Posts for groobo


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There's really not much I can remember from the top of my head about the second game. Like there were a bunch of useful jumps/clips, but I spent far less time with it than the first game (and that was pre speed glitch on top of that), so my memories aren't as vivid. Things might come back to me tho if I could watch mockups/wips of the levels--like I immediately remembered after watching one of your vids that you can immediately scale the club building entrance in whitechapel to get onto the alley buildings instead of going around, pushing the crate, then climbing. There were like a million jumps/clips in the pumpkin level, pocketwatch early, going straight for the exit trigger in greenwitch, circus skip, etc. Been trying to get into the discord for like half a year now since you guys seem to keep rediscovering stuff that was found a decade ago and was at least mentioned in this or the other thread, but the src invite has been dead since day one, even the updated one.
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Pretty much randomly when pushing my face against it. Run straight at the wall right next to where it meets the gate, jump, then try to curve towards the gate (the actual clip happens at the seam). No zombies btw. Never tried to find a setup for it since it never led to anything, so that's all the info I can recall--can't even remember which side of the gate it was done from, or how far from the seam your starting position should be. I'd say it's comparable in precision/difficulty to the fence clip in the second stage, as in you won't even see dan jerking around so it's hard to tell visually how close you are to clipping.
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About the speed glitch--are inputs the same as in medievil 2? I specifically tested it way back and was under the impression I weren't getting anything. Looking at the video I still can't tell whether something out of the ordinary is actually happening there tbh. Anyway, you can clip into the yellow rune cell in gallows gauntlet, but I could never find a way back out. The speed glitch might make it possible, saving a bunch of time by not having to go through the dragon gate whatsoever. Alternatively, I never attempted it with KBDs either, so that's also worth looking into. Oh also it might be possible to clip through the rune gate in the first level. I remember almost getting through on several occasions with just regular movement + zombies. Same goes for the gate in the mausoleum. And the tombstone jump across the moat in return to the graveyard might actually be possible now too. Render me excited lmao GG on the TAS btw!
Torn338 wrote:
So it was that easy... The dragon gate skip. Huh, neat.
literally called it 10 years ago haha
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I meant the first time around (1-1), as in without ashley.
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I always wondered if the oob path isn't actually faster in the post-village area considering you don't collect any valuables there.
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SW: Haven't you thought about making a tas, of the part you're so sure would be faster with your method, by yourself? It's not a question really - either gtfo and PROVE that you're right, or stop making a dumbass out of yourself.
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I don't know about chalices, but it comes down to pure math anyway. Time the sections where you absolutely need to kill enemies with and without a different weapon than the standard sword, then time how much time getting this weapon takes. Add that up and you've got yourself an answer. Did you actually get into the looping state with normal game means?
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IIRC you actually can't get into the level looping state without cheats in this game. Each time you try to go oob, dante will start to stutter walk in place, and won't take another step in any direction. No worries, though - there's a glitch involving this effect, which you can use to skip stuff. Dante will freeze in place, weather you're on the ground or not and there's a single frame window of opportunity where you can jump out of this state. You can use this to ascend above normally accessible heights or to travel along the 'oob barrier'. Eg. you can skip basically the whole whitechapel level with this. There are a lot of level design errors which can be used to skip whole chunks of stages. Like in kensington you can maneuver from the train tracks to a balcony and, from there, drop down into the trigger which transports you into the house where you get the pocket watch - from there you can head straight towards the level's exit. Or in greenwich observatory you can skip the cutscene where the green little pesky enemy appears for the first time, by going up the roof right before the cutscene trigger and doing some tricky jumps above it - then with some dash jumps you can skip all the following puzzles and go straight for the finish line. I don't recall anything more than that - it's been a long time since I played this game. Also, I can't remember if kbd works in this one too. edit: I wasn't aware of the speed glitch. Couldn't it be used to skip most of the sewers (or was it time machine: sewers?)? Either way kbd is useless now, even if it still works.
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Some time ago I went on a sequence break hunt for medievil 2 and I got to know that the engine is indeed very different from the one used in the first game. Eg. I wasn't able to get oob on any of the levels since those were guarded off by seemingly infinite, invisible walls. I found a way to actually ascend and, at a certain height, move along those "oob walls" in order to skip large chunks of like one or two levels. That and a couple of shortcuts resulting simply from clever movement is about all I could find. Then again, that was before I discovered the kbd and the inventory glitch - I wonder if hope that both work in medievil 2.
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Jumping above zombies is "the same speed", but jumping above the book and going in a straight line in the crypt is slower than curving around? That doesn't make any sense. Also I was thinking of using the sword more on the zombies you avoid by curving around them, rather than anything else. Don't forget the tree trick in the graveyard when redoing the WIP! And I would still advise you to release it when it's done - that way you're kinda making sure you don't miss any timesavers.
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@pumpik gorge: Exactly. @WIP: You really should start using the instant turn around trick some more instead of curving around. It's a bit wierd since you did the trick after picking up the red rune in the graveyard, but didn't use it on numerous other occasions (eg. picking up the small sword and rune at the crypt, using the green rune at the graveyard, getting the club and talisman at cemetery hill, green rune at the mausoleum). At some of these you could also pull off a kbd since you're already facing a wall. At the crypt after grabbing the rune, isn't it possible to jump above the book on your way to the gate? This would allow you to go for the bottle in a straight line. During the graveyard it would be better to push everything away with your sword instead of doing anything else. You also didn't use the tree trick I explained a couple posts back which saves a few seconds. At the start of cemetery hill you should change to dan's arm in order to get the club quicker. After getting it it's faster to get out of that general area through where the left boulder is, instead of the middle one. When approaching the campfire you should rather kill the zombie just before it and set your club on fire with the square button. You forgot to use the fence clip. When climbing the hill there's at least one occasion where you're running against the wall for a bit, which really slows you down. IIRC you can destroy the coffin at the start of the mausoleum so that Dan won't stutter and you won't have to jump in order to fall straight down. Stop wasting the club! You won't have to replenish for the pumpkin serpent if you use it only where necessary. You can release charged up daggers way sooner, even before the charging effect disappears completely. If you actually avoid getting hit by the demon's shards (which doesn't cost any frames) you'll finish the fight at full health, which means you can skip the vial at the following level. After killing the demon it would also be rather nice for you to run for the key straight instead of a curve. At return to the graveyard you once more curved around the tombstone before the rune skip :(. At the boss fight, maybe try delaying your first club (jump) swing and wait for the wolf to come down to the ground first. IIRC it's possible to win with only 4 swings instead of 5 - the last hit should land just barely after the second wolf appears. Now for the big one: you're not running in straight, optimal lines. You're basically facing minutes-worth of lost time when it starts piling up towards the end of the run. You didn't really catch that when I mentioned this after your last WIP, so here's a crude picture that will hopefully explain it. Starting from just before using the red rune, the red line is basically what you did, the blue one represents what you should've done. Even disregarding the planning mistake towards the end of the level you still lose frames basically at every section possible. This applies to all the levels you showcased on the WIP, not just the graveyard, so you better improve your movement or, like I said before, it will pile up to a significant amount of lost time. Oh and I can think of at least 3 spots where a kbd could work and two that I'm certain it'll work (right at the start and after grabbing the red rune) - assuming it only works when facing a wall dead-on, otherwise you should use it constantly.
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Umm, considering that the asylum and pumpkin branches are done exactly alike, no matter which is done first, it all goes down to after which route it is faster to replenish the club. We can complete the first branch, no matter which, without replenishing the club at all. Now if we first do the pumpkins, the best place to replenish is at the basement of the house with the golden statue in the sleeping village - directly on your path, takes 2s to get at most. If doing the asylum first, the ONLY place where we can replenish is at the underground part of pumpikn gorge, which we don't even enter (the regular route is faster by quite a bit). It's a no brainer, really. @pumpkin gorge: After getting up the walls we can jump over the fence surrounding the tower in the middle area and continue from there. There's no need for the green rune and this was mentioned a fair amount of posts back. @asylum grounds: I've spent a huge amount of time just trying this level and the only place I could get up the walls is at the chess puzzle. I've put myself in various high places and tried to reach the walls from there, but all the ones I've tried are extended with an invisible wall high enough for it to be out of our reach. @gauntlet: I think it has nothing to do with height, seeing how I did it from about the middle of the slanted path using the speed hack. I'm certain that there's simply no room for error in your trajectory and you have to go clean through. This makes sense if there's a pixel perfect hole in the wall for Dan to go through - if you reach the wall while being a single pixel too high, instead of going clean through you'll stop from hitting the wall and won't have enough momentum once you fall down to the correct altitude in order to make it to the other side. The reason we could do it with the speed hack is that even if you overshoot it your speed is still locked at 127, thus making it possible for us to go through even with the most subpar trajectory. So yeah, maybe it really is a matter of height - if so, it means that instead of trying to get as high as possible you really should've tried going lower. @RAM: Actually I wonder what exactly happens when you use the replenish glitch with a weapon without quantity or percentage, lika a small sword. In the mausoleum you can recover at least two extra small swords, but it has no appearent result. Maybe it changes the value of some random ram address, which could very well be an important one. You should take a look at this with ram watch, as it may lead to something useful. Other than that I'm still out of ideas and I still can't wait for that WIP.
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IIRC doing the pumpkin branch before the asylum one is better. The only good place to replenish the club's durability is in the sleeping village, when getting the golden statue. Assuming you take this route first, you'll go through the asylum, get to the pumpkin serpent, and you'll be all out of club before you even land a hit on it. You should have about enough durability after the scarecrow fields (if not, you can replenish on this level too) in order to do the pumpkins first. @everything before scarecrow fields: What about using kbd as a form of movement? If it really doesn't work "at a funny angle", there are plenty of places where you're facing a wall dead-on anyway. Remember that you can do it with a sword. @ghost ship: Just some trivia - the boss never appears if you get to him while looping. @the time device: Wait, what? But you can get to the exit trigger straight from where you start the level probably with a single loop, two at worst. Also you should check if you can kill the pumpkin serpent with a single extra life bottle (600hp total). And I forgot to reply to your earlier post, one thing in particular: you can easily avoid taking any damage at the mausoleum boss, without wasting time. His stream of shards is actually fired in a couple of pretty big series. This basically means that with the right timing by strafing left and right using the L2 button (or whatever button it was) you avoid taking any damage. This is childishly easy even in real time and it looks cool too. Can't wait for some WIPs! edit5: The gauntlet! Care to share some detail on why it doesn't work? This doesn't make much sense to me since you can almost reach that spot with a regular dash jump. Did you try the snake guy? Locking yourself between a wall and a zombie? A full kbd without any of the above things?
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I would still advise you to figure out the gauntlet skip before anything else. There's a good chance you're wasting time right now. As for the WIP: - Taking the right hand route at the beginning is faster. - After jumping the zombies in front of the big red gate, if you aren't holding any directional keys at the moment you hit the ground, Dan won't slide and you'll be able to enter the inventory straight away. - You probably can run straight at the tombstone, instead of curving around first and change Dan's direction right before falling ontop of it. - You should enter this level at full health so you can skip getting the vial at the end, which saves only like 2-3 frames, but still. - Try experimenting with the club sequence at the boss, because I'm sure I was able to finish him at the moment the second wolf appears, instead of his mid attack. General: - You can actually jump above all enemies, instead of curving around every single one, in order to stay at the optimal trajectory - thus saving frames. - You didn't stick to a single 'correct' trajectory, instead you're basically running in often small, sometimes huge zigzags. Either you're paying too much attention to the camera, or you don't want to make Dan stutter-walk. Either way - if you don't correct this it'll pile up to multiple seconds, if not a full minute, over the course of the whole game.
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3) What do you want to time and compare again? Getting the club is faster in the following level, even in real time. 8) But using the inventory glitch at the second lift was what I repeatedly pointed out since I discovered it, so I'm not sure what you mean by 'my' route. As for the crystal caves, here's how I did it in real-time: 1) Lure a goblin to as close to the ledge as possible and close enough to the left wall for you to be able to "run lock" between him and the wall (run without moving). 2) When you're ready, change Dan's direcion to AWAY from where you want to go and do the kb dash jump. The timing can be pretty strict, because just a few frames after you change directions, Dan will slip out from the locked position. 3) You only need to pull off a pseudo kb dash jump. A proper one would be faster, but I'm not sure if it's possible in such setting. Well, I'm not sure about number one. Maybe simply running straight against a wall and doing the kb from there would work too, instead of getting the goblin first. Also, I'm not really sure if doing a run taking the "gauntlet skip" route, without knowing if it's even doable with legit means, has any point. Then again, you're already at the crystal caves, so what the hell :p.
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I know that it can be done legit and what Dan's speed/height/direction need to be, so you don't have to bother with the video. Just for the sake of confirmation: you did pull it off LEGIT, right? edit: Posted this before you edited your post. You got at least one thing wrong: We CAN be at the peak of our jump so our starting point can be located at a lower z-coordinate (eg. at the middle of the corridor). Dan will go clean through the barrier, instead of dropping straight down and clipping into the fire at floor-level. There's no need to overcomplicate this or even put it into words - just do a kb dash jump for that extra bit of distance, which I was lacking in real-time. I gave up after not being able to even do a pseudo kb for like 20 minutes. Since it's basically child's play with frame-advance, it'll take you less than this to find the optimal position, angle and input sequence. edit2: The ghost ship: We can finally skip the ENTIRE level by starting the loop basically at the start, like this. Also, I checked what's the best place to recover the club to prepare for zarok's lair and it turns out that instead of dropping straight to the exit trigger in this level, you should rather fall into the invisible wall around the crates blocking the steering wheel at the end. From there you can grab a new club from the chest and are still be able to clip back through the crates. I also took my precious time to, well, time and compare a couple of strats: First of all, we don't need the small sword at all. Not really comparing anything but you'll save around a full second if you don't grab it. (Assuming I'm not crazy and we manage to skip the dragon armor) Getting the club at the mausoleum is faster by approx. 2s, compared to the one in cemetery hill. Getting the daggers in the mausoleum is about half a second faster than in dan's crypt. You can hit the chest while still pushing the block. The (even when highly unoptimized) old, on-foot method is faster than looping in the lake by a handful of seconds. The bottle in the graveyard is a waste of time. THE ONLY PLACE we have to sacrifice time in order to regain health is at the battle with zarok. We only need to survive four rounds of contact damage and we can survive two with less than two bars of health (a single bottle). That means we only have to get two vials after the second round and with the right manipulation both are located like a step away from you at the time you need to grab them. This costs you less than a second, while grabbing the graveyard bottle is more than three.
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Downloaded MHS, found the right ram address for the gauntlet, and had some fun. We can basically scratch every idea we had about skipping this level... EXCEPT ONE. God damnit, try to clip through it with locking your speed at max a couple of times so you know what you should be aiming for. Then try and reach that point with a kb dash jump. If that fails, try to do the same but with a boost from something. We can reach that sweetspot, height-wise, even from about the middle of the corridor - we simply need some extra distance in order to skip a huge chunk of the game :d. This better work.
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Sooo... How's that video comming? Anyway, I found some new tricks: Return to the graveyard: I finally discovered a time-saver for this level. Didn't get up the cliff, but it still shortens that general part of the level by quite a bit. Here's how you skip the yellow rune. By jumping into the coffins from the tombstone you can bypass the invisible walls surrounding them (you can also get up on the roof above them and simply drop down there, but this method is faster). From there just jump towards the sweetspot from either coffin (yes, this also works from the one laying flat on the ground). It seems a bit random, but at least we know it works. Also, I checked and taking the right-hand cliff is waaaay faster than the other one, not to mention that you can jump straight to the boss trigger from there, instead of waiting for Dan to recover from the fall before being able to move again like when jumping from the left cliff. The graveyard: After you first enter the area with the turning statue, head straight and get up to the higher level by jumping onto the tombstone and jumping once more. From there (the blue part is a bit higher than the rest of the area, I could only make it from there) you can jump onto one of the tree's branches, onto the stone thingie, and finally over the invisible wall. You want to get the bottle or you don't - either way this is faster than turning the statue or taking the long way around.
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The exit trigger is in the gap between the raised parts of the track, all the way at the end. IIRC you can't reach it if you fall down on the track on either side, so you have to go straight into it when looping.
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You were able to loop because of where the camera was - that and nothing else. I knew that for some time now, but didn't bother to mention the conclusion of my research since I haven't found a way to force the camera to either stop following Dan or focusing on something else. You probably know about deactivating instances that are out of view, or in this game: out of range (since the actual direction the camera is facing is irrelevant); so I won't bother to explain WHY this works. I knew that some wierd shit occurs when you lock the camera away from where it should be during cutscenes with the free-look camera cheat (eg. in zarok's lair when you place the camera in the door you first came from right after you trigger the first cutscene, only your skeletons will spawn - that also explains why the enemies spawn if you get to close to the gates after gaining back control), but I didn't know that the game actually unloads ground or walls (maybe the ground under the water is a special case), since I couldn't move Dan in this state. Also, I was more curious what would happen if you overkill the speed, not just set it to max. Does it jump to a high negative value, goes down to 0, or what? Finding the right RAM address on the gauntlet would be a great idea at this point.
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@RAM: I was thinking of using max speed for clipping rather than long-jumping. Also, what was Dan's speed during a full kb DASH jump? If it's around 100, I wonder what will happen if you manage a legit speed-overkill (go above 127) with a push from the snake guy. @Shadow: Here. @Moat: Double hitting enemies and double hitting for the kb jump would be different. The only way I can see it happening goes like this: *) Make sure you have the club equipped and the pointer is hovering above the club when you go to the inventory window. 1) Go into the inventory. 2) Double-press select. 3) Before the inventory pops back up, start running towards the wall, then press square at the very last frame where the game still takes input from you to control Dan. 4) Press x somewhere in the following frames and throw another hit with the square button. You can do it immediately after "switching" weapons - the trick is to NOT cancel the previous strike in case it still didn't register, though. **) If you were either running or tapped a directional key in one direction right before the inventory screen popped back up, you should be able to start running again after it closes with a single tap. 5) Do the rest of the kb jump like you normally do.
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@RAM: Make sure Dan isn't moving, lock the address at eg. 100, then unlock it. Tell us what exactly happens: does it instantly drop down to 0, does it decrease with each game-step, (if the latter) what happens when you move Dan during the decrease - is the fictional speed added to the real one? Every bit of info would be helpful. @Dan's shadow: The spot I found resulted in a slanted shadow. I know what you're thinking, but you actually can stand like this in a couple of spots in the game. @Sword kb: My theory is that the kb technique works once the hit registers while you already have some speed towards the opposite direction. So it's just a matter of delaying further input for a couple of frames after the initial attack-button press when using the sword. I did it in realtime, so I'm at least sure about the execution. @Moat: Did you try to nail a double-hit kb with the club only? Check ANYWHERE if you can pull something like that off and it's a big NO-MOAT-SKIP if a technique like that isn't possible. @Tombstone-to-cliff: I assume that both methods reach the same point because of how much speed you gain from the kb depends on how close the hit registered to where Dan is. In order to get a full kb jump, the hit has to land like right in Dan's face. Also I assumed you just changed the controller to a dualshock in the settings (you can do that in epsxe, at least) and tested my method of a pseudo kb in the direction I think is optimal and going in a literally STRAIGHT line - that's the only way I think it's going to happen and I guess you'd need to use the analog stick to achieve a straight trajectory. You can't register the hit anywhere really close to Dan when standing on the tombstone (even with the sword IIRC), that's why I don't see how a full blown kb would work in this scenario, not to mention that we don't even need it - we only have to gain SOME speed in order to cover the gap and touch the cliff at the peak of Dan's jump. Maybe this will help: you can start running without moving even by a pixel - just crouch using the shield and double press from there. If nothing works you can try luring a wolf to around that area, this makes Dan aim for the wolf instead of straight ahead. Maybe this would open up more angles where the hit will register and hopefully at least one will end up being really close to Dan (like kinda hitting the floor). @Last part: Me rotting at any of my friend's place isn't really an option. Don't worry, I'm sure you'll do a great job by yourself. Just make sure to post SINGLE-level video WIPs (so you don't have to redo more than you have to, in case someone spots a mistake early in a level) - if you don't want to release them publicly just put them up on sendspace and PM the url to anyone involved.
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I've tried everything there was to try without frameadvance, without luck. I've actually managed to ALMOST get on one of those blocks (Dan's shadow would fall ontop of one, but my height was just a few pixels too short to get up). I also had an idea of kb dash jumping from where the ground is a bit higher around the blocks, back to a really short one on the lower part (the invisible walls around the blocks are REALLY low), but I couldn't get a kb dash jump to work after trying for half an hour - that's actually why I suggested this in the first place. In case that doesn't work and you DID try everything I suggested (double hit kb dash/running jump, freezing the speed value at 100+ and doing stuff in that state - I don't see why the first one wouldn't work, though I'm not sure if you could really pull off a full kb jump or just a faster pseudo one, and I'm 100% sure that a ton of speed would allow for more clipping spots when you reach the breakpoint, just need to figure out what it is and if it can be reached with in-game means), but it led to nothing, just do the run. Even if we don't skip the gauntlet, the chalice and bottle count stays as is. So no chalices and you only should pick up the first bottle in the crypt and the one in the graveyard. The only things left to figure out in this scenario is whether you can get up the cliff or over the moat in return to the graveyard, if you can cover enough distance in the polls of the ancient dead with a kb dash jump instead of luring the fatty in order to reach the exit trigger, and if looping through the lake is faster than taking the old route. I can't test any of those without frameadvance myself, so I hope you really double check everything before jumping into conclusions.
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The second bottle in dan's crypt would definitely be a waste of time since the fight with zarok only takes like 30s or so and you need like 5-10s total to pick up the vials. The bottle in the graveyard would be worth it since turning the statue and taking the route with the bottle is slower than the normal way by less than a second and I guess it'd save more than that during the fight with zarok. I'm all out of ideas for now so I'm going back to playing around the gauntlet. edit: For the gauntlet, I guess we could also get onto any of these blocks in order to progress to the right one from there and finish the level early.
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65 you say? Maybe you could get to the other side of the moat at return to the graveyard with it. Or at least you could use it as a form of transportation before you get the daring dash ability (use the sword instead of the club, I guess), or even after that (using dash). Anyway, did a quick test run today. Getting the bottle in dan's crypt would save time in zarok's lair. I'm also thinking about the bottle in the graveyard. It's because if you want to land double hits with the club on any boss you have to attack at point blank which usually results in taking a ton of contact damage. Zarok, for example, eats away a whole bottle of your health in less than a second when you try to get the most from your club swings. So at least one bottle would be necessary to even survive the fight abusing the invulnerability time you get after loosing a whole bottle and by picking up the vials the skeletons leave behind. A second bottle would dramatically extend the time we can keep hitting zarok without going for a health refill, because of the extra invulnerability time and the fact that we can pick up more vials in one go. If you manage to enter zarok's lair with the club's durability at least at 50% then I guess you won't have to do the replenish glitch at the entrance hall. Each boss takes away either approx 25% or 50%. 25% if you just jump attack (each takes away 1%), or double hit (2% each). The latter is faster, but I dunno if it's faster enough to take the extra trip to the room with the right goblins in the entrance hall. So you probably should record and compare.