Giants: Citizen Kabuto

Game versions

There are multiple versions of this game:

• 1.0: The release version. Contains most glitches and crashes often. First choice for speedrunning.
• 1.1: Early patch with few changes, most notably the debug menu was disabled to prevent players from cheating in multiplayer mode
• 1.396: Beta patch, mostly like 1.4
• 1.4: Final patch. Crashes seldomly, but least glitches
• 1.497: Unofficial patch, focused on improving multiplayer (e.g. removing abusable glitches, more game modes, map sharing), unsuitable for speedrunning

Degug mode

For testing things the debug mode is quite handy (1.0 only). Of course this is considered cheating and must not be used during a speed run. During a game press T, type in MasterDebug, press enter, press Num -. Now debug mode is activated. You can do the following things now:

• Press ~ to open the debug menu. Beware that these options were made for the game's development so many things there can crash the game.
• Hold tab to move really fast through the level
• Press G to toggle gravity. Without gravity use the numpad to move up or down
• Press B to open a weapon selection screen
• Many other keys have more or less useful stuff assigned

Movement

Giants uses a simple friction formula: The player velocity vector is multiplied with a friction factor every frame. In effect this does not change your movement direction and the absolute slowdown is proportional to your velocity. There's an absolute speed cap of 1000 but this can hardly be reached by normal means.

When accelerating (pressing movement keys or gravity) acceleration is simply added to velocity; it's the responsibility of friction to keep velocity to a reasonable value.

Due to these very simple formulas it's unlikely that there are any tricks for faster movement besides rocket jumping.

When pressing forward/backward + left/right at once you move in 2 orthogonal directions at once, giving you 41% more velocity.

As mecc you have air control only while using the jetpack; with or without jetpack air friction slows you down. As reaper there's no air friction but also no air control.

So for travelling as quickly as possible as a mecc:

• When rocketjumping try to shoot the rockets right behind you (by turning around or flying backward) instead of just down to your feet
• Try to stay in air all the time by combining jetpacking with rocketjumping
• If you're out of rockets jetpacking is still alot faster than running. Probably best method for long distances is to let jetpack recharge, then jetpack until it's empty, then let it recharge again and so on
• Run (or fly) diagonally

Glitches

Invincibility

On a map with fade out (e.g. Level 1 Story 5) finish the level but while the screen is fading to black press escape and either restart the mission or go to the main menu to load a level. You'll now be invincible for the whole game. The game marks you temporarily invincible during fadeout but if you abort fadeout the game will not make you vulnerable again. You even retain invincibilty when not aborting a level's fadeout once invincibility was triggered.

More than 20 grenades

Normally shops don't offer grenades once there are 20 in the game (lying around or in possession of the player). However, if you still have grenades left your grenade stock is always filled up to 5 grenades even if no grenades are offered. This can be repeated again and again to drop infinitely many grenades on a heap in front of the shop. Just beware that too many grenades exploding at once (I guess the limit is around 40) can crash the game.

Turbo cancel

As a reaper with turbo power (e.g. all reaper missions except the first few ones) you can fly over the entire map with this. Just use turbo, and while active quickly open and close the map screen. Your turbo flight will continue but your turbo meter will start recharging so you can start your next turbo while the current turbo is still in effect. Also, when landing during aborted turbo you'll moonjump until you do a non-aborted turbo.

Sword boost

Hitting your sword against a steep slope will push you away at high velocity. However, I don't know whether there are any uses for this in speedrunning.