Giants: Citizen Kabuto

This game has a run page on SDA!

Game versions

There are multiple versions of this game:

• 1.0: The release version. Contains most glitches and crashes often
• 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)

Versions 1.0 and 1.1 are probably the best for speedrunning. 1.0 has most of the useful glitches, but also a minor flaw - Kabuto needs to eat 5 evil smarties in order to grow up. Since 1.1 the amount is decreased to 3. 1.1 also increases Kabuto's range for the red adrenaline attack.

The unofficial patch modifies many aspects of the game - lots of weapons' damage and max ammo is altered, reaperskis are faster, Kabuto's red adrenaline attack range is way higher than in 1.1 and probably much more, therefore is highly unrecommended even for practice if you want to follow SDA rules.

Debug 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.

Straferunning (pressing forward/backward + left/right at once, i.e. moving in 2 orthogonal directions at once, thus effectively moving diagonally) gives 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 and Kabuto there's no air friction but also no air control.

Rocketjumping is possible with most weapons without taking damage, only the mortar is unsuitable because it can easily kill you. All other weapons don't cause damage at all (even if the player character is groaning in pain :) ) so you can easily use the explosion from a heap of 40 mines for flying across the entire map.

Rocketlanding is similar to rocketjumping: to reduce fall damage shoot a rocket to the ground right before landing, this will reduce your vertical velocity alot and thus the damage you'd get from landing. Also, if you land too hard you'll be stunned for 2 seconds; this is also avoided by rocket landing.

Optimal jetpack use:

• 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 a lot faster than running. Probably best method for long distances is to let jetpack fully recharge, then jetpack until it's empty (and meter the jetpack fuel carefully to avoid getting stunned), then run while letting it recharge and so on
• Run (or fly) diagonally

Also Kabuto can walk up walls that look way to steep, especially when combining running and straferunning.

Glitches

All glitches should work in every version unless stated otherwise.

Invincibility (all characters, v1.0-1.1)

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 invincibility when not aborting a level's fadeout once invincibility was triggered. In 1.0 only it can also be triggered by restarting level after player's character death, but before the "Retry mission?" screen. Triggering it has a drawback regarding Kabuto's movement in deep water - when trying to get back to the land, chances are very high that he will be unable to climb and get pushed back into the water.

Skipping movement-locking animations (all characters)

Activating a backpack item cancels the animation triggered by landing too hard, making the Mecc able to move instantly. Casting a spell while in air skips its animation. Walking diagonally right after eating the last evil smartie needed to grow up skips the growing up animation.

More than 20 mines (Mecc, Delphi)

Normally shops don't offer mines once there are 20 in the game (lying around or in possession of the player). However, if you still have mines left your grenade stock is always filled up to 5 mines even if no mines are offered. This can be repeated again and again to drop infinitely many mines on a heap in front of the shop. Just beware that too many mines exploding at once (I guess the limit is around 60) can crash the game.

Turbo cancel (Delphi, v1.0-1.1)

As a reaper with turbo power (i.e. all reaper missions except the first two) 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.

Flying onto arrows (Delphi)

By aiming the RPG bow at the maximum of 45 degrees up and NOT moving the camera it becomes possible for a fraction of a second to use turbo and fly over some distance. Most useful for descending from a mountain if the only other way is to aim turbo straight down.

Sword boost (Delphi)

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.

Denial of popup bomb (Mecc, level 3 mission 7)

This glitch is not useful but rather annoying because it doesn't give you the popup bomb you're meant to get at the start of a level 3 mission 7 if all weapon slots are full although it occupies a different slot independent from weapon slots. To avoid simply discard a weapon during the mission before (e.g. during its fadeout time). Discarding a weapon here won't hurt because you'll need to discard one anyway at the start of the next mission to free a slot for the mortar you're getting there.

Faulty gate pass detection (Delphi, reaperski races)

Another very annoying glitch. Under some circumstances a gate can be marked as missed even if the player did not miss it. Also, if it happens at the last gate, the winning sequence does not start, making the player lose the race soon after.

Force smartie respawn (Kabuto)

Kabuto needs to eat smarties for growing up. There's only a limited number per level; to aid players who killed them they respawn if they're killed instead of eaten. Here's the trick: if you kill a smartie the next one will start spawning instantly but the dead smartie takes a few seconds to disappear; if you manage to eat it before it disappears you'll have eaten a smartie from the game's perspective AND another one spawns next to you.

Restart item glitch (all characters)

Restarting the mission does not reset everything. This can be abused:

• Collecting more items from nearby enemies: kill a nearby enemy, when you see the item drop you want restart the mission (which makes the dropped item stay), then kill that enemy again, get another dropped item = 2 total.
• (v1.0 only) Restart the level after placing a popup bomb. The popup bomb will continue its countdown and finally explode. This gives you all items you had at level startup (so you can take them with you into the next level) and also reduces the odds of the popup bomb getting destroyed by enemy shots because enemies are reset, too.

Raik movement glitch (Kabuto)

Hand-held or spiked raiks have strange effects on Kabuto's movement. You can no longer move in some directions while at the same time moving much faster in other directions (highly depending on the ground below you, declining terrain is best). Probably the raik's tentacles mess up the collision detection.