absolutely nuts man well done

Also, unrelated but, I did at some point play around with AutoHotKey, attempting to make scripts to abuse that "jump-boost" you explained to its max potential, but didn't really feel the improvement much (even attempting to race my friend side-by-side), and didn't think it would be worth trying to adapt my play style to using scripts like it. It is possible I just couldn't quite configure the timings properly, though.

The only thing that seems significantly improved from scripts is that it seems you can do much sharper turns while spamming jump, while keeping momentum, while if you didn't spam jump, you wouldn't keep your momentum with such sharp turns. However, with that being the only noticeable improvement, I don't think it's really worth bringing scripts into the rules/runs just yet.

Yoo nice runs man, glad to see you're still going at it! Congrats on taking over the whole board, haha.

I'll try and go through the runs & this post in a bit more detail when I get the chance, and ideally update the main post to include everything. Also, my bad for not being active like I said I would, ended up putting more focus into other games or projects.

I do still intend on coming back to speedrun this game a bit, especially go for space again, maybe try my luck at random, or meadow... When randomly casually playing with a friend, I actually managed to hit the "tree-skip" on meadow 7/7, skipping that last crate-jump, so if I could actually practice that it's a decent improvement, and I think there was a couple other minor routing improvements for Meadow. But also feel free to keep beating your own times if you wanna just blow away any new players looking in =p

For now all I have to specifically say regarding your runs is: 1- Wow, you really hit that space starting shortcut clean, going to have to practice that one if I want to take space back. I never got it that quick, could barely get it to tie with normal route. 2- I can't believe how quickly you cross those "thin line" routes. Like on your first stage of random or on that one Pirate stage with the rotating cube. Noice

LAST UPDATED: 2022/01/07 (formatting)

First of all, it should go without saying that skipping checkpoints is practically always going to be worth it, but it's a risk-reward balance, some might be worth getting, like ones before you're forced to hit bombs, where you're very unlikely to make it through alive.

========================================= Meadow 1/7:

• Jump from bridge past cp1 to save a bit of pathing
• Skipping stacks of boxes seems to be quicker than going through them 2/7:
• Can jump around the last high-jump rather than over it 3/7:
• Instead of going through white-glass tunnel, can jump straight down to platform with cp2
• After cp2, instead of taking the moving platform downwards, walk straight on the platform before the moving one to get to the other side 4/7: N/A 5/7:
• Take the left path where you have to jump around walls/outside the map. This is faster than the right path.
• On top, do not take all the boosters. You can jump straight towards the finish. It's unclear what the optimal path for this is. I think taking the first 2 sets of boosters then going left is the way. 6/7:
• Take mid shortcut at start.
• Skip checkpoint during moving platform, run straight to 2nd moving platform instead of waiting for the one you were on 7/7:
• Very hard to pull off, but you can use the trees in the 2nd box area rather than the boxes
• Instead of going through the grass tunnel at the end, jump straight towards the end.

========================================= Kitchen 1/7: N/A 2/7: N/A 3/7:

• You can use some of the rotating objects to your advantage
• At the end, the middle path is faster 4/7:
• It's unclear what's the fastest path, but it's good to know you can go up onto the side of the large rotating ramps, rather than waiting for them to fall flat again. 5/7:
• 1st booster takes you to 1st platform
• from 1st platform, 2nd booster takes you to 2nd platform
• At the end, instead of taking the big booster, jump straight down to the other donut to get to the end. OR, take booster twice in order to get over the wall and fly straight towards the end. (Unclear what's faster) 6/7: N/A 7/7:
• At the 2nd hammer, stay until its peak and you can jump straight onto the floating blue platform for a big shortcut

========================================= City 1/7: N/A 2/7: N/A; Can probably use bombs to your advantage, good luck with that though 3/7:

• Jump-boost bug to cheese the halfpipe 4/7: N/A 5/7: N/A 6/7: N/A 7/7: N/A

========================================= Pirates 1/7:

• Keep speed on the initial moving ship so you can jump straight out of it without waiting 2/7:
• You can stay on top of the halfpipe to dodge moving balls. This may be slower due to the jump-boost bug, but less risky. 3/7: N/A 4/7:
• Can skip 3rd moving platform on initial section
• Can skip 1st moving platform on 2nd section (go straight to 2nd), then you can skip the 3rd(1st after moving) and go straight to 4th, maybe even 5th
• On the final section of moving platforms, you can jump straight to the last platform with enough height. 5/7:
• Jump off the corner beside cp2 to get straight onto the ice seesaw shortcut 6/7: N/A 7/7:
• Near the first wooden fence, you can jump off the ice path down below, onto a further part of the path.

========================================= Space 1/7:

• You can go up the asteroids with jump-pads, without hitting the jump pads, by making use of double-jumps. This is just a bit faster than taking the normal route. The jump pads themselves are very inconsistent to hit, but it can be worthwhile. 2/7: N/A - Getting hit by the planet is most likely not worth it 3/7:
• After cp1, when you start going up the wall, if you hit the 1st corner just right after jumping, it gives you enough height to move straight to the next platform.
• From that second platform, you can jump straight to the 3rd with the jump-pad
• Along the wall, once you get to the bombs, you can just jump all around the wall with bombs rather than going through the short tunnel
• For the last section of bombs, make sure to hold R early in order to respawn quicker if the bombs send you to your death 4/7: N/A 5/7:
• Go right. After the first jump-pad, jump to the right towards the arrow-booster to skip a bit of the path you'd have to walk instead.
• For the final jump, make sure you jump from as far towards the edge as you can so you make the platform fall properly. 6/7:
• The initial middle shortcut is faster, but may be risky. 7/7:
• Taking the ship is much faster than the "naive" route.

Will definitely have a look at your newest vods before I do more runs 👍

Interesting, gives it a really cool effect haha, I'm a fan of those black outlines. Very odd that's all caused by compression/OBS settings.

I'm surprised you couldn't beat my space time, especially with that shortcut! Cool to know though haha. I tried using that asteroid shortcut but it was so hard to land properly using the jump-pads. I also didn't know about the spam-jump boost, and didn't really realize how you could use the double jump to your advantage in some cases. Though I imagine both of those are harder to use in space due to the low/high grav. It may be worth knowing I play on keyboard, and did most of my steering with the mouse (using the camera movement), that seems to steer a bit smoother than using wasd in some cases, which can make you lose speed if you make a sudden turn. However it's weird to use because the camera has some kind of acceleration to it, at least on mouse.

By the way, I've just created a new thread dedicated to maintaining a list of known shortcuts & strategies. I've gone through your runs and noted down all the significant cuts. Feel free to check out that thread and leave a comment if anything sounds wrong to you, but 95% of it is just info I've noted from your recent runs.

Damn man, happy to see some interest in the game! Like you mentioned early on in that vod, I also think there's some very broken behavior to be found in this game. The discussion about a macro is interesting, I'll try and replicate that ahk script you were referring to, and if I can get it working nicely I could post it in the resources section. I wouldn't mind scripts being allowed, I don't think anyone exactly expects this game to remain glitchless/"as intended". Not sure if I'll do more runs just yet but I'm definitely down to give it another go, with all these new skips. And now I have an opponent as well :D

Also, what's up with your graphics? It feels like you have a 4k texture pack or something. And why does everything have a black outline? Just wondering. Looks pretty neat honestly. If you look at my videos for comparison, everything is very smooth and there are no black outlines.

edit: Also, sorry about the delay in verifying your runs, you submitted while I was gone for xmas break

Since this game is pretty dead, I don't think it needs a discord or anything like that just yet. Perhaps eventually if it grows, but not yet.

For now, feel free to use these forums if you have any questions or ideas about how we can improve our speedruns.