Edit history:
Omnigamer: 2016-09-24 06:09:34 pm
Omnigamer: 2016-09-24 12:14:58 am
Omnigamer: 2016-09-23 11:55:37 pm
All the things
RIVE is an interesting new twin-stick shooter style game with exploration elements. I've been tinkering around with it this week and found a number of skips and otherwise. I have videos of most of the important ones, which I will be uploading gradually. For now though I just want to briefly describe what I've found so that others can experiment a bit more too.
MISSION 1: Not much to say here. Killing DLL twice is fastest, and the rest is just smooth movement through the hallway. So long as you don't die, it should be a pretty easy clear in sub-1:30.
MISSION 2: 2 significant skips here. The first is in the wide area where you are chased back by lasers after advancing towards the end of the room. With full HP (and full armor*), you can just wait through the lasers and move on to the next area. For the Campaign speedrun though, you can still get through with a setup that pulls the nurse drone. Just jump up as the third laser is about to hit the nurse and you should be able to get the HP and get through. The next skip isn't too far beyond that, in another wide room with a ton of Kamikazes. If you move through quickly enough, you can completely avoid being trapped by some laser drones.
MISSION 3: Nothing major here, unfortunately. I tested a lot of skips, but unfortunately you don't have the HP or the momentum to get through most of the laser traps. The main speed issues are taking out the Sky Carrier quick enough. NOTE: You can jump down the flaming pit at the end before you do your fireworks. Do not do this in IL mode, but in campaign mode it should be done.
MISSION 4: This mission is great. Rush through the opening areas with reckless abandon and hope you don't get creamed. After, fully heal at the nurse drone and grab a fresh one to bring along with you. At the first set piece area, you can just jump straight through the spider lasers on the left side. After you're through, wait a bit for the checkpoint to kick in, then suicide into the laser spiders a few times to refill HP to more than half. Then watch for the nurse drone following you: she will die on the third laser, but you can jump in and grab the HP drop to fill up a bit more. Then go to the top area of the boxes and jump through the new set of laser spiders to continue left. Now the tricky skip. I'm not exactly sure of the spawn conditions, but if you're quick and stay on the outside portions of the gravity bubble, the laser spiders will delay spawning. With a well placed jump out of the upper left quadrant of the bubble, you can reach the switch and activate it before you die on the ground. It might help if you shotgun jump out of the bubble to get a little more distance.
MISSION 5: You can skip having to do the minelayer section if you stand on the right half of the last platform in front of the sawblades when those electro-wheels come down the pipe. Saves a healthy bit of time, and usually very safe too.
MISSION 6: I didn't find any skips; it's mostly an autoscroller anyway.
MISSION 7: You can get a minor skip during the final sequence in the first room where the lasers are coming down. If you stay in exactly the center of the middle platform, they won't hit you as they move down and you can continue to the next area without having to wait.
MISSION 8: I don't like this mission. It would be incredible if you could get through the laser spiders at the end of the stage early, but alas they just do too much damage. Each time you interact with a new beam it does 5 (maybe 4?) points of damage, plus 1 damage for every few frames you are in its line of fire. You can get through to the last one, but you will never have enough HP to get through. Some ideas that may work if you can pull it off though: dragging any buddy with you far enough can potentially block the first laser, which may let you through. This would be fine for ILs, but would likely render a campaign run uncompletable though. You can skip a minor part of the arena with the Hack in it though. Just wait for the first bulldog to appear, hang out in the corner, and then ride it up to the exit. I tried for a very long time to get to that same exit after being ejected from the pipe, but it is just short with a shotgun jump. As another note, you can get around the laser turrets at the very beginning by hugging the top wall and just forcing your way through. I wasn't able to do anything useful with this though.
MISSION 9: Another fun one. You can skip part of the Tetris scenario by using the first set of bulldog enemies to boost you up to the entrance. You may be able to do it sooner as well by getting on top of the last I-block that falls on t he left, but I haven't found any way to set that up yet. Later on, in the big bubble with the tons of Sky Carriers, you can just barely reach the exit on the other side of the lava by doing a shotgun jump and letting your jumps carry out. The key thing here is canceling your downward momentum at the best times. If you go out of the bubble just right and shotgun yourself at about 30* below horizontal, you should be able to reach it after one lava bounce.
MISSION 10: I only found one minor skip in this mission that involves using a rocket jump to get up to the ledge in the pipe where laser bots would otherwise chase you back down. Saves maybe ~20 seconds.
MISSION 11: I couldn't find a single skip in this level. The "cage match" set piece seems to have special logic where you are instantly killed if you make it through. I couldn't identify any other areas where a skip would be possible, but they would certainly be welcome if they exist.
MISSION 12: Just kill the boss fast. For ILs this depends largely on getting enough subweapon drops to keep up with his cycles.
EPILOGUE: The big thing here is bringing one of the kamikazes from the double bubble room so you can use it to get across the lava pit section ASAP. Can be tricky, but otherwise it costs about 20 seconds so it's not a huge loss for Campaign.
I will update this thread with videos as I upload them. I don't think I will stick around with running this game long-term, but I am enjoying experimenting with the skips and doing some basic optimizations.
General tech:
Rocket Jump: fire rockets point blank at a wall for some diagonal knockback. Can be used to get some extra height, but I've only found a couple instances where it's useful.
Shotgun Jump: if you fire shotgun in the air, you get a boost of speed in the opposite direction from where you fire. This is *just* enough to pull off a few skips that need some extra distance. Optimal angle for distance seems to be about 30* below horizontal; the vertical component of the shotgun is pretty minimal, so it only really helps if done along with a jump.
MISSION 1: Not much to say here. Killing DLL twice is fastest, and the rest is just smooth movement through the hallway. So long as you don't die, it should be a pretty easy clear in sub-1:30.
MISSION 2: 2 significant skips here. The first is in the wide area where you are chased back by lasers after advancing towards the end of the room. With full HP (and full armor*), you can just wait through the lasers and move on to the next area. For the Campaign speedrun though, you can still get through with a setup that pulls the nurse drone. Just jump up as the third laser is about to hit the nurse and you should be able to get the HP and get through. The next skip isn't too far beyond that, in another wide room with a ton of Kamikazes. If you move through quickly enough, you can completely avoid being trapped by some laser drones.
MISSION 3: Nothing major here, unfortunately. I tested a lot of skips, but unfortunately you don't have the HP or the momentum to get through most of the laser traps. The main speed issues are taking out the Sky Carrier quick enough. NOTE: You can jump down the flaming pit at the end before you do your fireworks. Do not do this in IL mode, but in campaign mode it should be done.
MISSION 4: This mission is great. Rush through the opening areas with reckless abandon and hope you don't get creamed. After, fully heal at the nurse drone and grab a fresh one to bring along with you. At the first set piece area, you can just jump straight through the spider lasers on the left side. After you're through, wait a bit for the checkpoint to kick in, then suicide into the laser spiders a few times to refill HP to more than half. Then watch for the nurse drone following you: she will die on the third laser, but you can jump in and grab the HP drop to fill up a bit more. Then go to the top area of the boxes and jump through the new set of laser spiders to continue left. Now the tricky skip. I'm not exactly sure of the spawn conditions, but if you're quick and stay on the outside portions of the gravity bubble, the laser spiders will delay spawning. With a well placed jump out of the upper left quadrant of the bubble, you can reach the switch and activate it before you die on the ground. It might help if you shotgun jump out of the bubble to get a little more distance.
MISSION 5: You can skip having to do the minelayer section if you stand on the right half of the last platform in front of the sawblades when those electro-wheels come down the pipe. Saves a healthy bit of time, and usually very safe too.
MISSION 6: I didn't find any skips; it's mostly an autoscroller anyway.
MISSION 7: You can get a minor skip during the final sequence in the first room where the lasers are coming down. If you stay in exactly the center of the middle platform, they won't hit you as they move down and you can continue to the next area without having to wait.
MISSION 8: I don't like this mission. It would be incredible if you could get through the laser spiders at the end of the stage early, but alas they just do too much damage. Each time you interact with a new beam it does 5 (maybe 4?) points of damage, plus 1 damage for every few frames you are in its line of fire. You can get through to the last one, but you will never have enough HP to get through. Some ideas that may work if you can pull it off though: dragging any buddy with you far enough can potentially block the first laser, which may let you through. This would be fine for ILs, but would likely render a campaign run uncompletable though. You can skip a minor part of the arena with the Hack in it though. Just wait for the first bulldog to appear, hang out in the corner, and then ride it up to the exit. I tried for a very long time to get to that same exit after being ejected from the pipe, but it is just short with a shotgun jump. As another note, you can get around the laser turrets at the very beginning by hugging the top wall and just forcing your way through. I wasn't able to do anything useful with this though.
MISSION 9: Another fun one. You can skip part of the Tetris scenario by using the first set of bulldog enemies to boost you up to the entrance. You may be able to do it sooner as well by getting on top of the last I-block that falls on t he left, but I haven't found any way to set that up yet. Later on, in the big bubble with the tons of Sky Carriers, you can just barely reach the exit on the other side of the lava by doing a shotgun jump and letting your jumps carry out. The key thing here is canceling your downward momentum at the best times. If you go out of the bubble just right and shotgun yourself at about 30* below horizontal, you should be able to reach it after one lava bounce.
MISSION 10: I only found one minor skip in this mission that involves using a rocket jump to get up to the ledge in the pipe where laser bots would otherwise chase you back down. Saves maybe ~20 seconds.
MISSION 11: I couldn't find a single skip in this level. The "cage match" set piece seems to have special logic where you are instantly killed if you make it through. I couldn't identify any other areas where a skip would be possible, but they would certainly be welcome if they exist.
MISSION 12: Just kill the boss fast. For ILs this depends largely on getting enough subweapon drops to keep up with his cycles.
EPILOGUE: The big thing here is bringing one of the kamikazes from the double bubble room so you can use it to get across the lava pit section ASAP. Can be tricky, but otherwise it costs about 20 seconds so it's not a huge loss for Campaign.
I will update this thread with videos as I upload them. I don't think I will stick around with running this game long-term, but I am enjoying experimenting with the skips and doing some basic optimizations.
General tech:
Rocket Jump: fire rockets point blank at a wall for some diagonal knockback. Can be used to get some extra height, but I've only found a couple instances where it's useful.
Shotgun Jump: if you fire shotgun in the air, you get a boost of speed in the opposite direction from where you fire. This is *just* enough to pull off a few skips that need some extra distance. Optimal angle for distance seems to be about 30* below horizontal; the vertical component of the shotgun is pretty minimal, so it only really helps if done along with a jump.
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