Shovel Knight

3ngag3

2015-03-04 07:24:52 pm

Dougtrio trio...

Thanks to themaniyus for coming up with this little trick.

RamblingJosh

2015-03-08 06:54:57 pm

Many words! Handle it!

So I played the Plague Knight demo at Pax East this weekend. It looks very promising for speedruns. Plague knight moves slower than shovel, but he has a ton of control over aerial movement, and a couple neat movement tricks that allow him to move very fast. I talked to the Dev there a bit about speed running and he said he was hopeful that plague would be 10-15 minutes faster than shovel.

I'll post what I saw in more detail when I get home tomorrow and am not on my phone.

Copilot

2015-03-08 07:07:44 pm

Ruling the cosmos!

Oh sick, that sounds like it could be a lot of fun. Complex movement tech would definitely make a great run.

Copilot

2015-03-08 07:07:53 pm

Ruling the cosmos!

I'm a poet and I didn't even know it.

RamblingJosh

Edit history:

RamblingJosh: 2015-03-09 06:43:05 am

2015-03-09 06:22:14 am

Many words! Handle it!

Well I'm sitting in the airport for the next 3 hours, so imma give this a crack.

The demo consisted of the intro plains stage
There were 25 green coins throughout the stage, and a leaderboard after the demo. I played once to get a feel for plague knight and again to try and get a rough time. I got a 3:38 but I don't know if that includes a little animation that plays at the start if the stage (+8-12s compared to shovel knight I'd say) or the fanfare/exit animation after black knight. Only runs that got all 25 coins went onto the leadwrboard , some.of which requires detours to side screens (I would guess adding 20-30 seconds). The best time on the leaderboard was one "BSD"/with a 3:12.

As for how Plague plays:

He feels a tad slower than shovel, has no pogo, and significantly smaller jumps. However he does have the following:

-Throw potions. This is his main attack. Potions travel a short distance diagonally downward, and bounce off the ground slightly. They will explode upon hitting an enemy/deatructable object, or else after about a second. While throwing plague comes to a stop and is animation locked, but it seems like you can throw subsequent potions faster than taking another action. I believe there is a small delay after the third potion, probably the game only allowing 3 to be on screen at once. Aerial potions do a ton more, but I'll discuss that below.

-Charge potion. Holding the attack button will charge. After about a second, releasing the button will cause plague knight to explode. This explosion will damage nearby enemies but not plague knight. I believe it does the same damage as a normal attack. What's interesting is that this explosion propels plague forward, in what I'm going to call a flask jump, because why not. You have some control over the direction it goes. Holding forward you will travel in an arc forward, shovel.gf up you will go straight up (though I think the vertical distance traveled is the same in each case). This movement is very fast if a little hard to control, but the distance seems consistent so it shouldn't be a problem. Luckily there are ways to control it a bit better. Such as...

-Double jump. It's a thing he can do. Double jump can be executed either before or after flask jump. This adds a lot of options for moving efficiently through screens and maximizing the momentum gained by flask jumping. I'm fairly certain that even with his double jump, plague cannot jump as high as shovel.

-Aerial potions. These deserve their own section because throwing potions in the air has some interesting properties. For one, you will stall in the air while throwing potions, which can be for a couple seconds. It also give a you a VERY small vertical boost, but without perfectly timing at the jump peak, this is hard to take advantage of. Depending on how quickly you were moving before throqing potions, you can also continue to move horizontally through the air with aerial potions. Finally, it seems like once you have thrown a potion, you regain control of your aerialovement, if done to interrupt the momentum of a flask jump.

So that's some pretty cool stuff. Here are some tricks I picked up. The Dev I talked to did not have anything to add to this list, as a note.

Using the flask jump momentum to keep going forward with an aerial potion. This is still fairly fast, I would estimate around walking speed. More importantly though, you can begin charging another flask jump while air sliding. This is one of two ways to charge a flask jump without having to slow to a stop while throwing the potion. The second is...

Charging during screen transitions. If you throw a potion while entering a screen transition, holding the button will allow you to have a charged jump by the time you regain control on the next screen. Pretty simple really.

Using the relic button? I didn't look at whether or not relic use was set to a single button, or up + attack, since relics were not available in this demo. However I noticed that I was able to press both square and circle to throw potions. This meant that I could use one button to charge, and the other to continue throwing potions without releasing charge. Ive never played with single button relics or the ps4, so I don't know if circle would normally be the relic button.

Chaining flask jumps. This is basically just an extension of the first point. Typically you will be easily able to charge a second flask jump before hitting the ground. This means you can do something like charge -> jump -> flask jump -> air slide/charge -> flask jump -> double jump. Its pretty great.

I'll post some additional info about plague knights mode in another post below.

Well I'm sitting in the airport for the next 3 hours, so imma give this a crack.

The demo consisted of the intro plains stage
 There were 25 green coins throughout the stage, and a leaderboard after the demo. I played once to get a feel for plague knight and again to try and get a rough time. I got a 3:38 but I don't know if that includes a little animation that plays at the start if the stage (+8-12s compared to shovel knight I'd say) or the fanfare/exit animation after black knight. Only runs that got all 25 coins went onto the leadwrboard , some.of which requires detours to side screens (I would guess adding 20-30 seconds). The best time on the leaderboard was one "BSD"/with a 3:12.

As for how Plague plays:

He feels a tad slower than shovel, has no pogo, and significantly smaller jumps. However he does have the following:

-Throw potions. This is his main attack. Potions travel a short distance diagonally downward, and bounce off the ground slightly. They will explode upon hitting an enemy/deatructable object, or else after about a second. While throwing plague comes to a stop and is animation locked, but it seems like you can throw subsequent potions faster than taking another action. I believe there is a small delay after the third potion, probably the game only allowing 3 to be on screen at once. Aerial potions do a ton more, but I'll discuss that below.

-Charge potion. Holding the attack button will charge. After about a second, releasing the button will cause plague knight to explode. This explosion will damage nearby enemies but not plague knight. I believe it does the same damage as a normal attack. What's interesting is that this explosion propels plague forward, in what I'm going to call a flask jump, because why not. You have some control over the direction it goes. Holding forward you will travel in an arc forward, shovel.gf up you will go straight up (though I think the vertical distance traveled is the same in each case). This movement is very fast if a little hard to control, but the distance seems consistent so it shouldn't be a problem. Luckily there are ways to control it a bit better. Such as...

-Double jump. It's a thing he can do. Double jump can be executed either before or after flask jump. This adds a lot of options for moving efficiently through screens and maximizing the momentum gained by flask jumping. I'm fairly certain that even with his double jump, plague cannot jump as high as shovel.

-Aerial potions. These deserve their own section because throwing potions in the air has some interesting properties. For one, you will stall in the air while throwing potions, which can be for a couple seconds. It also give a you a VERY small vertical boost, but without perfectly timing at the jump peak, this is hard to take advantage of. Depending on how quickly you were moving before throqing potions, you can also continue to move horizontally through the air with aerial potions. Finally, it seems like once you have thrown a potion, you regain control of your aerialovement, if done to interrupt the momentum of a flask jump.

So that's some pretty cool stuff. Here are some tricks I picked up. The Dev I talked to did not have anything to add to this list, as a note.

Using the flask jump momentum to keep going forward with an aerial potion. This is still fairly fast, I would estimate around walking speed. More importantly though, you can begin charging another flask jump while air sliding. This is one of two ways to charge a flask jump without having to slow to a stop while throwing the potion. The second is...

Charging during screen transitions. If you throw a potion while entering a screen transition, holding the button will allow you to have a charged jump by the time you regain control on the next screen. Pretty simple really.

Using the relic button? I didn't look at whether or not relic use was set to a single button, or up + attack, since relics were not available in this demo. However I noticed that I was able to press both square and circle to throw potions. This meant that I could use one button to charge, and the other to continue throwing potions without releasing charge. Ive never played with single button relics or the ps4, so I don't know if circle would normally be the relic button.

Chaining flask jumps. This is basically just an extension of the first point. Typically you will be easily able to charge a second flask jump before hitting the ground. This means you can do something like charge -> jump -> flask jump -> air slide/charge -> flask jump -> double jump. Its pretty great.

I'll post some additional info about plague knights mode in another post below.

RamblingJosh

2015-03-09 06:42:35 am

Many words! Handle it!

Now some info on plague mode itself. This was not in the demo, just from talking to the Dev.

The biggest thing is how relics work. Rather than buying relics from chester, plague has to craft them. He does this by collecting reagents from the environment and from dead enemies. He can then craft relics from any checkpoint. Once a relic is crafted, they consume a regenerating power bar, rather than magic points.

It was also mentioned that plague can't enter town. I didn't think to ask if he had Map encountera, or what plague level would look like for him. The Dev hinted that one of the relics might improve his jumping ability somehow.

So this brings to mind a couple things.

It would appear that relics can be crafted in any order. Likely they would still be restricted by where certain reagents are available, but the n general reagent routing should be interesting. Also, I don't know what, if any reason plague would have to destroy checkpoints, unless it gave him something other than gems (which I believe are a reagent so I dunno). Either way you'd have to be sure not to destroy checkpoints when needing to craft.

I can't be sure, because I haven't actually played the plains in a while, but I believe I noticed one small difference in plague's version of the level. If true then there is no telling how many tweaks there may or may not be. This is important because I believe that in the end of the day, the biggest difference between plague and shovel times is going to come from how many skips and tricks are gained/lost because of stage and relic differences, above and beyond what flask jumping instead of pogoing will change.

Now some info on plague mode itself. This was not in the demo, just from talking to the Dev.

The biggest thing is how relics work. Rather than buying relics from chester, plague has to craft them. He does this by collecting reagents from the environment and from dead enemies. He can then craft relics from any checkpoint. Once a relic is crafted, they consume a regenerating power bar, rather than magic points.

It was also mentioned that plague can't enter town. I didn't think to ask if he had Map encountera, or what plague level would look like for him. The Dev hinted that one of the relics might improve his jumping ability somehow.

So this brings to mind a couple things.

It would appear that relics can be crafted in any order. Likely they would still be restricted by where certain reagents are available, but the n general reagent routing should be interesting. Also, I don't know what, if any reason plague would have to destroy checkpoints, unless it gave him something other than gems (which I believe are a reagent so I dunno). Either way you'd have to be sure not to destroy checkpoints when needing to craft.

I can't be sure, because I haven't actually played the plains in a while, but I believe I noticed one small difference in plague's version of the level. If true then there is no telling how many tweaks there may or may not be. This is important because I believe that in the end of the day, the biggest difference between plague and shovel times is going to come from how many skips and tricks are gained/lost because of stage and relic differences, above and beyond what flask jumping instead of pogoing will change.

Copilot

2015-03-09 09:44:15 am

Ruling the cosmos!

This actually sounds like it'll be really sick, both in routing and the running of it. One worry I have is that it sounds like the overall movement that you described with flask jumping sounds like it can get really complex and difficult, and if you mess it up even once you're hosed, so hopefully that doesn't interfere too much (I'm thinking a lot about how in some Castlevania games the fastest method of movement is back-dashing and then jumping at the end, requiring you to constantly hit left and right in the right sequence, else you just stall yourself heavily).

Do you know how far he was able to go with the vertical flask jump? About the same height as SK on a pogo?

RamblingJosh

Edit history:

RamblingJosh: 2015-03-09 07:55:58 pm

2015-03-09 07:48:03 pm

Many words! Handle it!

Tried to put together some references:

http://i.imgur.com/PUvl5h9.png
Bubbles. Shovel Knight has a lot more of them. Plague doesn't really need them because of his flask jump, but it shows there are some differences between the stages. What bubbles to exist in Plague's version of the stage actually serve as an obstacle being as he can't pogo off them.

http://i.imgur.com/eHwaeQo.png
On this screen, Plague has a little block on the right ledge, which stops him from jumping straight up there with a double jump -> flash jump. And rather than a ladder, there is another smaller ledge on the left.

http://imgur.com/CyA11gt,ffo4y4L,PUvl5h9,DwQVxw8,7O72fO5,rWiJUmP#4
This screen demonstrates that while Shovel can jump up above each ladder from the ground, Plague makes it roughly so that his head is aligned with the ground on the level above, after double jumping. Also in areas like the 3 dirt blocks on the right, Plague is a lot faster. He can quickly toss 3 potions down there and destroy all 3 blocks, whereas Shovel has to slowly pogo through each one in succession.

http://i.imgur.com/rWiJUmP.png
With a double jump - > Flask Jump, Plague can barely not make this ladder. So it would seem that that vertical is slightly higher than Shovel's normal jump height.

http://i.imgur.com/ffo4y4L.png
This screen is actually pretty annoying as Plague. The dust blocks are a little tricky to break smoothly because the potions you throw will try to go horizontally, so it can be tricky to get down as fast as possible. Also, he cannot double jump up to the ledge on the left, nor double jump -> flash jump to the ladder, so he has to do 2 flask jumps.

http://i.imgur.com/CyA11gt.png
This screen is noticeably different for Plague. There is no pit on the left, and the section the dragon is on is much longer, with the pit positioned much closer to the downward stretching bit of ceiling. As another note, the dragon is a good demonstration of the Flask Jump arc. If Plague uses flask jump when his toes are roughly aligned with the nose of the dragon, he will clear the dragon without taking damage pretty much perfectly.

Tried to put together some references:

http://i.imgur.com/PUvl5h9.png
Bubbles. Shovel Knight has a lot more of them. Plague doesn't really need them because of his flask jump, but it shows there are some differences between the stages. What bubbles to exist in Plague's version of the stage actually serve as an obstacle being as he can't pogo off them.

http://i.imgur.com/eHwaeQo.png
On this screen, Plague has a little block on the right ledge, which stops him from jumping straight up there with a double jump -> flash jump. And rather than a ladder, there is another smaller ledge on the left.

http://imgur.com/CyA11gt,ffo4y4L,PUvl5h9,DwQVxw8,7O72fO5,rWiJUmP#4
This screen demonstrates that while Shovel can jump up above each ladder from the ground, Plague makes it roughly so that his head is aligned with the ground on the level above, after double jumping. Also in areas like the 3 dirt blocks on the right, Plague is a lot faster. He can quickly toss 3 potions down there and destroy all 3 blocks, whereas Shovel has to slowly pogo through each one in succession.

http://i.imgur.com/rWiJUmP.png
With a double jump - > Flask Jump, Plague can barely not make this ladder. So it would seem that that vertical is slightly higher than Shovel's normal jump height.

http://i.imgur.com/ffo4y4L.png
This screen is actually pretty annoying as Plague. The dust blocks are a little tricky to break smoothly because the potions you throw will try to go horizontally, so it can be tricky to get down as fast as possible. Also, he cannot double jump up to the ledge on the left, nor double jump -> flash jump to the ladder, so he has to do 2 flask jumps.

http://i.imgur.com/CyA11gt.png
This screen is noticeably different for Plague. There is no pit on the left, and the section the dragon is on is much longer, with the pit positioned much closer to the downward stretching bit of ceiling. As another note, the dragon is a good demonstration of the Flask Jump arc. If Plague uses flask jump when his toes are roughly aligned with the nose of the dragon, he will clear the dragon without taking damage pretty much perfectly.

3ngag3

2015-04-14 01:40:42 am

Dougtrio trio...

I DID THE THING!

http://www.twitch.tv/3ngag3/c/6537472

I split a little early at the end so until further notice, I'm calling this 45:59

Copilot

2015-04-14 08:11:44 pm

Ruling the cosmos!

YOOO!! Nice job man, I'm really impressed. That's super cool that someone's managed to cut the 46. Sweet job man, congrats

3ngag3

2015-05-12 02:09:44 pm

Dougtrio trio...

So, it looks like a new Any% route has been planned out which utilizes many low% strats to compensate for the fact that you won't be getting the Phase Locket...or visiting the village at all, in that case. You will, however, be getting the Flare Wand from King which now comes first before Specter. Also, Treasure will now be done before Plague with the armory visit in between which means the most annoying stage will be done with the Conjurers Coat (wat?)

Between skipping the village and the various checkpoints you'd need to break for money, this will probably save 30-40 seconds over the route I use in my current WR run.

funkymonk88

2015-06-08 12:32:12 am

...and the circus leaves town

Hey guys. I've decided to start running this game. This is my first game I'll run, I've been watching runs of tons of games for 2 years now and decided it's time to get in on it myself. Is there any other good resources that could help me out. I've been reading a guide that capndrake made about 4 months ago I think and it's goinjg ok so far. Spent about 2 hours learning to stun lock the black knight haha. Anyways looks forward to getting to know you all.

Nintendo4an1

Edit history:

Nintendo4an1: 2015-06-08 11:28:26 am

2015-06-08 11:28:10 am

groovy

Quote from funkymonk88:

Hey guys. I've decided to start running this game. This is my first game I'll run, I've been watching runs of tons of games for 2 years now and decided it's time to get in on it myself. Is there any other good resources that could help me out. I've been reading a guide that capndrake made about 4 months ago I think and it's goinjg ok so far. Spent about 2 hours learning to stun lock the black knight haha. Anyways looks forward to getting to know you all.

Hi there! I'm Nintendo4an1, but you can just call me Ninty. I really haven't ran the game in a while and I'm just starting to get back into it, but I used this google docs file. It gives you the rundown on what to do for practically each level and gets updated every now and then. I highly recommend you use it. Happy running!

Copilot

Edit history:

Copilot: 2015-06-30 02:12:29 pm

2015-06-30 02:12:11 pm

Ruling the cosmos!

Oh my god, RamblingJosh wasn't messing around about this movement tech, holy crap. This looks really really exciting, this is going to be such a massively different speedrun from the normal game, it should be a ton of fun.

Copilot

2015-07-07 10:01:07 am

Ruling the cosmos!

So is anyone else gonna just buy the physical copy of Shovel Knight even though you already own it, like, just for the novelty factor? Like, honestly, it's one of my favorite games of all time, so having a physical copy of it would just be really cool to me, especially just having an instructiom manual (and man, do I hope they put a nice juicy instruction manual in there)

3ngag3

Edit history:

3ngag3: 2015-07-10 03:52:27 am

2015-07-10 03:46:54 am

Dougtrio trio...

Quote from Copilot:

Oh my god, RamblingJosh wasn't messing around about this movement tech, holy crap. This looks really really exciting, this is going to be such a massively different speedrun from the normal game, it should be a ton of fun.

Damn. That is some impressive movement.

BTW, I improved the any% WR to 45:48 a couple nights ago.

CptBrian

Edit history:

CptBrian: 2016-04-29 07:29:04 pm

CptBrian: 2015-07-30 04:59:12 pm

CptBrian: 2015-07-30 04:24:58 pm

CptBrian: 2015-07-30 04:24:35 pm

CptBrian: 2015-07-30 04:23:23 pm

CptBrian: 2015-07-30 04:22:30 pm

CptBrian: 2015-07-30 04:12:56 pm

CptBrian: 2015-07-30 04:04:18 pm

CptBrian: 2015-07-30 04:02:14 pm

CptBrian: 2015-07-30 03:58:24 pm

CptBrian: 2015-07-30 03:54:39 pm

2015-07-30 03:53:57 pm

Relax

-removed-

Copilot

2015-07-30 04:48:20 pm

Ruling the cosmos!

What? I don't mean to be rude, but you made a post on here when they made that change saying, quote, "It's great to see a working solution like that for speedrunners ... I think there's still a bit too much RNG for my taste"

CptBrian

Edit history:

CptBrian: 2016-04-29 07:28:59 pm

2015-07-30 04:50:39 pm

Relax

-removed-

Copilot

2015-07-30 04:52:44 pm

Ruling the cosmos!

Yeah, that and the quick swapping helped any% get really now (and some really nice routing from from 3engag3 and Bustah :))

Vibex

2015-07-30 05:39:36 pm

Quote from Copilot:

Oh my god, RamblingJosh wasn't messing around about this movement tech, holy crap. This looks really really exciting, this is going to be such a massively different speedrun from the normal game, it should be a ton of fun.

I'm a huge fan of Shovel knight, and I did some IL runs (didn't want to put in the time to learn the whole game), but when plague knight comes out I'm totally gonna have to try running it. His movement looks awesome!

MunchaKoopas

2015-08-10 08:04:27 pm

Thanks for watching the run everyone! I had a lot of fun. I am sorry the volume was low. They tend to do that to a lot of runs for seemingly no reason. I am glad you thought the commentary was good Brian. As for posting to this thread, I stopped posting due mostly to laziness. The only good timeline I have of when tricks were found is my youtube playlist and people's old PBs.

Copilot

2015-08-11 07:33:17 am

Ruling the cosmos!

Oh hey, by the way, for any of you who follow this thread and didn't catch it, YCG has stated that they're actually done with everything on the Plague Knight campaign, and at this point they're just going to be polishing it up so it's ready to ship soon.

MunchaKoopas

2015-08-14 07:05:25 pm

I made a tutorial for Low%
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFN8A44dbaQLRW2dybi9Jg1vuhNXw-9h3

MunchaKoopas

Edit history:

MunchaKoopas: 2015-08-17 07:34:29 pm

MunchaKoopas: 2015-08-17 07:34:02 pm

2015-08-17 07:33:03 pm

Charge slash glitch. Push attack then jump immediately after to charge much faster.