Ok. So I was in the overworld, mashing jump while holding up (which is just what I do in the overworld), in the corner of the screen, transitioning to the next room, when I died, and in the room that I was going into. I don't know if this only occurs in that one spot, but this could become an interesting timesave for OOB%, possibly skipping half the overworld if my assumptions are correct. I'll post a video if I have to.

Edit: Decided to just post the video. Here it is:

Also, a bit off topic, but I found some consistent setups for death abuse, especially in lava caves 1.

I have an update on this. I just did it again in another location. I wasn't recording, but I'll start now. I think it may be similar, if not the same, glitch that's used in the any% SDA run, to skip half of factory.

Edit: Got it again in the original spot. It appears that you need to have full speed in either direction for it to work. If this is true, this being an RTA viable skip is unlikely.

Edit 2: Appears to be exactly the same as factory skip. I'll work on this more. Recorded a couple more skips, including one where I actually fell through to jungle.

Hi, I just recently found this website. Great to see someone is still running this game too, I thought I was all alone! I have not experienced that exact glitch, probably because I usually don't bang my head against the ceiling in that section. I have found two analogous glitches in different spots in the overworld though:

1. When going into the screen where your video starts, with the two cats under a roof, if I bang my head against the ceiling I sometimes die and spawn directly between the two cats in the room. This can save a small amount of time even in 100%, but I've only gotten it about 5 times out of a lot of tries. It is much rarer than the factory skip; I've found that I can always get the factory skip within, say, 30 seconds of attempts (too slow for a run but very doable), whereas I cannot replicate this glitch except randomly once in a long while. This is the only glitch I know of that can be useful for 100%.

2. At the end of the overworld section there's the cat hiding to the right of the cliff. Once you talk to that cat, you start to head left to fall down to the tunnel into the forest. Exactly one time I've hit my head against the ceiling when going left into the next room and spawned in the right side of the cliff, then died and spawned on top of the left side of the cliff. This seemed slower to me anyway.

What are your other skips?

I have had trouble making lava death abuse at all reliable, so I'd be interested to hear your setup. I've been mostly running 100%, and it saves so little time that I usually don't try it.

Off-topic but I figured I'd post my progress here. I'll make a new thread once I've recorded a good run. I haven't been recording my runs lately, just taking a screen shot of the credits. I've beaten the 100% world record several times now... my best deathless run is 4:23, a 2-second improvement. With deaths I have a 4:18, but I died 4 times. At least one of those deaths was intentional, saving a couple seconds, and at least one of them was unintentional, losing a couple seconds, and I don't remember exactly what happened with the other two. I'll record my runs from now on and hopefully I can get even better runs on video to submit here. The 100% record has more room for improvement still, beyond even 4:18. I might come back to any% later too. If anyone wants to see my screenshots or has questions about strats I'd be happy to help. There is a TAS video somewhere that gets 3:57 with all the cats and 11 deaths, and I've taken a lot of my strats from that video but also came up with some ways to make them easier to execute.

I'm thinking about streaming, and noticed that cros has had a couple of streams. How did you set that up with cat planet? I've used OBS before but cat planet just starts immediately when you open the window, making it a little weird.

Hmm. I find lava death abuse quite reliable, at least at the 1st lava section. I could make a video on it, the timings are pretty simple for most of them. I'm still not too consistent with the death abuse towards the end, though. I'll have to practice that (and caves section :p ).

What's your problem with OBS? I know if I use game capture it doesn't start capturing the game immediately, so I use window capture. Window capture doesn't seem to refresh if you don't have the right settings though- I use window capture with "Executable Name" checked in the settings. Or are you having some other problem?

I think I got it to work, and I've now submitted a 4:23 run with 3 deaths. Hoping to at least replicate 4:18 soon. I think we might be talking about different intentional deaths in the lava section, since the route is different if you don't need to get the cats.

Oh right, you're talking about 100%. I don't really have any experience in 100%, though I plan to do it after I'm finished with any% no oob.

Offtopic, but do you think it would be worth it to recompile the game with some additional stuff, like a reset button, live timer, practice mode to warp between areas (looking at you caves section) etc? The source code (gamemaker project) was released with the actual game.

Also how on earth you got a 4:23 with 3 unintentional deaths and no death abuse? The 4:25 has kinda mediocre movement (barely any momentum conservation) but it's still a VERY good run.

That being said, it seems to be VERY possible. I found a 100% TAS of this game (no TAS exists for any other categories tho): It's a 3:52. Note that the strat at 2:46 is wrong, you can collect the cat from underneath, which is obviously faster. I don't expect an RTA sub 4 anytime soon, but nice to know that it's possible. This TAS shows all the death abuse that you need. The most important death abuse scenarios are pretty intuitive to use in a run, but there are a few other small ones that could shave off a couple seconds too. There's also a couple minor route changes at the start.

Edit: Just saw the new WR. Solid run! I thought by "3 deaths" you were talking about unintentional deaths. You got the 3 major unintentional deaths, there were 1 or 2 more "big" ones which wouldn't save too much time. Shame on that intentional death where you missed the cat.

You seem to have used the optimal route too. Very nice.

Glad to see people talking about strats for this game, even tho I can't contribute myself.

I think it would be fine to recompile the game with the stuff mentioned. I can try to take a look at making it this week but can't make any promises.

I could do it. I've had a little bit of experience with GM.

If you wanna work on it, go for it. From what I've seen in like 12 seconds of looking at the code, there's a global variable that holds the time, conveniently called 'global.time'. The object that writes to global.time, oTimer, also keeps track of frames so it wouldn't be too hard to add those into the timer. If you need help with implementing any features, add me on discord and I'll see what I can do.

Did the author use GML or drag and drop? I've got very little experience with GML. I don't think it would be too hard to slightly modify for my needs though.

Seems to be mostly GML. If you're inexperienced with GML, this source actually seems like a good one to start on.

Damn. Even after I fix a few annoying issues that come up when I try to run the game I get some errors about "obsolete functions" like this: if !variable_local_exists("dir") dir=1

The only way, seemingly, to fix this, is to just leave it as dir=1. This doesn't come up with an error immediately- it renders the first frame before throwing another one, something about referencing a function before initializing it. Ugh.

I managed to get it to work with no errors on game launch. For some reason the developer didn't include important dll's and the music folder in with the source code. All you have to do to make it work is copy these highlighted files from the regular game folder: into the folder you have the source in:

Oh, awesome! I'll try it now.

Edit: Nope. Still getting errors. I'll PM you on discord. No point spamming the forums with this shit.

My run is now on the leaderboard, so you can watch it there. I've seen that TAS video and I get a lot of my strats from there. Two of the three deaths are intentional and the third was a failed attempt at an intentional death. I'll think about incorporating more deaths, but if you watch the run you'll see that I still have a lot of time to save by just not accidentally hitting walls I don't want to.

Yeah, I saw it. A really, really good run, at this point, would probably be ~4:15. Sub 4:20 (heh) is free if you play consistently throughout the whole run.

I recorded a 4:22 today but I'll improve it even further before uploading. My goal is to at least match the unrecorded 4:18 I already got, and yeah 4:15 is very possible.

Nice! I reckon you'll end up beating your 4:18. You can already get 4:18 or 4:19 without that failed death abuse in WR run, and you can shave off some more seconds by not bumping into walls. Getting under 4:10 will require a massive amount of optimization in collecting individual cats, so I reckon the WR won't get below 4:13 or 4:14 anytime soon.

Also I just got a 5:16.75 off camera. I think I'll start recording runs soon, I can easily grind that down to 4:40 without too many major mistakes.

I'm been running any% now, and have gotten OOB glitches in several different places in the overworld saving small amounts of time, but they are all very rare. I changed the route slightly to go down to the lava caves so I can intentionally die twice, but it means I have to do more vertical travel. I think it saves a fraction of a second if done properly but it isn't trivial to do. The actual OOB glitch is quite difficult as is falling to the left side of the underworld rooms reliably. I submitted a 0:53.850 run where I get a slow version of the OOB glitch and screw it up a bit, along with a bump against the wall on the long fall. Still good for second place. The 0:51 run is very clean, so it will be tough to beat. A perfect run with a couple overworld OOB glitches might manage to get sub-50, but that will be hard to achieve. There are three "turns" in the run by my count (falling off the overworld cliff, going over the forest spikes, and the glitch), and they are all pretty tough to get right. I've been doing the jump over the forest spikes by doing one medium-jump from the top of the previous ceiling as soon as possible, which is fairly reliable but maybe I should try to do better.

Any advice on getting the glitch? I'm not really sure what to do besides fly at the corner with small jumps. Also, after falling on the left side, I want to die in the final room as quickly as possible so that I can respawn and jump to the final cat. I'm not sure when to start holding left to achieve that. Weird things can happen sometimes if I do it at the wrong time.

Speaking of weird things, a couple times I've attempted the glitch and gotten stuck in a screen that's half-forest, half-lava, unable to move. Also one time I ended up in a crow room where whenever I left in either direction I immediately died and respawned in the same room, so I was trapped. So it's possible to get the game to an un-finishable state.

I also wonder if it might be possible to incorporate some OOB glitches into the 100% run. This would be especially great if I could skip some of the crow rooms that don't have cats in them.