Alone in the Dark (1-3)/Game Mechanics and Glitches

Tricks common to all the three games

(move tricks here if you know they're present in all the games)

• item order: every new item gets placed on the top of the inventory. You may want to use items like the fuel canisters straight away before they get dropped further down. You can manipulate the order by dropping and collecting items but unfortunately this loses the menu time in either case.

• menu item glitch: sometimes the game skips over an item in the menu when you're trying to select one. This makes it sometimes better to collect two items in the "wrong" order.

• stair animation skip: when you hit a staircase it takes a few seconds for the character to be facing the right direction before climbing up. If you were already facing the exact right angle (and hit the right spot too?) this gets skipped and you ascend instantly. Difficult to succeed at.

Alone in the Dark 1

• Emily or Edward?: the only known difference between the two is the attacks which are seemingly a little bit faster for Emily. Could use some more looking into actually.

• clipping through walls: You can clip into objects and into walls under some circumstances. How you do this is simply run into a suitable corner (always between an object and another object or a wall) at an angle that's about 20 degrees into the wall or object you're trying to enter. When you're almost through you can just "burst" out.

A table listing all the known places you can clip into. Incomplete.

• camera defocus clip: when the camera is following the arrow or axe it may cause things to despawn that are normally in front of the protagonist making it possible to pass through them. This has at least been observed with the library door towards the stairs while the arrow was doing rounds somewhere in the statuette room.

• level wrapping: once OOB you can warp from one end of the map to the other. In rare cases causes crashes (possible if you go to the very corner). Probably not necessary for anything but can theoretically make certain OOB movements easier.

• OOB actions: you can fire from OOB to inside bounds and also perform some actions like closing doors. No known uses.

• The Cthonian skip: here's a video of how this works... Click here

• continued running: after picking up an object or performing one of many other interactions, if you instantly hit up again you don't stop running. When opening a door it never makes you stop at all.

• fast item cancel: just press esc to quickly select leaving an object that's in your way.

• mid-air rotation: release space when jumping and you can change your movement direction.

• pre-rotation: as you're performing certain actions such as using the key on the drawers you can get a faster rotation afterwards by just holding down the arrow key as you're doing it.

• health items: the 3 items for healing yourself are the two flasks in the two bathrooms and the biscuits in the kitchen. They heal you for 10 (2nd floor bathroom), 20 (1st floor bathroom), and 5 (biscuits) respectively. The game doesn't cap your health so you can use them pre-emptively. The maximum is 55 which lets you survive one Cthonian attack.

• damage cancellation: you can't get hurt while drinking a potion. You can make the animation last longer by hitting/holding down space.

• "slow" death abuse: after taking mortal damage you can still perform certain kinds of actions (instantaneous effect ones) such as wielding an item or placing an item into its slot. No known uses.

• resurrection glitch: if you take healing after taking mortal damage you will survive but be in a zombified state. To get out of it you have to select some action first. Going through "death" prevents you from collecting items that you normally pick up just by running into them probably making the game incompletable. However if you then save and load the game it should have removed this effect.

Doing the resurrection glitch with the lantern in hand will enable making dark spaces be lit as if you were still holding it.

• easier running: if you adjusted your CPU cycles in DOSBOX you could start running more easily, however this is ofc not allowed.

• when you save and load the game the camera angle sometimes changes in-between. Could be useful somewhere OOB?

• Some cutscenes can be cut short, at least if you get hit by a fireball or the deep one after using the talisman or throwing the lantern you get to access your menu early. (Does it also give you your movement?)
  • (NHG) after the "Pregzt in flame cut-scene", Carnby automatically will have a recoil animation like he was touched by something. I don't know really why but it happens all the time. Well if you are touched byt the fishman just before the cut-scene, this animation will cancel the following-one so you'll save a little bit of time. It's an important detail for a segmented speedrun!
  • (NHG)I had a brillant idea ! But unfortunately it did not work at all. I tried to launch the lanter through Pregzt, then putting the talisman during the throwing. In a way it worked but the "cut-scene" cancels the throw so the lanterns falls in front of me. I insist on the fact that it literally cancels the launch, making the lantern fall as a rock, because if you try to launch it without the talisman putting in place, the lantern will kinda bounce against the tree and'll go in a more or less random direction.

• Avoid camera transitions whenever possible to save the camera switch time. On the other hand there's sometimes lines that cause a bit of lag without the game loading a new view. This is probably the game loading new architecture into memory and can't be avoided.
  • One of the skips is when you leave the cellar and go towards the outside door, if you travel by a path that touches the corner of the staircase you avoid getting the angle that shows you the kitchen door.
  • Watching the speedruns will give you an idea where else this is doable (there's another one in the bridge maze area).
  • There might be an opportunity to save/load to make the camera view change into something else at the start of the next segment saving a tiny bit of time. See "Loading a saved game"

• Loading a saved game: doesn't perfectly restore the game state. Instead some things like the state the bathtub monster is in is carried over from before saving. Loading a save also influences the movement of flying arrows and axes, making them take a sharper curve towards you (because it stops their motion). Another effect is if you load a save where a door opening or closing animation is playing, wait for the door to open or close some more and load the save you'll see that the door's state comes from the situation before you loaded. This enables you to skip part of the animation completely saving time in a segmented run. Further saving and loading may change the current camera view.
  • Also this can prolong the death animation of at least the nightgaunts which is obviously not good.
  • When birds are crashing through windows loading and saving causes them to drop down on the floor prematurely. Hasn't been observed with other things. Maybe it's just the animation getting cancelled.

• Pause glitches:
  • The smoke spreading animation keeps playing even when paused.
  • (There are more? What exactly?)

• gramophone skip: if you wanted to get the pirate's key from the ballroom you only need to anger some of the dancers to get around them, grab the key quickly and run away.

• corridor with the paintings: The portraits will spawn axes and arrows respectively when you get far enough into the corridor. There will usually be just one axe and one arrow at a time. They track you and the camera follows them instead of you when they're moving around. You can get through the corridor alive without using health items, just about. This is very very difficult or impossible without saving and loading, which can be used to manipulate the arrows and axes. You may have to take the first axe when you're near the library door to make sure the portrait never spawns a second one, but you can't be too far or you won't have time to dodge the first arrow. Then you have to go to the left side of the corridor and dodge the first arrow by running tangentially to it, then rush to the far door into the bedroom. After that the arrow and camera will behave quite erratically, moving in and out of rooms. You are still generally able to get to the door, open it, and enter the room. Get the false book (it's very likely to get hit here), and just hope you can dash back to the library door and get inside in time. Inside the library you'll have better chances of dodging the arrow. If you go up or down the stairs while they're flying around you can "disarm" the projectiles (they can no longer hit anything) so it's easier to go through the library. None of this is likely to save any time though. Another thing to mention is whenever you get hit by a projectile this gives you the camera back so taking a strategic hit somewhere might be needed as well.

• • [from LotBlind]I've succeeded in taking only 10 damage (one axe) from the corridor projectiles. The key is to run directly to the library door, open it (you'll get hit by an axe), and I think also you have to trigger an arrow to be shot after opening the door. That often happens anyway when the axe knockback pushes you away from the door. Then you have to enter the library quickly. This has strange effects that don't reset until you load a save game. You should experiment with it yourself. It's easier if you have a lit lantern in hand before you start your mad dash so you can see what's happening in the library.

• • (LotBlind) So after today's testings I think the corridor skip isn't doable without saving/loading at least once or twice. That seems to mess up the tracking. This let me get to the library without even the first axe hitting me (I saved after starting to open the door). Then I used the method of attracting an arrow, doing a bit of to and fro in and out of the library so it starts doing its circles, then just make sure that arrow never hits you (the axe probably will though), and you can get the book, do what you need to do and finally go downstairs and you'll get rid of the arrow for good. But yeah don't know how to do that without segmenting.

• arrow grab: there is an obscure glitch that lets you sometimes collect items that you normally run into to collect when the game gets confused about what entity is touching them. The arrows and axes work for this. The false book and the talisman at least have been picked up this way. It isn't well-enough understood at current to make it a part of the run but it may always have happened right as the screen transitions into the room where the item was. Also it might be necessary for the projectile to be touching the item on the first frame, meaning it has to enter the room from that side. Otherwise it might be when you try to pick up another item (off the floor or so) while the projectile is touching the talisman when this triggers. Getting the arrow to fly through the item isn't enough by itself.

• • (NHG) I have no idea how the games considers that you touched the book. It happened to me too sometimes. I mean, some tries I can clearly see that the arrow fly over the book so in this case i suppose it's "normal" that it takes it. But sometimes, it's just not in the good spoot at all and i take it anyway... So i don't know. It's important to say that with this crazy camera thing, sometimes the arrow is kinda... Not where it looks. As if the texture was in the wrong places. Sometimes when I miss my move in the corridor, the arrow touches me though it's not near me at all. Maybe it explains why sometimes it touches the book even if graphically the arrow is not even close to it. In any case, I did not find a move allowing to make the arrow touch the book.

• • (Aqfaq) Let me get one thing straight. The arrow does not pick up any items. It is the player character who picks up WRONG items. It is a messed up situation, so it is quite hard to figure out what is going on, but you are almost there! It seems to work like this: Only visible items can be picked up. The camera needs to see the item, otherwise it can't be picked up. So, when the camera is in another room, you can't pickup the item your player character is touching, BUT INSTEAD you get the item that the camera is currently looking at. What I did with my test runs was this: When the camera was in the hidden room, then I picked up the false book (or ANY ITEM in front of the player character). Talisman is now erroneously picked up, because that is the item the camera is seeing.

• • (LotBlind) I thought I'd seen contradicting things happening, i.e. the arrow collecting something that's not visible to the camera but I'm not sure anymore. However, your explanation would give me the reason why I couldn't just lead the arrow to the secret room and make it pick things up.

• • (NHG to Aqfaq) if I understand what you are saying, it is Carnby who picks up an item at the place where he is BUT the arrow makes the screen change and the game considers that Carnby picked up the item in the other room ? I am really surprised by what you are saying because the only one time that I picked-up the talisman, Carnby was somewhere on the painting corridor, so as far as I know there wasnt any item to touch around here. I curse myself for having deleted the video when I did it, I erased it by mistake with my wrong attempts. But I can say the same thing about the false book, when the arrow/Carnby picked up I still was in the painting worridor with absolutly no item to touch, soooo I don't know about that

• escape route: you don't actually need to open either of the exits beforehand to be able to get out of the tunnels. You don't even need to unlock the cellar door or use the sabre in the study or anything. The study door WILL be locked though and you can't get out without the key.

• the boulder skip: (LotBlind) this is probably not really a trick but rather a result of the path I took through the game... causing the boulder to be gone after doing the Cthonian skip. Presumably this happens when you enter the cellars (trigger the Cthonian) and leave. When you're back, the boulder will be gone (and so will the bird).

• study stairs: when you return to the ground floor out of the tunnels Edward/Emily will sometimes turn around and go straight back down the stairs. It isn't understood why this happens but it wastes a lot of time (10s?). Maybe sub-pixels. Doesn't happen every time though. It doesn't seem to matter if the stairs were revealed by using the sabre or if you enter the study for the first time.

Monsters

What we call them unless we find more authoritative sources...

• zombie
• chicken/bird
• nightgaunt (mirror puzzle)
• knight
• ghost -> vortex
• vagabond (library)
• dancer -> vortex
• pirate
• rat
• bat (tunnels)
• Cthonian/worm
• bathtub monster
• settler (axe portrait)
• Indian (arrow portrait)
• ashtray
• deep one (frog monster)
• purple spider (arboreum)
• white spider (tunnels)
• big purple spider (tunnels)
• Pregzt (boss)

• fighting techniques: the left punches and swings are the fastest but have the least reach. The kick has the greatest reach but is slowest. The right hand punches are in-between. If you can get a monster to spawn inside you (e.g. chickens crashing through windows) or get them against a wall you can prevent the knockback from affecting them. The pirate is best fought by allowing him to start an attack on you and then hitting him after it's too late for him to block it. Alternatively you can fake one attack (e.g. left swing) and when he's blocking that quickly switch to another attack. Releasing the arrow key after you've hit the monster and pressing it again is faster than waiting for the animation to finish.

• Vortices: the swirling monsters that are created from the ghost or the dancers can't follow you into certain places at all. This includes the downstairs dining room. The vortices disappear during the endgame.

• Most basic monsters can be stunned/knocked back by throwing things at them as well as hitting them. If you do this it has the added benefit of getting rid of an item you don't need, although the menu time might be a little longer. The tunnel bird doesn't get stunned like the other two do.
  • Can be stunned: bathtub monster

Approximate time saved by skipping...

• the indian cover: 10 seconds in the loft + 2-3 seconds of putting it in place (minus the 1 second lost to taking an axe in the back if this applies)
• the sabre: 17 seconds
• the matches in the hearth room: 16 seconds minus time it takes to get another light source
• the study key: this saves about 7 seconds if you just pick up the false book

Alone in the Dark 2

Alone in the Dark 3

Jack in the Dark