WA1/WA2 Glitch - Adventure Skip

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billy bob
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WA1/WA2 Glitch - Adventure Skip

Post by billy bob » Sun Jun 19, 2016 6:28 pm

There's a way to crash the game that's been known for a while now. This method of crashing the game is to pause on the last frame of either a restart adventure fade out screen or an area transition fade out screen. When the game is resumed nothing will be visible except the icons at the top of the screen. After around 15 seconds of being trapped in this abyss the game will crash with a memory access violation.

What I have found today is that, if you do this via restart adventure, if you press ESC just before the game crashes then the adventure will be won! This means that any adventure in WA1 and WA2 can be beaten at 18 seconds if performed optimally. However, there are two difficult parts to this glitch: pressing ESC on the last frame of the restart adventure fade out screen, and pressing ESC just before the game crashes. The former is harder but OK in that if it is failed then you just lose a few seconds and can try again. The latter I can get consistently but if you fail then the game crashes. Scary.

My strategy for this will be to have a timer up on screen as well then try to time around 15 seconds after I've gotten the blank screen. Then when I near 15 seconds I will start mashing alternating between ESC and mouse click (mouse click pressing the resume game option).

Overall this trick could be done in around 18 seconds but on average will take me a few seconds longer.

This will make WA1/WA2 speedrunning faster but more boring. It will be worth doing this on almost every adventure.
I believe the way to go with this is having two separate categories, one with this glitch and one without.

One thing to note is that unlike in WA1 after doing the restart adventure method in WA2 the adventure is still accessible and can be played again, despite the star being collected and the win commands activating.

But it's not over. I've talked about doing this glitch in a restart adventure fade out screen, but what about doing it in an area transition fade out screen? I mean the fade out screens that happen when going between red arrows. Doing the glitch with red arrows in adventures has the same effect as doing it with the restart adventure fade out screens. But doing the glitch with red arrows in the hub has an interesting effect. What will happen is, it will say you've completed "the adventure" then you will be spawned at the win adventure location of the last adventure you entered (if you haven't previously entered an adventure the game will crash), and the win adventure commands for that adventure will activate and a star will be added to the star count, however the adventure will still be accessible (the adventure star will be yellow, not grey). This means we can collect infinite stars. This also means we could warp back across the hub to previous areas in some circumstances.

This glitch doesn't work in WA3 because you can't pause in fade out screens.
Last edited by billy bob on Mon Jun 20, 2016 12:29 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Muzozavr
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Post by Muzozavr » Sun Jun 19, 2016 9:41 pm

...

...

...



...

"No, the sound didn't cut out, I just... malfunctioned." (DeceasedCrab)

:shock: :shock: :shock:
Rest in peace, Kym. I hardly knew ya.
Rest in peace, Marinus. A bright star, you were ahead of me on my own tracks of thought. I miss you.
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cloudrac3r
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Post by cloudrac3r » Tue Jun 21, 2016 10:07 am

Uh huh. I agree with Muzozavr. This is amazing! :shock:
In terms of new category names, we would then have "Any%" (with the skip) and... what, exactly? If you name it "Any% No Skips" then you can't do the skip in the gloves level. (This is for WA1.)
Is there currently a run or a route which does all the adventures 100%? (All gems and coins in adventures, don't worry about the hub.) If not, maybe we should get brainstorming in the Discord. :idea:
On the topic of WA1 speedruns, how about a TAS? :twisted: Is there a program which can input keyboard button presses exactly, but ignore lag from messing with the timings?
And finally, are you watching or going to SGDQ? :)
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Post by Muzozavr » Tue Jun 21, 2016 10:11 am

In terms of new category names, we would then have "Any%" (with the skip) and... what, exactly? If you name it "Any% No Skips" then you can't do the skip in the gloves level. (This is for WA1.)
"Any % (No Universal Skip)"

The glitch itself will then be called "universal skip" to differentiate it from all the other skips.
Rest in peace, Kym. I hardly knew ya.
Rest in peace, Marinus. A bright star, you were ahead of me on my own tracks of thought. I miss you.
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Post by billy bob » Tue Jun 21, 2016 3:53 pm

Muzozavr wrote:"Any % (No Universal Skip)"

The glitch itself will then be called "universal skip" to differentiate it from all the other skips.
I agree it should be called Any% No something, Universal Skip is a possibility as the skip is done in almost every adventure but I wanted to be more specific and call it something like Any% No Adventure Skip Glitch or Any% No Win Adventure Early (or just Any% No Win Early) but I'm not entirely sure about these either.
I think the point is we want the title to say no winning adventure by means other than the winning condition (collect the star, bring Wee Stinkers to exit).
Any ideas?
I would also prefer to keep the title short but I could also use an acronym (and have full name in description).
cloudrac3r wrote:If you name it "Any% No Skips" then you can't do the skip in the gloves level. (This is for WA1.)
In The Magic Gloves the winning condition is actually met:
What saving in game over screen glitch with Wee Stinker or Baby Boomer death does, is it splits the player into two separate entities, and I’ll label these entities “Player 1” and “Player 2”. Player 1 keeps the position of the player, and the appearance of the player, and the movement of the player. Player 2, keeps the camera position, and the ability to collect items. If you try to cast a spellball while the player is in this split state, then the game crashes with a “memory access violation” message. So, player 1, keeps the movement and so it can be controlled with the arrow keys and mouse. However, player 2, can’t be moved with the arrow keys or mouse and usually can’t be moved at all. And, player 1 keeps the position, so it’s where the player was before the saving in game over screen glitch took place, but player 2’s position, is seemingly random. I mean, it’s not actually random it can’t be random, but I haven’t worked out what the game considers when deciding which space to put it on. But what I have found is, and this isn’t always the case, but the game tends to put player 2 onto the same space that another object is on. In fact, it’s not really that player 2 is on the same space as this object, it’s more that, player 2 sort of, becomes this object. And if this object is moving, then the camera will follow it. And if this object collides with an item, then it will collect it. For example, if you perform the glitch in the adventure “CrossRoad Level 3” then the camera will follow a Wee Stinker, or if you perform the glitch in the adventure “CrossRoad Level 1” then the camera will follow a Spikeyball. However, if we perform the glitch in this adventure, “The Magic Gloves”, then player 2 will become, the magic gloves, which is what we need to collect in order to complete the adventure. And because player 2 can collect items, the magic gloves are instantly collected and the adventure is completed. So in short what happens is, part of the player becomes the magic gloves, and collects itself, which completes the adventure.
cloudrac3r wrote:Is there currently a run or a route which does all the adventures 100%? (All gems and coins in adventures, don't worry about the hub.) If not, maybe we should get brainstorming in the Discord. :idea:
100% will probably include all gems and coins in hub too. I haven't done any routing for 100% but I'd be up for doing WA1 100% at some point (I need to do runs with the new glitch first).
cloudrac3r wrote:On the topic of WA1 speedruns, how about a TAS? :twisted: Is there a program which can input keyboard button presses exactly, but ignore lag from messing with the timings?
I don't know, I'd like to know.
cloudrac3r wrote:And finally, are you watching or going to SGDQ? :)
I always watch.
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Post by billy bob » Fri Jun 24, 2016 2:24 am

Just found something else interesting that can be done with this glitch. From the Floing menu we can warp to the win location of any adventure that has already been completed.

Talk to Guggenheimer then go into the Floing menu. Play the adventure you want to go to the win location of, then abort (or complete) the adventure. Then without playing any other adventures perform the new glitch in an area transition fade out screen. You will be warped to the win location of the adventure you just played, despite having played the adventure from the Floing menu.

This also means we can revisit places like The Void and Wonderfalls (we can escape The Void by shard teleporting and Wonderfalls by watching the cutscene again).
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Post by billy bob » Tue Jul 05, 2016 4:42 am

Turns out there's even more to this glitch!

We can reset areas in the hub.

When you do the glitch in an area transition fade out screen in the hub, the area that the glitch is being done in reverts to what it was when the last adventure was entered.

So basically, when an adventure is started the game records where everything is in the hub. If you perform the adventure skip glitch on a red arrow in the hub, then the area containing that red arrow will be reset to whatever it was when the last time an adventure was started.

One thing this means is that it's possible to collect an unlimited amount of any item in the hub unless it's dialogue dependent. When doing this glitch the dialogues that can be read in the area won't reset (because they're not part of the area).
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Post by garirry » Tue Jul 05, 2016 7:32 am

Man that's so darn awesome all the glitches that have been found at this point.

Also, about TAS: My short research showed me that the only software used for a Windows TAS is called Hourglass, and its compatibility is extremely limited, usually to games like Cave Story pretty much. If by some miracle I can get this to work (which might only happen if I ever have the motivation to do so), then insane world-records will be possible. I'd like to point out however that load times for save data is extremely important. In my case, since I have a 500 MB/s SSD for the games, then it's not a problem, but anyone else with a hard drive (especially the pathetic laptop ones) will suffer extreme time losses. It's unknown however if there is a max transfer rate for the games, if there isn't any, it technically means that the potential TAS speed is infinitely higher than what it might be. That seems to be unlikely though. If anyone has access to something like a 1 GB/s or 2 GB/s SSD to test the game's save speed though (like in a MacBook Pro, the new retina ones), that would be greatly appreciated. Regardless, as long as the speed isn't too low, there won't be too much time loss (once again, that assumes that a TAS is even possible to begin with). Only other option is the use of a VM. But hey, a man can only dream.
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Post by Muzozavr » Tue Jul 05, 2016 8:19 am

billy bob wrote:Turns out there's even more to this glitch!

We can reset areas in the hub.

When you do the glitch in an area transition fade out screen in the hub, the area that the glitch is being done in reverts to what it was when the last adventure was entered.

So basically, when an adventure is started the game records where everything is in the hub. If you perform the adventure skip glitch on a red arrow in the hub, then the area containing that red arrow will be reset to whatever it was when the last time an adventure was started.

One thing this means is that it's possible to collect an unlimited amount of any item in the hub unless it's dialogue dependent. When doing this glitch the dialogues that can be read in the area won't reset (because they're not part of the area).
So, in an ASG WA run, could you get only half of the mushroom keys needed, then take them and reset the area so that you get them all back? That way, you need less adventures, less ASGs and less time.
Rest in peace, Kym. I hardly knew ya.
Rest in peace, Marinus. A bright star, you were ahead of me on my own tracks of thought. I miss you.
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Post by cloudrac3r » Tue Jul 05, 2016 9:27 am

More about the TAS:
I have a nice piece of software called Actionaz. It runs on Linux, so it will probably work on everything else. It is used for programming scripts which it will run, and it can do things such as press a key, move/click the mouse. However, it also has some advanced features too, like check pixel colour, variables and find image on screen. I may be able to use this to TAS the game, although in a very hacky and bad way.

Garirry:
What exactly will a virtual machine do for a TAS, and why do you need an SSD with stupid read/write/access speeds? Is it just to make saving/loading the game extremely fast?

This is kind of getting off-topic. Maybe a moderator should move these TAS-related posts to the "Adventures done adventurously" topic (if that is possible).
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Post by Jutomi » Tue Jul 05, 2016 1:11 pm

billy bob wrote:Turns out there's even more to this glitch!

We can reset areas in the hub.

When you do the glitch in an area transition fade out screen in the hub, the area that the glitch is being done in reverts to what it was when the last adventure was entered.

So basically, when an adventure is started the game records where everything is in the hub. If you perform the adventure skip glitch on a red arrow in the hub, then the area containing that red arrow will be reset to whatever it was when the last time an adventure was started.

One thing this means is that it's possible to collect an unlimited amount of any item in the hub unless it's dialogue dependent. When doing this glitch the dialogues that can be read in the area won't reset (because they're not part of the area).
Say, do you think that this may be related to that glitch...
oh, was it Nobody found in his hub?

I'm honestly still confused about that one.
Your only little stinker that's absolutely NOT a z-bot by this name,
Jutomi~ :mrgreen:

Also, if you want to see my level list, here it is! :D
(Also: List of Hubs, WA Manual)
Oh, and my YT wonderland channel. Forgot about that.
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Post by billy bob » Tue Jul 05, 2016 3:20 pm

Muzozavr wrote:So, in an ASG WA run, could you get only half of the mushroom keys needed, then take them and reset the area so that you get them all back? That way, you need less adventures, less ASGs and less time.
Oh good idea! I was thinking it wouldn't work but I forgot we can complete a mushroom key adventure without picking up the mushroom key! So what we'd do is, complete four mushroom key adventures, then once as all four of the adventures have been completed collect all four of the mushroom keys, then perform ASG on a red arrow in the area, then collect all four of the mushroom keys again.
If we're still talking about the mushroom key gates then the only other thing to factor is the inventory limit. Also it may be faster to make three mushroom keys appear then reset the area twice, or two mushroom keys appear then reset the area thrice. This gets complicated.
Jutomi wrote:Say, do you think that this may be related to that glitch...
oh, was it Nobody found in his hub?
You're very right to bring this up. It does bear resemblance in that it's the hub resetting, the only difference is this is one area of the hub resetting but for Nobody it was the entire hub resetting. It does also bear resemblance to saving in game over screen. What Nobody says about the save in Hungry Hungry Lurker what with the naked Stinker hovering and the glow gem active and Stinker disappearing when the Lurker wakens. That's exactly the same as saving in game over screen with the death where the player is eaten by a lurker.
One method of saving in game over screen is to pause on the last frame of a game over screen, then the game over screen will extend and the option to save becomes clickable. What happens with ASG is that we're extending an area transition/restart adventure fade out screen by pausing on the last frame. So there are definitely similarities.
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Post by garirry » Tue Jul 05, 2016 6:25 pm

cloudrac3r wrote:More about the TAS:
I have a nice piece of software called Actionaz. It runs on Linux, so it will probably work on everything else. It is used for programming scripts which it will run, and it can do things such as press a key, move/click the mouse. However, it also has some advanced features too, like check pixel colour, variables and find image on screen. I may be able to use this to TAS the game, although in a very hacky and bad way.

Garirry:
What exactly will a virtual machine do for a TAS, and why do you need an SSD with stupid read/write/access speeds? Is it just to make saving/loading the game extremely fast?

This is kind of getting off-topic. Maybe a moderator should move these TAS-related posts to the "Adventures done adventurously" topic (if that is possible).
For a TAS, I don't think just key presses in time are enough. You need some kind of software to record them as you're doing everything super-slowly, thanks to said software. Regardless, I'll try it when possible.

SSD is JUST for loading and saving speeds. If you've seen Billy Bob's videos, you'll notice how saving or loading takes a few seconds, when in my case it takes almost nothing. It's important if you're making a TAS. As for VM, it would act similarly to an emulator, but we could do (if such VM tools exist) try to use tools like snapshotting and maybe even slowing down. This seems like not an excellent solution and will probably require an insanely powerful computer to do this properly.

Also, no, I don't think this is off-topic. We've talked about it in Adventures done adventurously, and this is heavily related, considering this particular technique is next to impossible to perform in RTA (at least when you have to do it every single time for every single adventure).

Also, does anyone know if WA runs at 30 or 60 fps?
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Post by Muzozavr » Tue Jul 05, 2016 6:34 pm

billy bob, apparently, has some method to get it working basically every time in an RTA.
Rest in peace, Kym. I hardly knew ya.
Rest in peace, Marinus. A bright star, you were ahead of me on my own tracks of thought. I miss you.
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Post by billy bob » Tue Jul 05, 2016 8:10 pm

I haven't actually crashed/exited the game in ages. I'm getting really consistent with this, it's going to be done. The only difficulty is optimizing the glitch, in terms of both getting the frame first time and starting the pause buffering as late as possible. Because when the frame perfect pause is missed frames are lost, and the earlier the pause buffering is started the more time is lost and the later the pause buffering is started the more risk there is crashing the game.
So I can do this consistently just not optimally.

My technique is this: I pause the game just before the frame. I pause buffer extremely tightly, I try to not let a single frame pass where I haven't paused. Usually I get it first try, if I don't then I just restart the adventure again (unless I'm trying to get hub area reset, in which case I load the save just before attempting). Then I wait just under 15 seconds (I have a timer on screen). Then I pause the game, and pause buffer slightly more loosely. Eventually the adventure will be complete.


Also the hub area resetting itself glitch wasn't working sometimes and now I know why. The glitch doesn't work exactly how I thought it did.
It turns out that the game takes a record of the area whenever the area is entered, not just entered by completing/aborting an adventure. So if you exit then reenter the area by a red arrow, then that will replace the previous record of the area.

In terms of speed all this means is that when failing to perform ASG on an area transition fade out screen then you can no longer just reenter the area because reentering the area will replace the record of the area from when it had keys with a record of the area when it doesn't. But this isn't a big deal because we can just save the game before the area transition ASG attempt then try to get the frame then if failed just reload the save and try again.


So this hub area reset side effect will be used to reduce ASGs in areas that contain multiple adventures that give keys in both WA1 and WA2.

About the mushroom keys in WA1, I think the best route is this:

Ignore the upper area entirely, enter the right area.
Beat Double Lock but don't pick up the mushroom key.
Activate Dizzy's mushroom key but don't pick it up.
Start Good Flower, Bad Flower but then immediately abort.
Collect both Dizzy's mushroom key and the Double Lock mushroom key.
Move next to the red arrow then save the game.
Attempt to get ASG on the red arrow, if failed reload the save and retry.
Collect Good Flower, Bad Flower's/Dizzy's/Double Lock's mushroom keys.
Move next to the red arrow then save the game.
Attempt to get ASG on the red arrow, if failed reload the save and retry
Collect Good Flower, Bad FLower's mushroom key (because we're next to it).
Unlock two mushroom gates at Mushroom Grove.
Collect Double Lock's/Dizzy's mushroom keys.
Unlock the other six gates at Mushroom Grove.
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Post by cloudrac3r » Wed Jul 06, 2016 10:30 am

I'm still a bit confused as to how to perform the glitch, since I can't get it to work. (For winning an adventure.) Tell me if I get it right:
1. Start the adventure. (Does it work from the floing guy? Are there different effects? Does it work if you enter the adventure after beating it normally?)
2. Push ESC to open menu > restart adventure
3. Wait for a short amount of time.
4. Hit ESC on the correct frame to open the pause menu. Use some kind of visual indicator to tell if you hit the right frame or not. (What is the indicator?)
5. Resume the game and wait for about 15 seconds.
6. Press ESC on the correct frame. If you push it too early, unpause and try again. (?)
7. When you pause on the correct frame, then instead of pausing, you instantly win the adventure? (Does anything else happen? Is it the same results as using the cheat code?)
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Post by billy bob » Wed Jul 06, 2016 12:02 pm

cloudrac3r wrote:I'm still a bit confused as to how to perform the glitch, since I can't get it to work. (For winning an adventure.) Tell me if I get it right:
Watch video to see the glitch:
Wonderland Adventures Any% Speedrun - 25:58
cloudrac3r wrote:1. Start the adventure. (Does it work from the floing guy? Are there different effects? Does it work if you enter the adventure after beating it normally?)
All work the same.
cloudrac3r wrote:4. Hit ESC on the correct frame to open the pause menu. Use some kind of visual indicator to tell if you hit the right frame or not. (What is the indicator?)
There isn't. Whether you got the frame or not, either way you'll want to resume game, so you'll know whether you got the frame after you resume game. What I do for this part, is pause buffer around the frame, not trying to let a single frame pass where I haven't paused, I find this more consistent. One thing with this is though, if you pause buffer, then you might have gotten the frame first time, so you'd be going into the 15 seconds without knowing, and that's another reason I pause just before 15 seconds.
cloudrac3r wrote: 5. Resume the game and wait for about 15 seconds.
6. Press ESC on the correct frame. If you push it too early, unpause and try again. (?)
I recommend pausing just under 15 seconds then repeatedly resuming and pausing again, trying not to leave time between pauses, but fortunately it doesn't have to be frame perfect.
cloudrac3r wrote: 7. When you pause on the correct frame, then instead of pausing, you instantly win the adventure? (Does anything else happen? Is it the same results as using the cheat code?)
It's the same, other than it will say that the adventure was won in 0 seconds, and no win adventure sound will play.
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