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.
This is my fourth attempt at this game's any% category, and is an improvement of 5941 frames thanks to even more optimizations and discoveries.
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, which has some situational usage for positioning.
- 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
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.
- Spidey Fly
A recent discovery, by interrupting Spidey's web zip on a wall by having him automatically start to normal swing, you can get him into a state where he is hovering in the air. This allows for a lot of both vertical and horizontal momentum in situations where it's very limited.
- Wall Zip Rebound
Another recent discovery, if you zip on a wall at a proper angle and place, you can be mistakenly put on the other side of said wall. This allows for some new skips in certain levels.
Improvements shortlist
- General optimizations on every level.
- Spidey Fly done on Scale the Girders to save 7 seconds.
- New strat with Rhino to avoid his attacks.
- Better fight at the end of Sewer Entrance.
- 5 seconds saved on Subway...somehow. Genuinely don't know how lmao.
- Wall zip rebound to skip the ending cutscene of Sewage Plant.
- Another wall zip rebound to skip Venom's Puzzle.
- 3 seconds of optimization in The Lizard's Maze.
- Slightly new route in Symbiotes Infest Bugle.
- Skipped the need to press the switch in Elevator Descent after getting out of bounds.
- New clip in Stop the Presses avoids needing to destroy any of the generators.
- Switch glitch in Stopping the Fog that saves about 6 seconds.
- New strategy with Carnage that saves 6.5 seconds.
Potential Improvements
Beyond the usual lag optimizations, a way to skip Subway is still heavily theorized and would save 2 minutes, but still hasn't worked out.
Suggested Screenshot
Frame 59716
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: As with many of your TASes, great work on this as well. To see that 5943 was cut over the last effort was surprising to me since I figured it would be refining for small movement optimizations and lag reduction. With the new discoveries, the end result shows a very solid piece of work. With nearly 5 minutes cut over the current existing
WR, and about 99 seconds over your
previous TAS, there is no reason to think that anything has been left behind. Great job on this ~9 year en devour and congratulations!
