I might be breaking the record on this game I have some secret strats on this game it might work
I did some glitch hunting back when I was running this, and the only major flaw I could find was a way to launch cars if they were pushed "into" a steep corner. I think it's a product of the physics engine trying to displace objects inside of solid objects, like when you try to hit those angular "spikes" that split some of the tracks and the car is very suddenly shifted left/right to avoid them. The same happens when a car gets pushed into a steep corner; the game displaces it upwards at a high rate of speed. If you hit them right, they will spin a great deal and rack up tons of points. It's possible to completely max out the point counter with one hit if you're lucky. The downside is that this sometimes results in instant destruction of your own car.
The ideal run would then be successful "launches" on one race in each of the divisions, which is what I was trying to do in my attempts, but couldn't reliably pull off. There are probably track-specific setups that would yield better results, but I'm not that motivated to wrestle with them.
But isn't the score capped at 50 for each spin no matter how many times/degrees it spins in one aerial ? Do you have some kind of footage for this ?
The manual says that the max amount of points possible is 100 (spinning the first place car 360 degrees.) It might also be possible to get 150pts for spinning the first place car 360 and destroying it. I don't have footage of it going higher than that, but I've experienced single-hit 999pt spins on real hardware more than once.
I realized when I was running this game that I had very little idea of how points were handled. For example, a really strong hit that sends a car spinning can sometimes only award 10 points, or a very small hit will award 50. Sometimes the points come after a long delay, other times instantly. If we understood it better, maybe we could exploit it.
I'll start running again and see what I can come up with.
Yes I remember that the manual said something about double points for spinning the 1st place car. But according to my experiences I considered this to be wrong. Just go to Ultimate Demolition Speedway (its pretty easy to get a good hit there), drive backwards and wait at the steep curve to hit the 1st place car. You never get anything above 50. You can do it on Pine Hills too. Maybe if you get a real crazy glitched hit with dozens of spins the game could freak and just max it out.
Also, I think it's not possible to stack up destruction and spin points on the same hit. If you hit a car at the front and destroy it, you get 25 kill points immediately. And since the game does not reward you for spinning dead cars, you don't get any more points despite the fact that on the last hit it was still alive.
Anytime near I want to pick the game up again as well and try to get a better understanding of the game speedrun-wise.
it's 10 points for a 90 degree turn, 25 for a 180, and 50 for a 360. and 25 for a killing blow. killing blow doesnt stack with anything else.
Congrats on the WR!
Sub 20 is totally possible - I had a 20:XX run right before we realized how crazy load times were between emus.
I believe a truly "perfect" run would be around the 16:30-17 minute mark - that accounts for insane RNG, fast loads, and a glitch at the start of Black Sail that nets you around 200-300 points in the first turn with minimal contact (seen in a couple of my runs in later divisions.)
Very nice WR indeed, especially with the Pro car. I thought Pro would be worse than Rookie in Wrecking because of the awful grip which turns and flips you over on every contact. But apparently it's not that bad.