I was disappointed to see that there was no interest in TASing this game yet, so I decided to create this thread and hopefully attract some of the folks that might remember this game from when they were a kid.
I am currently looking for glitches and skips that could be taken advantage of before routing anything. If nothing is found, I don't know if it'll be entertaining because it's somewhat slow sometime. However, anyone who has played this game before could very well be interested in seeing it get destroyed due to how awful the controls were in this game.
I played around with the block of stone that you can move around during the tutorial at the start and it seems that one of the corners is shifted a bit, as you can see from this picture
It only applies to collision with the level. Doesn't seem like it'll have any use however.
Any other finds are to be posted in this thread
By positioning yourself in a slightly angled orientation opposite to the load zone, you can fuck with the AI, like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm1L1iTpVzE
This should be used in the TAS for entertainment purposes
Very nice, I wasn't aware of that. I'll have to spend some time to sort through all of that and study these strats. By the way, the first post mentions a zip glitch but the recording of it is gone.
Edit: Old Wrinkle can be skipped at the very beginning but I couldn't find any use to it
this just happened
https://youtu.be/XYL5LOhMpiY
drill sergeant skip hype.
Very easy to do RTA as well: simply run into the statue at this angle, jump and let go of the stick so you don't accidentally jump out the level and die. You'll be at the top and free to walk along the walls from there
edit: not only drill sergeant skip it seems
https://youtu.be/nrlV98qj6s4
This wall's collision hitbox actually shoots way up into the sky, which is why the screen turns black. The trick is to walk along the other invisible collision boundaries that are shooting into the sky near you, and then jump into the loading zone.
Another interesting fact is that if you jump behind the wall where the jumping training was, there is no loading zone because the game never expected kingsley to be able to get there
Note that these skips are possible because the walls are slanted. Any object like this placed right next to a slanted wall should allow a similar clip. There is an exception to this however: In the same room with the drill sergeant, there are two carrots on both sides of the room, both next to perpendicular walls. I wasn't able to redo it but by running straight into them and playing with the side stepping, I was able once to jump out of the world. I'm gonna play around with it some more because it could prove to be essential to some other skips.
edit2: It it possible to skip the Armorer at the end with VERY precise jumping and sidestepping. (jump diagonally to the wall of the small warp cabin/room then sidestep in the air so you land right outside of the npc's trigger circular zone) This means he does not take the dagger back but it also means another thing: Old Wrinkle does not show up in the room after and the storyline does not advance, meaning that the king does not give you the grape key.
If a skip was found for this key, this would be the potential route for the start:
1. Progress normally, until the fight against the drill instructor
2. Clip into the sky using the statues
3. Jump down onto the load zone
4. Progress normally (perform glitch to skip one of the tutorial dialogue from the movable rock statue?)
5. Armorer speech skip (assuming it doesn't completely halt the storyline)
6. Grape lock wall skip
Here is a video of the armorer skip
https://youtu.be/0cHUPoDG5xQ
Again, completely out of reach for RTA. The angle has to be perfect and while it may not look like it, I'm completely hogging the npc's trigger circle
Thanks, this is my first steps into the world of TASing and it's been fun so far to search for exploits in a game that is still relatively unexplored.
Adelina skip (skip the shield)
https://youtu.be/P4Q-G6Ci3oI
This is actually slower than talking to her because it requires a steep angle (her trigger zone is too wide) and thus, a slow setup. It doesn't seem like it has any impacts on the game later as well so it doesn't really save time anywhere else. I still uploaded it for archival purposes however.
What's funny though is that the shield only serves as decoration. If you play further into the game without it, you can block hits just fine with your arms.
Any corners in the first room that will allow you to clip up and out? (couches, desk, bed)
Any of those would be slower. Talking to her takes around one second since you can just spam X and O to go through the text really quickly.
However, I do have some extremely awesome news. Using my newfound knowledge of slanted walls, I began searching for more of those.
And there just so happens to be one that is conveniently placed in the grape key room!
As to actually performing it, this one is much less RTA friendly. It requires a more precise angle because there's actually room on the other side, here
You just end up on that side if your angle of attack is too direct. Instead, you need to shift it a bit once you get inside the wall. Once you're up there in the ceiling, the path to the loading zone is much further than training room skip.
I have not performed it yet, and there's a good chance that it will softlock the game instead when coming out if the grape wall doesn't go down.
edit: It's impossible. The second wall you'd have to jump on doesn't extend up into the sky so you can't stand on it. We'd have to find some new strat to make it possible
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2174
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
oxysoft wrote:
By the way, the first post mentions a zip glitch but the recording of it is gone.
It shows that you can climb up on the roof, kinda, of the Root Beer Monastery in the 3rd world. The idea was to get around the requirement to collect the password for the guard.
-----------------------------
You've done amazing progress so far, I did not dream of the game being this broken, I suspect there are many places in dungeons where things can be skipped thanks to this, you might want to play with slanted walls (if there are any) in the Root Beer Monastery cellar. This could potentially skip the entire dungeon (don't know what that would do to the game-state though).
By the way, the first post mentions a zip glitch but the recording of it is gone.
You've done amazing progress so far, I did not dream of the game being this broken, I suspect there are many places in dungeons where things can be skipped thanks to this, you might want to play with slanted walls (if there are any) in the Root Beer Monastery cellar. This could potentially skip the entire dungeon (don't know what that would do to the game-state though).
I already had a feeling the collisions in this game were fucked from my hunt a couple days ago with the stone block, all that remained was to find ways to exploit it.
Diving into the first dungeon, I found another skip using the fish guys. This one isn't very hard to do RTA but it's unreliable as hell.
https://youtu.be/c8969WJ_guM
Not only is it unreliable, but enemies can actually clip onto that ledge with you and push you off, as seen in this video. Oddly, they can also die instantly when they clip into the wall as well.
Edit: Found a way to softlock the game
https://youtu.be/oAdNdgKhkBo
I'm gonna conclude today's hunt with the route for the slime room, combining Warepipe's early cloud checkpoint strat and a new skip.
https://youtu.be/PR1ggaxKYMg
It's doable with one enemy and clipping through the wall from a hit, as shown in the video, but it's easier when the second enemy arrives and proceeds to shove you and the first enemy UP the wall (not through!)
What's interesting though in this one is that I clipped through a 90 degree corner using just a hit from an enemy, which I didn't know was possible before this. I thought you always needed to bunch up 2-3 mobs into one spot so you get pushed out. I might go back and check if I can skip anything else using these enemies.
I did try clips like this earlier using crabs and spiders but I don't think these shove you far enough to actually clip through.
solarplex wrote:
unreliable during an RTA, but not for a TAS :P
Absolutely. I'm just mentioning in the case that anyone would be interested in these strats for RTA.
edit:
I was able to clip twice through the wall with the pineapple key lock using spiders spawned from the two pressure plates for the grape key. It is insanely difficult and consisted of me just running straight into the wall, hoping for a miraculous spider hit.
I *believe* it might have to do with the twitching when you run into the corner. I must have had the perfect angle and got hit the very frame I twitched partially inside the wall. The first time, I believe there was only one spider so the amount of spiders shouldn't matter.
In any case, this must be studied more because it would be an excellent skip (would save around a minute or two) and could open the door to more such clips. The corner used is a very obtuse angle which contradicts the earlier assumption that only very acute angled corners are fucked. It goes without saying that this is TAS ONLY, no way in hell would it be viable for RTA.
I'm gonna conclude today's hunt with the route for the slime room, combining Warepipe's early cloud checkpoint strat and a new skip.
You too? congratulations...
It's okay Warspire, someday people will get your name right.
I tried looking for speedruns of this game but everything google links to twitch is so old they havent kept the videos (unless the person highlighted the video). Only video I have to go on is the one sitting youtube video. Cant Wait to see more from your hunting oxysoft!
Ok guys, I found a new way to clip into walls, which opens up many new skips. Not only were we able to clip into sharp acute angle corners before, but when a tall enemy is available, we can also clip through 90 degree angle corners. The following skips were performed with this strategy.
https://youtu.be/Bf741W84I48https://youtu.be/VmVNkV7ALuMhttps://youtu.be/MEmDzinccrchttps://youtu.be/C1QyIEcQgAchttps://youtu.be/1bE1s38QxNY
Note: skipping snuff actually softlocks the game. The room with Lucy doesn't have a warp out trigger when you don't have the fork and knife from Snuff. Why is that even a thing? No idea. What if that warp out trigger was simply moved someplace else in that map though? Some memory inspection might be interesting. I've seen it happen though: monsters around me instantly dying unexpectedly, for no apparent reasons, when I clipped in walls. What if the same was applicable for a boss ?!? Would we even get the true knight sword and gloves if we didn't have the fork and knives? so many questions ...
90 degree corner clip instructions
Now I shall explain how it's done and I'll give an example rather than a general case explanation, should be easier this way. It's a bit harder than the acute corner clip but once you get it down, it's actually not too hard to do at all.
This is our corner
A
--------|
^ | B
0 |
M |
I have labeled the two sides A and B, and kingsley is the little zero. The arrow above him signifies his orientation obviously. Finally, M is the monster. In this example, we'll assume we'd like to clip into B. To clip into A, simply invert the settings I am explaining here.
Note: it must be a tall monster, these give good knockback. Spiders, crabs etc. have worked ONCE for me and in 30 minutes of testing after that, it never happened again. This goes without saying that we must study small monster clips more for the TAS. I should probably record the inputs when I'm testing this stuff...
Now, the trick is to sidestep towards B while running into A. Thus, you are seemingly smudged in the corner. Simply jump while the enemy is attacking you. It might be good to freeze your health while you practice this so you don't keep dying. After doing it a few time, you'll realize the timing and it becomes quite a reliable way to clip. It's a good clip for speedruns.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The third dungeon
1. Behind the mayor's house, is a slanted hill which lets you clip into the house, but you get warped on top of the house before you can hit the loading zone. It could be possible however if we found a way to stop the warping.
2. There is unfortunately no skip to quickly get into the catacombs, but there is a way to shorten this. In the second dungeon, there is a grape key early on that can easily be skipped with the new skip presented in this post. (haven't tried) The idea would be to perform the rare pineapple key skip at the beginning with the spiders, then skip the grape key as well. Now, that grape key is easily obtained by stepping on two pressure plates which are needed anyway because they spawn the spiders. So we could theoretically snatch the grape key then skip the next two gates, and use that grape key to activate the door to catacombs early, but I have no idea if the game actually reuses the same key item or simply applies the same sprite to two different key items.
3. To activate the battle with Clarence you actually need to get the three ingredient items, so there is no way to skip them. I wonder if we were to exit the catacombs early, if it would register as having beaten Clarence. There is no easy way to get up to the exit easily though. No magic corners and no good monster for the 90deg corners. The only monsters we have are small monsters, with the same type of knockback as spiders and crabs. There may be an incredibly hard clip that is possible with them but I have no idea.
4. If we can't clip up there, we can at least use sub-skips to quickly gather the ingredients. If you jump onto a pickup item (key, ingredient, etc.) from way up above, you don't actually die, it cancels the death and you are able to live. The room with the caged green leaf has an interesting skip which I will upload later if I can all successfully perform it. First, you use the hammer guys to clip on the walls. These walls extend up to 10000 units high, the same as some other walls we've seen in this game. So from there, jump onto the item and survive. Now, you would think there is no way out but after tinkering with the idea for a bit, I came to the interesting realization: the enemies in that room are a perfect match. When you are inside that cage, they will attempt to hit you from outside. Their hammer extends way into the cage, and it's possible to clip back up the walls. In fact, I have done it once this morning. Assuming we don't have another case of adjacent wall that is much lower, we should be able to walk these high walls and drop back onto the loading zone.
By the way, this forum should have spoilers that you can reveal and hide like on other forums, so you could put videos in them and it wouldn't load them until you actually expand it. This page is starting to load slowly with all the videos ...
Warepire wrote:
oxysoft wrote:
I'm gonna conclude today's hunt with the route for the slime room, combining Warepipe's early cloud checkpoint strat and a new skip.
You too? congratulations...
Hahaha, that's how the guy on the SDA forum called you so many times so I must have just copied that into my memory
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2174
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
You don't need to actually put the videos into video tags, also, for all these, please make bk2s that start from save-states and demonstrate them with input, to host next to the YT videos.
This is also starting to build up to be enough information to give the game a Wiki page.
I found a really cool trick just now which will save about a second and can be done RTA.
https://youtu.be/xu54YyfngUU
I wasn't quite sure how this happened at first so I loaded up no$psx and IDA and analyzed the assembly until I realized something interesting. When you go through optional text boxes in the game, (i.e talking to side npcs) you can press triangle to just end it there, rather than having to go through all of it.
I noticed that if you press triangle at the end of a chat with an npc, this byte which indicates that the text must end prematurely lingers and stays enabled. It only gets set back to 0 when you talk to another npc. What is nice however is that the training text boxes do not set this byte back to 0, and thus, Kingsley is able to walk again as soon as the text boxes begin to display.
Finally, speeches that are unskippable, (i.e old wrinkle in the room prior) will accept the triangle input right at the end, meaning you can set this byte at the end of an unskippable speech.
tldr just spam triangle (or learn to time it) at the end of Old Wrinkle's speech in the room before and you'll be free to walk during the training text boxes.
Warepire wrote:
You don't need to actually put the videos into video tags, also, for all these, please make bk2s that start from save-states and demonstrate them with input, to host next to the YT videos.
This is also starting to build up to be enough information to give the game a Wiki page.
You don't really need to see the inputs, video should be good enough to reproduce these tricks. I'm definitely going to record the inputs though once I build up enough courage to fuck with the more enigmatic and rare spider clips.
And I'd be down to fill a wiki page for this game if the admins give us one
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2174
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
oxysoft wrote:
I found a really cool trick just now which will save about a second and can be done RTA.
https://youtu.be/xu54YyfngUU
I wasn't quite sure how this happened at first so I loaded up no$psx and IDA and analyzed the assembly until I realized something interesting. When you go through optional text boxes in the game, (i.e talking to side npcs) you can press triangle to just end it there, rather than having to go through all of it.
I noticed that if you press triangle at the end of a chat with an npc, this byte which indicates that the text must end prematurely lingers and stays enabled. It only gets set back to 0 when you talk to another npc. What is nice however is that the training text boxes do not set this byte back to 0, and thus, Kingsley is able to walk again as soon as the text boxes begin to display.
Finally, speeches that are unskippable, (i.e old wrinkle in the room prior) will accept the triangle input right at the end, meaning you can set this byte at the end of an unskippable speech.
tldr just spam triangle (or learn to time it) at the end of Old Wrinkle's speech in the room before and you'll be free to walk during the training text boxes.
This solved the scenario I found once with the arrow pickup text box during the training. See the SDA thread.
oxysoft wrote:
And I'd be down to fill a wiki page for this game if the admins give us one
Request one on IRC, and also request to become an Editor so you can update it.
I found a really cool trick just now which will save about a second and can be done RTA.
https://youtu.be/xu54YyfngUU
I wasn't quite sure how this happened at first so I loaded up no$psx and IDA and analyzed the assembly until I realized something interesting. When you go through optional text boxes in the game, (i.e talking to side npcs) you can press triangle to just end it there, rather than having to go through all of it.
I noticed that if you press triangle at the end of a chat with an npc, this byte which indicates that the text must end prematurely lingers and stays enabled. It only gets set back to 0 when you talk to another npc. What is nice however is that the training text boxes do not set this byte back to 0, and thus, Kingsley is able to walk again as soon as the text boxes begin to display.
Finally, speeches that are unskippable, (i.e old wrinkle in the room prior) will accept the triangle input right at the end, meaning you can set this byte at the end of an unskippable speech.
tldr just spam triangle (or learn to time it) at the end of Old Wrinkle's speech in the room before and you'll be free to walk during the training text boxes.
This solved the scenario I found once with the arrow pickup text box during the training. See the SDA thread.
oxysoft wrote:
And I'd be down to fill a wiki page for this game if the admins give us one
Request one on IRC, and also request to become an Editor so you can update it.
The wiki page has been created and I have started to add some content
http://tasvideos.org/GameResources/PSX/KingsleysAdventure.html
Coming up, it might be interesting to investigate the intrinsic details of all these clips and upwarps. (i.e the perfect angles for the 90 degree corner upwarps, when to jump when getting hit, etc.)
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2174
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
Nice.
Question: In the glitched training text box state, can you jump?
There's a trick with the text box you demo'd, and that is that you can jump before it triggers, and land on the moving platform, closing the text box as you wait to be able to jump the next gap.
Or would this trick make the above mentioned trick obsolete?
Nice.
Question: In the glitched training text box state, can you jump?
There's a trick with the text box you demo'd, and that is that you can jump before it triggers, and land on the moving platform, closing the text box as you wait to be able to jump the next gap.
Or would this trick make the above mentioned trick obsolete?
There is a byte that freezes character inputs (so anything but the two camera related shoulder buttons) and using this new trick makes it so that this byte is never set to 1, so it does indeed obsolete the trick you mentioned. That is, only for the non npc text boxes. As explained in the post for this trick, the "cancel chat" byte is set back to 0 when you talk to another npc, but not for non-npc text boxes. Although I didn't mention it in my first post, this trick can obviously be used with the npc at the end of the jumping course to skip the other text boxes later (assuming the drill sergeant is skipped)
Edit:
Actually, you stop for 3-4 frames when the box is triggered but you don't stop when you jump so I think it might be worth it to jump when it is activated to save these frames. But since you move slower in air, it may not be worth it.
Also, it's decided: skipping the grape key for the castle basement will softlock the game when coming out. Getting out of the catacombs without beating Clarence will also softlock the game. I haven't found skips for those two, I just changed my coordinates in memory to test it. No need to search for skips for these areas anymore.
I think I will begin TASing the start (pre-sea town stuff) because it's highly unlikely that the route will change.
what an interesting mechanic
https://youtu.be/9b2mczdQva0
So it's possible to rotate and sidestep while activating a switch but here's the kicker: the game checks if there's a switch near your when you press square, then checks it again a dozen frames later when actually activating the switch.
I was disappointed to see that there was no interest in TASing this game yet, so I decided to create this thread and hopefully attract some of the folks that might remember this game from when they were a kid.
I am currently looking for glitches and skips that could be taken advantage of before routing anything. If nothing is found, I don't know if it'll be entertaining because it's somewhat slow sometime. However, anyone who has played this game before could very well be interested in seeing it get destroyed due to how awful the controls were in this game.
I played around with the block of stone that you can move around during the tutorial at the start and it seems that one of the corners is shifted a bit, as you can see from this picture
It only applies to collision with the level. Doesn't seem like it'll have any use however.
Any other finds are to be posted in this thread
As to actually performing it, this one is much less RTA friendly. It requires a more precise angle because there's actually room on the other side, here
You just end up on that side if your angle of attack is too direct. Instead, you need to shift it a bit once you get inside the wall. Once you're up there in the ceiling, the path to the loading zone is much further than training room skip.
I have not performed it yet, and there's a good chance that it will softlock the game instead when coming out if the grape wall doesn't go down.
edit: It's impossible. The second wall you'd have to jump on doesn't extend up into the sky so you can't stand on it. We'd have to find some new strat to make it possible
