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

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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.

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.

Abbreviations which may have been used: ws = wallstrafing, cj = circle jump, kspam = keyboard save spam, mspam = mouse wheel save spam, ad/added = adrenaline/on adrenaline

General Movement

  • 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.
  • 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 a microsecond after - the amount of speed lost is proportional to the number of frames in between these actions, but they must be done in that order. This is because air strafing will instantly or almost 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. 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 jumping: This is a basic movement technique where you accelerate on the ground in a circle as if slinging yourself to temporarily exceed the base speed. The technique executed well gives you the same boost as wall strafing (480 UPS) but can be performed anywhere where jumping isn't awkward and gets you moving in any direction including not parallel to walls. It's a bit difficult to describe and so self-sufficiency is called for in learning what works best.

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 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. 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 might not lose a lot 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 while rotating in the same direction through an arc of around 30 degrees (maybe even less). Practise this 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.

Circle jumping has the distinct disadvantage that because you're relying on jumping to keep your speed, you will be affected by enemy fire coming from ahead of you, unlike with wall strafing or trilling.

  • Air movement: You cannot seemingly use any special techniques to accelerate past your base movement speed in the the air. You do have the same base acceleration 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 to increase your travel distance by "wiggling" left and right after you've jumped so you don't overshoot it.
  • Chain jumping: 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.
  • 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 air strafe to control your movement. You can only ever hold one of each, and the mutagen injector is only found in one level, whereas adrenaline is found in multiple levels.
  • 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 room in abandon), and objects that you can just barely reach are the same, because you've already lost all your momentum when you land on 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 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.

  • 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 jump off the base of the slope whether or not you have extra speed.
  • 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.
  • 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. May also allow 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 when dropping off a ledge that involves doing the ground part of a circle jump but without actually jumping as you drop off.
  • Water movement: 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: Probably depending on your angle and speed of incidence, you might be able to avoid sinking into water completely just skimming across the surface instead. Just hold down jump.
  • 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) 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.
  • 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)


Boosts

  • Weapon boosts:
    • useful: spider mines, pulse rifle primaries, rockets, and the destabilizer
    • 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.

    • 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 grenades is absolutely tiny for some reason, but might be useful (if you can time it) for easily scaling a crate.
  • 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.

  • Combinations: don't forget to do one of the basic techniques + enemy boosts when rocket jumping etc. if you benefit from having a longer flight.


Weapons

  • DPS: (please do tests and edit in, make sure to note if headshots are not the best for some enemy type)
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Spear gun: more powerful against divers somehow?
  • 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.
    • Spider mines are possible to be planted in such a way so the explosion affects things through the glass. Probably requires a similar technique to the rockets.
  • Shooting through seams: grenades come in handy sometimes when you shoot through seams into places you can't otherwise visit yet, e.g. in sewersa. Also may work with spider mines in the sense that their explosion can affect an area through a wall, but this requires very careful placement.
  • 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.


Optimizations

  • 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.


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...
  • Enemy weapons: you might sometimes be able to get enemies to drop weapons from up high if they're on the very edge. Either kill them, or try to hit the weapon making them drop it.
  • 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).
  • Door crushing: You can actually get enemies to get crushed in opening and closing doors. This also completely hit stuns them. Maybe they might make a good platform...
  • Manipulating drops: remember you can get 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 health is determined by how you killed them: if you want headgear, don't shoot them in the head.

Drops table

(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"
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
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

General

  • Difficulty settings: The only known differences between 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.
  • 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 them 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.
  • Peaking: 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 doable (frame-rate?).
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 ever seem to be able to use objects through the walls from OOB. You can't even get back in the vehicle you used to vehicle OOB out. I have successfully first shot an NPC dead with a rocket, then looted them both from the OOB though.

  • 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
  • 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 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
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.


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

  • subway: you can shoot some of the "subway" signs down and they'll explode... perhaps for great damage.
  • whouse2: 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.
  • jungle1/jungle2
    • concertina doors: the folding doors can grab you and give you a lift
  • 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 or is close by 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 "silent".
    • 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. 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 keeping 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's facing the building
    • you can also just rocket jump right back inside the central building from the trigger that makes the gate raise; 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.
    • there's more rockets outside, by the wall that's closest to thrall

Side notes

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

The autoexec.cfg doesn't seem to be executing when the game is launched so it might not be useful to store extra commands in there. Luckily the game will keep your binds intact from session to session.

  • 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.
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