Time: 21:05 TAS 20:38 RTA
Medievil is a PS1 platforming/hack n slash game based off of a undead medieval knight Sir Daniel Fortesque, and his quest to restore Gallowmere and it's people to normal from the tyranny of Zarok.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: Bizhawk 2.4.2.1
- Emulator Settings: No memory card
- Fastest Completion
- Damage Abuse
- Heavy Glitch Abuse
- Luck Manipulation
- Movement Tech
This has been an 8 year project with glitch hunting, retasing, and much research. I did submit a TAS of this category last year thinking that would be the end of the any% category, but boy was I wrong. Days after submitting my first movie a speed glitch that was found 12+ years ago resurfaced, along with a new glitch with the club that makes the club the most powerful weapon in the game. For the early stages of the game up until the end of return to the graveyard the fastest form of movement is the speed glitch which caps out at 43 speed, which the normal walking speed is 28. As the run progresses past return to the graveyard the fastest form of movement is the daring dash. 58 seconds of improvement were made possible due to the speed glitch and the knockback dash, and the rest of the time is saved due to the super club glitch, better movement, and rng. Not to mention all the bosses in this game are now food for sir fotesque.
Speed Glitch
This technique is faster on dpad due to the speed depreciation being much greater on analog, so the best option of movement is to mix camera inputs with the dpad. By walking then starting the running animation, then repeating after 8 frames Dan is able to combine his walking speed (15) and running speed (28) having the same speed depreciation as the daring dash. You simply repeat the process and you will run faster.
Boost Jump
By speed glitching while you are falling you can chain it into a faster jump. You can not speed glitch while gaining height. Take a look at the gravestone jump in return to the graveyard to get an idea of how fast the jump is.
Super Club
The inputs for this is 4 frames with square and 2 frames with X. Essentially what happens is Dan is able to interrupt the alternate attack animation of the club with the normal attack making you attack with full damage much quicker than normal. It is absolutely ridiculous how much damage it can dish out.
Dagger Quick Shot
You can make your single shots do much more damage by using the same method used with Super Club.
Inventory Glitch
The inventory Glitch allows you to effect Dan's movement while the game is in the inventory for a brief moment, this is very helpful through out the run. While in the inventory, actors and any other sort of triggers are disabled, and Dan cannot take damage.
Level Looping
To simplify this glitch, essentially the inventory glitch is used to make Dan jump into the void while in the inventory, causing him to be immune to death. Once past the death trigger you can exit the inventory to move freely. Once Dan hits the bottom of the world, he gets placed to the top of the level cycling through the z coordinates.
Half Loop
When you loop to the top of a stage you can be stopped by a thick piece of geometry on your way up, causing Dan to land pre maturely. This is only possible in certain areas such as Haunted Ruins, and Enchanted Earth
Knock back Dash / Knock back
Most weapons in this game cause a knock back when it is hit against a wall. In this run the clubs alternate attack (Which is used to solve puzzles including fire) is used to gain speed that is normally not obtainable. To do so you must run at a wall, then use the alt attack for 2 frames, and then either jump or dash jump in the opposing direction. Dan's normal walking speed is 28, and 56 whilst daring dashing, the maximum speed that I have personally gotten from this technique is 97 under certain conditions. This is very useful through out the run.
Camera locking
The camera in this game is a huge pain, and can cause sloppy movement everywhere, but there is a way to correct that. By chaining jumps you are able to control movement much better than normally walking. This is used mainly before I get daring dash.
Corner Strafing
By changing your direction 90 degrees you are able to get more speed out of daring dash jumps, this will also help with the speed glitch depreciation when changing direction. You would start your speed glitch in 1 direction then go 90 degrees left or right for the next speed glitch alternating each direction to maintain speed in areas you need to make adjustments beyond d-pad capability.
Dan's Crypt
I skip the small sword to save a little bit of time, and finish the level normally grabbing the only life bottle I will get for the rest of the run. The small sword is not very useful.
The Graveyard
This level is normal for the most part. I end up using a skip to climb over a tree to save a few seconds, and a chest boost, which follows the same rules as a knock back dash.
Cemetery Hill
I am able to skip the witch talisman, since I will not be getting the dragon armor. This allows me to climb up the mountain to the exit right away. I use a clip, and a chest boost to climb the mountain a little faster. It was also found that you can skip the cutscene at the top of the mountain, by climbing a tree and simply walking around the trigger.
Hilltop Mausoleum
I grab the club in this level which is faster to get than the previous level. You can use the speed glitch to make pushing objects faster. With the new Quick Shot glitch you can manage to get a 2 cycle boss battle, which is not normally possible. The major issue with this stage is the unavoidable lag that you get in the basement, the goal with the movement there is to stop the lag as soon as possible. The lag is mostly caused by particle effects from the fire. The faster you get it off the screen the better.
Return to the Graveyard
This level has 2 new skips. You can skip the door that requires the skull key by using a knock back to jump out of bounds and simply walk over the gate. It's much harder than it looks to actually pull off due to the colliders only having a small hole in them to escape the level. The 2nd skip that was recently discovered allows you to jump over the moat onto the elevated area of the level, skipping the yellow rune area entirely. This trick is beyond precise. You must jump onto a very specific part of a tombstone while building up a boost jump so you will have enough speed and height to clear the moat. I had to use analog to find the correct position while also building speed with analog. The position on the tombstone is extremely precise and getting into that position while building speed is no easy task. Once you have the position and speed built up you must jump at a precise angle over to the ledge just having the right amount of height and speed. This trick within itself took 3 days to reproduce. Now onto the guardians of the graveyard. I abuse the super club glitch to pretty much make the boss a half cycle fight.
Enchanted Earth
I manipulate the frogs to gain some speed from their attacks. The goal of the level is to pretty much reach the lifts as soon as possible. The level loop that is used is a half loop.
Pools of the Ancient Dead
The goal of this level is to use the fat armored enemies to get to the exit trigger. When you knock back off of them they give you massive speed due to a certain attack they do. The main challenge is getting the enemy over to the correct spot. The distance they're moved is dependent on their animation, which was a bit of a challenge to tas.
The Lake
At the beginning of this level I jump right before the cutscene starts so I can gain some distance on land before I regain control of Dan. I use a new strafing dash jump technique to skip 70% of the bridge section. Then I use a clip to finish the level early.
Crystal Caves
What dragon? Usually by this point in the game you would have 2 key items which activate a boss battle in this level called the dragon gems. By completing the boss battle you would obtain the Dragon Armor, and a rune to raise the platform for the end of the level. Fortunately for us the developers put the exit for this level just barely out of Dan's reach by normal means. There are a few methods to skip over the end level gap, the fastest method I have found involves abusing the speed increase you get from walking on a decline and combining that speed increase with a dash jump. This provides just enough speed to clear the gap, and removes the need to waste time setting up a knock back dash.
The Gallows Gauntlet
This is where the run takes a huge left turn. It has been known for more than a decade that you can clip inside of the dragon fire gate, but it has never be known on how to get out. This glitch saves well over 12 minutes, and is this games version of Spyro 2's Gulp Skip. Being able to complete this level without dragon armor means you do not have to visit the entire right side of the map, thus skipping all of those levels, and any key items those levels require. The problem that I encountered while tasing this trick was the enemies. When you use the alternate attack on the club it tends to aim at near by enemies instead of where Dan is facing, so I had to manipulate the enemies to be away from where I do the knock back dash. I do the knock back dash on the right wall instead of the left due to the right wall being closer after the enemy manipulation, it is definitely much hard to do the trick from that spot. After you escape the gate, you grab the yellow rune and finish the level.
Haunted Ruins
I use 2 level loops in this level. The first loop is a half loop to hit the trigger for a room that leads to a key item (the crown) which you need to make the exit trigger active. The 2nd loop is a new loop that was discovered recently. After giving the crown to king peregrin the exit trigger, which is the catapult will become active. This loop saves us from having to fight the rock golems.
Ghost Skip
Just a normal level loop to the exit trigger. This skips the pirate captain boss fight, and the entire level.
Entrance Hall
Just the normal path to the end, a Knock back dash is used at the start of the 2nd room in order to jump off the stairs with great speed, enough to reach the next room.
The Time Device
Just like Ghost Ship you can immediately level loop to the end of the level. I die as I hit the exit trigger for entertainment value so I will enter the final boss with 0 HP.
Zarok's Lair
This level will be cut into 3 sections to better brake down what is actually happening in these 3 battles.
Soldier Despawn
The goal of this glitch is to make it so only half of Zarok's soldiers spawn in. There is a total of 8 soldiers and this glitch allows us to win the battle by only killing 4. To activate this glitch you must approach the middle of the arena just out of reach of the cutscene trigger, and then inventory glitch into the cutscene trigger. The cutscene will begin to play while the inventory is opened. You must keep the inventory opened until the end of the cutscene where your soldiers will spawn from the chalice, closing the inventory any earlier than this point will cause all 8 of Zarok's soldiers to spawn in. Keeping the inventory opened past this point will cause none of your soldiers to spawn in making you automatically lose the battle, so you must hit that key timing when the camera pans back to Dan with the chalice in the middle of the room. While in the inventory nothing can activate or deactivate, and all enemies will not move.
This is the correct time to close the inventory
This is the tricky part of the trick to understand. Since this tricks discovery back in 2010 nobody has been able to replicate it on an actual console due to a crash that occurs with the cutscene right before you face Kardok. The trick would work normally up until that point and then just hard lock at the beginning of the cutscene. Understanding why the crash would occur was a community effort. The problem that left us as a community stumped with this trick is the fact that it works without any issues on certain emulators (psxjin,epsxe). One of the runners in the community decided to try the trick out on duckstation and was getting similar results to that of a console(Hard Locking). He tried experimenting with opening the inventory at very precise times and got the trick to progress. I attempted to replicate this trick on bizhawk with his method, and it did not work. After investigating further I discovered by repeatedly opening the inventory (buffering) you have a chance at not crashing the game due to the inventory having a longer delay on opening while buffering. To continue with the trick you must keep the inventory opened until the end of the Kardok cutscene. The root cause of this crash seems to be something to do with the view distance and how that can cause the remainder of Zarok's men to spawn in. They have 2 spawn points, each spawn point spawning in 2 additional soldiers, 4 in total. During the entire soldier battle you must stay away from the north side of the arena or you will risk spawning in the remaining 4 soldiers. After the battle is over, if you at all go to that side of the arena and activate the triggers to spawn in Zarok's soldiers the game will crash. You must leave those 2 trigger inactive for the remainder of the game.
Areas that will crash the game
Kardok
I use the inventory trick from the previous section to keep Kardok from turning his shield on, because when the fight starts he is still trying to complete his animations that he was supposed to initially do when the cutscene was playing. An important thing to note, since the soldier despawn glitch is still active I must kill Kardok without activating the 2 triggers for the soldiers or the game will crash. This makes it so I can not just run up to Kardok and destroy him, I must wait for him to be out of range of the 2 triggers to begin fighting him. Luckily this left enough time to still squeeze out a 1 cycle fight and avoid any sort of shield phase.
Zarok
Just like Kardok Skip, you must perform the same skip on the cutscene right before Zarok to progress with the soldier despawn glitch. This does provide additional issues with the trick itself. Having the inventory opened during the Zarok cutscene makes it so Zarok will be stuck behind his gate at the start of the fight. Making this fight slightly longer than it normally would be. You must manipulate him with your position and camera to free him from the gate without crashing the game. Having him free himself quickly is no easy task. Once he locks on to you he will run at you with the speed of light on his side. The remainder of the fight you must kill Zarok without touching the 2 triggers and you must kill Zarok when he is in a position where the camera will not activate the triggers during the final cutscene, so you will be able to view the credits. Having a bad end position can cause a crash during the final cutscene.
Improvements
- Way to do half loops for more level loops if it is possible.
- Better rng in Zarok's Lair
- A way to skip the gate at the start of Hilltop Mausoleum.
- I suggest that the current movie that is on the site gets a new branch due to the dragon gate skip. Currently the categories for rta are No DGS, and Any%. No DGS is pretty much all levels, or NMS?. Classifying a major glitch in this game is very difficult due to the time frame the dragon gate skip was actually discovered. The dragon gate skip allows you to skip both dragon gems, the dragon fight, and the dragon armor entirely, not to mention 6 levels. It is a 12+ minute time save.
arkiandruski:Delayed while the author works on an improvement.
As I said in the forum thread, I think that a branch run could do more to differentiate itself from a fastest run than the current published run does. Add to that the fact that the publish run loses to the current real time world record which also doesn't use Dragon Gate Skip just shows that it's really outdated.
