Axiom Verge

Edit history:

Synophis: 2015-05-11 02:32:21 pm

2015-05-11 01:14:56 pm

Nice. I like the idea of no save warp run as I think that save warps make the runs a bit too easy. I also like the fact, that the no save warp route must kill Gir-Tab because the Gir-Tab quick kill is really fun to do.

I tried to glitch through a couple of walls, but failed. My intention was to enter the final area early by drilling through a wall but I couldn't manage to clip the drill through. I also collected all the size nodes, but it made no difference.

I'm currently waiting for the patch to truly perfect a run, but I did do an ok hard run (39:12):

Not much to say, the first sequence until the upgraded address disruptor is pretty tricky to do fast and there's still a lot of time to be gained by better health management. The latter part is about the same as playing on normal, so pretty easy. Sentinel can be rough, if one of the random projectiles hit you at the wrong moment and screws up the rhythm.

edit: I think the drilling through lasers has been patched. The patch changed the drill mechanic and added a knockback, which probably causes the glitch not to work anymore. At least I spent quite a long time trying to do that, but didn't succeed.

Nice. I like the idea of no save warp run as I think that save warps make the runs a bit too easy. I also like the fact, that the no save warp route must kill Gir-Tab because the Gir-Tab quick kill is really fun to do.

I tried to glitch through a couple of walls, but failed. My intention was to enter the final area early by drilling through a wall but I couldn't manage to clip the drill through. I also collected all the size nodes, but it made no difference.

I'm currently waiting for the patch to truly perfect a run, but I did do an ok hard run (39:12):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae3Hn9n91Ls

Not much to say, the first sequence until the upgraded address disruptor is pretty tricky to do fast and there's still a lot of time to be gained by better health management. The latter part is about the same as playing on normal, so pretty easy. Sentinel can be rough, if one of the random projectiles hit you at the wrong moment and screws up the rhythm.

edit: I think the drilling through lasers has been patched. The patch changed the drill mechanic and added a knockback, which probably causes the glitch not to work anymore. At least I spent quite a long time trying to do that, but didn't succeed.

Heidrage

2015-05-11 02:18:00 pm

Willing to teach you the impossible

Anyone figure out how to do this?

Synophis

Edit history:

Synophis: 2015-05-17 11:59:13 am

Synophis: 2015-05-17 04:00:36 am

Synophis: 2015-05-17 03:57:13 am

Synophis: 2015-05-17 03:56:31 am

Synophis: 2015-05-16 03:59:46 pm

Synophis: 2015-05-15 03:48:53 pm

Synophis: 2015-05-15 03:47:05 pm

Synophis: 2015-05-15 05:25:24 am

2015-05-15 05:23:12 am

Found another trick:

There needs to be enough vertical space for the swinging movement. If the ceiling is too close, the trick doesn't work. Seems to only go through walls, which are one tile wide. I haven't found anything useful for it yet and considering most of the current routes skip the grapple, it's already a time loss just to get it. You can get out of the hallucination with this, but upon arriving to hallucination, your drone is disabled until you defeat the Vision.

I've also been checking out some streams of the PC version and so far the biggest change I've noticed is that the default drone shot range has been massively increased. The range upgrade will no longer be required, I think. Other than that, saving seems to be faster on the PC. I asked about the saving from Tom and it's due to PC having faster disk access speed. Current any% route only saves once so it's not that big of a deal (losing maybe a little over a second compared to PC).

I'm also really interested in seeing the new final boss, so if someone could record it, it would be really nice.

edit: I just saw the new final boss and there's definitely a set pattern to practice for. I'm really interested in seeing what people come up with to do this fight. My initial thoughts are that because the first cycle now has laser drones, it would probably be best to keep the laser drones alive. Lasers are quite easy to avoid compared to the normal tri-shot drones, which come during the second cycle.

edit2: Apparently the default drone range hasn't been increased, I was just watching some stream, which had got the range upgrade before actually acquiring the drone. I saw a bit more of the final boss and it seems like you can manipulate the enemies position by constantly jumping and dashing upwards. This way the enemies should stay at the top so you can just spam away with the kilver. Obviously I haven't tried these out myself because I need to wait for the patch but that's something for people to try out.

Also, here's the god mode passcode for whatever reason you may need it: AXIOGXXJYCYA

Found another trick:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4rUFqO2zR4

There needs to be enough vertical space for the swinging movement. If the ceiling is too close, the trick doesn't work. Seems to only go through walls, which are one tile wide. I haven't found anything useful for it yet and considering most of the current routes skip the grapple, it's already a time loss just to get it. You can get out of the hallucination with this, but upon arriving to hallucination, your drone is disabled until you defeat the Vision.

I've also been checking out some streams of the PC version and so far the biggest change I've noticed is that the default drone shot range has been massively increased. The range upgrade will no longer be required, I think. Other than that, saving seems to be faster on the PC. I asked about the saving from Tom and it's due to PC having faster disk access speed. Current any% route only saves once so it's not that big of a deal (losing maybe a little over a second compared to PC).

I'm also really interested in seeing the new final boss, so if someone could record it, it would be really nice.

edit: I just saw the new final boss and there's definitely a set pattern to practice for. I'm really interested in seeing what people come up with to do this fight. My initial thoughts  are that because the first cycle now has laser drones, it would probably be best to keep the laser drones alive. Lasers are quite easy to avoid compared to the normal tri-shot drones, which come during the second cycle.

edit2: Apparently the default drone range hasn't been increased, I was just watching some stream, which had got the range upgrade before actually acquiring the drone. I saw a bit more of the final boss and it seems like you can manipulate the enemies position by constantly jumping and dashing upwards. This way the enemies should stay at the top so you can just spam away with the kilver. Obviously I haven't tried these out myself because I need to wait for the patch but that's something for people to try out.

Also, here's the god mode passcode for whatever reason you may need it: AXIOGXXJYCYA

scottm

2015-05-16 10:56:53 am

Quote from Heidrage:

Anyone figure out how to do this?
(shotgun early)

I believe it has been patched along with shooting through the laser doors

Zet

2015-05-16 11:45:42 am

The game has been out on Steam for a few days. Has anybody tried running the pc/mac/linux version yet, are there any differences/new strats/impossible strats?

MrZeroKage

Edit history:

MrZeroKage: 2015-05-18 12:57:14 am

2015-05-17 08:48:37 pm

I just finished my first play on PC. from what I can tell the final boss fight has change I think its from the patch talked about before. I learning the speedrun route from Synophis youtube videos might start doing any% runs next week. dunno for sure Witcher 3 might have something to say about that.

duckfist

2015-05-18 09:01:40 am

I've been playing it quite a bit on Steam, and I've beaten the game a few times now. The final boss certainly does not have that sweet spot in the top right. Unless there's some critical strategy I'm missing, the fight is mostly a damage race and pretty heavily dependent on health drops. I haven't played the PS4 version, so if there are other more subtle differences, I haven't noticed them.

I've got a lot more I'd like to say about this game once I've collected my thoughts on it more.

Zet

Edit history:

Zet: 2015-05-18 09:16:12 am

2015-05-18 09:16:00 am

I noticed, when you switch weapons with the right control stick, you'll get a sub-menu; when you switch via keyboard, it's in real time. Haven't found an option to turn on real time weapon change with the controller. How is that handled on the PS4 version? Otherwise, you might save quite some frames by switching weapons via Keyboard.

Synophis

Edit history:

Synophis: 2015-05-18 11:11:47 am

Synophis: 2015-05-18 09:51:00 am

2015-05-18 09:49:58 am

You can change the weapons in real time when you first bind a weapon to the quick swap. I guess keyboard can bind a few more weapons, but I think keyboard loses on some other aspects compared to controller.

The new final boss is a lot better than it was before. I'm sure a consistent strategy can be figured out with enough experimentation. Like as heidrage figured out, you can pretty much destroy the drones with red coat + kilver spam. The enemy behavior can also be manipulated, so people just need to try out different things, maybe the AI can be still confused some how.

I did a couple of runs today and improved my any% to 37:46 and also did a save warpless run in 49:05.

The best part of the save warpless run is the Gir-Tab quick kill (loud sound warning):

Btw. did everyone already know that you can also cancel the drone cooldown with the drill? Today I failed pretty much every Ukkin-Na climb because my R1 didn't work properly, so I played around with it and found this out. Using the drill seemed really consistent.

You can change the weapons in real time when you first bind a weapon to the quick swap. I guess keyboard can bind a few more weapons, but I think keyboard loses on some other aspects compared to controller.

The new final boss is a lot better than it was before. I'm sure a consistent strategy can be figured out with enough experimentation. Like as heidrage figured out, you can pretty much destroy the drones with red coat + kilver spam. The enemy behavior can also be manipulated, so people just need to try out different things, maybe the AI can be still confused some how.

I did a couple of runs today and improved my any% to 37:46 and also did a save warpless run in 49:05.

The best part of the save warpless run is the Gir-Tab quick kill (loud sound warning):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjqmoo-iE7w

Btw. did everyone already know that you can also cancel the drone cooldown with the drill? Today I failed pretty much every Ukkin-Na climb because my R1 didn't work properly, so I played around with it and found this out. Using the drill seemed really consistent.

Heidrage

2015-05-18 10:52:07 am

Willing to teach you the impossible

I just learned the ps4 quick change mechanics. You can set a quick select by entering the weapon menu and pressing L3 or R3. I set Axiom Disrupter to R3 and it allows me to switch back and forth between that and any other weapon I want given the L3 is not selected.

That Quick Kill is rather hard. I have not drilled it yet to get it proper but I can get the first half. As of right now it is my least favorite fight.

I am currently at 1:02:xx on warpless. I can easily get it down if I just practice a few rooms. The Grapple glitch is used in this run as well.

I think this category would be best suited for a marathon as it shows off a bit more of the game. That said, anyone who plays this game can tell you that any category is a rather awesome watch.

TenFootPit

Edit history:

TenFootPit: 2015-05-18 03:15:36 pm

2015-05-18 03:12:22 pm

Too many games to run these days as it is, and now this one drops and threatens to take over my life.

So is the current final boss the one with the new AI implemented? Or did the dev still have plans to work on that?

I actually learned the drill first, for the drone cancel jump. It seems to work pretty well for me, although I didn't experiment too much with using the code gun because I didn't want to give myself a case of stupid fingers.

duckfist

Edit history:

duckfist: 2015-05-18 05:20:49 pm

duckfist: 2015-05-18 04:08:09 pm

2015-05-18 04:04:48 pm

Here's a wall of text. Just some thoughts on the game, some stuff I found, cleared up some facts about Speedrun Mode, and general venting.

Mechanics:
In the first half of the game, the movement is very simple and non-technical. The basic movement in the game is closer to SotN with a fixed velocity and no horizontal acceleration - there's hardly any movement technique past basic platforming, unlike Super Metroid, which is very technical even without any powerups.

Obtaining the first Security Drone upgrade is the first potential for some advanced movement, since you have the option to launch the drone to collect items or activate triggers, and then detonate it to warp back to Trace.

The Trench Coat is the first item that unlocks some real technique - while it's still much slower than the Red Coat, it's clearly faster to dash at every opportunity than to just walk. I had some issues with accidentally double-tapping when simply trying to position myself, but I eventually got it under control.

Drone Teleport is the next big thing. Without the Enhanced Drone Launch, it's not particularly useful, but with it, it clearly becomes the fastest way to move at that point. The technique behind teleporting and cancelling is really badass, and in combination with the Red Coat, movement in this game becomes disgustingly good and fast. With practice, you can climb long vertical corridors very quickly, change directions in mid-air to navigate passageways quickly, and bypass many enemies and obstacles. It's important to realize that after launching the drone but before deploying it that Trace is still vulnerable, so you must time the deployment and teleport in such a way not to take too much damage. Also, by immediately double-tapping as you teleport, you can effectively emerge from the teleport invincible. By getting good at this I was able to climb the final stretch to the end of the game consistently without taking damage, and quickly.

So after the Security Drone, Drone Teleport, Enhanced Drone Launch, and the Red Coat are acquired, the movement becomes really technical and complex. I find it unfortunate that this capability is only in the last 10 minutes of a speedrun. Still, once you have these upgrades, the movement is very cool in this game. It's challenging to be fast and hard to execute well.

Sadly, almost every boss is awful. The crab boss is an extremely slow fight casually that forces you to use otherwise completely useless weapons to chip away at it forever. The hornet fight is also frustrating casually, but the quick kill strat interesting, although the consistency is weird. The second-to-last boss (not the optional one) is almost great, except for the randomly moving sperm spray pattern that he does - it's another instance where you can do nothing but stand in the corner and hope you don't get hit. The first boss is actually a great boss fight. The following two are alright - they certainly showcase some cool graphics, but they're both extremely easy and can be cheesed with little effort on the first try. And, of course, the final boss is bullshit. The drones can be lead around, but they can't be reliably dodged, making it a damage race. Since health drops from killing the probes is really inconsistent, a dry streak means you lose. Comparing with Super Metroid that the necessity to approach this boss with upgrades is flawed. You can't enter the Mother Brain fight with no e-tanks and win just by being lucky, as she will always do 300 damage to you no matter what. In this, you could potentially beat the last boss with minimal Health upgrades if you just get lucky drops. Until there's a reasonable way to beat the boss while taking a consistent amount of damage (or no damage at all), this boss fight hurts the speedrun quite a bit.

I also think the speedrun would be much better if more of the movement-tech upgrades were available earlier on. That said, the late game movement is really awesome, fun to do, and the input technique is pretty unique to this game. Also, I find the early game to be quite easy - this isn't really a bad thing, as it's relaxing and still kind of fun to play the early game.

-----

"Glitches":
Cancel the Drone launch cooldown: Using either the Drill or the Address disruptor will reset the cooldown on launching the Security Drone. This can be abused to relaunch the drone repeatedly while in mid-air to gain height. With Enhanced Drone Launch, you can move extremely fast in all directions this way (although horizontal movement is still slightly faster by dashing with the Red Coat once obtained).

Save Warp: You can save and quit to the title at any time, preserving items/upgrades collected, bosses defeated, and events triggered. This can be used to backtrack quickly, and in particular, return to the early game out of sequence. However, it can be abused for segmented Game Time strats. Save warping was without a doubt intentional, but it really makes things sloppy, throwing off the game timer and forcing you to do some menuing where you could accidentally choose "Exit Game" instead of "Back to Title".

Deploy Drone through Wall: A drone can be launched through a 1-tile wide wall or ceiling when standing adjacent to one.

Address Bomb Skip: The only glitch barrier vulnerable to Address Bomb that you absolutely need to pass through is the entrance to upper Edin. By taking damage, and then quickly jumping up and dashing horizontally with the Trench Coat, you can pass through the glitch barrier without needing address bombs.

Continuous Dashing: Sometimes, when doing a Trench Coat/Red Coat dash into a boss room, you will get stuck in a state where you keep dashing automatically once in the next room. In fact, the automatic dashing will start in the middle of a cutscene, when you are supposed to have no control, crossing the boss room before the fight begins. This often happens to me in either the second-to-last boss or the optional-second-to-last boss - particularly nice in the latter, since I can just instantly trigger the exit once the fight starts.

There are some other glitches I've heard about, like shooting through those beam barriers by standing at an exact pixel, or clipping through a 1-tile wide wall with the Grapple. I haven't gotten either of these to work, but I could just be bad. I've also seen enemies get stuck out of bounds, despawn, or zip through walls a bit, but not often and nothing really useful.

-----

Non-Useful Bugs and/or Potential Design Oversights:
(note: the game has had updates almost every day since released, maybe some of these are already fixed)
- Sometimes when entering the final boss room, the fight does not trigger and you have to walk back over to the right to trigger it.
- Sometimes you can trigger the final boss fight without entering the room completely.
- After acquiring Address Disruptor 1, there is a big mushroom whose floating spores you need to glitch to ride up to the room's exit. Sometimes, when standing on a glitched spore before it begins rising upwards, you get stuck in the "falling" animation, and are unable to jump. If you move off of the spore, or the spore begins rising, the animation returns to normal.
- I've had the "fast-travel thing" experience a similar bug. Once, as I was travelling west on it approaching the entrance to Eribu, it abruptly stopped one screen before the end, and Trace was suddenly in the same falling animation while standing on the fast-travel platform. The fast-travel thing remained broken until I moved 2 rooms away to reset spawns.
- After defeating the second-to-last boss (not the optional one), if its projectiles are still on the screen after defeating it, they can continue to do damage to you. This is bad practice for boss fights.
- Enemies can follow you into a door and deal a little extra damage to you after you've lost control. Metroid 1 does this and may be intentional.
- During the hallucination sequence in Ukkin-Na, the further you go into Ukkin-Na, the more intense the ripple effect shader becomes. If you die in this section, the ripple effect persists at the same intensity after respawning. This can really suck if you die right before the end of the sequence, when the rippling is at its most intense - you then have to redo the whole sequence with intense rippling. I need to go back and see if you can bring the ripple effect to other areas of the map.
- At the end of the hallucination sequence during the "reverse role" boss fight, it's possible to lose if Trace enters the room with low enough HP and you just rush him with the boss. I did this on my second playthrough, and after respawning at the previous save, instead of gaining control of Trace, he went into this weird "drunk" animation after standing up, and wouldn't respond to input. I couldn't even press Start, so I had to Alt+F4 out of it.
- As Synophis mentioned earlier, in a room with no ceiling, you can enter the room above it from below without the screen transitioning to it. While his example was the only spot I found that lets you go into another actual room, if no room actually exists there, the minimap will show you as out of bounds.
- Similarly, in some rooms, if it is possible to stand at the lowest point in the room (i.e. there isn't a row of tiles at the bottom of the screen to stand on, just the border of the screen), then the minimap will show you as being out-of-bounds in a room below. I'm not sure if these count towards map%, but my feeling is that they do not.

-----

Speedrun Mode:
- Can choose between Normal and Hard difficulty
- Shows your PB time and previous run time. However, it will not distinguish between Normal/Hard mode, and will always just show your category-independent fastest time. If your fastest time was not in speedrun mode (i.e. first playthrough of the game), it will show that time.
- Game Time starts a few seconds after pressing "Start". Seems to begin the moment the screen starts to fade in from black.
- Game Time does not record time spent resetting.
- You can "Quit Without Saving", allowing you to redo segments, effectively making Game Time leaderboards segmented.
- If you die, the game will autosave when you respawn. You can quit without saving by pressing Alt+F4 before this happens.
- All dialog and cutscenes have been removed, including the "item get" message, but save points still give you a "Game saved" message for some reason.
- Supposedly the RNG works differently in Speedrun Mode (fixed seed?). I have noticed early game health drops are consistent, but I don't know how the RNG works - if in between two different runs, you kill an enemy in the early game in one, but avoid it in the other, does that change a health drop made by the final boss?
- The Steam leaderboards are pretty crap, but at least we have them. It tracks the categories 100% Hard, 100% Normal, Any% Hard, Any% Normal, Low% Hard, Low% Normal, in that order. I think the requirements for Low% are the same as the achievement (<40%?), because pretty much every actual speedrun shows up on both the Any% board and the Low% board, so the Low% categories are completely useless (well since it allows segmented times, it's worthless anyways I guess)
- Beating Speedrun Mode will show a results screen that shows the difficulty, final game time, number of deaths, item collection percentage, and map exploration percentage

Here's a wall of text.  Just some thoughts on the game, some stuff I found, cleared up some facts about Speedrun Mode, and general venting.

Mechanics:
In the first half of the game, the movement is very simple and non-technical.  The basic movement in the game is closer to SotN with a fixed velocity and no horizontal acceleration - there's hardly any movement technique past basic platforming, unlike Super Metroid, which is very technical even without any powerups.

Obtaining the first Security Drone upgrade is the first potential for some advanced movement, since you have the option to launch the drone to collect items or activate triggers, and then detonate it to warp back to Trace.

The Trench Coat is the first item that unlocks some real technique - while it's still much slower than the Red Coat, it's clearly faster to dash at every opportunity than to just walk.  I had some issues with accidentally double-tapping when simply trying to position myself, but I eventually got it under control.

Drone Teleport is the next big thing.  Without the Enhanced Drone Launch, it's not particularly useful, but with it, it clearly becomes the fastest way to move at that point.  The technique behind teleporting and cancelling is really badass, and in combination with the Red Coat, movement in this game becomes disgustingly good and fast.  With practice, you can climb long vertical corridors very quickly, change directions in mid-air to navigate passageways quickly, and bypass many enemies and obstacles.  It's important to realize that after launching the drone but before deploying it that Trace is still vulnerable, so you must time the deployment and teleport in such a way not to take too much damage.  Also, by immediately double-tapping as you teleport, you can effectively emerge from the teleport invincible.  By getting good at this I was able to climb the final stretch to the end of the game consistently without taking damage, and quickly.

So after the Security Drone, Drone Teleport, Enhanced Drone Launch, and the Red Coat are acquired, the movement becomes really technical and complex.  I find it unfortunate that this capability is only in the last 10 minutes of a speedrun.  Still, once you have these upgrades, the movement is very cool in this game.  It's challenging to be fast and hard to execute well.

Sadly, almost every boss is awful.  The crab boss is an extremely slow fight casually that forces you to use otherwise completely useless weapons to chip away at it forever.  The hornet fight is also frustrating casually, but the quick kill strat interesting, although the consistency is weird.  The second-to-last boss (not the optional one) is almost great, except for the randomly moving sperm spray pattern that he does - it's another instance where you can do nothing but stand in the corner and hope you don't get hit.  The first boss is actually a great boss fight.  The following two are alright - they certainly showcase some cool graphics, but they're both extremely easy and can be cheesed with little effort on the first try.  And, of course, the final boss is bullshit.  The drones can be lead around, but they can't be reliably dodged, making it a damage race.  Since health drops from killing the probes is really inconsistent, a dry streak means you lose.  Comparing with Super Metroid that the necessity to approach this boss with upgrades is flawed.  You can't enter the Mother Brain fight with no e-tanks and win just by being lucky, as she will always do 300 damage to you no matter what.  In this, you could potentially beat the last boss with minimal Health upgrades if you just get lucky drops.  Until there's a reasonable way to beat the boss while taking a consistent amount of damage (or no damage at all), this boss fight hurts the speedrun quite a bit.

I also think the speedrun would be much better if more of the movement-tech upgrades were available earlier on.  That said, the late game movement is really awesome, fun to do, and the input technique is pretty unique to this game.  Also, I find the early game to be quite easy - this isn't really a bad thing, as it's relaxing and still kind of fun to play the early game.

-----

"Glitches":
Cancel the Drone launch cooldown: Using either the Drill or the Address disruptor will reset the cooldown on launching the Security Drone.  This can be abused to relaunch the drone repeatedly while in mid-air to gain height.  With Enhanced Drone Launch, you can move extremely fast in all directions this way (although horizontal movement is still slightly faster by dashing with the Red Coat once obtained).

Save Warp: You can save and quit to the title at any time, preserving items/upgrades collected, bosses defeated, and events triggered.  This can be used to backtrack quickly, and in particular, return to the early game out of sequence.  However, it can be abused for segmented Game Time strats.  Save warping was without a doubt intentional, but it really makes things sloppy, throwing off the game timer and forcing you to do some menuing where you could accidentally choose "Exit Game" instead of "Back to Title".

Deploy Drone through Wall: A drone can be launched through a 1-tile wide wall or ceiling when standing adjacent to one.

Address Bomb Skip: The only glitch barrier vulnerable to Address Bomb that you absolutely need to pass through is the entrance to upper Edin.  By taking damage, and then quickly jumping up and dashing horizontally with the Trench Coat, you can pass through the glitch barrier without needing address bombs.

Continuous Dashing: Sometimes, when doing a Trench Coat/Red Coat dash into a boss room, you will get stuck in a state where you keep dashing automatically once in the next room.  In fact, the automatic dashing will start in the middle of a cutscene, when you are supposed to have no control, crossing the boss room before the fight begins.  This often happens to me in either the second-to-last boss or the optional-second-to-last boss - particularly nice in the latter, since I can just instantly trigger the exit once the fight starts.

There are some other glitches I've heard about, like shooting through those beam barriers by standing at an exact pixel, or clipping through a 1-tile wide wall with the Grapple.  I haven't gotten either of these to work, but I could just be bad.  I've also seen enemies get stuck out of bounds, despawn, or zip through walls a bit, but not often and nothing really useful.

-----

Non-Useful Bugs and/or Potential Design Oversights:
(note: the game has had updates almost every day since released, maybe some of these are already fixed)
- Sometimes when entering the final boss room, the fight does not trigger and you have to walk back over to the right to trigger it.
- Sometimes you can trigger the final boss fight without entering the room completely.
- After acquiring Address Disruptor 1, there is a big mushroom whose floating spores you need to glitch to ride up to the room's exit.  Sometimes, when standing on a glitched spore before it begins rising upwards, you get stuck in the "falling" animation, and are unable to jump.  If you move off of the spore, or the spore begins rising, the animation returns to normal.
- I've had the "fast-travel thing" experience a similar bug.  Once, as I was travelling west on it approaching the entrance to Eribu, it abruptly stopped one screen before the end, and Trace was suddenly in the same falling animation while standing on the fast-travel platform.  The fast-travel thing remained broken until I moved 2 rooms away to reset spawns.
- After defeating the second-to-last boss (not the optional one), if its projectiles are still on the screen after defeating it, they can continue to do damage to you.  This is bad practice for boss fights.
- Enemies can follow you into a door and deal a little extra damage to you after you've lost control.  Metroid 1 does this and may be intentional.
- During the hallucination sequence in Ukkin-Na, the further you go into Ukkin-Na, the more intense the ripple effect shader becomes.  If you die in this section, the ripple effect persists at the same intensity after respawning.  This can really suck if you die right before the end of the sequence, when the rippling is at its most intense - you then have to redo the whole sequence with intense rippling.  I need to go back and see if you can bring the ripple effect to other areas of the map.
- At the end of the hallucination sequence during the "reverse role" boss fight, it's possible to lose if Trace enters the room with low enough HP and you just rush him with the boss.  I did this on my second playthrough, and after respawning at the previous save, instead of gaining control of Trace, he went into this weird "drunk" animation after standing up, and wouldn't respond to input.  I couldn't even press Start, so I had to Alt+F4 out of it.
- As Synophis mentioned earlier, in a room with no ceiling, you can enter the room above it from below without the screen transitioning to it.  While his example was the only spot I found that lets you go into another actual room, if no room actually exists there, the minimap will show you as out of bounds.
- Similarly, in some rooms, if it is possible to stand at the lowest point in the room (i.e. there isn't a row of tiles at the bottom of the screen to stand on, just the border of the screen), then the minimap will show you as being out-of-bounds in a room below.  I'm not sure if these count towards map%, but my feeling is that they do not.

-----

Speedrun Mode:
- Can choose between Normal and Hard difficulty
- Shows your PB time and previous run time.  However, it will not distinguish between Normal/Hard mode, and will always just show your category-independent fastest time.  If your fastest time was not in speedrun mode (i.e. first playthrough of the game), it will show that time.
- Game Time starts a few seconds after pressing "Start".  Seems to begin the moment the screen starts to fade in from black.
- Game Time does not record time spent resetting.
- You can "Quit Without Saving", allowing you to redo segments, effectively making Game Time leaderboards segmented.
- If you die, the game will autosave when you respawn.  You can quit without saving by pressing Alt+F4 before this happens.
- All dialog and cutscenes have been removed, including the "item get" message, but save points still give you a "Game saved" message for some reason.
- Supposedly the RNG works differently in Speedrun Mode (fixed seed?).  I have noticed early game health drops are consistent, but I don't know how the RNG works - if in between two different runs, you kill an enemy in the early game in one, but avoid it in the other, does that change a health drop made by the final boss?
- The Steam leaderboards are pretty crap, but at least we have them.  It tracks the categories 100% Hard, 100% Normal, Any% Hard, Any% Normal, Low% Hard, Low% Normal, in that order.  I think the requirements for Low% are the same as the achievement (<40%?), because pretty much every actual speedrun shows up on both the Any% board and the Low% board, so the Low% categories are completely useless (well since it allows segmented times, it's worthless anyways I guess)
- Beating Speedrun Mode will show a results screen that shows the difficulty, final game time, number of deaths, item collection percentage, and map exploration percentage

Synophis

Edit history:

Synophis: 2015-05-19 08:01:59 am

Synophis: 2015-05-19 07:51:21 am

Synophis: 2015-05-19 07:47:35 am

Synophis: 2015-05-19 07:41:22 am

Synophis: 2015-05-19 07:12:49 am

Synophis: 2015-05-19 07:07:41 am

Synophis: 2015-05-19 07:00:57 am

Synophis: 2015-05-19 06:59:41 am

Synophis: 2015-05-19 06:58:48 am

Synophis: 2015-05-19 06:42:31 am

Synophis: 2015-05-19 06:40:41 am

Synophis: 2015-05-19 06:40:13 am

Synophis: 2015-05-19 06:35:37 am

Synophis: 2015-05-19 06:34:35 am

Synophis: 2015-05-19 06:33:56 am

Synophis: 2015-05-19 06:27:03 am

2015-05-19 06:26:47 am

Quote from duckfist:

Excellent summary of everything discovered so far and other stuff

I'm currently routing the "warpless" route and grappling seems to be a quicker way to move so that creates more interesting speed tech for the early game. It's also faster to grapple through a wall than to use the lab coat. There are also some small shortcuts that can only be done when you have the grapple.

I also really disliked pretty much all of the bosses, before I figured out the quick-kill strats. Particularly the Gir-Tab fight took me like 2,5 minutes with the Nova and now it can be done in 20 seconds. Though casually, the bosses are definitely a weak point of the game, but the speedrun just demolished pretty much all of them. The only obstacle currently is the final boss. Also, you can actually avoid the Sentinel's random projectiles by timing a red coat teleport so that you have invincibility frames when the projectile hits you.

Every room in the game has preset enemies, which can drop health. As far as I know, there are three ways you can get a health drop.
- Some enemies will always drop health
- Some enemies drop health only when you are low on health (blue doggies in ZI)
- Some enemies drop health only when they are glitched first (crawlers in ZI)
I don't know how the final boss's health drops work though, it seemed to make no sense, when I once tried to figure it out.

Unless the RNG has been changed on the PC version, you can do the exact same route on story mode as on the speedrun mode. Almost every room in the game plays out exactly the same every time on either of the modes. Some bosses and normal enemies react to player movement, which creates some randomness, but that can be easily eliminated by moving around the exact same way every time. For example, Ukhu quick-kill relies on the fact that you stop at specific tiles to manipulate the boss to be at the right spot when it shoots out the glitchable enemies. I'm pretty sure that the only random thing in the game is the Sentinel's and another enemy's random projectiles, and Gir-Tab and Ukhu, if you're not using the quick kills. The new final boss seems to also react to player movement and there's probably some logic to the health drops as well.

[quote="duckfist"]Excellent summary of everything discovered so far and other stuff[/quote]
I'm currently routing the "warpless" route and grappling seems to be a quicker way to move so that creates more interesting speed tech for the early game. It's also faster to grapple through a wall than to use the lab coat. There are also some small shortcuts that can only be done when you have the grapple.

I also really disliked pretty much all of the bosses, before I figured out the quick-kill strats. Particularly the Gir-Tab fight took me like 2,5 minutes with the Nova and now it can be done in 20 seconds. Though casually, the bosses are definitely a weak point of the game, but the speedrun just demolished pretty much all of them. The only obstacle currently is the final boss. Also, you can actually avoid the Sentinel's random projectiles by timing a red coat teleport so that you have invincibility frames when the projectile hits you.

Every room in the game has preset enemies, which can drop health. As far as I know, there are three ways you can get a health drop. 
- Some enemies will always drop health
- Some enemies drop health only when you are low on health (blue doggies in ZI)
- Some enemies drop health only when they are glitched first (crawlers in ZI)
I don't know how the final boss's health drops work though, it seemed to make no sense, when I once tried to figure it out.

Unless the RNG has been changed on the PC version, you can do the exact same route on story mode as on the speedrun mode. Almost every room in the game plays out exactly the same every time on either of the modes. Some bosses and normal enemies react to player movement, which creates some randomness, but that can be easily eliminated by moving around the exact same way every time. For example, Ukhu quick-kill relies on the fact that you stop at specific tiles to manipulate the boss to be at the right spot when it shoots out the glitchable enemies. I'm pretty sure that the only random thing in the game is the Sentinel's and another enemy's random projectiles, and Gir-Tab and Ukhu, if you're not using the quick kills. The new final boss seems to also react to player movement and there's probably some logic to the health drops as well.

duckfist

2015-05-19 11:17:25 am

Alright, I messed around with the final boss more, and I may have a strategy, using just the Kilver. It still involves standing beneath the core, jumping and mashing up and shoot. But with the second and third phases, taking it slow and jumping every time the drones' patterns change to keep them off the ground. I only jump to attack the core when they're about to change patterns. I can win about 50% of the time now. If i accidentallt get one on the ground in the third phase I'm usually screwed. I'll work on it.

Synophis

Edit history:

Synophis: 2015-05-22 09:04:00 am

Synophis: 2015-05-22 08:56:19 am

Synophis: 2015-05-22 08:54:26 am

Synophis: 2015-05-19 02:18:27 pm

Synophis: 2015-05-19 02:14:47 pm

2015-05-19 02:11:48 pm

Quote from duckfist:

Alright, I messed around with the final boss more, and I may have a strategy, using just the Kilver. It still involves standing beneath the core, jumping and mashing up and shoot. But with the second and third phases, taking it slow and jumping every time the drones' patterns change to keep them off the ground. I only jump to attack the core when they're about to change patterns. I can win about 50% of the time now. If i accidentallt get one on the ground in the third phase I'm usually screwed. I'll work on it.

Nice, hope you can make it consistent enough so it can be used in runs.

I got the warpless route done and managed to do an ok run to showcase it:

I tried particularly to incorporate the grapple into the run and there are some places where it is definitely faster. The problem with grapple is that if you grapple too close to the ceiling there won't be enough swinging movement for it to be faster. There are also some walls where the grappling through walls works only sometimes and I haven't figured out what causes that.

Personally, I think this is a really great route to run. There are multiple difficult and unoptimized rooms like the room where you get the grapple or the backtracking through the green metroid thingies after acquiring the red coat. I also collected a lot more upgrades than is necessary, but pretty much every upgrade is so close, there's no reason not to get it. Having additional power upgrades also makes the drilling go faster.

edit: The PC version was just patched to v1.08, which adds useful speedrun stuff (Source)
- When exiting to menu, you return to speedrun screen and the in-game timer continues to run
- Adds in-game leaderboards, which show also the map%, item% and death count.

Leaderboards are pretty neat, because since you can't do segmented runs anymore, the boards will reflect the real best times. The in-game timer is based on elapsed frames so it should be a fair way to measure the times on any platform.

[quote="duckfist"]Alright, I messed around with the final boss more, and I may have a strategy, using just the Kilver.  It still involves standing beneath the core, jumping and mashing up and shoot.  But with the second and third phases, taking it slow and jumping every time the drones' patterns change to keep them off the ground.  I only jump to attack the core when they're about to change patterns.  I can win about 50% of the time now.  If i accidentallt get one on the ground in the third phase I'm usually screwed.  I'll work on it.[/quote]
Nice, hope you can make it consistent enough so it can be used in runs.

I got the warpless route done and managed to do an ok run to showcase it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNuswz1RVLQ

I tried particularly to incorporate the grapple into the run and there are some places where it is definitely faster. The problem with grapple is that if you grapple too close to the ceiling there won't be enough swinging movement for it to be faster. There are also some walls where the grappling through walls works only sometimes and I haven't figured out what causes that.

Personally, I think this is a really great route to run. There are multiple difficult and unoptimized rooms like the room where you get the grapple or the backtracking through the green metroid thingies after acquiring the red coat. I also collected a lot more upgrades than is necessary, but pretty much every upgrade is so close, there's no reason not to get it. Having additional power upgrades also makes the drilling go faster.

edit: The PC version was just patched to v1.08, which adds useful speedrun stuff ([url=http://steamcommunity.com/app/332200/discussions/0/613958868356878653/]Source[/url])
- When exiting to menu, you return to speedrun screen and the in-game timer continues to run
- Adds in-game leaderboards, which show also the map%, item% and death count.

Leaderboards are pretty neat, because since you can't do segmented runs anymore, the boards will reflect the real best times. The in-game timer is based on elapsed frames so it should be a fair way to measure the times on any platform.

CoolJosh3k

2015-05-24 04:03:40 am

I have not got the skill for speedrunning, but I am a fan of secrets and alternate play styles. As such I have some info to help to talented runners.

*- With drone cancel ascension, you do not need the drone throw range increase to beat that game. Still might be worth it, because of the time saved when using it for fast traveling.
*- I have managed to throw the drone though 1-think walls above, as well as the standard sideways.
*- Some enemies become disrupted (and harmless), faster than you can kill them. For example, the laser bugs are very fast to disrupt.
*- While shielding, you can trick enemies into still targeting Trace instead of the drone.
*- Some enemies can be shot off-screen without drawing aggro. For example, those little grass frog things (that spell out one of those secret codes when disrupted).

Personally, I have gotten all the way to the Sentinel (normal) with no stat upgrades. I also skipped the address bomb, drone range increase and used the save warping to sequence break. Took me about 3 hours and a ton of deaths. I have now spent a further 4 hours failing to beat the Sentinel.
I can say it is a fun ride, that turns into a puzzle of ai manipulation.

I have not got the skill for speedrunning, but I am a fan of secrets and alternate play styles. As such I have some info to help to talented runners.

*- With drone cancel ascension, you do not need the drone throw range increase to beat that game. Still might be worth it, because of the time saved when using it for fast traveling.
*- I have managed to throw the drone though 1-think walls above, as well as the standard sideways.
*- Some enemies become disrupted (and harmless), faster than you can kill them. For example, the laser bugs are very fast to disrupt.
*- While shielding, you can trick enemies into still targeting Trace instead of the drone.
*- Some enemies can be shot off-screen without drawing aggro. For example, those little grass frog things (that spell out one of those secret codes when disrupted).

Personally, I have gotten all the way to the Sentinel (normal) with no stat upgrades. I also skipped the address bomb, drone range increase and used the save warping to sequence break. Took me about 3 hours and a ton of deaths. I have now spent a further 4 hours failing to beat the Sentinel.
I can say it is a fun ride, that turns into a puzzle of ai manipulation.

CoolJosh3k

Edit history:

CoolJosh3k: 2015-05-24 06:54:35 am

2015-05-24 06:53:21 am

OMG, guess what I just found! A nice exploit that will lead to many a sequence break and new routes, I am sure...

Stand where a regenerating block would be (distortion or beam door, for example), then use your drone to enter another room. After you enter, destroy your little buddy and wham! Enjoy your ride to whatever is the next valid room above you. You will be in darkness at first, but just find your way around to the exit above. Will make sense after some experience.
Just find yourself a door or something and pop! Now the screen has caught up with you, but you are definitely not where you should be!
Note, this can be used to also go diagonal and you can escape the darkness to even more places once you have teleportation.
Warning: can cause crashes when entering some rooms, after room warping! Save once you arrive at your destination.

How was this not already found? Good times ahead!

Synophis

Edit history:

Synophis: 2015-05-24 01:55:57 pm

Synophis: 2015-05-24 01:55:30 pm

Synophis: 2015-05-24 01:52:44 pm

Synophis: 2015-05-24 01:51:48 pm

2015-05-24 01:28:25 pm

Quote from CoolJosh3k:

OMG, guess what I just found! A nice exploit that will lead to many a sequence break and new routes, I am sure...

Stand where a regenerating block would be (distortion or beam door, for example), then use your drone to enter another room. After you enter, destroy your little buddy and wham! Enjoy your ride to whatever is the next valid room above you. You will be in darkness at first, but just find your way around to the exit above. Will make sense after some experience.
Just find yourself a door or something and pop! Now the screen has caught up with you, but you are definitely not where you should be!
Note, this can be used to also go diagonal and you can escape the darkness to even more places once you have teleportation.
Warning: can cause crashes when entering some rooms, after room warping! Save once you arrive at your destination.

How was this not already found? Good times ahead!

Sounds like an interesting find. Could you maybe do a video, I can't quite understand how the trick works from the written explanation.

As for the Sentinel fight, I did the fight without upgrades by first glitching every enemy in the previous room and then killing all of them, creating a big pool of health. Then you just execute a good Sentinel fight and exit the boss room to get health when you need it. I think the minimum item% with current strats is 10% but climbing the last few rooms without the drone launch upgrade is a massive pain.

[quote="CoolJosh3k"]OMG, guess what I just found! A nice exploit that will lead to many a sequence break and new routes, I am sure...

Stand where a regenerating block would be (distortion or beam door, for example), then use your drone to enter another room. After you enter, destroy your little buddy and wham! Enjoy your ride to whatever is the next valid room above you. You will be in darkness at first, but just find your way around to the exit above. Will make sense after some experience.
Just find yourself a door or something and pop! Now the screen has caught up with you, but you are definitely not where you should be!
Note, this can be used to also go diagonal and you can escape the darkness to even more places once you have teleportation.
Warning: can cause crashes when entering some rooms, after room warping! Save once you arrive at your destination.

How was this not already found? Good times ahead![/quote]
Sounds like an interesting find. Could you maybe do a video, I can't quite understand how the trick works from the written explanation.

As for the Sentinel fight, I did the fight without upgrades by first glitching every enemy in the previous room and then killing all of them, creating a big pool of health. Then you just execute a good Sentinel fight and exit the boss room to get health when you need it. I think the minimum item% with current strats is 10% but climbing the last few rooms without the drone launch upgrade is a massive pain.

Tohloo

2015-05-24 04:47:12 pm

Radicool

I don't know enough about the game yet to figure out where this could be useful, but here is the drone zip that CoolJosh seems to be talking about.

Synophis

Edit history:

Synophis: 2015-05-25 12:13:18 am

2015-05-25 12:10:05 am

Quote from Toloo:

I don't know enough about the game yet to figure out where this could be useful, but here is the drone zip that CoolJosh seems to be talking about.

Oh okay, so you reset the room by either going two rooms apart or entering a different section of the map. Then you re-enter the room where you want to do the zip and because you're standing on a spot where the game generates an obstacle, the game doesn't know where to put you, so it seems to put you above the obstacle. I wonder if that works with drillable blocks as well. That would create a lot more opportunities for this trick since openable and glitchable doors are quite rare.

Grygor

2015-05-25 02:06:56 am

I just did some quick testing (sorry, no video) and it seems to work with every kind of destructible block, even the basic regenerating blocks in the beginning of the game.

I used the drillable blocks in the corridor below Xedur's room to zip up to the passege before his room, and I also used the full vertical column of regenerating blocks in the room to the right of the starting point to zip up to the room with the size upgrade above it.

CoolJosh3k

2015-05-25 02:40:05 am

Toloo seems to have pulled of a cleaner version of it, but that video shows the main idea. You do not need to re enter the drone though, just detonate it soon as you go through that door.

Grygor is correct, but the breakable blocks have a tendency to just overlap, instead of zipping. My tests had varied results, so perhaps they are just more tricky.

I will try to get some footage soon.

Grygor

2015-05-25 03:58:21 am

I did a bit more testing, and it seems the game is inconsistent about whether or not you have to return with the drone before zipping. Drill blocks and lasers seem to consistently let you zip without returning (I was able to do so with the single laser wall under Xedur's room), but glitch blocks and regenerating blocks are a bit inconsistent.

For example, for the glitch block barriers in the tunnel from Eribu to Ukkin-Na, which are three tiles wide, the zip would only work if I returned with the drone. So far these are the only glitch blocks I've tested, but the zip always works if I return, and always fails if I don't. Similarly, the one-tile-wide wall of regenerating blocks in the room to the right of the starting point only zips if you return. But in the room it zips you to, there's a huge section of regenerating blocks many tiles wide, and that one zips even if I don't re-enter the room. I'm guessing this has something to do with whether or not the blocks can be respawned without you leaving the room

Also, you can trap yourself with this (not quite a softlock because you can still quit and save) - I zipped into Xedur's room and was unable to escape, presumably because the lasers were up (Xedur himself was long dead of course). I assume this will happen if you zip into any laser-sealed boss room because, since you didn't enter through the door, the boss doesn't spawn and the event trigger that removes the lasers doesn't spawn either.

I did a bit more testing, and it seems the game is inconsistent about whether or not you have to return with the drone before zipping. Drill blocks and lasers seem to consistently let you zip without returning (I was able to do so with the single laser wall under Xedur's room), but glitch blocks and regenerating blocks are a bit inconsistent.

For example, for the glitch block barriers in the tunnel from Eribu to Ukkin-Na, which are three tiles wide, the zip would only work if I returned with the drone. So far these are the only glitch blocks I've tested, but the zip always works if I return, and always fails if I don't. Similarly, the one-tile-wide wall of regenerating blocks in the room to the right of the starting point only zips if you return. But in the room it zips you to, there's a huge section of regenerating blocks many tiles wide, and that one zips even if I don't re-enter the room. I'm guessing this has something to do with whether or not the blocks can be respawned without you leaving  the room

Also, you can trap yourself with this (not quite a softlock because you can still quit and save) - I zipped into Xedur's room and was unable to escape, presumably because the lasers were up (Xedur himself was long dead of course). I assume this will happen if you zip into any laser-sealed boss room because, since you didn't enter through the door, the boss doesn't spawn and the event trigger that removes the lasers doesn't spawn either.

CoolJosh3k

Edit history:

CoolJosh3k: 2015-05-25 04:20:17 am

2015-05-25 04:16:20 am

Worth noting, is that the game does appear to load all the rooms you are not currently in; but only with basic solid blocks. Anything that has a more dynamic function will not have become active when you enter the darkness this way.
Other areas (denoted on the map with arrows), I expect are not loaded at all. I'd guess this is why it takes slightly longer to traverse these transitions.
The possible crash (when entering a door), I'd imagine is due to the game not having loaded the resources for that area and terminating with an exception. Saving should correct this, as it appears to force a load for various things when an egg is used.

Also: when I say "darkness", I am referring to Trace's point of view, no what you actually see on screen.

CoolJosh3k

2015-05-25 06:42:30 am

Finally done uploading vids.

Here showing the idea of how it works:

Here showing how one can get into Kur early:

I messed up the sound, but it is nice an clear footage at 1080p60 with a high bitrate.