SSX (2012)

2013-12-08 03:47:37 am

Hey all, I've noticed that as far as I can tell there are no threads, runs, or knowledge base submissions about the latest SSX series offering on PS3/Xbox360 (the one just called "SSX" released in 2012), and as you can probably guess I'm in the process of developing a run for it. I apologize if I somehow missed a section dedicated to it in which case this can be removed, but I did a search and could only find offhand posts about SSX:Tricky and a brief dicussion of SSX3.

My goal is to do a respectable any% run of the campaign (World Tour) mode from a new game. My understanding of this means timing a run from the selection of the "World Tour" option to final finish line crossing on the final race with Griff in Lhotse's Death Zone. (someone more experienced please correct me on timing nuances if the run should be started at first race selection instead).

My Run Strat musings so far:

So far when speedrunning SSX the majority of the game has been about picking the fastest lines and planning when and where to get boost, and by extension managing Tricky state. But there are some additional nuances that need addressing, specifically when and whom to give upgraded RNG shop gear to, finding places where the wingsuit allows for skipping portions of the track (and whether it's faster than simply boosting through them grounded), and keeping a balance of pure speedrunning and point scoring for Trick challenges.

My strategy as of now is to check the shop and give speed or boost upgraded boards to Zoey whenever she comes up as she appears once in every region to introduce the other region's runners as well as having her own region first and being the character the final race is run with. I'm sure there can be points left over to spend on other riders' gear when they come up though, so planning who actually has the MOST overall time to shave in their region's runs is my next goal to figure out so I can give them preferential gear treatment.

Additionally I'm in the process of seeing which Trick based challenges aren't easily met just by staying true to the paths I've chosen as most optimal for speed so far which will need to be rerouted for campaign. And also if any tracks have significant wingsuit skips I'm not yet aware of (so far just the obvious hairpin turn skip in the bottom section of Cerro Pollone and a jumping a semi-circular portion of Cerro Torre in Patagonia are a part of my route, but I expect this to change as soon as I've given every track a hard look at route planning).

As far as technical things I haven't found any major glitches or bug based skips, but the game is pretty forgiving when it comes to kill planes and invisible walls (especially considering there's a built in rewind function in-game, though it's not quite a tool of precision it does theoretically allow for hard glitch re-attempts if any are found) so if nothing else I'm sure there are some cheesy mountaintop skimming routes out there to be found to shave down time. I'm also not sure as of yet every exact detail of video and recording specs for the game but I'll jump that hurdle if and when I feel confident enough to start recording runs.

Any comments on the game, known specs, known bugs/skips, or routing theory (or even just a "you go mang") would be most appreciated.

Thread title:

Hey all, I've noticed that as far as I can tell there are no threads, runs, or knowledge base submissions about the latest SSX series offering on PS3/Xbox360 (the one just called "SSX" released in 2012), and as you can probably guess I'm in the process of developing a run for it. I apologize if I somehow missed a section dedicated to it in which case this can be removed, but I did a search and could only find offhand posts about SSX:Tricky and a brief dicussion of SSX3.

My goal is to do a respectable any% run of the campaign (World Tour) mode from a new game. My understanding of this means timing a run from the selection of the "World Tour" option to final finish line crossing on the final race with Griff in Lhotse's Death Zone. (someone more experienced please correct me on timing nuances if the run should be started at first race selection instead).

My Run Strat musings so far:

[hidden]
So far when speedrunning SSX the majority of the game has been about picking the fastest lines and planning when and where to get boost, and by extension managing Tricky state. But there are some additional nuances that need addressing, specifically when and whom to give upgraded RNG shop gear to, finding places where the wingsuit allows for skipping portions of the track (and whether it's faster than simply boosting through them grounded), and keeping a balance of pure speedrunning and point scoring for Trick challenges.

My strategy as of now is to check the shop and give speed or boost upgraded boards to Zoey whenever she comes up as she appears once in every region to introduce the other region's runners as well as having her own region first and being the character the final race is run with. I'm sure there can be points left over to spend on other riders' gear when they come up though, so planning who actually has the MOST overall time to shave in their region's runs is my next goal to figure out so I can give them preferential gear treatment.

Additionally I'm in the process of seeing which Trick based challenges aren't easily met just by staying true to the paths I've chosen as most optimal for speed so far which will need to be rerouted for campaign. And also if any tracks have significant wingsuit skips I'm not yet aware of (so far just the obvious hairpin turn skip in the bottom section of Cerro Pollone and a jumping a semi-circular portion of Cerro Torre in Patagonia are a part of my route, but I expect this to change as soon as I've given every track a hard look at route planning).

As far as technical things I haven't found any major glitches or bug based skips, but the game is pretty forgiving when it comes to kill planes and invisible walls (especially considering there's a built in rewind function in-game, though it's not quite a tool of precision it does theoretically allow for hard glitch re-attempts if any are found) so if nothing else I'm sure there are some cheesy mountaintop skimming routes out there to be found to shave down time. I'm also not sure as of yet every exact detail of video and recording specs for the game but I'll jump that hurdle if and when I feel confident enough to start recording runs.[/hidden]

Any comments on the game, known specs, known bugs/skips, or routing theory (or even just a "you go mang") would be most appreciated.

Warepire

2013-12-08 04:15:01 pm

Heavy Metal Powered

SSX games are usually crazy & fun to watch when going for the fastest time. I'd like to see a run of this.

SmallFry

2013-12-09 01:12:57 am

Thanks man, I'm glad to hear someone wants to see it run: I know I want to run it so that's both halves of the battle lol. I don't really have any estimate of when I'll get a full run out right now since I'm still in the heavy planning phase of getting each route hammered out, but as soon as I feel confident I can put out a run worth watching I'll grab some recording equipment and see if I can't get a clean run submitted.

SmallFry

2013-12-13 10:09:26 pm

I've taken the liberty of creating a Knowledge Base page for the game with all the things I've found so far while experimenting, from the raw basics to some strange foibles of the game. If anyone has any knowledge of the game that isn't represented there (or if I've said something that you don't think is correct), feel free to spread that knowledge.

FerreTrip

2013-12-15 09:00:56 am

Nuzlocker and wannabe speedrunner

Good luck! I'll try and catch a run of this, being the one who's doing the SSX 3 run (training starting next month once my freaking Wii arrives).

SmallFry

2013-12-16 10:59:41 pm

Oh yeah! I saw that thread go up. I imagine they're similar runs in theory so I wish you the best (and hopefully anything I find in this run holds some general merit for yours).

SmallFry

Edit history:

SmallFry: 2014-02-01 08:52:22 am

2014-02-01 08:47:24 am

Just a minor update for anyone who was following this: I've got a rough draft route worked out for the courses in 6 of the 9 regions so far and things are going well on the refresher practices while I push towards hashing out the end-game routes.

I'm surprised how few of the regions have major wingsuit skips that are RTA worth it though. I've done the guesstimation on a few very small ones and it's almost always more time spent going to Patagonia forcing a wingsuit to appear in the shop (~20 seconds) than you save doing any minor skips on a new character's courses. Thankfully Patagonia itself is rife with skips, so you can make full use of Elise's naturally given wingsuit in the region.

Antarctica is/was a complete pain to find the optimal routes for though, I have the feeling if any of these are going to change dramatically it's going to be there, Moby's board just isn't cut out for easy Tricky gain and there are a ton of dicey "Maybe worth it??" routing decisions I still have to test the merit of when it comes to the decision to give him a wingsuit or not.

Besides that most of the routes so far have been seemingly faster with no wingsuit (barring the potential for using a wingsuit over the ice picks in the Siberia deadly descent). I'm not sure if that means there aren't as many major skips as I assumed or if I'm just not looking for them hard enough, but I know for sure at least one major skip was patched out of the game between the time of a video recording I found and my attempts now, so maybe that explains a bit.

One thing of note though is that I think I may have found an semi-exploitable feature for the run just yesterday during the Antarctica routing: when you're gliding in a wingsuit and pull straight up while your guiding helicopter is swinging in from overhead you seem to get a minor boost in height. I'm not sure if it's an actual gameplay feature in the helicopter giving you an updraft, or if it's a minor bug owed to the way the camera pans out during such an overhead sweep, but either way it has made at least one minor skip possible so far, so I'll have to start theorizing if there are any other locations this could be used in. It seems very dependent on the helicopter's programmed routing though so there's no guarantee that any spots this is possible in make for a good route overall or even that this glitch happens anywhere else besides the particular location I noted it in. We'll see.

Just a minor update for anyone who was following this: I've got a rough draft route worked out for the courses in 6 of the 9 regions so far and things are going well on the refresher practices while I push towards hashing out the end-game routes.

I'm surprised how few of the regions have major wingsuit skips that are RTA worth it though. I've done the guesstimation on a few very small ones and it's almost always more time spent going to Patagonia forcing a wingsuit to appear in the shop (~20 seconds) than you save doing any minor skips on a  new character's courses. Thankfully Patagonia itself is rife with skips, so you can make full use of Elise's naturally given wingsuit in the region.

Antarctica is/was a complete pain to find the optimal routes for though, I have the feeling if any of these are going to change dramatically it's going to be there, Moby's board just isn't cut out for easy Tricky gain and there are a ton of dicey "Maybe worth it??" routing decisions I still have to test the merit of when it comes to the decision to give him a wingsuit or not.

Besides that most of the routes so far have been seemingly faster with no wingsuit (barring the potential for using a wingsuit over the ice picks in the Siberia deadly descent). I'm not sure if that means there aren't as many major skips as I assumed or if I'm just not looking for them hard enough, but I know for sure at least one major skip was patched out of the game between the time of a video recording I found and my attempts now, so maybe that explains a bit.

One thing of note though is that I think I may have found an semi-exploitable feature for the run just yesterday during the Antarctica routing: when you're gliding in a wingsuit and pull straight up while your guiding helicopter is swinging in from overhead you seem to get a minor boost in height. I'm not sure if it's an actual gameplay feature in the helicopter giving you an updraft, or if it's a minor bug owed to the way the camera pans out during such an overhead sweep, but either way it has made at least one minor skip possible so far, so I'll have to start theorizing if there are any other locations this could be used in. It seems very dependent on the helicopter's programmed routing though so there's no guarantee that any spots this is possible in make for a good route overall or even that this glitch happens anywhere else besides the particular location I noted it in. We'll see.

HoboWithaShotgun

2014-02-01 08:53:23 am

Wake up and be awesome

I'm assuming you're using a PC, just want to know. Is it possible to removes patches from the game? I know you can do that with 360 and I'm assuming you can also do that with PS3. Not sure if that would be allowed. If not then I'm sorry for the useless post

Good luck with the run dude

Aftermath

2014-02-01 09:22:23 am

Quits halfway

There are a lot of videos at http://www.merqurycity.com/ssx_forum/videos.php?c=16 and http://www.merqurycity.com/ssx_forum/videos.php?c=19 showing good times on each course with and without wing suit. Not all of them are the fastest, but should give you a good idea of the lines and skips with/without wingsuit.

Apologies if you've already checked them out.

SmallFry

Edit history:

SmallFry: 2014-02-21 01:35:45 am

SmallFry: 2014-02-21 01:31:28 am

SmallFry: 2014-02-21 01:27:48 am

SmallFry: 2014-02-21 01:25:19 am

SmallFry: 2014-02-21 01:23:50 am

2014-02-21 01:21:13 am

Quote from HoboWithaShotgun:

I'm assuming you're using a PC, just want to know. Is it possible to removes patches from the game? I know you can do that with 360 and I'm assuming you can also do that with PS3. Not sure if that would be allowed. If not then I'm sorry for the useless post

Good luck with the run dude

Maybe? I hadn't even thought of that lol. I'm playing on 360. If there ARE ways to do so I'd love to hear about them, as of right now I was playing with the impression I just had to live with it: which is certainly untrue now that you challenge that notion. You think if I just go into the SSX game saves I could remove them then? It seems totally obvious now that you said that lol. Thanks!

Quote from Aftermath:

There are a lot of videos at http://www.merqurycity.com/ssx_forum/videos.php?c=16 and http://www.merqurycity.com/ssx_forum/videos.php?c=19 showing good times on each course with and without wing suit. Not all of them are the fastest, but should give you a good idea of the lines and skips with/without wingsuit.

Apologies if you've already checked them out.

No I haven't, and I appreciate every tidbit! Most of the things I can find with base level searches on various tracks are few and far between. So having a baseline of quality videos will help me greatly, either in reassuring myself that I've got the right idea, or what to start experimenting with based on what they show. I'm really a novice at hunting down existing information on offbeat runs, made obvious by the fact I missed all of this lol, but I'm very very glad someone told me.

That said these runs will all be with max level gear, meaning I won't be able to employ all of the tactics seen (or finish nearly as fast). But even just checking the theoretical cleanest/fastest lines against the realistic low level ones for each course help bring this up to a better standard of quality for sure.

I sense incoming route changes immediately.

[quote="HoboWithaShotgun"]I'm assuming you're using a PC, just want to know. Is it possible to removes patches from the game? I know you can do that with 360 and I'm assuming you can also do that with PS3. Not sure if that would be allowed. If not then I'm sorry for the useless post

Good luck with the run dude[/quote]

Maybe? I hadn't even thought of that lol. I'm playing on 360. If there ARE ways to do so I'd love to hear about them, as of right now I was playing with the impression I just had to live with it: which is certainly untrue now that you challenge that notion. You think if I just go into the SSX game saves I could remove them then? It seems totally obvious now that you said that lol. Thanks!

[quote="Aftermath"]There are a lot of videos at http://www.merqurycity.com/ssx_forum/videos.php?c=16 and http://www.merqurycity.com/ssx_forum/videos.php?c=19 showing good times on each course with and without wing suit. Not all of them are the fastest, but should give you a good idea of the lines and skips with/without wingsuit.

Apologies if you've already checked them out.[/quote]
No I haven't, and I appreciate every tidbit! Most of the things I can find with base level searches on various tracks are few and far between. So having a baseline of quality videos will help me greatly, either in reassuring myself that I've got the right idea, or what to start experimenting with based on what they show. I'm really a novice at hunting down existing information on offbeat runs, made obvious by the fact I missed all of this lol, but I'm very very glad someone told me.

That said these runs will all be with max level gear, meaning I won't be able to employ all of the tactics seen (or finish nearly as fast). But even just checking the [i]theoretical [/i]cleanest/fastest lines against the realistic low level ones for each course help bring this up to a better standard of quality for sure.

I sense incoming route changes immediately.

HoboWithaShotgun

2014-02-21 09:39:57 am

Wake up and be awesome

This video features Skyrim but I've done this with multiple games. The only problem is that it might remove all your save files

And yes, this is legal

IAreSmurphy

2014-03-05 10:14:25 am

If a route is found, I will definitely try some runs, I have the X360 version and I will start trying to route soon.

IAreSmurphy

2014-03-19 02:17:09 pm

So i finally started runs last week, and the first thing i noticed is death abusing the skip level function on many of the levels including deadly descents as it is faster if a level has a death wall near the beginning.

IAreSmurphy

2014-03-19 02:18:07 pm

So i finally started runs last week, and the first thing i noticed is death abusing the skip level function on many of the levels including deadly descents as it is faster if a level has a death wall near the beginning. (Sorry for double post)

SmallFry

2020-07-12 05:19:01 pm

This is the mother of all dead forum necros but:

I'm back just to say I'm finally going to be able to run this game for real after so many years.

What 2014 me didn't know when I first made this thread was:
1) I was about to get my first job out of college, and all other plans would immediately die, essentially forever
and
2) I had no capture card with which to capture attempts anyways, so willpower to continue routing despite not being able to run quickly ran out

However: with the magic of time, money for a capture card, and COVID: I can finally make this happen, and I'm tentatively aiming for the World Record (it looks achievable, few seem to have taken up this game since).
I go by SmallFry in most places now, but figured I'd reply to this thread for laughs just to prove not all whims die for good, and sometimes it takes time to make what you really want happen.

LotBlind

Edit history:

LotBlind: 2020-07-13 08:00:55 am

2020-07-13 07:59:00 am

Cool! I don't think we've had a snowboard game since ktwo's Amped 2 run.

BTW: with the magic of being an admin, I can change your username if you should so prefer.

SmallFry

2020-07-22 05:27:17 pm

Quote from LotBlind:

Cool! I don't think we've had a snowboard game since ktwo's Amped 2 run.

BTW: with the magic of being an admin, I can change your username if you should so prefer.

Sure!

I don't know how much there will be to talk about, but that would be cool.

I'm just finished with initial routing and plan to do a Cutscene% run on Friday to talk with friends about the routing process and chill before starting real attempts thereafter.

SmallFry

2020-07-26 01:11:52 am

I did my first real run with the new route I paved and got within 25 seconds of current World Record.

I think it's safe to say it'll be in my grasp very soon if I stay the course.

Going to update the SDA Knowledgebase on the game with what I learned, proved, and disproved since initially making it in case anyone else is motivated to give it a crack!

LotBlind

2020-07-26 11:22:35 am

"World Record" is essentially just a buzzword. What that means in terms of the run's actual quality is pretty vague, with something of a correlation with the number of names on the leaderboard. I hope the run you're comparing yourself with is well researched and executed.

SmallFry

Edit history:

SmallFry: 2020-07-26 03:39:34 pm

SmallFry: 2020-07-26 03:35:11 pm

2020-07-26 03:31:39 pm

I know what you're trying to say lol. It's a reasonable run for a game that got little speedrun love, but the new routing will significantly improve it when everything is over.

It doesn't really matter to me if the WR was good, bad, or ugly to start off with though. My goal is to push this game to its and my limits; that's sort of the point of speedrunning. So all I mean by this is that I'm happy to see that my efforts have already improved the game's potential in the long run.