This is a tough one. From purely a ‘speedrunner’ perspective, I think we should keep Resolution Toggling, V-sync Toggling, and Crouch Clipping. Our goal is to beat the game as fast as possible, using any and everything within the game to help us achieve that; exploitations, glitches, etc. included. But you can’t just approach the problem from one perspective obviously. Speedrunning is also naturally competitive and so fairness and integrity between all runners must also be upheld. From this perspective the clipping glitches can been viewed as very volatile from person to person. They can be inconsistent and all clips are different, there are hardware limitations, and there is also editing in an extreme custom resolution specific to the person in order to get FPS at an optimal level for clipping. So solely from this perspective, you’d probably want to remove everything back to Legacy. But I think the key here is finding a balance between these two and not being ignorant to one or the other.

So for me personally, I think we might have to resort to using third-party programs like Dxtory to ensure fairness while also not sacrificing things that makes running the game fun and interesting. Obviously this then brings up the counter argument that using third-party programs isn’t exactly a ‘fair’ speedrun as it’s using things outside of the games limitations. But for me, I think it’s OK as long as its intentions are for the best of everyone and the community. In the end we all just want to have fun speedrunning a game we love so why not try something different to pursue that.

Also if this did come to pass, we’d probably have two overall major categories: Legacy and TAS. Legacy is everything that does not include any form of Crouch Clipping whereas TAS would include all forms of course clipping assisted by a tool such as Dxtory. Then they would have all the subcategories (Any%, All Missions, 100%, Low%, etc.) included under. And we can’t forget Console so that would be under Legacy or a third overall main category.

Anyway, I digress a little. I also don’t think specifically banning Resolution Toggling and/or V-sync Toggling is a good way to go at all, but keeping them and doing nothing at all is just as bad. If we keep Resolution Toggling, we have the awkward, extreme switch of resolutions but it is the fairest compromise that includes all forms of Crouch Clipping to date. If we ban Resolution Toggling, we then limit ourselves to V-sync Toggling. Keeping V-sync Toggling gives a very large advantage towards people with very good hardware and people with low to medium hardware cannot even use the technique. Banning V-sync Toggling also then limits us to normal Crouch Clipping. Keeping normal Crouch Clipping can make many clips inconsistent and give people with the optimal FPS (around 130) an advantage over others, similar to that which V-sync Toggling gives. Removing Crouch Clipping obviously then just makes it Legacy. I don’t believe there is a very good ‘in-the-middle’ solution, but there may be one I cannot foresee. I believe that in the end we either keep moving forward or circle back around to the very start.

In the end, not everyone is going to happy with the outcome. Trying to facilitate for everyone also is probably going to be impossible. But I hope that we can all move forward with the goal to just simply enjoy speedrunning this game as well as having fun together as a community.

Props to Metzix for showing us the video with the camera lock weirdness which was the driving force for finding this, and Infomastr for finding out that you can get a prompt on the first hack, then me for finding the second ;)

Another revision of the M13 Apollo clip and fall:

If you can dodge the first hugger while heading towards the Beta Core, you can use it boost yourself through the crawlspace before the generator. Saves roughly 7 seconds, but that number might need more testing.

You can also do this with the shotgun, bolt gun, and flamethrower. There seems to be a certain interval where if you hit the Alien during his drop from the vent animation with any weapon atleast once, he'll be scared off into the vents. As long as the drop isn't scripted (M18, M14), it should work from most vents, but timing may vary.

A highlight showing off jack cancelling using peeking while also showing off that you can actually kill the Joe without anything but the jack. It took 13 hits to kill the Joe, while moving behind the Joe every 2 or 3 hits.

So this is a pretty awesome trick. Not only does it increase the range of the stun baton dramatically, but also makes it instantaneous and it can go through solid walls. I also think the extended range of it is probably equal or near to that of the flamethrower, maybe more, I'm not 100% sure though. I found it while trying out the stuff Info was talking about to do with cancelling attack animations using peek on Joes, etc. to get faster attack speeds.

Doing it is pretty simple, you just need to find the right speed at doing it. Simply hold right mouse button to bring it up, then left click to attack, instantly let go of left and right mouse buttons, then hold the peek key, then press right mouse button again. Hopefully that's an okay explanation. Also be careful when doing it near say a wall or something, because otherwise if you fail, you'll end up using a charge on the wall.

But yeah, this allows you to kill the security guy behind the shutters at the start of M11, making it safe and fast while saving flamethrower fuel.

Also as a side note, you can also quickly cancel the shotgun cocking animation using the same method. This allows you to get a bunch of shotgun shots off really quickly.

I made a highlight as well of me doing it at M11, shown here:

Another potential use would be say after the server hub in M10, if you get bad RNG and one of the pistol guys is in the way to the Labs elevator, you can stun baton him quickly without wasting fuel.

Hopefully we can find more places this is useful, even though we're given so little charges on actual runs.