SiN and SiN: Wages of Sin/Game Mechanics and Glitches

If a trick applies to only some versions of the game, note which ones that is. If you have more or more precise knowledge, feel free to just edit the text.

Abbreviations which may have been used: ws = wallstrafing, cj = circle jump, ramp = ramp jump, kspam = keyboard save spam, mspam = mouse wheel save spam, ad/added = adrenaline/on adrenaline, eb = enemy boost, ob = object boost. bbox = bounding box. BISP = "Bad InitialSnapPosition" (an error message if you try to declip into a solid). The word "terminal" is preferred for the interactable computers around the game so as to avoid confusion with the game's console.

General Movement

• SiN runs on id tech 2, i.e. the Quake II engine. There are some differences but many tricks work just the same. Read below for a detailed explanation of how the physics work.

• Movement symmetry: In SiN the physics have no inherent differences based on which of the four cardinal or diagonal directions you're moving in relative to your facing. For this reason you can perform any basic technique in any of the eight directions, not just forwards or backwards. Sometimes you might actually want to do this too in order to, e.g., be able to aim in a given direction while moving or because it requires less mouse movement.

• Movement speed: The base movement speed in SiN along both axes and diagonals is 320 in-game units (Units Per Second or UPS). With most movement, the fastest way to accelerate from 0 to 320 is by just accelerating in a straight line. This should ALWAYS be done before starting to trill, wall strafe, or circle jump. It only takes a handful of frames, perhaps 32 frames and a few more due to the effect of friction.

• PRESERVING YOUR MOMENTUM: After gaining extra speed with any of the tricks mentioned below, you can keep almost all of the speed across gaps or without having to continue trilling/wall strafing/circling by FIRST releasing all movement keys (!) and THEN jumping soon after - the ideal time for doing this seems to be a couple of tenths after releasing the buttons (may vary depending on latencies), but they must be done in that order. This is because air strafing will instantly reset your speed to 320. If you need to shoot at something on the side, or just rotate around, you can also do that during the jumping without losing time.

Because the game buffers one jump you can just hold the jump button down between hops. It's a good habit to get into to re-depress it soon after hopping so you will never fail hopping up stairs/ramps etc.

• Trilling: This is a basic movement technique where instead of just holding down one movement key you move in a given direction and then start tapping other keys so you're accelerating alternately at 45 degrees on both sides of the main direction of movement. Tapping at the right pace should increase the base speed by a noticeable amount (going up to about 370 UPS) although less than wall strafing or circle jumping. The advantage is you can perform this technique in close quarters without relying on walls or whenever jumping is awkward. It can also be the best alternative when you just want to reposition yourself a little before continuing with faster techniques. You can do trilling on the ground or underwater.

• Wall strafing: This is a basic movement technique where you hug a wall while running and accelerate at an angle that faces the wall itself at about 40 degrees from the parallel to increase your speed to around 480 UPS. This means if you're using forwards and right to strafe against a wall on your right, you need to face an angle of about 5 degrees to the left of what would be parallel to the wall. Remember to first get to your base movement speed by accelerating parallel to the wall.

Notice this only works against vertical-ish walls while on the ground. You cannot wall strafe in the air but you can underwater.

• Circle strafing/jumping: These are basic movement techniques where you accelerate on the ground in a circle as if slinging yourself to temporarily exceed the base speed, which is called circle strafing. The technique executed well gives you the same boost as wall strafing (480 UPS) but can be performed anywhere with enough space, and gets you moving in any direction including not parallel to walls. It's a bit difficult to describe but the idea of accelerating at an [ultimate] angle of ~40 degrees to your direction of movement is retained, just there's no wall to cancel out the rotational component of the acceleration, hence you're simultaneously spinning around.

The fastest way to perform a circle jump in SiN (and related games) is to accelerate linearly in whichever direction until hitting 320 UPS, then gently swinging the mouse to the side to cover a small arc where the mouse movement is fastest at first and slows down a little bit towards the end. If you want more insight into the mechanics, study the Quake 3 movement guides by injx: the basic principles are the same in SiN although the game may use slightly different values for the key variables. There are also tutorials on YouTube for Quake 3/Quake Live strafing that should give you the gist, but note that the air strafe part does not apply here.

In practice, and especially because the time to reach the maximum circling speed (presumably either because of more rapid physics checks and/or a lower friction) is very short in SiN, you will not lose a significant amount of time if you just move forwards (in a direction somewhat off to the side of where you're headed) until hitting 320, then holding down +left or +right (so your new movement angle is 45 degrees off) while rotating in the same direction through an arc of around 30 degrees (maybe even less). Practise just circle strafing around first in open areas to get the feel for it, using wall strafing speed as a guideline for how fast you're supposed to be able to move at best. Remember that when you start a circle jump, if you're already moving in a different direction, you have to wait longer for that existing momentum to be cancelled out to get the same starting situation.

Circle jumping has the distinct disadvantage that because you're relying on jumping to keep your speed, you will be greatly hindered by enemy fire coming from ahead of you, unlike with wall strafing or trilling. If you find you can't circle jump consistently, try either releasing the movement keys even earlier, or be aware of your starting velocity before you've went into the circle strafe.

• Chaining jumps: You can chain multiple circle jumps together to keep traveling at near 480 UPS while also being able to adjust your heading - you simply do another circle jump directly off landing, with the theoretical best angle of acceleration again being ~40 degrees.

• Air movement: You cannot use any special strafe techniques to accelerate past your base movement speed in the the air. You do have the same base acceleration/air control meaning you can strafe around corners at 320 UPS. Extra useful when on adrenaline when normal air movement is made clumsier. You can also use this ability when on adrenaline by "wiggling" left and right so you don't overshoot the jump.

• Adrenaline/mutagen: When on either adrenaline or the mutagen, your base movement speed along both axes is approximately doubled. The downside is you lose the ability to slow down during leaps (once attained a higher speed) and can only rotate in circles. You can only ever hold one of each, and the mutagen injector is only found in one level, whereas adrenaline is found in multiple.

• Ramp jumping: This is a basic movement technique that arises from the way jumping is handled by the engine. Every time you jump off a surface, the jump adds to rather than replaces your current upwards velocity. Because of this, if you can jump twice or more times in rapid succession, you'll be able to get a much higher jump in total. In practice surfaces that are lower than the lowest crates are very difficult to ramp jump off (I've never been able to ramp jump off a curb but I have off the kind of wainscotting in the area above the dynamite cellar in "abandon"), and objects that you can just barely reach are the same, because you've already lost all your momentum when you're high enough to get on top of them.

Ramp jumping twice off the SAME surface will fail, unlike in Q2. In fact doing so also completely resets your momentum from any previous ramp jumping or other upward boosts. Unless this is specifically called for, it's why spamming the jump bind madly is often not the most consistent method, but instead you have to sort of time each jump so it happens only once off each surface. If it's just two jumps though, you can buffer the second jump immediately after the first making it a lot easier.

You can't ramp jump while adrenalined or mutagened, not even right after it's worn out.

You can bind a jump command like this to give you an automatic second jump:

"+moveup; wait; -moveup; wait; +moveup" (leaves the +moveup command active after the first jump, hit the crouch key to jump just once)

However, this would be considered scripting and as such may only be used for testing purposes.

• Bumping: When you hit a slanted surface at speed, some of your horizontal velocity is converted into vertical momentum, thus allowing you to reach somewhere slightly higher up. In practice you still always want to perform a jump off the very base of the slope whether or not you have extra speed (if it's an unclimbably steep slope that is) instead of just smashing into it mid-flight.

• Rotating at high speeds: if you've obtained a high amount of speed (over 480) and want to keep most of it while adjusting your movement direction, look for walls that you could aim at to get bumped in the right direction by. Otherwise try NPCs, objects or anything. Enemies could shoot you to give you the boost you need. Weapon boosting off walls or the floor is another idea. You CANNOT use circle strafing to keep over 480 speed for longer than a handful of frames because friction will cancel out more speed than the strafing gives back.

• Crouch Jumping: In SiN, crouching in the air pulls your head down more so than your legs up. Because of this it isn't useful for reaching higher ledges but can be used to not get stuck jumping through gaps or into ducts. Also allows keeping full momentum going into such places.

Crouching can give you extra traction in some situations (observed in some places with water running down a pipe)

• Circle drop-offs: There's a specific technique that's sometimes useful that involves just circle strafing off a ledge without ever jumping, giving you a higher speed with a lower arc.

• Friction: The base value for friction is 6. This value is dynamic and goes up the faster you're moving. This is the reason there's a cap speed to ground-borne movement.
• Edge friction: This is additional friction applied when you're standing on an edge. The extra friction makes it very difficult to gain from ground movement techniques when passing off or along an edge; thus avoiding edges while accelerating is key. E.g. circle jumping off a railing will be very clumsy because of edge friction, but some extra speed can still be gained.

• Water movement: The water movement speed is half the normal value and as such water should be avoided as much as possible. If you need to do it, though, use wall strafing or barring that, trilling. Wall strafes can be done even when moving straight down or up (the dimensions involved don't matter at all) and off non-vertical walls, and even off what you'd call ceilings and floors: also remember you can strafe forwards towards a wall at 40 degrees off the parallel instead of using +left or +right all the time, which might make some strafing easier.

When trilling, it might be fastest to use both jump and trilling while facing slightly lower than the desired direction of movement if you're generally moving slightly upwards, or the same with crouch if moving downwards. Note that it's never fastest to use just jump or crouch by themselves although crouching at least gives you the normal underwater speed whereas jumping (+moveup) gives a lesser one for some reason. Finally think about whether you can combine jump/crouch with wall strafing, because, again, the dimensions involved don't matter so long as the angle is right.

• Swimming upstream: You can usually just swim right up cascading water. It might help to save spam. If there's a current resisting your motion (these are really just point objects that repulse you whichever way you're coming from), save spamming helps you pass through.

• Jesus walking: you're able to avoid sinking into water completely just skimming across the surface instead. Just hold down jump or aim upwards while hitting a +forward or +back.

• Getting out of water: Build up speed to make it possible to exit water in more places.

I've seen a few spots where I couldn't get the PC to jump out of the water until I crouched, presumably giving him the foothold he needed.

• Getting on crate-height things: By crate-height we mean the height that most typical crates have that makes it difficult but not impossible to jump onto them. The more speed you have the easier it seems to get on the object. That's why if you're running parallel to the thing, you can try to wall strafe along it (at the usual angle is best) and jump. Suddenly switching your angle to face the thing more directly might also help. If you approach it perpendicularly try trilling or circle jumping before jumping but with this approach you can't help having to time it well. Otherwise doing a kind of "bounce" jump (jump right as you've landed right next to something) also feels like it sometimes works.

• "Bounce" jumps: there's a strange effect by which you can get a seemingly slightly higher jump by jumping so you land right next to something (or into an explosion about to happen) and jumping again. This might make it easier to get on crates, but has also worked when I wanted to get on doors using a rocket/pulse boost. Just running towards the objects/explosions might also help. Might be because when you're in the air, you can jump again a little bit before having fully landed (but that's speculative).

Boosts

• Weapon boosts:
  • useful: spider mines, pulse rifle primaries, rockets, and the destabilizer
  • [almost completely] useless: grenades

Use weapon boosts not only for height, but also for extra horizontal speed or rotation. The boost you gain is (most times) directly proportional to the damage you've self-inflicted. Consider aiming at entities, walls and even ceilings aside from just the floor. It's unclear whether the explosion's distance (and effect) is calculated to the point closest to your hitbox, or to the center of your hitbox.

• Max self damage (rookie difficulty):

grenades: 12.80 rockets: 15.80 spider mines: 14.20 pulse primary: 14 destabilizer tap: 6.40 destabilizer full charge: 35.20

• • Spider mines: can be stacked but using even just one comes at a delay compared to the instant boost from other explosives. Remember to switch to them as early as you're able to start planting them down. They also don't always stick to objects which means you can send them forwards and make them hit an object to delay their movement - e.g. getting them stuck on an opening door. Spider mines can be redirected in multiple ways: if they hit an entity while still flying through the air, they'll often bounce off it at the equivalent angle. You can also bounce them off other spider mines. Rockets and other explosions will hurl them at ginormous speeds in a direction away from them which might allow you to assassinate someone or something around a corner.

The height at which you place a spider mine for a good vertical boost seems to be fine whenever it's somewhere low down. If you don't want a vertical boost, try placing them higher up on the wall instead. To plant one down directly beneath you, crouch first and it won't wander about at all. Throwing a spider mine ahead of you is one way to get a faster boost off it maybe. If you make them collide with each other so they're blocking each other's path they'll all stop moving. Or throwing it in the air before falling off something so it boosts you downwards or towards the side. You can detonate them pretty quickly after throwing.

You can also switch between weapons and still be able to detonate the mines later. Just hit your "use weapon" bind to change between mines and detonator. Any weapon can be used to detonate a mine, including other explosives, which might be the better option in some circumstances.

• • Pulse rifle: the primaries give a nice boost that doesn't hurt objects if that's relevant. Shoots more rapidly than the rockets which might also come in handy.

• • Rocket launcher: give a similar boost to the pulse primaries but cause environmental destruction as well. Rockets can also sometimes ricochet off things (observed with the car that's thrown in the air at the start of gorge).

If you managed to explode a rocket passing you in the air, you could use its explosion for boosting.

• • Quantum destabilizer: useful because it's scalable. The biggest boosts you can gain from the destabilizer hurt you for around 35 health points. Use the sounds it makes as a cue.

• • Grenades: the boost from a single grenade on the ground is absolutely tiny for some reason, but might be useful (if you can time it with the approx. 3-second fuse) for easily scaling a crate. It's actually made more potent if you aim another grenade at the grenade you just fired, which causes the new grenade to explode immediately. This increases the boost as well, presumably because the new grenade exploded higher up. If you can time the maneuvre so both grenades explode at once, the boost is even bigger.

Blowing up a grenade on another grenade in the air is a thing.

• Explosive objects: Exploding barrels, trucks, drivable vehicles etc. can also be used for extra speed and height.

• Ramp boosting: When you fall on a slanted surface of any kind, you automatically gain a boost off it, making you save time if the boost is at all in the direction you were going. This is why you should try to time and aim all jumps so you land them on suitable ramps whenever that doesn't cost time otherwise. On long downwards inclines (like the escalators in level one) you can gather ENORMOUS amounts of speed.

Hopping up a slope or a set of stairs doesn't cause you to lose any speed. When going downhill, you don't actually have to jump, you can just slam against the surface without doing anything and get carried along, but you're not going to be boosted [as much] doing it that way.

Ramp boost off ceilings: when crouched or otherwise able to touch the ceiling, you can get an "inverted" ramp boost off it.

• Sliding: when the inclines are steep enough you can just slide down for a good boost.

• Enemy boost: Getting hit by enemy fire or melee attacks will propel you. The effect starts to get very significant pretty quickly so try to get enemies to do this a lot.

• Object boosts: When you brush against things like barrels, doors, or any object, you get stuck for a little bit until you're ejected again. When this happens you temporarily gain a fairly high speed which you can preserve by starting to hop. Think about combining this with a ramp jump off the same or an adjacent object. Object boosts work best when you're also wall strafing off the object, in which case the final speed can exceed 480 UPS. The timing on the first hop is tricky: you have to jump a little bit before actually getting the boost, while being stuck.
  • Vertical object boosting (off vertical doors): A special case is anything that's above you that you can reach by jumping, getting a combination of a cj and ob.
  • You could even try to get a boost off something on the floor (i.e. stepping/circle strafing on it): unknown if this really works.

• Combinations: don't forget to do one of the basic movement techniques + enemy boosts when rocket jumping etc. if you benefit from having a longer flight; also combining multiple boosts like blowing up a barrel with a grenade.

Weapons

• Fists: the damage output for the melee attacks isn't terrible, which means you might want to get the fists out to quickly dispatch enemies stood in doorways before having collected a shotgun.

• Magnums: only the add-on allows dual-wielding Magnums. You shouldn't play the base game through the add-on launcher though.

• Shotgun: This weapon can be used for double kills (one shot two kills) if the enemies are correctly lined up.

• Spider mines: you can prevent doors etc. from closing by placing down mines. So long as they don't attach to anything, their hitboxes will obstruct anything. Also works for moving things like trucks.
  • An advanced usage would be to place them so that they block an elevator's doors. Then you send the elevator off, except in many levels, the elevators can't move until you've detonated the mines, at which point it will start moving a bit faster than from a "cold start". A similar technique works with any objects whose position triggers scripts.
  • Spider mines can be made to immediately attach to the first surface they hit, floor also, by crouching while throwing them. Even works airborne. If they first hit an object, they will NOT be armed, but rather stand in place until the timer runs out.
  • When will spider mines explode if they're not detonated manually? This seems to take a varying length of time (which may be an artifact of the timescaling used to figure this out), but generally on timescale 1 it takes more or less exactly 3 minutes whether the mine is attached to something or still running into something.
  • You can get a mine's explosion to travel through things: You just have to stand inside the mine yourself and the walls and objects around the explosion will be ignored. Doesn't work with grenades, not even after placing them carefully.
  • You can redirect a traveling mine by causing an explosion next to it, perhaps to get it to reach its destination sooner or to get it to go around a corner. The rockets seem the most handy for this.

• Grenades: if you can place them carefully, grenades can also be used to obstruct things for a short while.

• Destabilizer: the destabilizer can be used as a powerful opening damage weapon, because while its DPS may fall short of some other weapons, you can start charging it up before having an angle on your opponent.

• Shooting through glass: With the correct angles (about 60 degrees below horizontal if the pane is vertical), you can get projectiles to spawn on the other side of glass panes. This works with at least grenades, but pulse primaries and rockets are also a candidate in some cases, though very difficult to use. It's the easiest if the pane is slanted in which case the effective angle is also wider (along the yaw axis) than otherwise. You can get a special kind of ricochet with a narrow angle off to the side where the shot will bounce off the pane itself but still pass through it.

• • Pulse rifle - against an up-slanted (rising away from you) pane: just shoot exactly horizontal; against a lowering pane: shoot at around 30 degrees below horizontal.

• • Getting rockets through against a lowering pane is very difficult but doable. You probably have to tap crouch while pressing against the glass and shoot instantly in a somewhat horizontal angle. Against a rising pane: not confirmed to be possible.

• Shooting through seams: grenades come in handy sometimes when you shoot through seams into places you can't otherwise visit yet, e.g. in sewera. Also may work with spider mines in the sense that their explosion can affect an area through a wall or ceiling, but this requires very careful placement, most likely such as causes a part of the mine's hitbox to penetrate the surface.
  • Spider mines example on geo2. (Unknown why exactly this works)

• Shooting through permeable entities: You can often shoot at your enemies using hitscan weapons through entities such as rails, gates and foliage.

• Planting grenades: you can "plant" a chaingun grenade by crouching and shooting it low. This sometimes causes it to disappear into the ground.

• Blowing up rockets: remember you can always blow up any rockets in the game, perhaps to deal damage to those firing them at you, or to get a boost as it's flying by.

• If you collect more than one new weapon in turn, it skips straight to the last one. This doesn't cause the others to be loaded though.

• Grenades can ricochet off bodies on the ground, whereas mines will get caught on them.

• Some enemies you have to hit inside their bboxes (i.e. can't hit parts that are hanging outside of it) while others clearly not.

Damage Per Second

(not finished)

NPCs

• Infighting: You can sometimes get enemies to fight each other. Seen a guard attack a turret (in the bank) after being hurt by it. May require their A.I. to be alerted by something first.

• Spawning: In some sequences (e.g. in the bank when you enter the fountain room) where exactly the guards will spawn depends on where you're stood - it's probably always somewhere some distance away or behind the corner where you can't see them spawning in. Use this to manipulate getting better enemy boosts etc. Also consider deliberately setting off alarms to get more guys to spawn in for better boosts.

• You can "push" NPCs that are moving about (like the civilians you rescue in mission 1) by just standing in their way. Maybe you could get them somewhere useful? To get an idea of how they might move about try using ai_showroutes 1.

• Ghost actors: cutscene actors sometimes already stand in place invisible waiting for cutscenes to start. Eg. in "gorge" at the very end, the cutscene Blade is standing in front of the elevator. They can be hurt by explosions, or even die, which can mess the cutscene up but might have some positive effect somewhere too...

• Disarming: To disarm an enemy, try to shoot their weapon hand to make them drop it. It is presumed you just have to hit the lower arm portion (as indicated by damage messages when sv_showdetaildamage is set to 1) and there's a random chance of it happening and the enemy screaming something like "Ow, my hand!". This is sometimes very difficult because that part of their models especially in the gun arm tends to hang outside the bbox a lot of the time. Only hitscan weapons are presumed to work, because the others don't target specific parts.

• Falling off: under some circumstances NPCs will fall off ledges without being pushed. Observed with a guard in chem2 falling off a walkway down into the mixer area near the exit.

• Enemy wedging: you can sometimes get enemies lured into places that are about to collapse or otherwise get blocked off. In some cases this doesn't kill them but keeps the ceiling/whatever from crashing down, which might let you pass under it. Observed in subway before the 2nd manumit fight (but in that case the fight is delayed until the ceiling has collapsed).

Also try using NPCs to hold doors open.

• Door crushing: You can actually get enemies to get crushed in opening and closing doors. This may also completely hit stun them. Maybe they might make a good platform...

• Security Cameras vs. NPCs: there's a chance you can manipulate NPC behavior and positioning by checking the area they're in through a camera first (see chem1 example).

• Cutscenes vs. NPCs: The stuff that happens during cutscenes can also reflect on the game state afterwards, so if you skip the cutscene the actors will actually start in a different position. chem1 with the secretary is a good example.

• Alerting AI early: just shoot to get their attention earlier if beneficial, e.g. in whouse1 near the start. The loudest weapon seems to be the rockets.

• Sound propagation: the states of doors affect how far sounds travel and at what distance NPCs will be alerted. The propagation changes instantly after the door starts opening. The weapons used also makes a difference. There may be special scripting involved in some places.

• NPCs can be shot with rockets and other "all"-type projectiles even if it doesn't look to hit them, only their bbox. This allows you to snipe them from behind corners.

• Manipulating drops: remember you can get any health items and armor even from the basic types of guards so long as you didn't completely gib them. The type of armor you can get and its condition is determined by how you killed them: if you want headgear, don't shoot them in the head. The drops will vanish shortly before the body does.

• NPCs will ignore (themselves or each other) getting hit by sniper shots, unless you've missed.

Health, Armor, Damage

• To see details about damage inflicted/incurred, set sv_showdetaildamage to 1. TOT_DAM means health damage.

• Damage inflicted on Blade from any source scales depending on difficulty so Rookie is 1X and Hardcorps 3X. The hidden difficulty makes it 4X.

• You can have fractional hp or armor, with the numbers displayed always rounded down.

• The three types of armor on NPCs is the same as on you: head, torso, and legs.

• NPCs will effectively have 1/2 of whatever armor seems to be protecting them: even if the enemy drops a 50 condition torso piece, on them that piece will only absorb 25 points of damage before failing. After they die, shooting at their armor causes it to deteriorate at the expected rate.

• There are two functionally different weapon types when talking about damage modelling: locational and ALL-type. The locational weapons include the Magnum, Shotgun, Assault Rifle and Sniper Rifle. Every other weapon is ALL-type.

• Both Blade and all enemies behave in the same basic way when they're shot with locational weapons. A random value from the weapon's damage range (see tables under "weapons") is taken with all possibilites equally likely. This value is multiplied by a factor that depends on the enemy type and part contacted. The torso damage is the baseline (1X) that also represents damage taken by any armor parts present.

• Most enemies have many different damage locations (LOC, displayed by sv_showdetaildamage) like "torso upper" or "arm right lower". The damage they take in each of these areas often varies so that the four functionally different LOCs are: head, torso, upper appendages, and lower appendages. Typically human enemies will take 2-4X damage in the head, 0.7-0.8X in the upper appendages, and 0.5-0.6X in the lower appendages. The multiplier also determines the damage increments and range - with torso damage you'll see 1 point increments with e.g. a range of 8, so if headshots on a given enemy are 3X, you would see 3 point increments and a range of 24 for those.

• When shot at from a locational weapon, any armor absorbs all damage landed in the respective area completely until breaking, which is usually reflected in the respective texture turning bloody. Damage taken up until the point of breaking is given the 1X multiplier and reduced from the damage being inflicted. Any leftover damage is multiplied by the respective multiplier for that body part.

Example: thug_mag vs. locational damage

• console shows this damage distribution after shooting at thug_mag in the head with a magnum several times
  • 24 armor, 0 hp
  • 1 armor, 22 hp
  • 0 armor, 24 hp
  • 0 armor, 36 hp
  • Thus the first hit went all into armor (1X, thus it was the highest possible roll of 24).
  • The second hit penetrates the armor: 1 point goes into armor, then the remaining damage gets a multiplier of 2X, meaning the base damage was 1+(22/2)=12, the worst roll.
  • The third hit's base damage was 24/2=12, again the worst possible roll.
  • The fourth roll was for 36/2=18, making it average.

• Damage inflicted by ALL-type weapons is always ALL-LOC regardless of where the target was hit, making the enemies have effectively no different damage LOCs or multipliers at all against such weapons. The damage is the same from enemy to enemy, but still has a set uniformly random range.

• With explosives, direct and indirect hits have different calculations: a direct hit deals damage from the same range regardless of the exact point of impact, whilst an indirect one deals the more the closer to the character model (probably the center of the bbox) of the target it exploded. In the case of pulse primaries, the damage is actually greater - and more consistent - with a close indirect hit than a direct one.

• When armor is present, ALL-type (projectile) damage will be split between the armor types according to this table:

armor types present	damage distribution
HTL	1/3 each
HT	1/3 both + 1/3 hp
HL	2/3 L, 1/3 H
TL	2/3 L, 1/3 T
H	1/3 H, 2/3 hp
T	1/3 T, 2/3 hp
L	all L

As you can see, the game for some reason prioritizes leg armor in these calculations, even to the point where you can avoid all hp damage from ALL-type attacks by just having leg armor at all times. All of this works the same way when inflicting ALL-damage on yourself. Note that enemies' melee attacks are not ALL-type even though yours are.

Example: thug_ass vs. ALL-type damage

• console shows a weird distribution after hitting thug_ass with spear
  • "42.67 armor - 25.33 hp", so total damage dealt was 42.67 + 25.33 = 68
  • thug_ass starts with 20 legs, 40 torso, which means 2/3 damage goes to legs, 1/3 torso
  • therefore 20 legs and 10 torso removed first, 38 damage remains and thug_ass has 30 torso armor left
  • 38 is now split 1/3 torso, 2/3 hp = 12.67 torso, 25.33 hp
  • so total of 20 + 10 + 12.67 = 42.67 armor and 25.33 hp damage has been dealt
  • thug_ass has 30 - 12.67 = 17.33 torso armor left
  • SECOND SHOT deals 18 armor, 48 hp, so 66 total
  • why 18 armor? probably because the stored value was rounded up from 17.33 --> 18
  • similarly the hp value might have been rounded up, but because it's an overkill (73.33 damage dealt vs. thug_ass' 60 hp pool) we can't easily tell

• The fact that an enemy will take "all" type damage does NOT mean there is sure to be no parts that are not "all" type. (e.g. robots)

• Fall damage: all to hp.

• Environmental damage (lava etc.): all to hp; depends on how deep in the lava etc. you're in: it's 2 hp per body part immersed with a factor based on the difficulty level chosen.

• If Blade shoots a nearby wall or surface at an upwards angle with one of the locational weapons, the explosion causes him to take a little bit of ALL-damage (0.60 times difficulty). Doesn't give you a boost.

• Blade's special LOC's (probably take same damage as head and lower respectively):
  • watch
  • hair
  • head_glasses

Drops

• Enemies will automatically drop any remaining armor. Its condition is 2 times whatever it would have protected them for. If you pick the armor up, the body will be more easily gibbed so you could theoretically lose other pick-ups this way.

(if you're testing these, please replace the information below with the enemy types and mention what health items, armor, weapons and ammo they can drop.)

Enemy Type(s)	Drops
bind	create binds, e.g. "bind space noclip" you can type a whole string of commands into a bind command so long as the string is enclosed in quotes
alias	replaces another command with a single word, e.g. this creates a rudimentary timer: alias time "set gl_showents 1; wait; wait; set gl_showents 0" alias binds are treated like normal commands, e.g. "bind x time"
bindlist	displays all binds
cvarlist	displays all cvars and their values
info/serverinfo	prints a list of cvars starting with sv_, which includes most movement-related ones
clear	clears the console
exit	exit game if hanging
save X	saves in file X
load X	loads file X
record X	use to record demos with filename X: useful for studying tricks in detail if played back with a low timescale
stop	stop recording

Optimizations

• Pre-cutscene movement: You can start moving/shooting during the short time after a map has loaded into memory but before any cutscenes have started playing. You should try to pick up some speed and finish with a jump right before losing control. (This assumes you keep moving for a little bit afterwards, or before control has been restored)

• Maximizing DPS: You can probably sometimes benefit from switching weapons right before the clip runs out to skip a reload animation.

• Elevators: Some lifts you can ride while preventing the inner doors from closing. This might cut off a few hundreths when exiting, unless it's best to do a circle jump out the lift instead.

• Approaching doors: with doors that take a little bit to open and thus form bottlenecks, the absolute fastest way to get through them is to aim your movement towards the first point from which you can successfully "use" them and to aim directly at the nearest point in their use box while spamming use with the mouse wheel.

• Ladders: always aim directly up when climbing ladders unless it's more important to start shooting at someone, in which case still try to aim up as much as you can. When going down, just drop off and catch the ladder near the bottom if required for health management.

• Command buffering: the game will always buffer one command if you hold the button down, meaning you could use it to time finicky actions by e.g. switching between weapons, jumping up and down, or shooting a certain number of times.

Saving and loading

Saving and loading mostly preserves the game state intact without a lot of ways having been found for how to abuse it. You can, however, use the lag generated by saving to cause some useful effects.

• Save pushing: You can spam saving (use your quicksave or bind a key to save into a specific dummy file, e.g. "bind x save test") to counter the effects of water currents and air currents, enabling you to access a few areas you otherwise couldn't.

• Skipping triggers: just save before hitting a killbox or other relatively thin trigger while moving at a suitably high speed. The engine will extrapolate your movement without checking for triggers (will check for walls and other tangible things though). Might be easier with a less powerful CPU or if you cap your framerate, but it might also not matter.

When falling from above or boosting up, crouch in the air to make it easier to do skips.

Save spam trigger skips confirmed in:

• • bank (trigger at door leading into fountain room)
  • uwpass1 (death lasers, needs lots of speed)
  • chem2 (both fans)
  • dam (death trigger falling off the ledge)

Save spam skips almost never seem to work for event triggers without really high speeds, but it's probably only because the triggers are too thick. There may be thinner triggers in some places. When you use cheats to gain more speed, you'll notice you can start skipping more triggers meaning it's theoretically possible in lots of places. Otherwise, you can use save spamming for delaying the triggers activating, which will make some tricks easier to perform, but at the cost of losing time to the lag. You have to be very careful with when you start spamming and for how long, otherwise you'll end up losing time for no reason when just a little bit would have been enough.

It's also possible to use it for delaying enemies noticing you, or to make them not spawn in (that's just another kind of trigger).

I think spamming creates more lag when you are also holding a button down, i.e. giving an input on each frame. You can't seem to skip as many frames when you're just jumping around vs. ws or just +forward. Might be bollocks though and it's just more difficult to save spam and jump while using the mouse for both like I (LotBlind) do it.

General

• Difficulty settings: The only known differences between the two difficulty settings are on "hardcorps" you take a lot more damage from enemies and the types and numbers of enemies present will occasionally show some variance. You also take considerably more damage from [some?] environmental hazards such as the sludge in chem2.

• Patches: There should be no significant changes affecting speedrunning between v. 1.11 (GOG) and 1.12 (Steam) although you never know if there's some small thing somewhere. It's probably best to avoid earlier version of this game because there's always a greater chance they're not as stable and will be annoying to run.

• Entities/objects: The technical in-game term for anything that isn't a piece of architecture is an "entity". They share some similarities including spider mines bouncing off them. Some are intangible (some plants), others can be collided with. Others have extra "bboxes" placed around them that act as their hitbox.

• bboxes: These are referenced in the console command "sv_showbboxes". The 'b' most likely stands for 'bounding'. They serve various purposes. Some act as the "use" surfaces of buttons etc., others represent an object's hitbox, for example an NPC's. A lot of them don't directly cause collisions, but rather tell the game when the player or another entity is next to the enclosed object to start checking for collisions with the object's visible shapes. Yet others are difficult to tell why they're there. Note that there are other triggers all around the game that are not revealed by using the command. Using this command is useful for easily seeing how high you have to jump to climb a tree etc.

• Trees: Trees have strange hitboxes. Some of them extend most of the way up, some end only a little ways above where you can jump to without parkouring. Some of

them don't even have hitboxes at all. You should look into possibilities of using trees and other unusual entities for parkour.

• Trucks: to destroy a truck (works at least in dam) you have to shoot the main body, not the bed. This might be a useful way to clear enemies quickly or to get a speed boost off the explosions. Check the bboxes to see the exact place to shoot.

• Bioshield (aka reactiveshields): Reduces damage taken by 3/4. Present in geo2 and mansion1.

• Adrenaline: Present in chem2, xeno1 (2), xeno2, mansion1. (is this missing anything?)
  • Mutagen present in xeno2.

• Mouse acceleration: To get rid of the mouse acceleration, just change the "mouse filter" option in the menus to a different setting.

• Terminals: to exit a terminal view, either hit escape, or the console bind twice.

• Terminal Movement Trick: You can depress continuous-use binds before interfacing with a terminal and they will not be interrupted by using it. The game also lets you rotate during that time which means you can move around quite flexibly until you get shot.
  • Works with: crouching; jumping (you need to hit both crouch and jump before interfacing with the terminal, and when you release crouch, you get exactly one jump; shooting.

• Skipping cutscenes: You should be able to skip every cutscene just by holding space (or some other bind, no need to mash).

• Blocking things: just standing underneath or on top of moving parts can cause the programming to get messed up, which could be useful for something. On whouse2 you can use this to get into the ducts that the crates move through after the arms that lift and lower them have shifted enough (it's slow to do).

• Center view: you might sometimes find a use for this command if you know you need to be aiming at a spot exactly horizontally ahead or a little above or below, or perhaps for underwater strafing somewhere.

• 3rd person view: the default key for this is "i" and it allows you to see behind corners to check on NPCs and such.

• Picking things up: Remember that you can just "use" a collectable item to pick it up instead of having to run over it. The same off bodies.

• Using things through thin walls: You can sometimes use things through at least objects, possibly even thin walls. E.g. pulling something out of a locker without having to open it. May also work to open doors from the wrong side, at least with doors with valves since the valve is a separate object.
  • You can loot bodies through floors, and presumably thin enough walls, because it clearly just checks the distance.
  • You can't use the modem box from OOB in whouse2.

• Vehicle OOB: when you exit a vehicle, it places you behind it. If there happens to be a piece of floor OOB right behind the wall behind you, it can place you on that side. If the side behind you is blocked, it puts you on the left, then right, and then presumably in front of the vehicle. Sometimes you may have to park the vehicle so its left side is closest the wall with behind it being blocked.

• Spawn OOB: if you stand where something else is about to spawn, when it does, it might push you through the floor into the OOB. This might require being underwater; at current the only place it's been found to be possible to be on a spawn location is in uwpass2. If you cheat and reach where the crates spawn in whouse2, it will not send you OOB.

• Door OOB: there's at least one object in the game (the first of the two doors leading to the U4 storage in chem2) that can push you through the floor. Presumably it simply moves so fast, and luckily isn't flagged to deal 4000 damage on impact. The other door has a wall underneath and as such cannot be used for this. No other objects have thus far been found to enable this.

• OOB: OOB is kinda weird in this game. If you get a position above the void, you can just fall right through and wrap back around. It doesn't, however, keep doing this - instead you get bounced back up when you fall below the level again. The bounce gets you nearly as high up as you started. Every subsequent bounce loses a bit of height. If you bump on a floor on your way up, it kills your momentum and you start falling again, but again for some strange reason it treats you as having reset the whole thing. The adrenaline always makes it easier to move around OOB if you can afford to spend it there. There are many levels where level end triggers stretch into the OOB and thus can be accessed through it.

You can't generally seem to be able to use objects through the walls from OOB. You can get back in the vehicle you used to vehicle OOB out but only if a part of the vehicle is inside the wall. I have successfully first shot an NPC dead with a rocket, then looted their body on the floor from the OOB as well.

• Moving crates (and other objects): any object that's on top of another object or generally airborne it seems you can sometimes hit or shoot far away. This could enable you to get a crate or even an NPC into position for some parkour somewhere.

I've also seen a crate get blasted right through a wall when I shot grenades at a large stack of them.

Using the console

To activate the console, hit the § key (to the left of the 1 key). Commands don't require a prefix in this game and will be interpreted as chat messages only if the given command doesn't exist.

For actual runs...

• you MAY use the console to change your fov or sensitivity (which can't be precisely set in the menu)
• also to disable view bobbing if you like (etc. mostly cosmetic changes)
• also to rebind all keys and assign separate binds for the weapons

• Binds: To change weapon binds through the console just type in the following command - "bind x use fists", replacing x and fists with the correct things.

Check out the default.cfg in the "base" folder to see what the other actions are called.

• Weapons: Fists, Magnum, Shotgun, AssaultRifle, Chaingun, SpiderMine, RocketLauncher, PulseRifle, QuantumDestabilizer, SniperRifle, SpearGun

Key Names: ESCAPE, F1-F12, PAUSE, BACKSPACE, TAB, SEMICOLON, ENTER, SHIFT, CTRL, ALT, SPACE, INS, HOME, PGUP, DEL, END, PGDN, UPARROW, DOWNARROW, LEFTARROW, RIGHTARROW, KP_SLASH, KP_MINUS, KP_PLUS, KP_ENTER, KP_5, KP_UPARROW, KP_LEFTARROW, KP_RIGHTARROW, KP_DOWNARROW, KP_HOME, KP_END, KP_PGUP, KP_PGDN, KP_INS, KP_DEL, MOUSE1-MOUSE3, AUX1-AUX32, JOY1-JOY4, MWHEELUP, MWHEELDOWN

• Console Commands/Cheats: To enable cheats for experimentation, first type in the console "cheats 1", then start a new game. To get the default value for any variable, just type it in the console without any extra parameters. It's sometimes possible to use cheats even when the variable is set to "0" - may have had to do with switching files in-between.

It might be wise to use a separate file for running and one for testing things so you don't accidentally leave some setting or bind in that's not supposed to be used.

QII console commands with explanations, lots of which apply to SiN. Some variables seem to be ignored for single player games though.

Use the pgup and pgdn keys to scroll text in the console.

Some commands and cvars:

Command	Information
bind	create binds, e.g. "bind space noclip"
alias	creates complex binds, e.g. this creates a rudimentary timer: alias time "set gl_showents 1; wait; wait; set gl_showents 0" alias binds are treated like normal commands, e.g. "bind x time"
bindlist	displays all binds
cvarlist	displays all cvars and their values
info/serverinfo	prints a list of cvars starting with sv_, which includes most movement-related ones
clear	clears the console
exit	exit game if hanging
save X	saves in file X, e.g. "save test"
load X	loads file X; the names of the default saves are: save1, save2, save3, save4, save5, save6, save7, save8, save9, save0 and quick - the autosave is save0, and of course the quicksave is quick
record X	use to record demos with filename X: useful for studying tricks in detail if played back with a low timescale
stop	stop recording
demomap X	play back demo X
set	command used for setting a cvar, e.g. "set r_drawentities 0"; only really required within aliases
toggle	command used for toggling binary cvars, e.g. "toggle r_drawentities"; useful when creating binds
map X	puts you in a given level, which are listed here: training, intro, bank, abandon, csite, subway, chem1, chem2, whouse1, whouse2, biomecha, biomechb, silo, sewera, aq1, sewerb, dam, wworks1, wworks2, oilrig, uwpass1, uwpass2, docks1, geo1, geo2, docks2, jungle, jungle2, gorge, area57, biomass, xeno1, xeno2, mansion1, mansion2, phoenix, thrall, paradox (bonus level)
exec	executes a .cfg file - e.g. "exec test.cfg"
loadmap	reloads map assets
reconnect	places you at the start without affecting the map state
viewpos	gives current coords; also tells you the view angle, which could be useful
vid_restart	restarts graphics engine to kick in changes you've made etc.
wait	used mainly in aliases to make the game skip a frame ahead before executing the next command, which is required to make some stuff work

Cheat	Information
god	godmode, also infinite ammo on any weapon you've acquired
noclip	also gives you flight; use gl_clear 1 to get rid of the Hall of Mirrors effect while noclipping
notarget/wallflower	non-aggroed enemies ignore you
health X	sets your hp between 0 and 999
wuss	gives all weapons except spider mines
spawn X	used to spawn items, enemies etc. entities in front of you; spawning weapons is good for acquiring more ammunition for them because "give" doesn't do this
give X	used to place items directly into inventory; some stuff you can "spawn" or "give": adrenaline, mutagen, pulsepart1 (means secret weapon part #1), pulsepart2, pulsepart3, reactiveshields (aka bioshield), scubagear; enemies/NPCs; plot items

See the FAQ for a full listing of what you can "spawn" or "give".

Cvar	Information
nomonsters 1	disable enemies; takes effect after reload
timescale	you can use this to speed the game up or slow it down, default 1: consider using this to practise difficult tricks or just to see if something is possible to do at all
r_drawentities 0	to disable drawing entities, i.e. objects - useful combined with sv_showbboxes 1 to clearly see the bboxes
r_drawworld 0	to disable drawing world - useful to see bboxes clearly and to see through walls in general
gl_clear 1	to get rid of hall of mirrors effect
sv_showbboxes 1	to see where the "bboxes" are
ai_timepaths 1	the ai_ cvars give you various info about the way the A.I. pathfinding works
ai_showroutes 1	the ai_ cvars give you various info about the way the A.I. pathfinding works
ai_debuginfo 1	the ai_ cvars give you various info about the way the A.I. pathfinding works
ai_debugpath 1	the ai_ cvars give you various info about the way the A.I. pathfinding works
ai_showpath 1	the ai_ cvars give you various info about the way the A.I. pathfinding works
sv_drawtrace 1	draws all traces, e.g. bullets, "use" check, and A.I. vision
sv_showdetaildamage 1	gives useful information about damage taken by all actors, including the location of contact
developer 1	displays various debug messages
gl_showents 1	displays the game time and the model names of the entities presently in view: use the timer alias to make it start and stop

Useful Aliases

• timer alias (yes it needs to have two wait commands):

alias time "set gl_showents 1; wait; wait; set gl_showents 0"

• • this also displays the names of various entities in your view, allowing you to know e.g. what the enemy you're looking at is called

• alias for getting the adrenaline effect - doesn't always work: alias ad "give adrenaline 1; wait; wait; invuse"
• alias for getting the mutagen effect - doesn't always work: alias muta "give mutagen 1; wait; wait; invuse"

To keep aliases between sessions, you have to keep them in a .cfg file that you exec at the start of each session. If you want to activate all the somewhat interesting developer outputs, the .cfg should look like this:

toggle sv_showdamagelocation; toggle ai_timepaths; toggle ai_showroutes; toggle ai_debuginfo; toggle ai_debugpath; toggle ai_showpath; toggle sv_showbboxes; toggle sv_drawtrace; toggle sv_showdetaildamage; toggle gl_clear; toggle developer; alias time "set gl_showents 1; wait; wait; set gl_showents 0" alias ad "give adrenaline 1; wait; wait; invuse" alias muta "give mutagen 1; wait; wait; invuse"

Turning them off again - just exec the same .cfg again, or bind separate toggle commands on specific keys for more versatility.

Glitching/Experimental Stuff

• Camera Movement Trick: When interfacing with cameras, if you hold down the use key, you can move around completely freely, shoot, jump or crouch. You can't issue other use commands until you've released the bind once, as expected. Then you can use something you're standing right next to. and so long as you continue holding down the button, you can resume movement. Nothing special happens if you exit a level while in the camera view (tested on Geo1). This might be useful for if there was a situation in which watching an A.I. through the camera for an extended period of time manipulates what they're doing somehow, but it's unknown what that could be. At first glance it seems all the actors and everything else around Blade are loaded into memory based on his vicinity to them. Conversely, the further away he gets from the camera view target, the more entities are removed from memory, which is observable by disabling rendering the world.

If you reach another camera screen while already in the camera view and use it, it simply (and expectedly) flicks between the first camera's views.

• Peeking: by hitting an object or wall above with enough speed, it will look like you're pushing through for a little while. However if you record a demo when doing this, the demo might show that it never really happened, it was just an artifact caused by latency and predictions. It is unknown if it's actually possible to do something through a wall this way (frame-rate?).

• Object glitches: Some objects that are supposed to be one use are actually possible to re-trigger before their animation has finished. E.g. the alarm switches in chem1 can be triggered multiple times causing the handles to zoom into the floor (delaying the alarm). Some doors have been seen rotating around endlessly after glitching out in some way (fridge door in the apartment secret in csite). It's very likely these are cases of individual missing/wrong flags though and not something to abuse systematically.

• Reloading while in a level loading screen: This has caused crashing. Not sure how to abuse. It tends to say "server disconnected, reconnecting" in the console while the game isn't drawn. If the save file you're reloading is right next to the level exit, and you quickly hop into the exit blindly, the next level is loaded in normally, proving that the game world is being simulated. The fact that graphics are missing might not cause anything else to work differently and so this might never lead into anything abusable. If you reload a second time, you might get "baselines not valid -- allready spawned".

"Can't "cmd", not connected" has also been seen after multiple reloads. Eventually game might just straight out crash after the "sky" command.

• Hybrid view: You can get into a combined camera/terminal view by performing the camera movement trick and using a terminal. In this state you're able to access the terminal options normally. No known to have any clear applications.

• Terminal Glitch: Sometimes you can mess with save/loading and terminals in such a way as to leave the game slightly confused about whether or not you're using a terminal. The result is the message "console does not exist" being repeated in the prompts. In this state you'll be able to move around and do everything normally. It's not currently known if this has any uses. It's also very difficult to describe what has to be done in order to get into this state, but any of the following may have been involved:
  • Get the hybrid view (described above).
  • Swing your mouse around so you're no longer facing the terminal.
  • Save/load in combination with other steps: this might change the state you're in.
  • Buffer commands before the game has loaded in. Sometimes buffering ESC can let you enter the menu right after reloading, which may affect something. Or try buffering ESC+USE while facing the terminal, which means the game might get confused when you leave the terminal and access it again at the same time.
  • Hit escape or the console bind twice so as to try to exit the terminal.
  • A state in which your view is zoomed away from the terminal but you're still interfacing with it is a very typical result. Another thing that can happen is you're free to move around and use things as normal while still locked in terminal view. It is unknown what happens (if anything) if you were to finish the level like this, or do something else like triggering a cutscene.

• Door Nudge: doors can sometimes give you a sudden nudge to the side if you're standing by the hinge and opening them. Haven't been able to do anything with this yet. Works with valve doors e.g. in sewera.

• Vehicles interrupting timers: When you're in the mountain gorge level, when you're in the quad it looks like the lava stops gushing out until you've dismounted it: the question is whether entering vehicles causes other globally timed/scripted events to be delayed. It might full well be a special script for this one level though.

• You can unpause the game while in the console (just press the pause key) in case you find a use for the console bind.

• Getting caught while falling: This can happen with non-orthogonal architecture. You start jittering in the air. It may even allow hopping up a wall that's too steep to scale normally some ways. It can also result in massive fall damage if it keeps going for too long. Unknown if it can be used with something else.

• Geo2: When I first entered this level, I got this really strange glitch that got me caught at the entrance in an endless fall where I'd never actually land on the bottom, instead jittering up and down in the air above it, and I'd periodically get sent up to the top of the shaft (presumably whenever I'd wrapped around the whole level). I'll explore it more if it ever happens again. Might have resulted from gaining so high a speed somehow that the game was actually just ejecting me from the ground.

• You can mess up elevators by blocking them with mines so they can't move: it might be they eventually forget what they were doing, or get debuffered or something, and that's when you can seemingly send them in the same direction they were already supposed to be moving. Might also have something to do with blocking their doors with mines. (Observed in silo)
  • You can also get props like the machinery in whouse2 in a weird state by continuously blocking them (by standing in their way yourself works in that case). This can cause doors that were once held from closing/opening fully to be sent OOB/into each other when you reopen/close them.

• There are more console commands than are listed in the Quake 2 console guide, all listed by the command cmdlist. There may be more in there that have some situational use, so if anyone has experience in these sorts of things...

• You could theoretically use the "pre-cutscene stack" at the start of some levels for free rocket jumps or such before the game sets you to full hp and armor again, but there doesn't seem to be anywhere where you can have such weapons at the start of such a level.

• There's lots of places where you can get caught in the air without ever landing. This could happen on top of certain objects (like the unused warhead in the lab in phoenix) or just caught inside a cleft between two walls. This causes you never to lose your terminal falling velocity when you finally do fall off, and as such, could enable faster movement somewhere. Sometimes it also causes massive fall damage though.

• There looks to be absolutely no way to shoot hitscan weapons/punch through walls like you can projectile ones, nor can you use anything through a wall.

• Can you do anything interesting with dying during cutscenes or level transitions?
  • The cutscene characters (including Blade) can be different ones to the ones seen during normal gameplay. If you mess with one of them, including cutscene Blade, it can mess with the cutscene when the game is left hanging waiting for an actor to finish moving somewhere or finishing an animation. This can happen e.g. if you manage to kill Blade as he's running across the view in the end cutscene of wworks1, but only if he dies before reaching a certain marker. The same if you kill the cutscene Blade at the end of gorge (who is present but invisible during normal gameplay too), or one of the other characters present.
  • If you kill your actual game self during any point when the game is about to load a new level (e.g. at the end of dam just as the tram is about to reach its mark), the loading proceeds as normal with you being given 1 hp at the start of the next level. No anomalous "dead man walking" states can seemingly occur. This can even happen during any normal level transition based on Blade himself reaching a trigger. If you kill Blade just before reaching the trigger, the same result is yielded.

• You can get stuck in the bottom of an ascending lift preventing it from moving at least in the Headquarters map. Not sure if this can be exploited.

Unsolved Mysteries

• Can you get vehicle OOB in other places than whouse2 (at either end of the driveway) and the entrance in gorge, perhaps by luring an enemy next to the wall to block you off more? I was trying to be pretty thorough with this in case there was a loose piece of extended floor somewhere OOB but it seems the way the levels were made precluded the possibility more or less.
• NPCs are allowed to open doors in SiN. You might be able to manipulate them to do this for you sometimes. One way to make it happen is if they prevent a door from opening fully/closing by standing in the doorway getting crushed by it, thus delaying the door closing. If you could alert them ahead of time (perhaps by shooting through seams), they might even do it before you've entered the area.
• As an extension to that, can you get NPCs to open locked doors ever like in Wolf3D?
• Can you use stuff like "use" spamming or "jump" spamming to do anything weird? The basic way to test for this is to bind those commands on the mousewheel and unlatch the wheel. However you can't bind "jump" i.e. +moveup on the mousewheel, or rather it won't do anything. BTW: I don't think either of these work - the game is damn solid when it comes to handling almost anything you throw its way. I can't even slightly get inside walls for instance and everything feels super-consistent.
• I found the "ghost actors" late into my playthrough and so never tested them in many ways, except in gorge. I don't instantly know how to make use of them but still worth a look. Try shooting at them to nudge them or just kill them, sometimes you can do that off the few frames that you can move around at the start of a level that opens into a cutscene straight off.
• I never tested most event triggers for whether you could save spam your way through without triggering them. You can also delay them activating and generally gain frames of free movement (as it would seem) from doing that, but ofc you're always losing some time to the save spam lag.

• When comboing a weapon boost with ramp jumping, is it better to shoot the weapon on the first jump or second one? I can't see a real difference, but am guessing it's slightly more advantageous to shoot the weapon early.

• Is there anything to achieve from altbinding or doublebinding a command instead of regular binds?

• Can you utilize blowing mines up through walls somehow?

Level-specific (but not category-specific) notes:

• training

• intro
  • there's two ways to exit this mission - the "natural" and by getting your helicopter to land early. The latter is faster and puts you at the alternative entrance to bank.

• bank
  • when you've skipped the fountain room trigger (that causes the security screen to lower), you've simultaneously skipped the next one and may enter the vault freely
  • Bank has the first terminal so you can get the terminal glitch but I couldn't do anything interesting with it.

• abandon
  • several ways to skip the dynamite sequence: quickly move underneath the closing hatch to block it with your head, then use it if necessary to be able to shoot both beams propping it; just shoot the latter beam or both when they're falling in place.
  • if you're really quick you might be able to skip the collapsing ceiling

• csite
  • alternate exit by smashing through the door in the corner of the bulldozer area

• subway
  • you can shoot some of the "subway" signs down and they'll explode... perhaps for great damage.
  • get in the way of the escaping manumit (second fight/first from alt entrance) to prevent some guys from spawning in (is that what causes it?)
  • get the manumit to boost you on the subway car's roof for a faster last fight

• chem1
  • this level seems to have an extra goal of finding some info on U4, but it's automatically checked at the end of the level.
  • at the start you can just hold down +right and get automatic wall strafing off it.
  • lab 1 = the one past the secretary; lab 2 = the one with three workers near the elevator; lab 3 = one near the secret weapon part; rec room = with the soda vending machine
  • each lab has one "alarm guy" who will be the one to hit the alarm; killing them means no alarm gets triggered in that lab at any point
  • three ways to obtain yellow key: pick it up off the locker room guy's body, from his locker, or get him to panic and exit the level which spawns one in the corridor in front of lab 1 near the 4-way crossing - for the last one he generally always waves to the lab 2 guys first triggering an alarm. It spawns whenever his A.I. has decided to go for the exit next, i.e. before he's actually reached that part of the corridor. If the alarm is already active, he skips stopping at lab 2 meaning it can happen even sooner.
  • he may sometimes not run directly to the exit but instead go to the guards' room, in which case no extra key card is spawned in the corridor; he may also get stuck in the doorway in the locker room itself
  • in order for the guy to react to the alarm, you'll first have to activate his A.I.; the other way around nothing happens.
    • done by either hitting a trigger in the corridor leading perpendicularly away from lab 1, near where it branches off towards the rec room, or by going to the 7th security camera view in the secretary's booth
  • the locker room guy can be made to run towards the door by shooting your gun after opening the door (the lab 2 guys may hear you though)
  • you can more or less guarantee killing the locker room guy without anyone hearing if you make sure both doors are closed before shooting; or just use the fists
  • one of the two guys in the rec room will wave to the lab 1 people when escaping, which causes an alarm if the "alarm guy" was still alive
  • this level is one where it's possible to manipulate where the securtrons spawn based on where you're standing
  • The yellow suit is present in the locker even before the engineer reaches it. The yellow card is right above it.
  • You can sometimes sneak past the labs without even crouching, meaning no shooting is necessary to get no alarms this way, but it's pretty finicky. This can even work with the secretary without having to wait for too long or maybe at all.

• chem2
  • if you got no alarm on chem1, it's possible to get through the first gas chamber with the scientist, but the timing is very strict - just enter it right before the door closes
  • When entering the ducts, you might be able to get a ceiling boost when you get to the start of the rising part (ramp jump into bumping into the ceiling), but it will require a good timing if it's possible at all.
  • you CAN parkour onto the pipes above the fans (off here). Afterwards, I can confirm it's possible to mspam through the spinning fans but it might take pretty long (the game literally lagged out and Windows asked me if I wanted to terminate it on that occasion). On the other hand you don't have to wait for the blades to fully stop so... it is important to parkour up first so you get as much falling speed as possible. You might wanna fall through the first fan closer to where you came from so the second one has time to suck you up to a higher speed.
  • to get through the second gas chamber without the key card, you can use a cj + enemy boost off the shotgunner with a really high jump arc and mspam
    • if you could lure another guy to stand underneath the door at the opposite end, as you trigger it, he gets gibbed, and this stops the door for another second making getting through easier. Still I emphasize you shouldn't need this, but there's a chance it's faster because less mspam is involved.
  • on easy you can just swim the slime ignoring most objectives if you ws with enough hp; on hard it seems to hurt you too much, unless you spend your ad
  • If you get on the upper level and to Mr. Skander's computer before alerting him, you can kill him by selecting "close U4 storage". This also messes up the chase sequence.
  • OOB by standing underneath the first U4-chamber door as it's closing and crouching
    • usable for a faster exit if you can't swim the sludge

• whouse1
  • in the first area, you only have to shoot two of the enemies fast, because the truck will start moving after.
  • one of the crates near the start has a silencer
  • can't parkour over gate A or B - can over gate C though
  • the guy behind the glass will react the same time every time he's seen you - he'll trigger the alarm and run out, but he gets stuck on the door that can only be opened after he's dead: for this reason you have to show yourself to him early so the door is open when you get there
  • if you can skip the trigger that sets the second truck moving, you should be able to parkour onto the balcony off the truck (requires 3 jumps) or onto the wall next to gate C
  • can't exit the level if the alarm is active (sometimes the sound is disabled but it's still active)

• whouse2 (has save corruption glitch [tend to get it in the storage area reached by keycard] so save a lot in different slots)
  • the doors that only open when you're coming from the other side seem to work based on a trigger box that's on the other side of the door that you actually have to stand in to get the door unlocked. That's why it doesn't seem you can force or trick them open from the other side.
  • OOB by riding the forklift to the end of the driveway, parking it next to the door (left side facing the door and so the rear of the forklift is touching the curb), and exiting
    • can reach the exit from OOB by bouncing and hitting the side of the elevator shaft that's towards the elevator doors - fall through the narrow gap in the architecture to be able to be close enough to the shaft so you can do this
  • if you climb on the second level in the room with the two vultorn crates, you can ramp up into the place where crates are being carried and fall into the area behind the link fence

• biomecha
  • skip by spider mine jumping over the first ambush
    • can also be done with second ambush but there's an invisible wall that doesn't disappear before the spider is dead
  • you can grenade the securtrons through the seams

• biomechb
  • long terminal trick because the virus wait is so long - plant a mine at the door so it doesn't stop you from backing up even further while waiting
  • spider mine jump onto the upper area in the reconah pit to skip the fight

• silo
  • can't seem to be able to reach through the door/wall to get the hand early no matter what you do

• sewera
  • can shoot a grenade through the first door for blowing up the bar on the other side that holds it shut
  • otherwise to get on the second level quicker you can hop into the niches near the doors in the first part that has a fake ladder leading up

• aq1
  • skip first puzzle just by moving fast enough
  • can dolphin right up onto the rocket launcher platform
  • can enter the pipe with the first turbine (after the part with the mined crates) and swim right through, afterwards reaching the exit is simple

• sewerb

• dam
  • two mines can get you over the dam wall if you want a little shortcut going down to the mixers
  • use save lag to skip death trigger when falling towards the base of the dam; reaches the alt exit and skips wworks1 and 2.
  • the number of barrels you need to shoot to complete the secondary objective depends on your difficulty setting: on rookie, it's enough to blow up all the barrels in the second area that has a truck in it and the ones in the corridor towards the tram; on hardcorps, you might have to get all of them but 2.
  • can +back to gather more ammo after triggering the tram (you're not required to be in it)
    • you can even do the following in 100% runs: complete every objective except for entering the tram, go to the tram and plant a mine so it's running in place blocking the tram door, hit the tram button so it attempts to send it off, move back down to the dam, hop off and complete the mixer objective while timing blowing the mine up manually so the tram immediately after reaches the marker moving you into wworks1 instead of having to listen to the long conversation between Blade and J.C. -- now you've technically completed every objective in dam without getting stuck. If you return to dam later from wworks2, the game instantly sends you to oilrig instead.

• wworks1
  • can parkour onto the roofs off the parking lot
  • sewage intake area: you can actually DESTROY the tanks (with the valves) by shooting them to help you move around more freely
  • route suggestion: get sewage key - parkour into filtration pools area (drain then) - get inside and disable all the clarifiers (enter it through the red clarifiers' side) - do the sewage intake stuff - drain red and yellow - parkour over and do blue

• wworks2
  • EP is in place and possible to shoot and kill even before hitting any valves, but this doesn't (?) do anything interesting.
  • It might be possible to use EP for enemy boosts usefully. Going up the ladders for instance.

• oilrig
  • shoot the guy nearest the ladder at a delay to make sure you have time for picking up his rocket launcher
  • ad + rockets to quickly get to the elevator without ever being inside the rig

• uwpass1
  • you have to destroy four (?) things to render the base inoperable (hardcorps)
    • at least these count - the pipes in the starting area; the machine behind the glass; the pipe in the same underwater area; the big machine at the vent shortcut exit; ??
  • big skip if you have lots of spider mines and health: you can boost and mspam through the deadly laser grid - afterwards kspam to get to the bottom and wait for sub to open door (get the sub to push you?)

• uwpass2
  • OOB by kspamming to where the subs are coming from and waiting for the next one to spawn - it pushes you right through the floor; you can sometimes survive the fall (don't know how that works) and get to the exit

• docks1
  • you can just hit the valve on the other side of the blue key door by aiming at an angle through the door, which opens the door without having the key

• geo1 (has save corruption glitch inside the ducts near the exit to geo2 so be careful where you save)
  • some of the explosive panels seem to require direct hits on specific parts to blow up; rockets don't always seem to work very well

• geo2
  • can parkour up on the overhanging walkway in the first room; e.g. hop on top of the machine straight out of the duct, then might be able to use the two nearby pipes and get a perfect cj into air strafing on the slanted part of the machine and then the walkway
    • otherwise get on the other side and use the platform above the display, or just weapon boost it
  • if desided, the overheating can be delayed simply by flicking the switch again
  • shooting the 3 pumps drains the pool in area57 lending access to biomass
  • you can blow up the panel above where the secret is by placing a mine on the ceiling and standing inside it, allowing you to get on the upper level that way
    • Spider mines example on geo2
  • You can also parkour off the stairs in the siphon station room to get on the pipe that collapses after the pumps are destroyed.
  • This level is one where you can send the elevator up early, then return for goodies in the same room.

• docks2

• jungle1
  • concertina doors: the folding doors can grab you and give you a lift
  • accessing jungle 2: can do this even if you destroyed the machine in geo2 but you have to take a short dip through lava

• jungle2
  • concertina doors: the folding doors can grab you and give you a lift
  • there's a shortcut that's only present if you destroyed the machine in geo2

• gorge

• area57

• biomass
  • only accessible if you drained the pool in geo2 (?)

• xeno1

• xeno2

• mansion1

• mansion2

• phoenix
  • the rocket has funky physics once its animation has finished: if you hop inside one of the green bboxes coming off the top and wait, it shoots you up way fast and you'll land on the top platform.
  • you can also just ride the ascending rocket up: it will start its ascent once the three enemies outside are dead whether or not it was in place, meaning it will clip through the floor; you'd have to be able to shoot them through the wall to make it happen quickly enough to justify doing that; if you do that (e.g. by cheating), the rocket will ascend near the wall and you can't ride it because the platform blocks your way

• thrall
  • you can alert thrall early by sending out a spider mine around the side of the building and carefully placing a rocket so the mine is sent flying towards thrall. If it landed on him it can be detonated to activate his A.I. sooner. Otherwise a rocket in the lower part of the wall that's towards thrall in the upper chamber with the pool will do the same. The other weapons seem too "quiet".
  • you can sometimes dodge everything the guy throws at you just by strafing left and right at a medium distance (so he doesn't do melee attacks); otherwise just go up the ladders for a fairly safe way to cheese him, even to the point that you can safely fist him with the mutant hands from there. He can't seem to be able to shoot you with rockets when there's something in front of his right (rocket) arm, so just keep the rock pillar between you and him while circling it; he can even be gotten completely stuck in multiple places, e.g. behind the corner of the pillar that points at the building
  • you can also just rocket jump right back inside the central building from the trigger that makes the gate rise; if you wait for thrall to get right outside the entrance, you can find a narrow angle that allows to hit him with rockets from the inside, or just keep hopping. You can also shoot the chaingun through the gate.
  • you should be able to block the upper sliding doors with mines as you pass through inside the building. This allows you to hop outside using a couple of boosts instead of taking the elevator.
  • you can stop the cage's movement in the inclined part if you just stand at the rear yourself or do the same with mines.

Side notes

• There are many commands and cvars that can be added to the shortcut, making things a bit faster and convenient. For example:
  • +set player <username> will set the user's name in advance, but doesn't exec their config like logging on would (The cvar player is not case-sensitive.)
  • +exec /players/<username>/config.cfg (should work for the GOG install at least) actually execs your own .cfg where your personal binds etc. are.
  • +menu_main will make the game jump to the main menu, skipping the intro videos. Otherwise, +menu_loadgame will make the game jump directly to the load menu.
  • +load <savegame> will load the specified savegame.
  • +map <mapname> will start the game in the specified map.
  • More common commands like +wuss or +noclip will also work.

Examples:

Shortcut	Result
"C:\Games\Sin Gold\sin.exe" +set player USER +menu_loadgame	Log in as "user" and open the load menu.
"C:\Games\Sin Gold\sin.exe" +set player SuperMan +load quick +noclip	Log in as "superman" and load the quicksave with noclip activated.
"C:\Games\Sin Gold\sin.exe" +set player InCredible +set skill 0 +map geo1 +wuss	Log in as "incredible", and load the map geo1 on the Rookie difficulty with all weapons.

This hasn't worked for everyone. The other, perhaps more reliable, way to do this is simply to add the commands to the autoexec.cfg (no plus-signs required).

• Changing config defaults: just edit default.cfg and then create a new profile.

• Swag: to add swag to your runs, use the built-in voice synthesizer! The command is "say_talk X message", where X is the pitch. It should be considered a must to have some quips reserved for after killing Thrall.

• You could, in theory, record a run using just in-game demos (loading screens aren't timed anyway). They must have no significant lag and must be started on the first frame and last till the very last frame of each segment. Some aliasing like this might help:

alias startsegment record current alias retry "stop; load last; startsegment" //stops recording, loads a save called "last" alias endsegment "save this; stop" //saves to a file called "this", stops recording

Note that the game accepts the mouse movement input even while paused so you shouldn't touch the mouse before the recording has started.

• If you can't window the screen, try switching to software rendering. This will also uncap the theoretical framerate as shown by the command "FPS 1" but your normal cl_maxfps value still governs how many frames are drawn.