BizHawk Lua Script

Information details

• The first number is the ID of a surface.

• The second piece tells if it is a floor (f), wall (w) or something else (?).

• The third piece tells if it has pushed you (p) or not (n). It may also show "behind", indicating you're touching it but not being pushed because your hitbox was behind the surface prior to movement for this frame.

• The last number tells how far it pushed you, or if it did not push you how far [in the direction it would have pushed you] your kart moved anyway. If this movment is 820 or greater, the surface will not push you. You must get pushed for the surface to have its normal effects.

• Your kart's hitbox is a blue circle. Your kart's hitbox is actually a sphere.

• The white line on the blue circle represents your Movement vector. A green line represents the surface normal vector of the floor you're on. A red line represents the surface normal vector of a surface you are touching but not pushed by.

• White triangles represent floors (and other non-wall surfaces). Orange triangles (generally will appear as lines with the 2D top-down view) are walls you are not touching, and yellow ones are walls you are touching.

• Any surface you are touching is filled in. A red fill means it has not pushed you. A green fill means it is the floor you are "most on", which is the one controlling the slope of the floor your kart is on.

• The nearest object, if it has a hitbox the script knows how to draw. This will be cyan color. Boxy objects will also have a white wireframe. Spherical objects will have a white circle on them (and a white circle on your kart hitbox) indicating relative depth from the current perspective. If the white circles do not overlap, you are not touching the object.

Tricks and game mechanics

• Prolonged Rocket Boost (PRB): If you get a start boost and keep using MTs fast enough that your boost timer never reaches 0, you can drive offroad without losing any speed. This can also be done with a boost pad instead of the starting boost.
  • Using a mushroom boost will set a different boost timer. When this timer hits 0 PRB will be lost.

• Increasing maximum speed: Fast falling and hopping from uphill slopes increase your maximum speed. This of course means you are in the air and cannot accelerate. However maximum speed does not return to its normal value immediately upon landing, so you can keep some of this speed for a short time on the ground or hop again to take it into the air. PRB prevents these increases to maximum speed.
  • The amount of the increase from hopping from an uphill slope depends on your kart's orientation relative to the slope. If you face more directly upward, you gain more speed. This continues to apply in the air, so turning in the air can increase or decrease max speed.

• Fast fall: When making a large jump, it is usually beneficial to hold up. Not doing so could cause you to slow down when your boost wears out. This happens because pressing up increases your maximum speed Max Sp, keeping it above current speed even after your boost wears out. Fast falling also increases your air speed multiplier, if you did not jump with the R button. (Air speed multiplier does not apply during jumps.)

• Starting Turn: Turning while not drifting slows you down through Turn loss. However, there is one frame before you start moving when pressing left/right will change Turn loss without actually turning your kart. By pressing left/right on this frame, and then the other direction the next frame, you can turn a bit without losing any speed.

• Lap Timer Bug: Mario Kart DS allows you to have a lap time that is not an interval of 1/60th of a second (1 frame). However, this partial-frame time is NOT used as the starting time of your next lap's timer. Thus, any "time" between crossing the finish line and the end of the frame is not counted. This means it is usually best to have one frame where you are just slightly before the finish line and then cross it on the next frame.

• Driving into the air: Normally, drifting into the air (e.g., going off a ramp) slows you down. To prevent this slow-down, drive off while your drift angle is near 0. This can't always be done, but is very easy to do in places like GCN Luigi Circuit when driving off the boost pads. This slowdown is a result of air loss and depends on the difference between Target and Movement. The reason having drift angle slows you down is that Target ignores drift angle while in the air.

• Tight/Wide Drifting: Pressing outside (left on a right drift or vice versa) in a drift soon after a hop will cause you to turn more inside than pressing neutral (neither left or right). In the case of ROB's BLS kart at boost speed, this effect lasts 10 frames. Each frame reduces the strength of the effect. The strength of this effect depends on your kart's current speed. It is much smaller when not boosting. It also depends on hopping, so a slip drift will not have this effect.
  • Note that this does not happen on the first frame after landing. In order to charge a MT as fast as possible while turning as tight as possible, do not press outside to start the charging on the first frame possible; wait 1 frame so that pressing outside will turn you inside.
  • Also, this effect continues to apply beyond the point where pressing outside makes you turn less than pressing neutral. Meaning, you do not reach your maximum drifting radius until several frames later.

• Drift turning in air: When you are in the air during a drift, pressing either left or right will slow your turn, eventually stopping the turn. Not pressing either will result in turning inside. The amount you turn is proportional to how much you would turn when pressing outside on the ground. So like "tight/wide drifting", this effect is strongest soon after landing from a hop. Also, the rate of turning does not change while in the air.

• Left+Right: Pressing left and right at the same time turns you exactly as if you were only holding left. However, the right press can still be used to charge a MT. (This only works if you were already holding left the frame before you press left+right.)

• Exiting a drift: Turning loss does not take effect when drifting, but is changed by pressing left/right. Press left/right just before exiting a drift to get it as low as possible. (When drifting tight, pressing 2 frames neutral, 2 frames outside, 1 frame inside to charge, 1 frame outside+release gets it very low. When drifting wide, 2 neutral, 1 inside to charge, 1 inside+release gets it very low.)

• Slowing down: The best way to slow down from top speed is not to simply press B. Pressing A+B will decrease your speed by a percentage each frame. At high speeds, this percentage is a greater decrease than the fixed decrease from simply pressing B.

• Slippery slowdown: Because Movement vector's X and Z components change independently, a slippery surface can result in a decrease of the movement vector's magnitude. For example, say you are moving along the X axis and have zero movement on the Z axis and then quickly turn 90 degrees. The X component of the movement vector will move towards 0 and the Z component will move towards 1 (aka 4096) at the same rate. If they both get half way, you'll be moving at a 45 degree angle but significantly slower than you would normally since 0.5 is less than the sine of 45 degrees (or, 2 times square root of 2). As a result, it is generally best to move as straight as possible through the mud in Luigi's Mansion or SNES Choco Island 2.

• Wall clip: When you hit a wall (or other wall-like obstacle), your drift angle is set to zero. If you hit the wall at the very end of the wall, you can move past it on the next frame and so go around a corner very tightly. This is somewhat easier on low-grip surfaces, since the slipperiness makes it easier to move past the end of the wall on the frame after hitting it.
  • The amount a wall slows you down depends on the relative angle between your Target movement vector and the wall. Moving near parallel to the wall will minimize speed loss, but increases the distance you must move in the one frame after hitting the wall. (This is because your hitbox is a sphere; if you are moving parallel to the wall and touching it you are necessarily at least 1 hitbox radius away from being fully past the end.) Boxes, pipes, and mission gates can be clipped with no speed loss.

• Super bounce: If you bounce and hop at the same time, the vertical speed of the bounce and of the hop will stack and you will get much more height than either one alone.

• Height from walls: When you touch a collision surface, either wall or floor, your Movment vector's Y component is immediately set to match the Target vector's Y component. While you are in the air, the target vector depends on kart orientation where slow falling increases the Y component. It also lags behind Pitch, so if you slow fall and then bounce, then immediately touch a wall, you will get the increased Y component from slowfalling. This results in your Speed moving you upward as well as forward. Combine this with a boost and a super bounce to go incredibly high. This is how the Waluigi Pinball shortcut is done. Additionally, hopping increases Target vector's Y component with a maximum being two frames after the hop. So stopping touching the wall 2 frames after the hop will maximize height.
  • The X and Z components of Movement vector are also updated when touching a wall. They change the same as they would on the ground, and so this change depends on surface grip even when you are in the air.
  • It is also possible to use the increased Y component from hopping alone to gain extra height on flat ground. When boosting this can be just enough to lead to a bounce.