Speedrunning Tips and Tricks

[wooden veldt]

Here we can share speedrunning techniques and tricks

Currently i am working on migrating my calculation sheet to a google doc, so i can make it public to use
but that is TBD

and i will post a treasure 2.0 speedrun explanation after that

[young mauve]

nice

[upbeat orchid]

ooh nice ive been thinking about speedrunning the game to like 1mil or 500k something like that

[wooden veldt]

1mil coins is a speedrun
Though the 2.0+version makes it take forever

[young mauve]

i always wondered what OP meant

[wooden veldt]

OverPowered

[young mauve]

yea

[hearty seal]

I thought it let us know who the Old People were

[young mauve]

lmao

[indigo hull]

go fast 🙂

dont waste time

(hehehe)

[wooden veldt]

Just going fast won't cut it :S

[distant sigil]

Go faster then

[upbeat orchid]

so are there any categories for this? i checked speedrun.com but it doesnt have any results for hydroneer

[upbeat orchid]

i always thought it was Outright Pretentious

[young mauve]

yes

its on bridgepour.com, hydoroneer's wiki/website

[upbeat orchid]

oh okay sweet, ive been working on some techniques for gettin to 500k and 1mil

OHOHO theres no 2.0.8 runs yet

[wooden veldt]

1MIL is cursed in 2.0 compared to 1.6 and 1.7; it takes like 2-3 hours at least to even get 100K
so no one plays it

same with treasure%, until i found a new route; 2.0+ treasure % without glitches or without that specific glitch would take like 90 mins at least

smithing% is just get a 2nd person or tough luck

after the holiday i want to work on a more solo-able run/strategy

[distant sigil]

you wouldnt need a second person you can just use your feet to control the second character smh

[wooden veldt]

as i said i am working on it 👀

[distant sigil]

i have done a solo smithing% run that with me controlling both characters didnt record it though just did it as a proof of concept

[upbeat orchid]

yeah ive done a few test runs for 1 mil and my record so far is like 10 hours i think

[distant sigil]

basically just had the second character be using the brush with the main character doing everything else

[wooden veldt]

as i understand it timing is, as of 1.7,
from when you move the character
till the frame you see the thing you need. 1mil coins; smithed item; treasure chest moving

in 1.6 timing was a bit different, we might have to retime the whole board but IMO the old runs need to be purged

[upbeat orchid]

is there a way to see how much time you have in one save?

[wooden veldt]

not really, no

[distant sigil]

btw what is the way to get out of bounds near icehelm that you mentioned in your message for the bounty

[wooden veldt]

you go up to a stone and walk into the corner

and you just.. go

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/703235666162745406/995062199020163082/2022-07-08_22-21-12.mp4

this one

[wooden veldt]

Hello everyone!
i am finally done with the spreadsheet.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1G7_Aicxz_51_AAF4pV1i3jY40dDlQj3WX9sBT86M4ts/edit?usp=sharing
I need to make it a bit more readable and edit some names probably.

if you want to help me edit it, feel free to DM me and i MAY add you

[sand pewter]

Speedrunning Tips and Tricks

[devout snow]

https://twitter.com/HydroneerGame/status/1625528009326227458

Hydroneer (@HydroneerGame)

Hydroneer 2.2 will introduce a new tutorial area, guiding players through the basics of the game!

▶ Play video

Twitter · Feb 14, 2023, 4:10 PM

New speedrun for 2.2?

[normal cloak]

Speedrunner, in a few weeks:
"If you grab this pan that has both water and dirt inside, you can press it up against this wall. Save/load, it will float there. Quickly, grab your brush and spam LMB while running/crouching at the wall to clip past the conveyor tutorial, shaving off a whole 7-8 seconds! (depending on main menu time)"

[devout snow]

Ahaha

Well I'm interested to see how people do it. We've hardcoded in things the player has to do, so glitching your way through it might be tricky

[wooden veldt]

challenge accepted

tutorial%

[normal cloak]

You're on!

[indigo hull]

Speedrunning getting a automation system? preferably no glitches

[sand pewter]

not really what this forum is about,

[indigo hull]

Eh true lol

starts a new forum

[marble socket]

sooo i found out you can do this in hydroneer and im wondering if you guys can experiment with things so we can find a glitch into the tresure chamber

cart glitch in the rock face

berd

[wooden veldt]

#wetried

it could be barely possible with the pallet with perfect placement

[marble socket]

oh wow i ddint think anybody would even try this

[wooden veldt]

this is like 2 days ago, we just had the idea because we were discussing 2.0 treasure%

[marble socket]

oh ok

[wooden veldt]

there is a couple things that i did find using the truck but both are really rare and random
one is having a truck on the roof and somehow getting it upside down
block both doors using blocks, then enter/exit should put you on the invis roof of the cave

the other was uh

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1025337117699735572/1174558263191289928/2023-11-16_04-54-24.mp4?ex=656807a0&is=655592a0&hm=ae4888e7fd16157636bf86e251063d154ec5a0804010e5dbc01f5c6caedb42a3&

we were trying to glitch the truck through the terrain

only once it clipped into the cave but not into the treasure part

[wooden veldt]

glitch used here: block in hand glitch (then drive the truck)
to do that you need to click really fast (reccommend auto clicker) and press E a couple times

i use a built in mouse button or OP autoclicker

[upbeat snow]

so the old variant of the bug aint gonna work. i allso tried to make it better but the items dont behave like back then (thank god). if i break trough i will ping back. (i did come close so maby in a few days...)

[wooden veldt]

👀

[iron oxide]

Is anyone doing speed runs? If so what categories are there already?there isnt anything on Speedrun.com for this game yet

[near nexus]

Speedrun.com won't accept this game because it's "a sandbox with no clear ending goal"

So we keep track of it on the discord

[iron oxide]

Ahh I see, where could I see the runs/standings? Cause Ive been playing around with an all properties glitchless run (essentially a race to 22970 coins) and my runs have been around 1h20m

I was wondering if others have done a similar runs, or just generally how people go about getting lots of coins fast

[sand pewter]

They're on the wiki

The issue with most speed runs is that it's heavily biased by RNG

The only real ones are crafting%, and treasure%.

1 mil coins just isn't viable anymore in 2.0

[near nexus]

Tell that to our cooked footwear

[sand pewter]

It isn't viable via mining then I'll say

[iron oxide]

Yea it heavily based in RNG but lots of other games are too

[wooden veldt]

Ok so i am going to go through the current speedruns and see what kind of resources we need.

this way we can clean up backtracking and information

Categories of speedrunning

1million coins%

1.7 - current is 52minutes but 40 minutes is speculated to be possible. Need to work on a strategy calculator. TBD
2.0+ - current uses boot cooking which is now deleted; so any strategy will be record. my best guess is it will take like 2 hours. TBD

treasure%

1.7 - current is 29.7 seconds (unverified). this category is dead by all means as i dont see a major improvement
2.0+ - current is 20min but this uses a fixed bug. in 2.1 there was an even stronger bug but both were fixed in 2.2.
since you need to buy 1 or 2 plots and also mine to the relics i estimate the time of completion to be 35min with 4min digging time & movement

smithing%

1.7 - no runs ; strategy TBD
2.0+ - current is 3:48. oh boy multiplayer ruined this run. the strategy is pretty clear just try to estimate when you can afford the necessary stuff really

tutorial%

2.0+ - current is 1:58.7. the strategy is pretty solid and i've not found new skips. 1:45 is possible and maybe lower

plot%

1.7 - no runs ; strategy TBD
2.0+ - current is 51:18. it's probably possible to do in 45mins but this is optimistic

hydrosaur%

DLC - current record is 25:05, sub 20 is surely possible, 16:xx is theorised. am working to route currently

untapped potential:

Bastion

• craft a drill %
• farm a crop %
• any quest %
• all relics % *

DLC

• all relics %
• plot%
• 1m coins %
• water system %
• craft a drill %
• new glade %
• MOT's island time trial% AKA circuit%

not happening probably ever:

• kings quest % ☠️
• all achievements % ☠️ ☠️

[zealous eagle]

holds sprint button harder

[wooden veldt]

hydrosaur %

old bone route
if you have luck for the mist bones to not spawn which is roughly 1/3 chance then the estimated best time is 17.40 - 18:00

hypotesized new bone route, but going up the volcano turned out harder than planned
still relies on 1/3 no mist bones

[zealous eagle]

ngl I would like to write algorithms to find the fastest possible route (meaning all bones would have to spawn at the correct location) and the route with the fastest average time. I doubt i have time for that though

[wooden veldt]

i mean if we are going to go for "perfect" rng then that is so vanishingly unlikely like on the order of 1 / 10^15 or less

as for just using the following sets we could craft a theoretical best
"skip 0" - all 65 bones so no luck
"skip 1" - skip either bottom mist or volcano center - 56% roughly
"skip 2" - skip either both in the mist or both on the volcano - 33% roughly
skip more, 3>17.8%; 4>9.8%; 5>5.4%
"36 perfect" - really handwavy @~ 8.9383853528×10−19 or 1 in 1.1 quintillion

since we have to start at H and end at M i adjusted a TP solver route until i got the lowest i could
https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fas/psych/software/TSP/TSP.html
it's pretty sure on the shattered field order; that is solved for all we care about

[zealous eagle]

i know it's basically impossible to have the perfect run, it just would be funny to do the algorithm.

[wooden veldt]

probably something like this

but its goingto do something else as it wont consider terrain especially around the 5 on the ice block island

[zealous eagle]

i thought a bit about "the beste route" and realized it is very complicated. Cause you don't have to visit empty spots, you just have to see them, to know they are empty.

oh btw i thought about skipping the one above M. It looks like including it takes quite some time.

[wooden veldt]

yeah but respawn is favorable and its less out of the way than either mist one

[zealous eagle]

true, unstuck is very favorable there

[wooden veldt]

when going up that road you can see if its spawned, from either side
if you go from right to left you'll go a bit out of the way to spot it
left to right it's the last bone so if you counted you'll skip it or its a wash due to mist probably

anyway if you have more experience with weighted graphs and searching routes please do say it i got ideas involving only checking the 5 closest neighbors

so you wont get a "lol go from lumberton harbor to the barrens harbor"

[zealous eagle]

i don't really have experience on that, but i think i know enough to write the algorithms i Was talking about.

[wooden veldt]

there's certainly alot of research on it
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/academic/class/15210-s14/www/lectures/shortest-path.pdf
https://dev.to/jjb/part-17-finding-shortest-paths-in-graphs-using-dijkstra-s-bfs-554m

and plenty of examples
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A*_search_algorithm#/media/File:Astarpathfinding.gif
https://www.google.com/maps

i think dijkstra would probably work greatly

thing is i could probably code that but my programming language of choice isnt exactly the best to work with lol

[zealous eagle]

well A* and dijkstra are great for finding the shortest path between two points, but idk about "visit all of those, order doesn't matter"

the code having a runtime of less then a lifetime would also be nice lol

[wooden veldt]

i mean thats why the traveling salesman problem is an unsolved problem; and it's NP

https://www.baeldung.com/cs/shortest-path-visiting-all-nodes

[zealous eagle]

well bruteforce would be relatively easy to code, but idk about the runtime...

[wooden veldt]

well if i do my 5 closest neighbors
and you somehow force the start and end point, #0 and #66
that is 5^65 paths

if every path is 1 bit thats 10^32 terabytes

[near nexus]

How about intuition. I think you could've gotten the run below 20m already if you stopped tinkering with algorithms and just played ;p

[wooden veldt]

i know i should be counting 2.2 GHz but same difference it would be 10^35

[wooden veldt]

i have been experimenting dont you worry
i just got the worst luck and volcano can be a PITA

[near nexus]

Also clearly ball busting, but better than arguing over nearest points

[zealous eagle]

too easy

[wooden veldt]

there is probably a smarter way to go around it but considering =see above= i dont think its fruitful to do a full on maths paper on how to optimally search bones

[near nexus]

I think the above orange path is the best you're getting if I'm being real and even then that might be a touch reset heavy as it requires missing both barrens spawns in the seeding

[zealous eagle]

well I think the first thing to do would he to create a weighted graph (with time needed to go from one point to other as weight). And connections, only where it would make sense to use those connections

[near nexus]

However, I think your category needs more rules

[wooden veldt]

to get a good weighed graph that means traversing the whole map over 100 times more than likely

[wooden veldt]

such as?

[near nexus]

You start the timer after loading the dlc area, but what's to prevent someone from scoping the seeding beforehand, riding the boat back and faking tf out of the run

Might want to include creating a new save into the submission as manditory

[zealous eagle]

ok new rule: video includes creating and going to volcalidus, but timer starts at volcalidus entry

[near nexus]

Because anyone can currently just start the recording during the boat ride and make it seem like it's legit

[wooden veldt]

i mean sure that's why i recorded the whole making of the save right

[near nexus]

You did but you never specified that's how it should be handled in the future. You just stated timer starts after volcalidus load

See what I'm getting at?

Gotta define the rules or people get cheeky

Also did you setup splits for that by chance or you manually hotkeying your timer?

[wooden veldt]

i guess let people scope. if the order of bones is crazy we can catch it

plus if the truck isnt where it's meant to be that's tampering

[wooden veldt]

i no longer have livesplit since the wipe this was a timer added in post

[near nexus]

Ah fair. Was curious because I was debating goofing on twitch and using a vod for submission if I managed a good run but something about manually pressing the timer key sounds like butts

[wooden veldt]

you can turn the livesplit sounds off iirc
i used to use it back when and never really had issues

[wooden veldt]

i was also getting cheeky like i did scout some saves to see if there is barrens bones

and i found some crazy glitch that is totally not going to fly for the speedrun but it would save time..
player wrong warping which requires the save to be new and the original "volcalidus" folder to be missing in a specific way

[near nexus]

Yeah I know about that

See it a lot when loading peoples saves for bone hunts

Since my main is marked on the boat but if they include the player.sav it'll warp me there on vol load instead of doing the boatride

[wooden veldt]

honestly as long as the save isnt "tampered with" i dont mind scouting myself
would need to think about that

[zealous eagle]

missing in a specific way?

[zealous eagle]

we could split the category into scouted and not scouted lol

[wooden veldt]

it was weird
it worked when i renamed the volcalidus folder but not when i did it a second time..

[near nexus]

You'd just have to delete the vol folder to get a new seed, scout it then if you found one you liked, you cut the folder and back it up elsewhere. Then you load the save without the vol folder active so it sets you back on bastion boatside then save to menu

Fools the game into believing it should load the boat next play session then you copy back in the vol folder

So when you take the boat ride, it reads your vol player.sav and drops you off there instead of the long boatride to lumberton

But yeah, it's set on the boat load to grab the player.sav and figure out where to dump you. Normally you'd be on the boat as that's the only vanilla way to transfer between so it's not a huge deal. But obviously that way of doing things isn't perfect if you play with your save files outside of the game

[near nexus]

Hopefully that wordy explanation made sense. It marks one of the two player.savs as the active one when loading your save then uses the other when loading between areas. So you just use file shenanigans to manipulate loading behaviors

Obviously they could code it to always override the player.sav when taking the boat to a default location, but they didn't. So it's fair game for speedruns that allow it in the ruleset

Also why there were bugs with taking the boat back to Bastion dropping you into the Bastion ocean since the player.sav wasn't lined up with the boat starting point for a bit there

I "think" that got fixed during the hotfix stuff but it could honestly still be a thing

[wooden veldt]

Ive seen it when deletinf the volcalidus folder but not naturally

Ill try seeing if your scouting stuff works

If i got a save without mist it cuts out that rng

[wooden veldt]

allright so when i made a new save and went to volcalidus i copied that folder and that had all the good properties

then adding that to a new save allows me to go to volcalidus on the same rng

then exiting to menu without saving on the new save loads you back in allowing for easy resets

[near nexus]

Ahh I didn't think about abusing not saving too

[wooden veldt]

this is actually great, pre scouting be damned

[severe steeple]

just make the run req looking at the empty museum display from inside/on the donation box. doesn't matter if players identify where the bones are so long as they all start from the same point.

[wooden veldt]

we already resolved this issue by allowing scouted runs

it is obvious if a bone is new or pre-placed

[harsh pawn]

Top 3 of each category

Plot%

1: Augray | 00h 51m 18s | Ember Cradle
2: Augray | 00h 57m 23s | Ember Cradle

Tutorial %

1: Steef | 00h 01m 58.7s | Ember Cradle

Smithing % (No mods)

1: Squidy / Freeto | 00h 03m 48s | Ember Cradle
2: Squidy / Freeto | 00h 04m 05s | Ember Cradle
3: Big Mike UWU / a muffin cat | 00h 04m 20s | Ember Cradle

1M coins (No mods)

1: Steef | 00h 51m 20s | Ember Cradle
2: Lukas | 00h 52m 07s | Ember Cradle
3: landonairey | 00h 58m 11s | Mildew's Aquifer

Treasure % (No mods)

1: Applebox | 00h 00m 30,6s | Ember Cradle
2: steefgozercool | 00h 00m 31,9s | Ember Cradle
3: Applebox | 00h 00m 32,3s | Ember Cradle

DLC - Hydrosaur%

1: Steef | 00h 17m 24s | Ember Cradle
2: Steef | 00h 25m 05s | Ember Cradle

Powered by Bridgepour (v2.1.IB)

[zealous eagle]

well, until someone else then steef even does it, it doesn't really matter

[severe steeple]

I musta missed that message, anyways you needed a clean point to start from so I figure an empty dino display would be garauntee nothing has been donated yet

[wooden veldt]

im too good lol (joke okay)

[wooden veldt]

it would be evident as soon as the player gets to delivery

you cant deliver without showing the museum, besides we can count

[severe steeple]

fair, I supposed the difference between preplaced and not so is the glow right?

[wooden veldt]

yes

[zealous eagle]

how does someone count?

[severe steeple]

grab a quest scroll

does it for you

[wooden veldt]

https://tenor.com/view/sesame-street-muppets-vampire-dracula-scary-gif-659234911368571388

[wooden veldt]

no i mean count the bones that are collected

not count the bones that are delivered

[severe steeple]

again quest scroll does it for you

[wooden veldt]

you could still cheat

i mean i would know a thing or 2 about that

[severe steeple]

did you never notice that you can keep the scroll for as long as you like and just not get the tokens?

[wooden veldt]

but i mostly did it with TAS

[wooden veldt]

i mean sure its a storyline quest, it doesnt go away

[zealous eagle]

yes he did

[wooden veldt]

same as KQ and KQ2

[zealous eagle]

don't even need to ask in order to know that xD

[wooden veldt]

i know alot

[zealous eagle]

some would say too much

i am just saying ||remote control bomb||

[severe steeple]

then just dump the scroll in the truck and start the timer at that point, could just req the truck be recalled before hand so that it's always in the exact same spot

[wooden veldt]

i like starting the timing from when you load into the area

this makes it more clean instead of "stand on XYZ spot" since you can do the <soccer throw the ball> method and gain like 10 meters

[severe steeple]

eh, not my prob, I'm not doing the speedrun anyways XD

[zealous eagle]

ehh, can we get back to the start of this conversation: why even change the point at which the timer is started?

[wooden veldt]

i mean you coulda asked about things instead of commenting on a 3mo old comment lol

[severe steeple]

well I only found this thread today soo...yeah 😄

[wooden veldt]

i have considered and lobbied with itchy to change timing methods actually but we decided against it

[zealous eagle]

i think i was part of that conversation

at least i talked about that topic too at some point

[wooden veldt]

2.0+ has different timing than pre-2.0 due to misunderstanding and not wanting to vet things 1x1

anywho i wanted to change all timing to 2.0+ and also remove load times

ambitious, but not doable

[severe steeple]

oh if anyone is trying to do the flag thing on mot's isle, I managed to somehow do it without doing it on my very 1st visit XD

[wooden veldt]

obviously we would only count a full lap lol

[severe steeple]

I just drove through the few flags on the road from the boat to the store got out, looked at a few prices, got back in an drove round something and all of a sudden I had achievements for something I never did XD

[zealous eagle]

this bug exists as long as the dlc itself. i thought they fixed it though.

[severe steeple]

don't even know how I triggered it, curious to know now that you say it's a known bug

[zealous eagle]

idk the triggers. i think there where multiple.

[wooden veldt]

i have no clue why the 0 second and 1 second lap thing work

the triggers are between the cones it shouldnt be able to do that

[severe steeple]

maybe it's simply driving through the finish line after just getting into the truck?

[wooden veldt]

when you drive over the bridge then back over the finish it wont count

[severe steeple]

or maybe it's the angle I came in at? perhaps it only expects that angle from a done lap?

I hadn't even touched the bridge

[wooden veldt]

its line or plane detection, angle shouldnt matter too much

[wooden veldt]

that is what starts the timer

[severe steeple]

well I had only touched it AFTER getting the achievement just outa curiosity of what the route was supposed to be

[zealous eagle]

i just checked. they "fixed" bugs with those achievements triggering 3 times.

[wooden veldt]

ah yes

https://tenor.com/view/fehlerhaft-fehler-bugs-bug-gif-26196067

[zealous eagle]

daily life of a dev

[severe steeple]

then maybe I managed to somehow glitch my way into starting the timer unknowingly before I could even try the route?

I did drive the roller to the boat before getting back into the truck, perhaps I managed to trigger the timer by going via an unexpected route?

I went straight over the green to the boat with it since I was not putting up with the snail pace around the u-bend

[zealous eagle]

this bug hasn't be reported for a long time. i honestly doubt you could manage to trigger again (but feel free to try). The devs probably can't do anything without knowing the trigger and they probably won't look into this issue themselves, considering they are working on a new game, which takes up all their time.

[severe steeple]

only just noticed you mentioned they're working on a new game, what new game?