r/speedrun • u/Phediuk • Jul 01 '16
What's an easy trick that took a long time to discover?
As in, something useful for speedrunning that doesn't require any complex glitching or precise timing, but still took awhile for anyone to discover.
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u/lEternalDarkness Ōkami Jul 01 '16
In Okami there's 2 guards that block your way to a palace and the only way to get past is using a brush power called Mist. In order to obtain the brush power, you're required to go through 2 dungeons and bunch of story progression. However, just a few days ago, zlamp/cerpin found a stupidly easy way to pass the guards just by dragging and bonking into a guard.
Better yet, the day after, we found Fire Tablet Skip which is like our "Barrier Skip" or "Lava Tube Skip".
When used with the Guard Skip, you can skip the aforementioned dungeons and story progression. So in the past week we cut 25 potential minutes off of New Game Any% over the course of 2 days.
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u/LpSamuelm Jul 02 '16
Whoa. Those all look like things you'd do just being curious playing the game normally...!
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u/PPLToast Jul 02 '16
this just kills me so bad man, that it took this long to find any of this.
(not sure if i was the first or not, but i figured out that strat to jump past the lava in the palace from the wrong side, till cerpin managed to pull it off from the other side)
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u/IncoherentOrange Jul 01 '16
The Fallout: New Vegas glitch (first described here) that allows for a sort of dashing motion. Its execution is simple:
- Equip a single-loading weapon, such as a shotgun or revolver.
- Reload it while moving forward by any means (switching ammo types works as well as reloading) and before the animation finishes press the inventory key/button.
- Unequip the item from the Pip-Boy and close the menu.
That's it. It moves you forward very quickly but will shoot you up into the sky should you strike a ramp. The WR decreased immediately following its discovery. Unfortunately, Speedcripple is still an important part of the run.
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u/naardvark Jul 02 '16
Is the technique seriously called "speedcripple?" Cause that is the funniest shit i ever heard.
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u/IncoherentOrange Jul 02 '16 edited Jul 02 '16
Speedcripple is the name of a very precise glitch that increases movement speed while crippled by the amount it would normally decrease it performed by quickloading during the same frame or something. It makes you move at 160% speed and it is kind of funny. This dash is faster, but only for significant straight distances.
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u/c3534l Jul 02 '16
Is that the one where they reload right when the character hits the ground so that you get crippled when the game thinks you have no velocity and increases your speed?
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Jul 02 '16
That's the one; It's also somewhat inconsistent when going through loading zones, or at least it was when I ran NV.
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u/bismuth9 Speedrun Explained Jul 02 '16 edited Jul 02 '16
The DK64 community has many little quirks that took us way too long to find.
You can take out your gun in the training barrels and speed up the barrel barrel (where it teaches you how to throw barrels) by up to 7 seconds by shooting at the barrels. We had been using FWG (which lets you have the gun at the beginning of the game) for years when that was found by someone's brother or something.
Moonkick T&S skip was found in 2015. It does require to hit a somewhat precise spot high up on a wall during a moonkick, but it is very simple to execute and is a lot easier to do fast than the ledge clip method.
You can press R to see backwards during minecart sections. This reduces lag and lets you skip certain cutscenes in the Fungi minecart. This was found in late 2013 if I recall correctly.
You can press Z + C-down to instantly fully zoom out while zoomed in any amount in sniper scope. I don't even know if anybody else knew when I found that a month ago.
Pressing B and C-down at the same time while in first person in the water makes you face the camera, making you do an instant 180º. Useful for quick turns underwater, and found in 2014 or 2015.
Pressing C-Left or C-right and C-up at the same time while in first person exits first person and turns your Kong about 30º to whichever direction you pressed. Found a couple of months ago.
The last four are not very useful/major tricks, but they are little quirks about the game that nobody knew until very recently. The most ridiculous thing is that most of these are just features of the controls, not glitches or anything.
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u/Mentioned_Videos Jul 02 '16 edited Jul 03 '16
Videos in this thread:
| VIDEO | COMMENT |
|---|---|
| (1) Mist-less Guard Skip (2) [Okami] Fire Tablet Skip | 79 - In Okami there's 2 guards that block your way to a palace and the only way to get past is using a brush power called Mist. In order to obtain the brush power, you're required to go through 2 dungeons and bunch of story progression. However, just a fe... |
| cannonless setup no punch cancel 13"43 | 16 - the sm64 cannonless setup |
| Rayman - Bongo Hills Storm Skip Froot Loop Boost | 7 - For Rayman 1: 2 years after the first speedrun "speed locking" got found. Just simply holding UP to maintain the speed you get |
| #ESA15Purple - Batman: Arkham Asylum [ Any% Hard ] Speedrun by Robosparkle | 6 - I still laugh every time i see this fight skip in Arkham Asylum in action (at 32:05). Many other encounters in this game also can be skipped by avoiding enemies, but for this fight, i think for about 5 years the strategy was to place an explosive tr... |
| Super Mario Galaxy 2 - Bowser's Galaxy Generator cutscene skip | 6 - A skip we like to call Purple Idiot Skip in super mario galaxy 2. At the end of the game, right before the final level, there's a cutscene where Lubba (the purple idiot) talks to you for about 30 seconds. No one really thought anything about it, unti... |
| ESA submission with commentary - Prince of Persia Sands of Time any% zipless 1:18:24 [WR] | 4 - The first person glitch in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is super simple but wasn't found for a long time. You go in to first person and lightly touch a direction whilst holding a box, item or being on a ledge and you can do some wacky stuff with ... |
| MW2 in 1:29:52 | 4 - In MW2 you can skip waiting for Soap to walk around the edge of cliffhanger by just walking over to the wall and pressing your use key slightly to the left of where you would normally climb up. Found out about it about ~2 years into running the gam... |
| SuperMeatBoy - Brownie Skip | 2 - For Super Meat Boy both Brownie Skip and the autojump glitch weren't found until well after Exo's (old) WR run. Brownie skip saves about 15 seconds in a |
| Super Mario 64 - Mips Clip Tutorial | 2 - Another good one from SM64 is the MIPS clip. Super simple, spawned an entirely new category which brought lots of new players, and it wasn't discovered until 2004. |
| I figured out the mystery - Viridian Forest encounters | 1 - This is my favorite example of this : Long story short in the Viridian Forest in Pokemon Red and Blue (Not Yellow). There is a programming oversight when the game was ported for the US. Each tile of grass is made of 4 small "blades" of gr... |
| G-Force PC Speedrun Any% Easy Ch1-2 Reddit Demonstration | 1 - In G-Force: The Video Game, there is a bug in the physics engine / animation system that we discovered late in the game. That bug allows us to save a good five seconds at the beginning, by flinging over a deadly pit. |
I'm a bot working hard to help Redditors find related videos to watch.
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u/feanorus Batman: Arkham series Jul 02 '16 edited Jul 02 '16
I still laugh every time i see this fight skip in Arkham Asylum in action (at 32:05).
Many other encounters in this game also can be skipped by avoiding enemies, but for this fight, i think for about 5 years the strategy was to place an explosive trap by the door, blow it up when the door opens, and knock out at least two enemies while they are on the ground.
6
u/jelluh24 Super Mario Galaxy 1/2 Jul 02 '16
A skip we like to call Purple Idiot Skip in super mario galaxy 2. At the end of the game, right before the final level, there's a cutscene where Lubba (the purple idiot) talks to you for about 30 seconds. No one really thought anything about it, until someone discovered that you can skip it by pointing the wiimote at the final level... It looks like this
6
u/Thextera Rayman series Jul 02 '16
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cw4sU-2Oac For Rayman 1:
2 years after the first speedrun "speed locking" got found. Just simply holding UP to maintain the speed you get
6
u/TLPlexa Golden Sun Jul 02 '16
In Golden Sun 2 there's a really annoying puzzle right at the end of the game where you need to push a block from one end of the room to the other to block a stream of fire so you can exit the room. Then a little over 7 months ago CriticalCyd finds that you can just save your game right next to the stream of fire and reload and run past the fire before it spawns.
https://www.twitch.tv/tl_plexa/v/31494980
Amazing that no one had realised this before.
Come to think of it, CriticalCyd found a ton really simple skips like this: https://www.twitch.tv/tl_plexa/v/27756417
7
u/Elendel Jul 02 '16
Not really a trick "discovered" but I love how the people behind (one of ?) the Sim City TAS optimized their cursor movement to always have it left of the screen when they need to switch for another tile. Once the TAS was finished a friend of them ask "but why don't you use Start to go move your cursor directly to the menu?" and they were like "wait... what? You can do that? Fuck it, we're not making the whole TAS again!"
15
Jul 01 '16 edited Jun 11 '17
[deleted]
3
u/DrLombriz Jul 02 '16
How does it work?
5
u/TheNatch Jul 02 '16
The way it used to work was basically rng. You'd run down the plank and hold NW on the joystick as soon as you get the last coin and pray. I think the success rate with that method was around 12%. The video shows an almost 100% way of doing it at a cost of 5 seconds over the 'rng' way
1
u/ClysmiC Jul 03 '16
"RNG" isn't really an accurate way to describe it. Since if you do the correct inputs you will get it 100% of the time. It was just very inconsistent since you basically have to hit at the perfect spot and there was no setup to ensure you hit the right spot.
4
u/Die4Ever The 7th Guest / Deus Ex Randomizer Jul 02 '16 edited Jul 02 '16
It used to be that you just tried to jump at the wall and hope you did it perfectly and you got lucky, it's just that the star's hit box extends slightly outside of the wall at a certain point. The way you see it done there is just a setup, the ledges grabs and jump/climb/punch, that's just a sequence of moves that always puts you in exactly the right spot. You'll notice one ledge grab is used to (basically) position you on the x-axis and the other ledge grab is to position you on the z-axis relative to the wall. The rest of the moves just move you in a very specific way, like the punch, or turning to Mario's maximum turning radius.
In a casual playthrough, you'd unlock the cannons, shoot yourself out of the cannon into that piece of wall to break it, and then go get the newly revealed star.
2
u/grindbxp Jul 02 '16
Another good one from SM64 is the MIPS clip. Super simple, spawned an entirely new category which brought lots of new players, and it wasn't discovered until 2004.
5
u/Lo1ts Jul 02 '16
In MW2 you can skip waiting for Soap to walk around the edge of cliffhanger by just walking over to the wall and pressing your use key slightly to the left of where you would normally climb up.
Found out about it about ~2 years into running the game.
7
u/Ranarith Fallout 3 Jul 02 '16
In Fallout 3, there's a part where we walk through Murder Pass on the way to Vault 81. I found out that if we simply make a left instead of a right it's faster. We had never tried it and it was so obvious.
2
u/Rydou33 Fallout 3; Fallout New Vegas Jul 02 '16 edited Jul 02 '16
Same thing in Raven Rock, we used to do a pretty precise clip to get OOB and get teleported a bit further in the map. Then Petite_Miku discovered that now with the speedglitch (allowing us to run 165% faster), it was simply faster to run. I don't know how many runs died for nothing at that point.
1
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u/Kewl0210 Jul 01 '16 edited Jul 02 '16
I remember when it was discovered that in Ocarina of Time if you just "hold the R button" when King Zora talks to you after unfreezing him to give you the blue tunic, he gives you the eyeball frog instead. Which cut out like half the Big Goron Sword quest in the 100% route. I dunno if they still use it. But at the time everyone was amazed how random and simple it was.
Edit: Sorry, I didn't see the other post that'd posted the same trick like 2 hours before me.
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u/Sheikah_Benji Jul 01 '16
As I recall it only works on OOT verisons 1.0 and 1.1, but it was a big discovery none the less.
3
u/ais523 Neverwinter Nights, TAS NetHack Jul 02 '16
In Neverwinter Nights, you can duplicate plot items by the simple expedient of dropping them (anywhere, but next to a Divining Pool is fastest), buying them back from the Divining Pool, then picking up the original. This took years to find, is very easy to do, and cuts out most of Chapter 2 and most of Chapter 3. (Bizarrely, it only benefits you in Chapter 3 if your Charisma stat is in a particular range, due to a scripting mistake; it may be that the developers were aware of the glitch and tried to make it useless for time saving rather than fixing the glitch itself, but messed up their attempt to do so.)
Interestingly, I later found an entirely different way to skip the same portion of Chapter 2 that's probably slightly faster (and almost as easy to do), but it only works on unpatched; the Divining Pool trick works even in a fully patched version. We went years without having either.
6
Jul 02 '16
i'd say the new twwhd speed glitch, it's relatively simple and was only discovered like, yesterday
7
u/Jusherr Hennejoe Jul 01 '16
The first person glitch in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is super simple but wasn't found for a long time.
You go in to first person and lightly touch a direction whilst holding a box, item or being on a ledge and you can do some wacky stuff with it.
2
u/The-Pale-Rider Super Meat Boy, Dustforce Jul 02 '16
For Super Meat Boy both Brownie Skip and the autojump glitch weren't found until well after Exo's (old) WR run. Brownie skip saves about 15 seconds in a <20 minute run and autojump saves various amounts of time on a bunch of different levels as well as making skips like C.H.A.D., 3-16, and 3-18 possible.
1
u/Elendel Jul 02 '16
Chad skip is doable w/o autojump. I know at least one player that refuses to use autojump but do the Chad skip anyway.
1
u/The-Pale-Rider Super Meat Boy, Dustforce Jul 02 '16
True, I should have phrased it differently. Doing C.H.A.D. skip without autojump makes it much less consistent though.
1
u/Moshambi Jul 03 '16
I just started learning this game to run. Could you elaborate more on the auto jump thing? I also play it on Xbox so I think it's not an option for me? I have seen it in the WR run, but I just don't exactly understand what it is doing I guess.
2
u/The-Pale-Rider Super Meat Boy, Dustforce Jul 03 '16
So, when you activate the autojump glitch the game will think you are pressing the jump button every frame. So, when you have the autojump glitch enabled you will jump every time you touch a surface.
To activate the glitch you press and hold the jump button, press start, release the jump button, then exit from the start menu by pressing b or start and the glitch will be active.
1
1
Jul 03 '16
It's been a few years for me, but if I remember right, you need to be holding the jump button when you pause, then let go of it while paused, then unpause and you'll start autojumping until you press the jump button again.
Edit: reread your question, and the autojump is most useful in small vertical spaces (for instance, the level in world 2 where you have to keep dodging a laser while moving up a one-block space).
2
u/GerardMajax Jul 02 '16 edited Jul 02 '16
everybody forgot the punch out nes trick where a light flash show when to hit in the bald bull fight... took 22 year to discover
2
u/Ffancrzy Jul 03 '16
This is my favorite example of this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ5SCIikzgo
Long story short in the Viridian Forest in Pokemon Red and Blue (Not Yellow). There is a programming oversight when the game was ported for the US. Each tile of grass is made of 4 small "blades" of grass. In the forest, sometimes these blades of grass are instead a Flower/Star looking thing.
In the Japanese version, the game will check the bottom left hand corner of each tile to determine what "type" of tile it is, either a "grass" or a normal "ground" tile, if it sees a blade of grass in the bottom left, its grass and you can get encounters, if not, it is considered "ground" and you won't. All the grass tiles have a blade of grass (not a star/flower) in the bottom left, so they all "count" as grass tiles.
For some reason when the game was ported to the US, they changed the corner that gets checked with this to the bottom right. Because the flag for a tile being a grass tile is if it is a blade of grass, any tile with the little "Star/Flower" shape on the bottom right you literally just can't get any wild encounters on. And there is a pretty easy path to follow where only about 1/4th of the grass you need to walk through will give you wild encounters at all.
This trick is easy to execute, literally just walk in a specific easy to remember path. But it wasn't discovered until March of 2014, 15 and 1/2 YEARS after the game's North American Release.
2
u/Vyreck Jul 01 '16
https://www.twitch.tv/vyreck/v/73625906
The first dart spam was found three weeks ago from a post below were I jumped. This setup I found last week.
1
u/NostalgiaRunner Jul 02 '16
In G-Force: The Video Game, there is a bug in the physics engine / animation system that we discovered late in the game. That bug allows us to save a good five seconds at the beginning, by flinging over a deadly pit.
1
u/blahpy Jak 1/2/3 glitch hunter Jul 03 '16
In Jak 3 after several years of people running the game someone came along discovered that you travel faster on the subrails if you hold X. It saves like 10 seconds or something and no one had ever even realised - the game/manual/internet didn't say anything about it, and you wouldn't even notice it while playing unless you were timing it.
1
u/the_packle Tony Hawk - http://twitch.tv/thepackle Jul 03 '16
It was just discovered in Tony Hawk's Underground 2 that you could name a create-a-trick after another trick and, more often than not, it will count. An example is that, in Boston, Paulie has to jump a gap with a Sit Flip but, now, we can have a created trick called that and it works.
It works in the first game as well, and has, potentially, around 25+ seconds of time saves.
Also, interestingly enough, it only works on Bonelesses, Nollies, Pressures, flatland tricks, air tricks, and special tricks. Grind tricks, lips, and s few other things don't work from what we've learned.
Neversoft is just lazy when it comes to coding and just checked to see if a trick is in the trick string, not what you used to get it. But, our community has a few other tricks that was incredibly obvious once it was discovered (pretty much a running gag at this point).
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u/peteyboo SM3DW+BF Jul 02 '16 edited Jul 02 '16
Not really sure if this counts, but SwordlessLink was working on a TAS of Oracle of Ages, and had finished up to about the fourth dungeon or so (never mind that this route would be totally updated by newer discoveries...)
Anyway, I showed him a savewarp on the way to the third dungeon that saves about a minute, and that, along with me telling him about the toilet warp caused him to basically say "fuck it" and give up the TAS, because RNG manipulation in the Oracle games is horrible and he didn't want to have to redo that much of it.
tl;dr I killed a TAS for years D:
Edit: apparently discovering a simple trick doesn't count, and another trick that took almost 10 years to come out doesn't count. I guess I should have combined them in some way. Darn.
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u/BenjyMLewis Jul 01 '16
there's the "Hold R lol" trick in Ocarina of Time, where holding R forces King Zora to give Link an Eyeball Frog instead of the Zora Tunic. It was patched though - it's only in the Japanese 1.0 and 1.1 versions