Tricks common to all the three games

(move tricks here if you know they're present in all the 3 games OR remove them if you notice one of them isn't)

Alone in the Dark 1

Timer-Based Tricks

Time to go from A to B or to get item X

Table

Experimental Speculation / Might Help in AitD 2 or 3

• If the view and room are desynced (because camera is following arrow), if you warp around, it tends to cause coordinates desyncing as well. Thus if there was any natural way to induce coord desyncing, it might be during such times.
• Somehow had a save file that caused the bird to trigger instantly upon entering E1R4 even though normally this can't happen on your first visit after loading any save file. Possibly related to this there's a save file where ACTOR 21 (loft bird) has its ROOM_CHRONO wrapped around to a huge value with Emily in E1R0.
  • Sadly the (former) save file was deleted. The latter is savefile.
• When you're standing on a Deep One's back, you're actually a little ways above it: it's not exactly 2000 units tall (1142 instead) and its ZV is at -1400. If we move down 39 units to -2851 (which means our feet are at -1971), we can still walk around on its back, but at -2850 we can't. So the top half is 1970-1400=570 tall and the bottom part has to have height 572. However, more likely is -1400 is actually the last pixel of the bottom half and so both parts have height 571 instead. The point is both the actors seem to have their ZV coordinates at exactly their center points, and the assumption is all actors are the same in this respect.
• You can technically visit the inventory right as you're getting ready to clip through something to get the same effect as when just running. Can't see any specific reason to do it this way though. You lose your running state too.
• VARs 4 and 5 being set to values above 100 makes them act weird: they seem to wait for the game to play the first sound effect (that's not the one in the other VAR) and store it in the slot. From there on out, that particular value of that VAR will play that particular sound effect.
  • If you start messing with the values for VAR 4, 5 or presumably 15, it seems something can go wrong with the game writing sample data on top of the rendered image (with a softlock).
  • It looks like maybe the game resets the values for VAR 4 and 5 every frame so could be just VAR 15 is possible to use here. VAR 15 is only set when the player enters E3, E4, E5, or E6 or is on one of them.
  • To be exact, VAR 4 and 5 only reset if VAR 4 has been changed. Also some rooms may be exempt because the actor holding the right LIFE isn't in memory. In fact this is why your step sounds are not set when you come back from E5 to E3.
  • The way the game reacts to values above 100 for these VARs seems to depend more on what has happened prior, not which exact values they were given. If you just reload a save file and immediately fire the rifle, it tends to be an immediate "vanilla" softlock with music playing but nothing else happening. If you cause some other sounds to be played before you shoot, the game seems to become tolerant to glitchy values without actually playing any sample on firing. If the game has given it the "go-ahead" once, it doesn't seem to ever change its mind until the VARs are messed with again. If you switch between ordinary sample indices and glitched ones, it tends to result in a noise texture all across the screen and random large and fairly small values being written inside the VARs. Sometimes the CVARs can also be affected, giving a kind of checkered pattern with big and small values alternating (which could yield that all-important 1). Aside from all this, smaller graphical glitches may also occur.
  • On occasion, the game will die a slow death with individual actors disappearing from the "radar" one by one until none are left.
  • To get "the full monty" you can set it to 99 first, then 101 and finally 102 at which point you get the tutti frutti effect. Amazingly, setting it to 110 as the last value doesn't seem to work although it might still crash the game.
  • Sometimes some of the values can keep changing for a few frames before settling during the tutti frutti effect. Repeatedly seeing VARs 53 and 54 changing when VAR 15 was set to 103.
  • Seen the room value change during one of the crashes.
  • Seen the CVARs being written over with the VARs, so that CVAR 1 takes the value of VAR 1 etc. all the way to the last CVAR. This happened at a delay after a softlock when VAR 15 was 106.
  • Once seen CVAR 41 changing to -1 (from 198) during the softlock.
  • All in all, this is all very difficult to predict and it is currently completely unknown whether it can be used to get the desired effects.
• You can create softlocks that don't seem to overwrite VARs by throwing stuff OOB. Once it's wrapped around the plane a few times (doesn't always do that) is when it might happen. Same as with the skipped Cthonian actually.
• Can't find any way to walk backwards then getting a lamp snap to get the desync to happen in E3R11 without the rifle.
• You can keep an ANIM running just by holding down SPACE, presumably because it never goes back to the "main" part of LIFE 549. This can be used to sometimes keep the PC in the walk down/up stairs ANIMs after finishing a transition.
  • For example, while running, you can temporarily release +up, then later before you release SPACE, depress +up again to keep running in case this is ever required.
• Not sure what to do with it, but Edward has a frame in his jumping ANIM where the offset is 338 (which is massive for a single frame). Even Emily will move 120 units per frame during keyframe 1 of jumping.
• You can get a s/l snapback after doing a lamp snap (as you'd expect), but it's difficult to picture a use for this. In theory there could be a situation like this:
  • There's a trigger in front of you that you want to hit and then do a (90-degree) turn snapping into another trigger that's on the side, after which you s/l to get back to a trigger that you initially stood in.
• Why does the game interpret hitting left as if you were hitting right when you're jumping up the E5-E3 staircase? This is the only time I've noticed this behaviour. I managed to once get the game to react in the expected way but usually the rotation is in the wrong direction.
  • This can't have anything to do with hitting the stairs trigger in E3 after the TRACK has finished because that would cause you to be sent back to E5.

(Probably) Pointless Trivia

• If you wanted to do a walkathon for the game, the best would be to reset walking every 60 frames but you'd have to be careful not to trigger running. It's the same as the real-life sport.
• It seems you cannot move due West. At 270 degrees, you will also creep towards the S very slowly. Moving back and forth at that angle means you're just moving South.
• For some reason, when the game loads in E1R7, the S nightgaunt is moved around after first getting loaded in.
• You can start a climb while "closing" or "open/searching".
• The jug can be collected from OOB.
• Pregzt will deflect anything thrown at him before he's been weakened. If you were right next to him, it may get placed on the other side of the tree, simply because of how the algorithm for placing thrown objects works, you being in the way yourself.
• When you s/l while a door is opening, sometimes the door has opened completely when you return without you doing anything special. Obviously doesn't help real-time runs unless it means you've regained control before having been hit (avoiding the knockback) or something equally unlikely.
• If you get desynced and then die outside of E6R6 with the stone door having been opened, it doesn't necessarily put you in the right place? It's difficult to tell whether this is a real thing or whether I just messed up the warping affecting the end result.
• If you wait for the bird in E1R4 for 60 seconds, when it shows up, the active monster count goes up by 1. However, if you activate him by collecting the vase, this doesn't happen. This is reset anyway during all transitions and thus doesn't change the rest of the game, but it does mean you can (erroneously) get random noises playing with the bird still alive in E1.
• When you load any save, VAR 25 (being in the intro) always flashes 1 before going back to 0 before gameplay continues.
• Unlike when you back up, if you fire the rifle or get knocked back your speed stays at 0, not -1. This has no known uses.
• There can be an in-between turn within the lamp snap during a room transition (going into a room and snapping back to another one), presumably caused by SPACE not having been held long enough for the lag during the transitions not to increase the amount you turn by.

Misc info

Object properties incl. associated life, body, and weight.

Alone in the Dark 2

Alone in the Dark 3

Jack in the Dark