Monster categories:
In this game, monsters are divided in 3 categories which is how we will refer to them. Each monster of a given category will give the same knockback on attack.
- Short (Spiders, crabs, scorpions, etc.)
- Tall (Fish guys, etc.)
- Crush (Enemies that can crush you with a hammer, etc.)
Tricks
Text box skip
During the tutorial at the start of the game, several text boxes appear on the screen instructing the player how to play the game. These stop your movement for 2-3 seconds and can be somewhat annoying. By reverse engineering the game, it was found that these textboxes check for a flag in memory, and if it is true/enabled, the text box will not block the player's movement. This flag is the same flag that is set when the player presses triangle while talking with a NPC, to cancel out the chat. It was accidentaly discovered that if the player presses triangle as the text box of a npc chat is shrinking away at the end, it will set this flag and it will linger until the next NPC chat. For example, if one presses triangle at the end of the chat with old wrinkle before the tutorial, the text boxes during the parkour course will not block Kingsley's movement. Activating this flag also lets Kingsley move 10 frames earlier leaving an NPC chat.
Boss instant death
When a boss falls into deep water or into the void, it will result in an instant KO. Read further for strategies that were developed while keeping this in mind.
Upwarps
In this game, the collision detection code is a standard ejection-style collision management system, popular with older games. The one in this game is flawed in several ways, and I will explain how we can take advantage of it in this section.
< 90 degree corners (acute/sharp angles)
In this game, any corner formed by two meeting planes where the resulting angle is smaller than 90 degree can be exploited quite heavily. There seems to be a bug in the collision system that makes it so the game can't eject kingsley out of these sharp corners when there is a force applied in a direction opposite to the apex of the corner.
This means that you can just run straight head first into an acute angle corner, wiggle around a bit, and Kingsley will just jam himself deeply inside the corner/wall.
From there, you can do one of two things:
- Simply jump and release the stick; You will be atop the wall
- Turn around, sidestep into the opposite direction until you can safely just hold the sidestep and remain lodged in the corner, then backflip or jump. This is required for certain corners where finer control over the angle is required to successfuly perform the upwarp.
90 degree corners
These corners require a tall or crush enemy to successfuly upwarp with. An unassisted upwarp on a corner of 90 degree or more so far remains nothing but a legend, the same is true but with short enemies.
To simplify the explanation, I will illustrate a concrete example rather than use words. You are gonna want to create the following setup to upwarp into B. Simply reverse the setup to upwarp onto A.
A
The little zero is Kingsley, the hat character above him signifies the direction he is pointed at, M is an enemy. The idea is to run straight into A, while sidestepping into B. Jump just before taking a hit by the monster and you should be upwarped on top of B. Beware, sometimes you might simply jump right through the corner and fall to your death into the endless void. You can jump right after the attack instead but is slightly more difficult because most time, you will simply pop out the corner right after. Jumping and getting attacked in the air makes it so that you get upwarped as soon as Kingsley starts bleeding deep enough into the wall and is the preferred way, both for speed, simplicity and consistency.
> 90 degree corners (wide angles)
These are the hardest clips/upwarps known in this game and require very precise timing, angles and positioning.
- Using short enemies: in the many hours of grinding this, it has only occured twice to me twice using spiders in the second dungeon, to skip the pineapple key door. (Where an easier skip has been found by now) Behind the acute angle corner in the room with the grape key and spiders, there is a wide angle. I simply ran straight into it for a long time, meanwhile getting attacked by spiders from behind. This does not cause an upwarp but instead, a simple clip through the wall to get in the room behind. The wall is fairly thin, which may have had something to do with making this one easier.
- Crush enemies: these enemies I believe give the greatest knockback. It is possible to upwarp just like with tall enemies and 90 degree corners using a crush enemy. (tested only in one place)
Using tight geometry
In certain levels, certain geomtry and objects are placed close enough to the wall that you can squeeze yourself in-between and be partially jammed inside the wall. This allows for clips that would not normally be possible.
Boss strats
Gallagher:
Snuff:
Easy-mode:
- There is a 90 degree corner behind his throne to the left. Go there and bring Snuff with you. Use him to upwarp on top of the wall, stand right inbetween the door and the wall. The door will go down. Manipulate snuff into standing on the door, step off, wait a bit then jump into the void. Snuff will go with you and kill himself. Beware however: if snuff jumps too late, you will get the death transition and will have to start over. The goal is to get the item before the death transition.
Hard-mode:
- Elevator snuff up onto the wall, jump down inbetween the door and the loading zone then somehow manipulate him to jump out. This is faster because you don't have to take a death and you can exit right after. It's insanely hard however.
Clarence:
Similarly to Snuff, clip out of the map through the iron bar door using a damage boost. The doors will remain open after that. Get clarence to follow you outside then jump on one of the barrels floating in the water. Clarence will automatically walk to his death in the deep water.
Reggie:
Hard-mode:
- It's possible to have Reggie teleport right next to where he just was. Not exactly sure if we can keep doing it over and over again but it's worth testing.
- It's possible to get on top of the wall and make an elevator like with Snuff, but Reggie kind of does whatever the fuck he wants. He doesn't follow you, like the other bosses. MIGHT be possible with heavy AI manipulation but unlikely.
Rex:
We can get him to jump back into the map quickly by taking a hit from his cloud.
Gustav:
It seems that if we let him throw his axe then attack him as he tries to spawn it back, he'll just keep trying to spawn it over and over again.
Interesting details
- Certain walls in this game extend all the way to 10,000 units high into the sky. This makes certain upwarps very difficult for RTA because all you see at that height is just black. By going into first person view and looking all the down, parts of the level can be seen, making it a bit easier to orient yourself. The first players to memorize the angles and timings at that height to be able to move freely to their target without looking down will be advantaged and save many seconds.
- The sidestepping mechanic seems to have been added as a last minute thing seeing how it seems to be loosely coupled with the rest of the character control code, for example:
- You can sidestep while you are activating a switch/key (as well as rotate)
- You can sidestep after dying, when Kingsley is lying on the floor
- Jumps and backflips behave interestingly. Looking at the Y velocity during those, we can see that it falls back to zero before Kingsley actually touches the ground. This is very visible with the backflip, mainly. This may have some interesting uses that need to be figured out.
- There is a single frame before a cutscene plays (i.e activating a switch, when the game shows you what that switch did) where you can shoot an arrow and the arrow will come out from the POV of the cutscene. It's unknown yet if this is just a visual thing or if it's an actual physical entity that can hit other stuff. It's more likely to be the latter since the arrow actually hits the scenery and gets stuck in it like it normally would.
- Some entities do not update at all from afar. This is proved by standing far from a target that you must shoot, to the point that it is invisible on sceen, zoom in, shoot the target then unzoom. The target will not activate until you go back near it or zoom towards it.
- Enemies can perform unassisted upwarps very easily compared to Kingsley. This is most prominent with spiders when they jump at you: their velocity goes pretty high and they will clip into walls quite easily.
- You can run into canon balls from the first dungeon without taking any damage sometimes. This may be dependant on angle and such.
- The angle at which you come out of certain green portals is dependant on the angle at which you went into.
- Loading zones in this game extend infinitely into the sky (or possibly to Y=10,000 like tall walls)
- Keys of the same type are the same items. (A banana key in an early dungeon is still the same banana key item in later dungeons) This means that for keys we can't skip later that are long to obtain, we could possibly get a fast to obtain one in earlier dungeons, skip it then use it later to save time.
Videos
This section will showcase most of the known skips in the form of videos
NPC skips
- Armorer skip lets you keep the weapons but stops the game's story from advancing
- Adelina skip you get no shield, seems to be useless. The shield is actually just a visual thing, you can still block just fine with your bare arm
Dungeon skips
Castle
1st dungeon
2nd dungeon
3rd dungeon
4th dungeon
Etc.
Credits
- Oxysoft: writer, author of most of these finds
- Fenns, Warepire: First persons to start looking at Kingsley's from a speedrunning perspective,
- Not Worthy: Brought many new ideas to the table, including a few skips
- SaintConnor: Newest member in the roaster, introduced the idea of using backflips to perform safer and more precise upwarps