Revision as of 15:03, 26 January 2014

General Movement

Climb Skipping

http://www.twitch.tv/honorablejay/c/3485415
The animation system in Arkham Asylum is designed so that Batman's movements are as smooth as possible. By abusing this, it's possible to make Batman jump farther than the developers intended. To start, find any ledge where Batman will jump just short of the destination. This will normally cause him to grab onto the ledge and climb up.

1. Turn the camera to a 45 degree angle
2. Run at the ledge as normal
3. If the stars align, profit!!

If done correctly, Batman's animation system will cause him to stand on air just over the edge of the platform and perform the jump farther ahead than normal. This will make his jump longer and completely skip the climbing animation.

Quick Attacks

http://www.twitch.tv/honorablejay/c/3485518
During fights, most players will spam the attack key as fast as possible, which is incredibly inefficient. Instead, wait for an attack to land, and just as it connects press attack to immediately unleash the next hit. It takes some patience and practice, but if you wait for an attack to land then immediately hit attack again, Batman will immediately throw another attack without delay. This allows you to string attacks together quickly against single or multiple targets.

Roll Cancel

http://www.twitch.tv/honorablejay/c/3485690
Batman has many mandatory animations. Flinching from explosions, standing up after a ground pound, etc etc. By initiating a dive roll just as one of these mandatory animations is supposed to happen, the animation is completely canceled by the roll. This allows you to keep Batman moving and waste as minimal time as possible.

Fall Cancel

http://www.twitch.tv/honorablejay/c/3401030?t=1m45s
When falling from a sufficient height, Batman will save himself by spreading his cape to slow the fall (which also wastes quite a bit of time). If the use/glide key is spammed just before the cape spread animation, the entire fall animation is skipped and you can immediately start moving. The fall save cape animation is one of a few animations that cannot be skipped with a roll cancel.

Understanding Analog

Quoting a forum post from 12/13/2013:

Just to make sure it's documented somewhere, I wanted to go over a little known "feature" of Arkham Asylum that we figured out tonight.

First, some history (and a graphic to help demonstrate). Green is the center (0,0), the blue dots represent 100% +-x/+-y at the corners for the classic analog design. The red dots show the maximum range of current analog sticks.

In the early years of analog joystick gaming, developers and hardware manufacturers utilized a square design for the analog stick's movement. This meant that game developers could directly read the x/y coordinates that the hardware was reporting and immediately use that data in a game to determine turning/walking/etc speeds. No matter what direction the stick was moved in, the developers could depend on the stick always being able to use 100% of the x/y axis's independently.

Enter the PSX Dual Analog/Shock controller. Aside from being a fairly comfortable controller, it helped usher in a newer design to the analog stick: a circular movement zone. This made movements easier for the player, but added a headache to devs: while the x/y axis could be fully used at up, down, left, or right, the corners were cut short and only able to use about 80-85% of the total x/y movement. No longer able to simply rely on the x/y coordinates, smarter devs started using math to figure out the angle the stick was rotated at AND the total percentage the stick was pushed in that direction. This way every angle could use 100% of the stick's movement and the game didn't know any better.

Now enter the Unreal engine. Whether by Epic programmers' divine trolling foresight OR by licensing dev stupidity, by default it appears the engine raw reads the x/y axis data from an analog stick. This means that even console games are affected UNLESS the game dev knows to reprogram how the analog stick's data is interpreted.

So how does this affect Arkham Asylum? Well, here are a few things that we can understand: 1. The standard 360/PS3 gamepads use circular motion analog sticks 2. The Unreal engine appears to read the raw x/y data from the analog sticks 3. The raw x/y coordinates on a circular analog stick only report about 85% of the full x/y motion

So for Arkham Asylum this means that using the Left stick to run will only get you full running motion at the + corners of the circle and shortchange you on the X corners of the circle. In terms of the Remote Batarang, this also means that you will not get full steering control at the X corners if you use only one stick. The workaround for this is, since both sticks can be used to control the batarang, to use one stick to control left/right and the other to control up/down. Not all games are affected by this however since most devs have switched to using the newer calculation methods, but it does crop up from time to time. Also, game/console version differences can act differently depending on how the hardware interacts with the controller and how the game accesses the controller data.

Just to note, I also plugged in a 3rd party wired 360 remote (which is reported as some weird name but is recognized by games as a 360 controller on my Win7 x64 PC) and tested out the angles on the analog sticks. Sure enough, while it does get to about 95% full range at the X corners, some of the movement is indeed lost since even the driver doesn't calculate the sticks extension/angle correctly. Using an older PS2 USB controller adapter and a PSX Dual Shock controller reports only 85% movement at the corners, while a really old Logitech wireless controller (Logitech Wingman Cordless), that does indeed have a square analog movement zone, reports full 100% movement at the corners.

Area Specific Skips

Bell Skip

http://www.twitch.tv/diabuk/c/3257536 http://www.twitch.tv/honorablejay/c/3401030?t=40s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-smVVwW-pM

When entering the Arkham Mansion for the first time, by cutting the bell early it's possible to skip everything from the introduction of the shock collar up through the Nightmare 2 sequence.

1. From under the bell, climb up to the Chronicles of Arkham
2. While looking at the Chronicles tombstone, turn directly to the right, look up, and climb to the ventilation ducts along the wall
3. Turn left and climb the last piece to the vent duct (hold duck if Batman tries to walk off the edge)
4. Choose the gap to use

• If using the left gap (closer to the bell) stand in the middle of the duct and as far forward as possible
• If using the right gap (just next to the window) stand as far forward and as far right as possible

For the left gap:

1. Manually aim a Batarang so the crosshair is roughly in the center of the Tetris-shaped gap, then use the Action Cam to watch the flight (cape-stun button while manually aiming)
2. Adjust your aim until the camera follows the Batarang through the gap without getting stuck on the wooden planks
3. Switch to the Remote Batarang without adjusting your aim, then throw it
4. Just after goes through the gap, angle down and left at the same time
5. Once lined up horizontally it's safe to let go of left

For the right gap:

Make sure that the center of the Batarang touches the center of the rope, otherwise the trick will fail. Since the devs designed the bell to be cut by the game's lock-on aiming mechanic, the actual area of the rope that is solid is very thin and only interacts with the center of a Batarang.
For 100%, skipping the bell will happen after entering Dr. Young's office and scanning her fingerprints. If the skip is done before that, then a few sets of Joker teeth will not spawn.

Gordon's Pipe Skip (Any%/100%)

After defending the Batmobile, the story expects Batman to scan the area to find Gordon's pipe, which then leads to the Medical Facility. Instead, just go to the Medical Facility's rooftop entrance and continue the game as normal.

Skip Ivy + Cash (Any%)

After obtaining the Line Launcher, the game expects Batman to visit Ivy to learn about the Titan cure. Afterwards, the next stop is supposed to be Aaron Cash in the Mansion to learn where Killer Croc's lair is. After those two pieces are done, Batman heads to Intensive Treatment to continue. Both of these side meetings are completely optional and don't need to be completed to gain access to Intensive Treatment.

1. Obtain the Line Launcher
2. Begin heading out of the Botanical Gardens
3. Once in the Abandoned Tunnel (the last room Batman can enter before further progress is halted), bring up the menu and do a Checkpoint Restart
4. Leave the Gardens and head for the upper level entrance to Intensive Treatment

100% runs will have to visit both Ivy and Cash to ensure all of the Joker teeth for the Riddler trophies spawn.

Cutscene Skips (Any%/100%)

Throughout the game, certain enemies and situations will make use of small in-game cutscenes that will zoom/warp the camera to a specific location to introduce a new gameplay/story element or area hazard. There are a few that can be skipped to save time or activated early to make them play as quickly as possible.

1. Intensive Treatment 1: After the first wave of enemies is eliminated, quickly make your way to Boles' corpse before the next wave begins. This will activate the finding Boles cutscene as soon as wave 2 is eliminated.
2. Mr. Stun Rod: The first stun rod enemy is introduced immediately after dropping the bell. Catch him with the Batclaw to skip his dialogue.
3. Ivy's security guards: When going through the Botanical Gardens to fight Ivy, just before line launching over the pit the game will play a small cutscene showing 2 possessed guards. To skip the camera zooming in, either line launch down the hall to the pit, Batclaw both guards, or Batarang them.
4. Camera Warp Cutscenes: Anytime the screen fades out to show a different area of the level, mashing Attack/Cape Stun will skip the cutscene right as it begins.