a proper gba bios. It doesn't let you run the VBA-Next core without it, but it does let you run mGBA either way, and the timing for mGBA is very different depending on it.

So I'd say have runners tell what emulators they used, including BizHawk core and if they had a proper gba bios, but for now I'd like to get more extensive frame data to be able to do proper comparisons, so don't start converting or rejecting things yet. Also please err on the side of accepting runs rather than rejecting them. There's communities in China/Taiwan and in Japan for this game and there's language problems in communicating between them to let all the rules be easily known and agreed on. With a good conversion method it shouldn't be difficult to convert most of the different emulators anyway.

I'm adding Juste All Bosses, though I don't think I'll ever run it. I just think the leaderboard should reflect the runs that the runners are doing. Hopefully any competition will move to All Furniture later and make All Bosses obsolete.

There are 17 bosses besides Maxim and Dracula. -Of them, Vampire Bat, Skull Knight, Max Slimer, Shadow, and Death (5) would definitely be in an All Furniture route. -Golem, Devil, Legion Saint, Pazuzu, and Peeping Big (5) would very probably be in, or would anyway be close to the necessary path the route takes. (Being near furniture, etc.) -Minotaur 2, Legion Corpse, and Cyclops (3) would probably be skipped but would definitely be close to the necessary path. -That leaves Living Armor, Minotaur 1, Giant Merman, and Talos (4) which might be out of the way the route, but probably 1 or 2 of them would be in the route or close to it anyway.

So I predict that about 1-4 of those bosses would be very far out of the way of any All Furniture route. And the more optimized the route gets, the less bosses it would come close to or fight. Besides them, there's also Maxim and Dracula. Probably the cutscene glitch wouldn't count as defeating the bosses, but there might be some question about that. Probably a more optimized All Furniture run would fight them and a less optimized one wouldn't.

On the other side of it, most pieces of furniture are near enough to bosses or to the route an All Bosses run would almost definitely have to take. The big additions would be getting the Crush Boots, going through both ball races, visiting the furniture room at the end, and going to 4 places with furniture which might not be close to the route which are in Treasury A, Skel Cave A, Marble Gallery B/Wailing Way B, and Chapel B. Of those 4 places, probably 1 or 2 of them would be in the route or close to it anyway. Besides these, there would be lots of minor additions to get the rest of the furniture which would really add up.

In conclusion, I think the 2 categories would be very similar if they were similarly optimized. I'd guess the All Bosses run would repeat about 50%-70% of the All Furniture run, and then end early at about the 80% mark. However, since I won't run All Bosses, there's a good chance they won't be similarly optimized or would use different route preferences, which would make for a lot of the difference between them.

But anyway, there's literally nothing wrong with having 50 meme categories as long as they're made by serious runners. At the moment, richterfans is the second best Juste runner and he did one of these collectible categories before I did, so I would put his category on the leaderboard.

It's just too bad I can't try to convince him to run All Furniture instead without making it sound like All Bosses isn't option, since I know he doesn't understand English very well. I would just hope the category isn't improved enough in the future to justify removing it later.

I don't know if it's a good idea to have Juste All Bosses as a category. Other castlevania games have it, but there's no way I would ever run it. Getting good runs with Juste using optimized routes is so frustrating and inconsistent that I wouldn't want to run more than one "All Something" category, and All Furniture is the best one for that since getting all furniture makes a change to the ending.

On the other hand, the more categories the merrier. If someone puts effort into running by some rules it should be reflected in the leaderboard. So I would say make it a miscellaneous category. But please, richterfans, run Juste All Furniture instead. It's a much better category.

What does anyone else think?

(Also I want Juste Boss Rush Hard No Subweapons to be a category. So I think I'll add that too.)

More

I have some new glitches that I'm in the process of making videos for. There's a few more coming up.

First

There doesn't seem to be any way to switch back to Juste so it's probably useless. It's a fun glitch though.

New hard route: New route based on richterfan's 26:39 run. First he goes straight from getting crushing stone to Shadow by fighting Legion, skipping getting the save near Dracula. Then after Maxim's Ring, he save-warps back to Skeleton Cave A and takes a sequence through Chapel A and the Sky Walkway A OoB to warp to near Dracula. Doing this will be faster, I overlooked that way of getting to Dracula. This makes both Legion and Dracula kill you in one hit, but it also routes out some other hard things, so I think they're about even in difficulty as long as you're good at the boss fights.

If both routes are done perfectly then they come out to about the same, but in the old route there was a hard candle zip to skip the first elevator in Treasury B to save 25 seconds that was unlikely, and it also had other more inconsistent zips than the ones replacing them. I timed it and the new route should tend to be about 20-40 seconds faster at the same high level of play and luck.

I'm not going to run this new route any time soon but whatever.

New beginner-friendly route: richterfans also gets a lot of level ups from jumping bone pillars early in the run. This loses time, but it makes the rest of the run much easier without losing that much time to do it. I recommend this as the best beginner-friendly route, just his whole 26:39 run without much change.

For extra friendliness, instead of doing the airlaunch to get from lowering the crushing stone to the crushing stone immediately, you can try walking to a room in Aqueduct B (the second from the exit to Sky Walkway) and zipping to the right, then from there zipping to the right in the harpy room, then sliding out of the wall to the pendulum room in Clock Tower B. This makes the first candle zip the only airlaunch in the whole run, but it's not good in any other way. There's also another big mana prism to the right of the crushing stone which helps as a backup if you're doing the fairy damage glitch.

Some other things that might make Any% faster: -Finding a consistent enough zip to Dracula from after getting Maxim's Ring. It would be good as long as it's faster than 1:30-1:45. It's better if it glitches into the room since the cutscene-glitch can be cut short about 15 seconds to skip Maxim without opening the door to Dracula. -Killing Death fast and consistently enough without the crushing stone. The griffin wing allows much more warps, but it's not good enough for any% if it can only be gotten that late in the run. The griffin wing also gives an easy warp to Dracula after Maxim's Ring. -Floating boots, but I gave up on that a long time ago. It took me 6 hours of farming it to just be able to test the route. -Cutscene glitch to credits-warp. -Subpixel manipulation. -Becoming Maxim to do most of the run and then becoming Juste again right before the end.

Then you would just shoot Shrek with the pistol instead of the shotgun and have to reload 5 times.

My favorite idea for a harder category is to do any% without taking damage, which I saw someone do once. You can get through the big rooms safely by going through them prone, but that takes a long time and there might be interesting strats to going through faster. I suggest that if you want a new harder category.

If you mean making an all furniture route, you don't have to. I already have a not great, but not terrible route to start with that I posted a long time ago on SDA.

To make a good route you would need to know the details of what kinds of warps to different rooms you can do when out of bounds. This involves more details about specifics of Juste's movement. I should make another long post about it later, but basically: Getting stuck in the wall zips you up. Jumping into the wall with a whip out approaching the top of your jump zips you down for a little while, before zipping you up if you're still in a wall at the end of it. Zipping down with the whip out while also holding forward will zip you diagonally down and backwards for a little while. There's more weird stuff with holding different directions to get different results, and I'm not really sure how it all works. At some point these warps get really inconsistent, but that's just the nature of speedrunning Juste. There's no way around some inconsistencies and you have to put them into the route so that maybe only 5% of your runs even finish, because anything else would be much slower.

To make an optimized route for All Furniture and for Maxim All Bosses, I've been working on marking a complete map of all the different warps from one room to another I could do, without special things like floating boots. I got about 25% of the way through it before stopping. I would want to pick that up again and finish it to make good routes.

I'm reposting my previous route that I posted almost 3 years ago. It goes off of the 28:34 Any% route I mentioned in the second post as a base. I cut out some old notes and added some new ones. It's pretty good for beginning. More optimized routes will all get much harder.

I grouped the pieces of furniture: A- Chair, Side Table, Stuffed Stag (Treasury/Skel Cave B ) B- Sage Statue, Silver Dishes, Strange Mirror (Cavern B ) C- Gold Trinket, Silver Trinket (Walkway A) D- Antique Table, Lucky Cat (Clock Tower A) E- Tall Clock, Raccoon Figure (Clock Tower B ) F- King-Size Bed, Rocking Chair, Old Radio (Walkway B ) G- Castle Drawing, Chandelier, Closet, Teacup, Teapot (Top Floor/Treasury A) H- Phonograph, Bookshelf (Skel Cave A) I- Pretty Vase, Ancient Urn (Entrance B ) J- Silk Curtain, Candleholder, Smiling Statue (Gallery/Wailing Way B ) K- Candlestick, Wine Glass (Top Floor A/B ) Ungrouped: Hero Statue (Chapel B ) and Wizard's Urn (Skel Cave B near summoning tome)

Part 1: 1- Do the usual route to get double jump except pick up the furniture in group A and enter and exit Cavern once. You need the sign to pop up so that you can do a zip later. -> [Save warp back to Entrance.] 2- Activate Entrance warp, get Hint Card 3 and Platinum Tip -> Fight Giant Bat to open drawbridge -> Get Drac's Ring -> [Save Warp to Entrance A] 3- Do the candle zip to Skel Cave A while activating Top Floor warp -> Save at Skel Cave A -> Get floodgate key -> Box zip to summoning tome and wizard's urn -> [Save Warp to Skel Cave A] 4- Box-zip to Chapel A while activating Cavern warp. (this takes sliding to the left off the screen around where the drumstick is; you can't do this if it's the first time visiting Cavern) -> Grab Drac's Eyeball -> zip sequence into Aqueduct B+moon physics (by way of walkway A tower) -> Lower crushing tip in ClockTowerB -> zip in room left of the save to the right to ClockTowerA [[Note: This means zipping up the right wall of the AqueductB room left of the save on the map.]] -> Save at ClockA and reset to disable moon physics

Part 2: 5- [[Beat Max Slimer here]] Activate ClockTowerA warp -> [warp to EntranceB] -> Get Lure Key and a whole of money bags. 25 bags = $10,000$$$ should be enough for 40 potions and one of the best armor sets. Could get by with less [[I would personally skip all of it, but it doesn't take very long to do.]] -> [warp to TopFloorA] -> Beat Pazuzu (This pazuzu fight is going to be pretty hard since you're vastly underleveled and will die in one hit. To make it easier you could get the guardian armor set first and possibly get crushing tip and bible in ClockTowerB early here also.) [[I wouldn't bother with crushing-tip early, but the sequence I had in mind was to go back to the harpy room in ClockTowerA after saving but still with moon-physics and zipping to the crushing-tip, then getting the bible from the candle next to the ClockTower warp.]] -> Buy bunch of potions and equipment at shop below Pazuzu -> Go down into treasury getting group G also activating the center warp and getting Moon Armor. -> [warp from TreasuryA to ClockTowerB] 6- [[Get the bible from the candle next to the warp.]] Save at ClockTowerB -> [[Beat Peeping Big here]] Get Crushing Tip -> [[Beat Legion here]] group F and Drac's Heart in walkway -> Beat Shadow -> [Save warp] 7- Group E by smacking the guy to open the wall [[Note: This is the room with the hammer in ClockTowerB]] -> [Save warp] 8- [Warp to ClockTowerA] -> Save at ClockTowerA -> Get group D and Drac's Tooth -> [Save warp] 9- [[Beat Devil here]] Group C (can get some medicine jars) [[I recommend them]] -> Maxim's Ring -> [Save warp]

Part 3: 10- [Warp to CavernA] -> Save at CavernA -> Open floodgates -> [Save warp] (Also can get level ups on Talos here) [[I don't recommend it]] 11- Fight Death and get the wing -> [Save warp] 12- [Warp to CavernB] -> Get group B ending with mirror [[fighting Golem along the way]]. (Into mirror is a 30 second autoscroller. You might be able to skip it by super jumping with medicine jar at the left edge. But getting Drac's Nail this way means not skipping it) -> go back to the autoscroller and zip into Aqueduct A-> get Drac's Nail -> [Save warp to cavern A] 13- [Warp to EntranceB] -> Save at Entrance B -> Get group J (can take detour to grind at jp bonepillars) [[I don't recommend it]] -> get Crush Boots -> [Save warp] 14- Go down to Drac's Rib and get group I -> Save at Entrace-basement B -> Warp to TopFloorB and then TopFloorA getting group K -> Open Maxim's door from the left in castle A [[Note: I have a vague recollection that this might be impossible. If so, a simple patch is to warp to the center warp in castle A and go SkelCaveA instead of doing the zip.]] -> zip from ChapelA to SkelCaveA (by way of minotaur) [[That is, from how you get moon-physics, but doing a different warp instead.]] -> get group H -> [Save warp to BasementB] 15- [Warp to TopFloorB] -> get Hero Statue [[Again, this may be impossible from TopFloorB, I forget. If so, you could try box-zipping from SkelCaveA to ChapelA and maybe there's a warp to ChapelB somewhere around there.]] -> Zip sequence to FurnitureRoomB [[This goes through the chapel B OoB, maybe through the left of the center room A, I forgot.]] -> Walk to DraculaB -> Destroy the entire castle with all the furniture you collected [[Note: You have to visit the Furniture room after getting all the furniture to trigger the hidden best ending. It's hidden because nobody notices that it's different from the good ending.]]

Since this route goes pretty much all around the castle, it can be used with minor edits to fulfill getting any combination of all furniture/spellbooks/relics/bosses and it's not a bad route for any of those.

I still haven't gotten around to that guide. I should try to do it in small parts so that I can get it done piece by piece, eventually. There's some more specific documentation you can find on tasvideos, both in the forum and in comments on some submissions, but it's not very well documented exactly how anything works.

I can explain how the mechanics of the whiplaunch work since I have a very good feel for it and how all the different launches probably come from the same oversight in the code. So let this be a draft for part of that guide:

The way I pieced it together is that for most of Juste's horizontal movement, the game sets the current speed to the starting speed of that kind of movement and a direction of that speed. The current-speed variable is a positive or negative integer, and the direction variable is one of two possible states, left or right. When you stop continuing the movement, the game applies a constant deceleration of some amount to your speed. On the ground walking, it's 1/4 pixels per frame per frame; in the air or on the ground dashing, it's 1/8 pixels per frame per frame; and in the air with floating boots, it's 1/32 pixels per frame per frame. The deceleration is just acceleration in the opposite direction of the direction of movement, and it keeps being applied until the speed becomes 0. The game presumably checks for speed being >= or <= to 0 to the set speed to 0 and stop the deceleration, and it picks out of the two depending on what direction it previously set. The way whiplaunching works is by making the game accidentally set the direction-of-speed variable in the opposite direction of the real direction of the speed variable (whether it's positive or negative); in other words, the direction of acceleration is in the same direction as the direction of speed, instead of in the opposite direction as it usually is. This way, instead of decelerating to 0, Juste indefinitely accelerates in the direction of the current speed. How fast this acceleration is depends on which constant acceleration value was set when the acceleration started (1/4, 1/8, or 1/32).

This needs a glitch in the code to happen, which I'll get to, but first I need to explain some terms. Juste has "movement-states," which the game keeps track of and applies speed, acceleration, and direction-of-acceleration depending on which you're in. Some of these movement-states are "direction-locked," where the previous direction-of-acceleration is not reset when going into them. Though it preserves both the direction-of-acceleration and the constant acceleration to be applied, it doesn't apply this acceleration during the state. Even if acceleration is not reset by going into some state, it is always reset if speed ever becomes 0. In these direction-locked states, the game typically freezes speed and either carries on the previous speed or sets a new one, and it typically limits your abilities to move.

Now for how to make the glitch. For the standard whiplaunch off of a ledge, first you walk to the right and stop. As you slow down, the speed is to the right starting at 1.5 pixels per frame, but an acceleration is being applied to the left at a constant 1/4 pixels per frame per frame, and the direction-of-acceleration is to the left. You have 6 frames (1.5 pixels per frame / 0.25 pixels per frame per frame = 6 frames) before the speed becomes 0 and acceleration is reset. Before then, you can backdash to the left, which is a direction-locked state. In the dash, the speed is to the left at 3 pixels per frame, with the same constant-acceleration of the previous 1/4 pixels per frame per frame to the left though not currently being applied, and with the same direction-of-acceleration to the left. After some time (~12 frames) the dash will start to slow down, at which point the constant-acceleration will change to being applied to the right by 1/8 and the direction-of-acceleration will change to being to the right, and your speed will gradually fall. To preserve the acceleration, you should go off a ledge, which goes into another direction-locked state. This off-ledge state lasts 6 frames, and speed starts to the left at 1.5 pixels, with constant-acceleration being applied to the left by 1/4, and the direction-of-acceleration being to the left. (The direction-of-acceleration being wrong here is important because it checks for speed being >= 0 before resetting acceleration, while the speed is currently -1.5 and increasing.) It will only increase up to 3 to the left before going into the normal air-state and starting to decrease, unless you go into another state that doesn't reset acceleration before then. If you've tried backdashing, jumping, and whipping really close together, you can see that you decelerate to 0 horizontal speed while whipping. This time, since that deceleration is set to the opposite direction and the direction-of-acceleration is opposite too, whipping will accelerate every frame. Going into the air-whipping-state from the off-ledge-state keeps everything the same while acceleration continues being applied for the ~40 frames that the whip lasts, and an extra 6 frames of an after-action-in-air state. From the speed of about -2 that you started whipping at, those 46 frames of 1/4 acceleration being added every frame brings the speed at the end up to about 13.5. From there, you can keep chaining whips or subweapons in those 6 frames after each one to preserve the acceleration. If you land without a whip out, you will start to decelerate by 1/4 every frame. If you jump, you will start to decelerate by 1/8 every frame.

You can see how this works generally by hopping in one direction away from a ledge while far away from it, then dashing back to the ledge after you land from the hop before your speed goes to 0, with dashing again and again each time before you start to slow down, then try whiplaunching off of a ledge that way. You'll see that it works.

Besides launching off of a ledge, you can launch from hitting with a divekick. Here, you slow down in air, divekick to hit something, then whip during the 1 frame of going backwards off of the hit. That single frame allows the deceleration that happens during slowing down in air to be transferred to the other direction to make it acceleration. Though from a divekick the acceleration is 1/8 instead of 1/4 since it's in the air.

There's also different kinds of launches that come out of using a super-jump off of the ceiling, which I haven't documented well yet. I tried rerouting any% using them and it turned out to be slower. They would only be good for longer runs.

I tried lots of other ways to launch from all sorts of things but couldn't find anything else, so I'm satisfied that there are no other possible launches.

As for Juste's potential, I put a lot more time into exploring all the possibilities than just my finished runs would indicate. I think I can pretty decisively say what his potential is. In general, Juste is more optimized than Maxim, not less. There's a few more minor, slightly useful glitches that I haven't documented yet and I've searched all over for different zips and warps, and I doubt there would any more human-possible major glitches that I'm not aware of that could be discovered. The biggest thing would be new places to cutscene-glitch from and new things to get out of the cutscene-glitch, like a credits warp.

From this, I've pretty much determined how all the categories that could be worth doing would be like. I'll maybe post it in more detail later since this post is getting very long. Just for Juste right now: -Juste Any% route isn't improving any time soon, but the time is improvable. -Juste Furniture% has been on my list of things to do for a long time, and it would take a long while to get a good route for it. I could still run it with a bad route maybe. -There's Juste Low% which would be a complete mess. It's better suited for TAS and might take 6 hours of repeating inconsistent and hard things, but I want to do it eventually anyway. -Juste Boss Rush is improvable by a decent chunk of time, I'm not very happy with it.

I haven't done all these things because the way I approach speedrunning is that if it's not fun for me I stop and do other things, so I start a lot of things and don't finish them. Hopefully I'll get around to more in the future.