Current Events > New windwaker glitch discovered that saves 1+ hour in speedruns but at what cost

(+) Yeah! (+)

Barrier skip has been a thing in windwaker HD for a while, it really shortens run times by skipping all the triforce charts as well as multiple entire dungeons. The trick to do it was exclusive to HD though, so most people probably kept believing it wasn't possible in the original game. Well, recently it turned out they were wrong, but it's by far of the most annoying glitch (that has actual speedrun purpose) to execute I've seen in any game. I can't really imagine anyone wanting to run it and it already has a separate speedrun category despite only having 1 completed run using it. <_<

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49oktNLG5kc" data-time="&start=6416

you can watch the whole thing if you want, but I timestamped the part where the new glitch starts just so you can see in action how bad it is lol

Every time link tries to pull out the glitched grappling hook, another 52 bytes of memory are permanently locked up. To achieve maximum fragmentation, the 2000 uses of the grappling hook need to be spread across Windfall, Dragon Roost, and Hyrule in a specific way, several hundred at a time.

---

I don't understand glitch speedrunning. I can get optimizing a game to near perfection but just smashing through with weird tricks just seems pointless.

Botw coulda used a grappling hook, or a hookshot

Just realized I didn't really put an actual explanation in the first post.

This glitch works by pulling out a glitched grappling hook many many times in a certain way, each time taking more memory away from the game. Once enough memory is occupied the barrier completely fails to load and you can walk through it as though it's not there. However if you do it too much, other essential things might fail to load or the game itself might crash which is why you have to actually count all 2000+ of them
---

Count to 600

LUL
---

nemu posted...

I don't understand glitch speedrunning. I can get optimizing a game to near perfection but just smashing through with weird tricks just seems pointless.

it's entertaining from a programming perspective. Seeing stuff that you thought wasn't possible is fascinating. If you want to see actual gameplay, then that's what longplays are for

fohstick posted...

nemu posted...

I don't understand glitch speedrunning. I can get optimizing a game to near perfection but just smashing through with weird tricks just seems pointless.

it's entertaining from a programming perspective. Seeing stuff that you thought wasn't possible is fascinating. If you want to see actual gameplay, then that's what longplays are for

Yeah I like seeing how people exploit things through experimentation and understanding of how the game is built. Summoning Salt of a great YouTube channel for looking at the history of a game's record evolving.

how do people discover this shit
---

Seems like you're just spending the same amount of time skipping the barrier as you would just doing the quest and dungeons.
---

Awesome. Looks like my "useless" out-of-bounds trick finally came in handy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5Sq6lUTLRU" data-time="
---

kirbymuncher posted...

Just realized I didn't really put an actual explanation in the first post.

This glitch works by pulling out a glitched grappling hook many many times in a certain way, each time taking more memory away from the game. Once enough memory is occupied the barrier completely fails to load and you can walk through it as though it's not there. However if you do it too much, other essential things might fail to load or the game itself might crash which is why you have to actually count all 2000+ of them

this sounds like the most boring speed run in the entire world of gams
or whatever the opposite of a speedrun is for a sesame street gam
---

In semi-related news, they got OoT down to under 17 minutes:
https://kotaku.com/two-year-effort-to-beat-ocarina-of-time-in-under-17-min-1836383250
---

HylianFox posted...

how do people discover this shit

Data mining, perseverance, and sometimes even just dumb luck.
---

YukihoHagiwara posted...

this sounds like the most boring speed run in the entire world of gams

You haven't seen a 100% dex run of Pokemon Red and Blue.
---

I thought the method to barrier skip involved an infinite quiver glitch. Unless it changed since I last followed this.

BLAKUboy posted...

Seems like you're just spending the same amount of time skipping the barrier as you would just doing the quest and dungeons.

If it was slower the speed run wouldnt do it lol
---

If youre skipping content with glitches, it isnt a speed run.
---

HylianFox posted...

how do people discover this shit

Sometimes it's just dumb luck >_>

There's literally a glitch in Mario 64 that happened ONCE in some random run that teleported a dude up a platform in the clock level and no one has been able to replicate it since. There was even a 1k bounty for whoever can figure out how to do it and no one has been able to get it to happen again, just to save like 5 seconds on a run lol
---

NeonOctopus posted...

HylianFox posted...

how do people discover this shit

Sometimes it's just dumb luck >_>

There's literally a glitch in Mario 64 that happened ONCE in some random run that teleported a dude up a platform in the clock level and no one has been able to replicate it since. There was even a 10k bounty for whoever can figure out how to do it and no one has been able to get it to happen again, just to save like 5 seconds on a run lol

You have to be shitting me.
---

I misspoke. It's only a 1k bounty for the glitch. Still lol though

https://kotaku.com/1-000-bounty-offered-for-mario-64-glitch-1722134626
---

NeonOctopus posted...

I misspoke. It's only a 1k bounty for the glitch. Still lol though

https://kotaku.com/1-000-bounty-offered-for-mario-64-glitch-1722134626

Yeah, still, lmao. You know there are people doing this as we type.
---

Speedrunning is weird.
---

Deadpool_18 posted...

Yeah, still, lmao. You know there are people doing this as we type.

I think most of the running theories are that it was a hardware bug of some sort and is thus unlikely to ever be replicated, nor would it be very useful if it was

Alpha218 posted...

I thought the method to barrier skip involved an infinite quiver glitch. Unless it changed since I last followed this.

This is part of the process from what I understand? I'm not super knowledgable about windwaker glitches so I might be wrong. But my understand is that you use infinite quiver glitch in order to shoot enough arrows so that you pull out invisible grapple instead of normal grapple, and then you repeatedly pull out and put away invisible grapple to eat up memory

BLAKUboy posted...

Seems like you're just spending the same amount of time skipping the barrier as you would just doing the quest and dungeons.

Well this guy beat the WR for it by like 30 minutes despite him being out of practice with the game, it being his first run like this, and him messing it up significantly (including crashing the game once). I'd guess that even assuming no better way to do this is found it's probably still 1-1.5 hours faster
---

My favorite moments of speedrunning are when the RNG royally fucks someone over. Usually its RPGs. Like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNw74bzWp10" data-time="
---

Manocheese posted...

Awesome. Looks like my "useless" out-of-bounds trick finally came in handy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5Sq6lUTLRU" data-time="

Ur legend
---

nemu posted...

I don't understand glitch speedrunning. I can get optimizing a game to near perfection but just smashing through with weird tricks just seems pointless.

I understand that some games have glitches that "ruin" watching a speedrun of the game, but games where a speedrun is just a slightly optimized version of regular play just makes me feel like..."Wow I could do that if I wasted a bunch of time".
---

Glitching is cheating so i just download a file at the very end and speed run it by just beating the last boss in 1 hit, by cheating.
---

Anteaterking posted...

"Wow I could do that if I wasted a bunch of time".

#AllSpeedRuns
---

Benify posted...

Speedrunning is weird.

Crazy glitch. Thanks for sharing
---

nemu posted...

I don't understand glitch speedrunning. I can get optimizing a game to near perfection but just smashing through with weird tricks just seems pointless.

Because some people want the literal fastest possible completion time. No matter the cost. Watching someone beat SMW in 40 seconds due to glitch abuse is fun to see.
---

SH_expert44 posted...

nemu posted...

I don't understand glitch speedrunning. I can get optimizing a game to near perfection but just smashing through with weird tricks just seems pointless.

Because some people want the literal fastest possible completion time. No matter the cost. Watching someone beat SMW in 40 seconds due to glitch abuse is fun to see.

Pretty much, although typically those kind of skip 90% of the whole game speedruns aren't as interesting to me. Typically I like stuff like 100% or "all bosses" type runs.
---

LordMarshal posted...

Glitching is cheating so i just download a file at the very end and speed run it by just beating the last boss in 1 hit, by cheating.

thank you for showcasing your ignorance
---

tag
---

pokedude900 posted...

YukihoHagiwara posted...

this sounds like the most boring speed run in the entire world of gams

You haven't seen a 100% dex run of Pokemon Red and Blue.

obviously excluding shit like "a "press"*-less" runs

*I say "press" since it's still using a-functions. "henry" was right.
---