Hi!

I was wondering if anyone knew what exactly causes the first gear in Terra Tubes to do a half spawn? I've been getting a lot of it while practicing, but I just can't really figure out what exactly causes it. I'm going out of bounds in the beginning and then dropping back inside in the spinner room below the start point.

I don't know if anyone's fully fleshed out the proof of this, but I'm fairly sure it's caused by sprite limit. The gear is made up of 4 sprites. Every robot you leave alive shoots more lasers, which are fully recognized by the game whether they're on screen or not, so they cause half of the gear sprites to spawn instead of all. Why this causes it not to move, that I don't know.

The good news is yes, you can get a consistent full spawn. Since the robots shoot the lasers at the same exact time every time, all you need is to perfectly execute your route. Reach the checkpoint within a certain timing window without any slip-ups, and you should get a consistent spawn. If a perfect run is still getting a half-spawn, there may need to be a strat change somewhere.

And don't feel bad if it doesn't work. Between 2010-2013, before we found the good window, we were getting half spawns about 50% of the time, and several of the world records back then got a half spawn. Dying on the left spikes is a pretty quick backup, so it's not a huge worry unless you're at zero lives.