Latest revision as of 22:26, 10 January 2015

Game Mechanics

Movement

With limited exceptions, you can only travel in four directions. Reversing direction is generally faster than turning ninety degrees because of how momentum works, so you should try to avoid turns when routing. When in midair, you may reverse direction immediately, but you cannot turn ninety degrees. If you try to turn and then jump while you still have full momentum (see “Diagonal Jumps"), you will jump in the direction you were originally traveling rather than the one you want to go. Because of this, if you need to jump after a turn, you need to allow yourself time to stop. This is another reason to keep unnecessary turns out of your route.

If you run into a corner while most of Whizz is in line with the open space next to the corner, the game will “push” Whizz around the corner. You will be halted on the frames where the game pushes you around, but you will resume movement when you are clear of the corner. You can use this to avoid having to make two turns to get around a corner. This also works in midair, so you can jump at a corner and land on a platform to the side of it (see how the lakes in 2-2 and 2-3 are traversed for examples of this).

Buffered Jumps

If you let go of the jump button while in midair, then hold it down again, you will jump as soon as you hit the ground. This can be used to climbs steps more efficiently, and also set up sequences of jumps to happen consistently.

Another use for this is jumping off of flags and other powerups. Normally, powerups disappear when you run into them; however, if you jump on the same frame that you land on a powerup, you can jump off of it and gain some extra height. Buffering the jump makes this easy and consistent.

Attacking

When playing on the normal and hard difficulties, spinning removes one point of health. If you try to spin while you are at 1 HP, the game enforces a spin cooldown of a couple seconds, so you have to be very careful about when you spin while low on health. The red-and-white enemies in each stage are immune to spin attacks; any enemies that are susceptible to attacks will die in one attack.

Enemies may drop red mushrooms, which heal you, or blue mushrooms, which hurt you. Red mushrooms will turn into blue mushrooms if you let them sit for a few seconds. If you really need health, you can get a guaranteed red mushroom by spinning while standing on one of the red buttons that sets off a rocket. This is good for one mushroom per button.

General Tricks and Glitches

Diagonal Jumps

The Whizz physics engine does strange things if you jump a few frames after turning ninety degrees, while your momentum is still shifting. Sometimes, you will sort of jump in the direction you intended to go, but with a little list in the direction you were originally traveling. Sometimes, you will do a very short jump that just barely turns you toward the new direction. Rarely, you will do a long diagonal jump that moves you a couple tiles in both directions.

It is not currently known how to manipulate diagonal jumps. The amount of delay between when you turn and when you jump does not seem to matter, other than that if you jump too early or too late, you will get a regular jump rather than a diagonal jump. The pixel on which Whizz is standing when he starts the jump may be a major contributor. In any case, because it is not known how to make them happen consistently, it is probably best to avoid trying to do diagonal jumps at all.

Door Geometry Abuse

Breakable and unlockable doors do not have invisible walls over them, even if they are next to parts of the level that do have invisible walls over them. You can jump over any door as long as there is a nearby enemy or object you can use to get enough height.

1-HP Bug

When playing on normal or hard, the game does not check which door breakers you have collected if you spin while at 1 HP. So, as long as you are at 1 HP, you can break open almost any door. Because of this, in many levels, it is much faster to spin a lot and intentionally take damage from enemies in order to get through doors than it is to collect the door breakers as intended.

The only known exception to this bug is the horizontal platform doors in some stages, like before the wall of platforms in 2-3. For those doors, you must upgrade to the third breaker level.

If you use your spin attack while at 1 HP and then collect a red mushroom, you may spin and exploit the 1 HP bug during the time when the spin cooldown would normally be in effect. This may be useful in some cases to kill an enemy and then break open a door without waiting for the cooldown, if the enemy happens to drop a red mushroom. If you wait longer than the cooldown period to spin again, the 1 HP bug will no longer work, at least until you get back down to 1 HP.

Continuous Spin

If you spin and then fall into a lake while still spinning, the game stops your spin animation, but forgets to reset your spin state. So, subsequently, you can attack enemies and break open doors simply by running into them. The effect ends if you use your spin attack manually. You may still take damage when running into enemies, even if you kill them with the continuous spin attack, so this does not give you invincibility.

Since world 2 is the only world with lakes, it's the only place where you can use this trick. In the current any% route, it is used to make part of 2-1 a little easier, but it otherwise isn't useful since 2-1 is the only stage where you normally fall into a lake.

Balloon Animation Skip

If you die after crossing the goal, or if you die in such a way that your momentum carries you across the goal, the game will play the death animation and then take you to the end-of-level scoring screen. The death animation is much faster than the usual animation of running to the balloon and then flying off, so this can save a few seconds in levels where it is practical to cross the goal while poisoned or after time has run out.

The game still subtracts a life when you do this, so if you do have zero lives and you cross the goal somewhere other than 4-2, you will game over after the game computes your score.

Game Over Bug

Sometimes, after playing Whizz for a while, the game's logic for handling death starts overwriting things in memory that it shouldn't. This causes the game to break in several ways and eventually crash.

One effect of this bug is that the life counter updates incorrectly. For example, you may game over after a death despite not having previously died in the current run. Also, after continuing, the game may show that you have 0 lives, or 9 lives, or a number of lives represented by a glitched-out sprite. Once the bug triggers, you will usually game over after every death.

Another effect is that the camera can completely freeze. Sometimes, it will remain at the beginning for the entire level. It may also alternate between following Whizz and freezing up when Whizz kills an enemy, when Whizz collects a powerup, when Whizz takes damage, or at apparently arbitrary times. The behavior typically changes after each death. After several deaths, the game usually gets back to a state where the camera follows Whizz normally, though it may feel extra laggy. As with other camera breaks in this game, the gameplay is not affected apart from the fact that you can't see where you're going.

A third effect is that the background art and animations can get messed up. Some examples of this, depending on the level, include the animation stopping and the color palate changing.

Completing a level after this bug has triggered often crashes the game, at which point, the game is quite literally over.

It is not known what causes this to happen. It has so far only been seen when the game has been played without resetting for a long time. It is also not known how long, "a long time," needs to be for the bug to appear, but a fair estimate would be an hour. Because of this bug, it is recommended to reset between runs even though you can get back to the title screen from the ending.

Level-Specific Tricks and Glitches

1-2

Camera Break

This trick apparently underflows Whizz's position and breaks the camera for the rest of the level. It is not useful for speed.

To activate the break, get on the platform that moves in four directions, just before the brick door. When the platform moves over to the left or top side of the open space, walk a few pixels off of the platform, so that Whizz is on both the platform and the solid ground next to it. The platform will stop moving. Jump and try to move back in the direction of the platform at the same time (it is okay to move back a little after you jump). If you jump correctly, Whizz will appear to hit his head on an invisible wall and then fall through the gap between the solid floor and the platform.

Whizz will now be in a part of the level geometry where he is not supposed to be, and his position will be impossibly high/low. You can escape this area by running to the right if you activated the glitch on the left side of the open space, or up if you activated the glitch at the top. Whizz will fall back down onto the solid ground normally around the open space.

When this happens, the camera starts wrapping around the screen and loses track of where Whizz actually is in the level. Whizz will still be in bounds (once you fall back down onto ground, anyway) and can progress through the level normally, but the camera will not follow his actual position. Furthermore, all sprites (enemies, powerups, moving platforms, etc.) will be invisible. Also, springs will not be active, though this does not seem to make a difference in completing the stage.

1-3

Platform Jump

Near the end of the level, you must activate a moving platform with a yellow button and then ride the platform to the next section of the stage. Because the platform starts rising as soon as you hit the button and it is some distance away, you normally have to wait for the platform to rise all the way to the top and then fall before getting on. However, it is possible to get on the platform while it is first rising and skip a cycle.

The key to this trick is that the platform is one pixel wider than the wall to the left of it. If Whizz is as far up as he possibly can be while still being able to reach the button, you can jump from the button onto the platform, catch the platform's bottommost pixel, and ride the platform to the top. However, because of how movement works, you cannot do this simply by running into the wall to the left of the platform: if you are not already on the correct pixel, the wall will stop you early. Furthermore, because Whizz moves 3 pixels per frame when you run into a corner, it is more likely than not that you will end up on the wrong pixel if you try to push around the corner from an arbitrary starting point. You must align yourself on the exact pixel before jumping onto the button.

One setup is to run down into the post below the wooden door after you break it open and use that to set a consistent position for yourself. Be careful to run directly into the post when you do this and avoid pushing around the right or left side of it. After hitting the post, run left so that you hit the wall to the left of the moving platform, and then tap down very briefly before holding left to push around the corner. TODO: is this a one-frame tap? This should get you on the correct pixel to jump left onto the button and then right onto the platform.

The trick is not over when you get onto the moving platform. You will likely have to tap left briefly to avoid sliding off the right edge. You will then need to press up for a bit so you don't run off the left edge of the platform. Once you've moved up at least a pixel, you can run or jump onto the top level and continue with the stage.

When executed with minimal setup time, this trick saves 2-3 seconds over waiting for the second platform cycle.

Extra Fancy Balloon

If you are on the uppermost possible pixel as you cross the goal in 1-3, the game will draw two spinners on top of the balloon. This requires a similar alignment as in the early platform trick: you must get on the correct pixel before turning right toward the goal, and you cannot get yourself back on that pixel by moving up once you have turned the corner.

This is easily the most important trick in the game even though it creates lag and costs time.

*it is not actually an important trick

2-1

Camera Shift

If you jump onto the staircase of rollers near the beginning of the stage, Whizz's sprite and the camera follow the path of Whizz's jumping animation even though the game is actually moving him up the rollers. As a result, Whizz appears to be a couple tiles up from his actual position in the level, with the camera centered on his sprite. The sprite and camera stay shifted for the rest of the level.

This is just a fun cosmetic bug. For speed, it's better to walk onto the staircase and keep the correct camera.

Camera Break

It is possible to get a camera break in 2-1 similar to the one in 1-2. The apparent cause is bad geometry around a post on the left side of the lake.

To set up the break, fall into the water and get on the leftmost possible pixel on the right side of the post. As with other pixel-perfect alignments of this sort, you have to come in from the top to get on this pixel and can't simply run into the post from the right. Once you're in position, if you jump, Whizz will hit his head and wrap around his Z-coordinate, breaking the camera.

Like the 1-2 break, this is just something to show off and not a speed trick. Unlike the 1-2 break, this one sometimes crashes the game when you try to fall back in bounds. So, you probably shouldn't do it.

TODO: video showing which post this is.

2-2

Button Jump

Near the beginning of the stage, you have to jump onto a button to unstack some platforms that you need to climb. If you jump onto the button from the correct position, you can land directly on the button instead of on the step in front of it. You want to jump from just past the little crack in the ground before the steps. If you're too early, you'll run into the side of the button; if you're too late, you'll run into the side of one of the steps and lose height. When running at full speed, there is a 4-frame window for the jump.

The time difference if you miss this is very small (much less than a second).

Super Sled

When riding the sled at the end of the stage, you can slide right off the bottom edge of the map. This saves about 2/3 of a second, depending on how you do it, since it skips the animation of Whizz getting off the sled and you move faster sledding than walking. Also, it looks funny.

If you go out as early as possible (after the second set of flags), be careful not to go too far down. If you go more than a tile or so past the visible part of the map, you can get stuck in a place where you can't go back up anymore. When this happens, you will not trigger the goal when you go past it and all sprites will thereafter despawn, leaving you to helplessly fly across the map until you run out of time.

If you go out a little later (after the sixth set of flags or so), you can go down as far as you want and you will cross the goal at the same time regardless. This also creates less lag than going out earlier, so it should be the preferred approach when going for speed. It has the disadvantage of not corrupting the balloon sprite, however.

You cannot go out of bounds if you are not on the sled, so be careful not to run into a flag and lose it. You will also lose the sled if you go out of bounds, then go back in bounds and run into the snow, since the trigger for losing the sled is still there.

2-3

Early Platforms

In the middle of the level, there is a cliff with three platforms that go in and out of the face. The bottom platform recedes as you approach it and appears to be too far into the cliff for you to climb up until the second cycle. Since Whizz can stand on a tiny sliver of platform, however, it is possible to jump off it and get up to the top on the first cycle.

To do this, you must approach the cliff cleanly. Make sure you don't run into the corner after the spinner, and attack before you run into the nearby enemy so it doesn't push you back. Just before you hit the wall, turn down, quickly jump onto the bottom platform, and buffer a jump off of it and onto the second platform. From there, jump back up to the third platform, turn left, and jump to the top.

The two key things are timing the jump onto the bottom platform and making sure you don't jump the wrong direction off the top platform. You need to get a feel for when to time the turn and the subsequent jump. If you run into the wall and then turn, you'll probably miss the platform, but you can't jump too early or you'll miss the edge of the platform. It takes practice. The thing with the top platform is that you need to make sure Whizz has completed the turn to face left before you jump to the top of the cliff. If you try to move too quickly, you'll jump before Whizz turns and likely end up at the bottom of the cliff again. You have a lot of time on the third platform before it recedes into the wall, so be patient.

Getting the first cycle saves about 3 seconds versus waiting for the next one.

3-2

Bouncy Castle Despawn

Just before getting on the submarine, you have to jump off a bouncy castle onto a wrecked ship. If your positioning is wrong earlier in the level, the game sometimes fails to spawn both the bouncy castle and the nearby hole in the ship. Since you cross a breakaway bridge on the way over to the ship, this leaves you trapped next to the ship, with no way to progress other than waiting for time to run out and trying again. You obviously don't want this to happen in a run.

The cause seems to be your positioning in an earlier part of the level. Before this part, you run down a long path where you jump over a beachball, then turn right past some flags and a crab, and then finally turn up onto the breakaway bridge. If you are too close to the upper edge of the path when you go right, it seems, the bouncy castle despawns. If you are careful to go along the middle of the path when you turn right, the bouncy castle does not despawn. Going to the middle of the path costs a few frames, but can save your run.

4-2

Flag Door Jump

You can buffer a jump off the flag in front of the wooden door and jump straight over the door at full speed. This is the fastest way past that door.

To do this, just run along the row of flags, do a full-height jump just after Whizz's feet cross the line on the bottom side of the last block with an 8 card below, and buffer another full-height jump off the flag. There is a 4-frame window for timing the initial jump.

If you miss the flag jump, the best backup is to jump onto the nearby enemy and use it to get over the door. The enemy usually moves into position while you are in the process of missing the jump, so there's no disadvantage to going for the jump off the flag. If the enemy moves out of position, just get the door breaker behind it.

Poison Skip

Normally, you land on a bottle of poison and have to pick up an antidote before starting the steeplechase game. However, you can jump over the poison and then skip the antidote.

To do this, stop on the yellow step next to the poison instead of running down the steps. Position Whizz on the right side of the step, hanging off the edge. Then, jump to the left so you push around the corner. If you set up the jump right, Whizz will pass over the poison while in midair and land on the left of it. From there, you can get on the horse.