Introduction
Spider-Man, known more commonly as Spider-Man 2000, is a 2000 action-adventure game developed by Neversoft, probably more well-known as the developer of the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games. It was the first Spider-Man to be done fully in 3D and in general still holds up rather well in terms of plotting and level design, unlike a few of its direct sequels.
This is my third attempt at this game's any% category, and is an improvement of 7040 frames (a little under 2 minutes) due to another round of optimization and the implementation of some new skips found over the years.
Mechanics and Glitches
- Web Swinging
Web swinging in this game on the surface appears a bit more rudimentary then what would become standardized with Spider-Man 2: The Movie: The Game, although the basics remain the same. Essentially, web swinging works by determining a point directly in front of Spidey as a 'swing target', and if Spidey is close enough to that target he will swing to it with a press of the R button.
There's three variations of swinging: slow swinging, fast swinging, and web zipping. Slow swinging is when Spidey takes two webs to reach a target, and while slow and generally avoided it does allow for traversal without losing height. More common in the run is fast swinging and web zipping, however, as they're both very quick to execute. Fast swinging happens whenever a swing target is close enough to Spidey to be completed in one web swing, and web zipping can generally happen when Spidey is extremely close to a wall or floor while in a standing state, although there's some exceptions.
- Web Abilities
Beyond normal combat abilities like punches, kicks, and grabs, Spidey also has access to four different web abilities that can be chosen via a directional input in the C-Stick, alongside shooting a normal web.
Web Gloves great boost Spidey's punching abilities, which can be exploited by only using punches at the end of combos to greatly increase damage output.
Web Dome protects Spidey in webbing that explodes after a certain amount of time, or earlier with a button press. Due to an exploit, this is very useful.
Impact Webs (trademark Ben Reilly) shoots a ball of web at an enemy. It's not as instant as shooting a normal web, which itself has useful properties, but it does decent damage and is generally useful at taking out enemies resistant to physical damage.
Web Yank yanks an opponent and....is never used lol.
- Clipping
Clipping refers to a variety of methods used throughout the game in order to get out of bounds, but in the majority of cases refers to using Spidey's webs in unintended ways to push him out of bounds, be that via an object or holes in geometry. Essentially any indoor level is susceptible to clipping, and in many cases the loading trigger for the next level is present somewhere out of bounds, often independent of cutscenes that play before them.
- Web Dome Ascension (WDA)
For whatever reason, the N64 version of the game has a glitch that allows for Spidey to ascend when using a web dome on the edge of a platform. After ending the web dome, it's even possible to jump out of it since the game temporarily considers Spidey to be on the ground at the end of the animation. This is used in a few levels for traversal and out of bounds movement.
Improvements shortlist
- Swing routing was optimized in every level to be faster.
- Scorpion, Rhino, Venom 1, Venom 2, and Carnage are all faster due to differences in attack strategies and carefully managing their health.
- A few levels take advantage of overlaping cutscenes to save time. This is done in Stop the Bomb to start the bomb timer sooner, and in Hidden Switches to skip one of Venom's cutscenes.
- Sewer Entrance has an OOB that saves less then a second, mainly due to N64 having a black wall present for whatever reason that has to be moved around with WDA.
- Subway still isn't skippable ( >:( ), but 9 seconds was saved from a new lag reduction strategy and killing enough of the lizards at the right time for the level to end properly.
- The Lizard's Maze was massively improved thanks to more optimized swinging and a way to skip the cutscene at the end of the level via OOB travel.
- A new out of bounds in Symbiotes Infest Bugle (found by me!) saves a few seconds while leaving quite a few civilians to presumably die. Thanks Spidey!
- Elevator Descent is skipped with a zip that pushes Spidey out of bounds due to incorrect targeting when holding swing, which saves about 30-40 seconds.
- New out of bounds method in Waterfront Warehouse saves a few seconds over the old method.
- A minor cutscene was skipped in Stopping the Fog by positioning Spidey very carefully before interacting with the three switches in the level, since the trigger to open the doors is slightly larger then the cutscene trigger.
- Thanks to careful web cartridge routing, Carnage is slightly faster since I no longer need to pause Impact Webbing to pick up a cartridge.
Potential Improvements
As this game is 3D, optimizing its movement is exponentially harder then it would be for a 2D game, especially considering factors such as lag and optimal angles to reach swing points the fastest. Thus, it's likely that there's still frames to shave off in every level, but doing so would take far more time then it's worth.
For any theoretical new skips, ideally a way to fully skip Subway would easily allow for a sub 20 minute time, although attempts to do so have so far been fruitless. The Black Cat cutscene at the end of Stopping the Fog would also ideally be skippable, but again attempts have been fruitless.
Suggested Screenshot
Frame 59716
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: Wow...what did I just witness!? :) This was some pretty crazy stuff and I applaud you on furthering the cuts.
Accepting to "Standard" for publication.
