So this is a very unfortunate exploit for the game to have, but using printscreen to lag the game on suitably low-end hardware gives bigger jumps. (maybe it works on higher end systems? I'm doubtful.) See here for an example:
Yo! Noid 2 has a similar bug, so when I happened to get a bigger jump due to a lag spike in School World I was primed to recognize the cause immediately. That game also has categories for allowing and disallowing lag manip, and I'd encourage the same here if the trick even matters in any runs and the game is run enough to warrant it. I suppose that's up to existing runners, though.
Anyway. I just figured I should bring attention to this, I don't believe it's known!
Okay, so here's a demo run I did of Mist World with an application of lag manipulation. My text mashing is a lot slower than the record, and I also lose at least 1.3 seconds loading just Underwater World(!!), but the real significance is in the jumps I do towards the language learning prism. By using lag manip as you jump off of the red orb platforms, you can make the jump directly to the next one, which... may not save time anyway. (at 0:56)
It can also be used to make this jump, but I couldn't be bothered getting it in a clean full run:
I haven't (yet?) checked other levels to see if it helps elsewhere, but I can imagine it has a few applications elsewhere too. Figured a real example of its use cases would be good to post though.
...I'd probably like to run this game if not for the lack of a load remover. Maybe I'll try it anyway with a macro for text mashing o,o
Im kinda against having this being allowed for the main leaderboard, but I wouldn't be opposed to adding a category split for lag manipulation, similar to the Yo! Noid 2 leaderboards if people are okay with that. Just seems like kind of an unfair advantage to have if you have a low end PC, granted im not sure if this trick works or not on high end PCs. I personally couldnt really get it to work.
Yeah that's sorta where I'm at. If it's possible for everyone there's a real argument in favour of just allowing it, but if it's hardware-dependent then it sucks and shouldn't be allowed at all. I think there are some genuinely cool applications of it, so I think I'm in favour of its existence so long as everyone can do it.
Making a separate category is... sort of an appealing idea, kneecapped by this game's borderline non-existent speedrun community. Maybe if there were even half a dozen active runners it'd make sense. There aren't, though, so... yeah
