I noticed that the Piercer Bomb in the construction site is already up when you glitch in there. Usually, when you first go in there, the Pierce Bomb is concealed below the ground, and then it rises up DURING the cutscene, so in order to activate the cutscene trigger we'd need the construction site to load up in the "Piercer Bomb Down" state. Now, I'm no coding expert, so I could be totally wrong here, but my guess is that the state the construction site loads up in could depend on whether or not Haven City is currently in the "Metal Head Invasion" state. As the construction site will load up in the "Piercer Bomb Up" state if you go there during the postgame when the city is peaceful again (The construction site also has a 3rd state, where the Piercer Bomb is up and the Baron's corpse is present, which is for when you're there after the cutscene has played but the metal head invasion is still underway). This begs the question, has anyone tried to glitch into the construction site DURING the metal head invasion but before you're supposed to go there in the story? If that works that could skip a few missions...
If this is what's happening, than it would certainly kill the idea of construction site as a skip you could pull in the beginning unless you were able to get Underport skip first. But i've checked the underport myself using debug mode and there's nothing there unless I just missed a specific trigger.
@@UBvtuber The best thing to do is really to find a working trigger. Even if the conditions required make it unviable, there could be something learned that could lead to a viable skip down the line.
Okay, so I actually tried to load construction site during the metal head attack before the actual mission....... and yeah, it still just shows the bomb raised.
After doing some research into this, the reason the cutscene doesn't load is because the construction site, while loaded, isn't *fully* loaded. Some objects pop in and out here and there as if the game still treats you as inside the room. There may be two separate triggers that need to be hit in order for the site to properly load.
For the benfit of the Jak 2 community, I'll point out that Construction Site Skip WAS possible in a different (non-retale) version of the game: ruclips.net/video/bJhk0GMT7mM/видео.html (august build) ruclips.net/video/7xf-jRqMHEY/видео.html (july build) Maybe the simplist solution is to find the difference between the versions of the game where it's possible vs the current Jak 2 where we havn't found it yet with Debug Mode to see if a work-around can be triangulated - it'd be the death of Any% for Jak 2 if RTA viable Construction Site Skip as found
I've never even been interested in speed runs, even a little bit, but for some reason I can't stop watching your breakdowns of the glitch hunting involved. It's truly impressive just how much some of these games can be broken to save time, and the glitch hunting involved is fascinating
Love the switch up. You have good potential to make these types of videos. You’re editing is good, voice is good, you have your info down pat. Keep up the good work! Looking forward to more content from you!
Thoughts: I watched the August Build version that has a construction skip ability. I assume no such thing can happen that way in the main game. 1. As Zeddessell said below, after Metal Head Mash when the city is under attack, a different state of the city compared to any other time except immediately after escaping the fortress, skip underport & stadium & try it then. 2. Like Lava Tube Skip (LTS) in J&D: TPL, a pose (that I think Jak 2 left out but 3 didn't), between Haven City/Underport or Haven City/Construction Site (maybe even Air Ferry in Port & Metal Head Nest), trick the game into thinking you're in a different level when one is not fully loaded & go into Underport or Construction Site to skip ahead like LTS. Regardless amazing to see these games completed so fast; my childhood initial playthroughs: Jak 1: April 6, 2003 - October 6, 2003, Jak 2: December 25, 2003 - June 24 or 25, 2004, Jak 3: December 25, 2004 - December 31, 2004
Excellent video, I'm not into speedruns but I have used the Mar's Tomb glitch just for goofing around. I gotta say I've never thought about the potential of the Construction Site I'm intrigued at the possibilities. But now that debug mode has been found I'm not so sure we'll find the trigger within the city itself, I'd bet it's buried in another area.
Somewhere is a Level Designer who created that Construction Site mission and knows damn well that it requires certain conditions to trigger the cutscene that can't be met by simply managing to load the level or get there.
The way i see it, it's impossible as you presented it. I've fucked around with debug mode, the only way to get that area to load the cutscene is to have it loaded as the "check the construction site" mission. it's linked to it as a mission parameter. So the only way to do the skip is somehow tricking the game into thinking you're in that mission, which means pulling a skip to/after "defend the stadium" mission before it. Of which i'm not too sure how to pull that off. My suggestion is to see if a stadium skip is possible. It could be a case of attention being focused in the wrong segment.
Wait a second people found lap skips recently? I knew about that since way back in 06. I remember shitting my pants the first time it happened to me lmao I legit thought God was throwing me a bone
Is there any research into what causes the cutscene to trigger? I'd assume it's just completing the mission before (or something in that line of thinking) Is there any particular reason why any of the missions between hitting 62% and 90-odd% don't have the capability of being warped to?
Someone can correct me, if they know, but my guess is because the cutscene we trigger at 62% involves the character turning into Daxter. I think developers wanted to delete all early cutscenes from the game to prevent warping, but couldn't do so, because the game can't have Jak running through that certain hallway and needed to leave the Daxter change in. Assuming the character change doesn't matter, there could be few other places to get the skip. Inside the hub and most revisited areas are obviously out of question, since they can be reached at any point during gameplay and could easily be abused (The first area you visit out of city is also a place you visit after around 70-80% of story). But places like the Underport and Weapons Factory/Krew have cutscenes in them and are only visited once, just like Mar's Tomb. Still, Mar's Tomb has few cutscenes unavailable before the percentage warp, so I guess inactivating those cutscenes is the most likely scenario with the other places as well. Same with Construction site.
maybe the cutscene trigger isn't activated until a specific point of the game, or maybe the trigger is there but could be out of bounds, could even be under the floor of the spot where it normally activates
The cutscene only triggers if the active task is consite-find-baron-resolution (essentially the mission Check the Construction Site), so there's no way to trigger it by glitching inside the construction site, that has to be the current mission in order to get the cutscene to trigger
Luminar Light yeah it was me. The cutscene is there the first time you visit. They removed it in retail version. Kor is impossible to beat without ammo refills though.
This might be the key in my opinion. Depending on how exactly the cutscene trigger was removed there may be points at different stages of the game where it may still be active or can be triggered by another sequence break. Might take some code digging between both versions to figure out the exact requirements but it may reveal some clues to what changes were made to the cutscene loading sequence. My wild card guess would have any beneficial mission triggers useful to a speedrun would be at a point before the 66% skip and if known probably linked to mission made early in the development cycle and also shuffled to an earlier point in the game. Those usually have hidden triggers or other exploitable features that get missed during crunch time and never removed due to dev priority, similarly for any missions/cutscenes/characters which have interactions that change aspects of the hub world. If one of those still has code which loads a normally unreachable sector or scripting which can jump into the trigger chain for the construction site or closer to it then the 66% it might represent a time save depending on how far into the normal progression chain it sits. The E3 Demo disk might be a good starting point too given it's earlier March 2003 build date.
When would you do the mar tomb skip? Maybe you could do it a mission before that skip? I'm not a speed runner so sorry if all this sounds a basic, but there has to be a way to trick the game into playing the cut scene
Is there a checkpoint on the other side of the construction site entry area? If so could you not trigger a load error, forcing the game to check your location against the progress, it may load the cutscene using a debug. Just a thought.
Late comment, but is there an explanation to why the minimap disappears after you go oob and make your way towards construction hallway (before resetting your checkpoint)?
late comment but im fairly sure the minimap goes away when you are indoors. it goes away because it thinks your inside the construction site, even though the construction site isnt there.
Every time I read about skips in a videogame I just have one thought: LAZY/BAD PROGRAMMING. I find it insane that programmers allowed shit like Spyro's "dive-flying" or superjump, the hoverboard thing you showed here or just walls not being tall enough. Why is it so hard to make walls a couple of virtual meters higher? How could they not check that crap while making the game?
@@bugdracula1662 - It's one thing to have "unavoidable" bugs like the ones that prevent you from getting stuck under certain structures. It's much more different to literally make the collision of a wall like 2m lower than the wall actually is. They aren't even saving on fucking disk space!
Assigning collision to textures costs memory, which given how visually detailed Jak II is, and some other early PlayStation games, there wasn't much memory to spare with the PS2's 32MB of RDRAM, hence why walls ended not far up.
It was a failsafe programmed in by the developers. Basically the game gives you the equipment you should have by that point because it knows you'll need it.
I noticed that the Piercer Bomb in the construction site is already up when you glitch in there. Usually, when you first go in there, the Pierce Bomb is concealed below the ground, and then it rises up DURING the cutscene, so in order to activate the cutscene trigger we'd need the construction site to load up in the "Piercer Bomb Down" state.
Now, I'm no coding expert, so I could be totally wrong here, but my guess is that the state the construction site loads up in could depend on whether or not Haven City is currently in the "Metal Head Invasion" state. As the construction site will load up in the "Piercer Bomb Up" state if you go there during the postgame when the city is peaceful again (The construction site also has a 3rd state, where the Piercer Bomb is up and the Baron's corpse is present, which is for when you're there after the cutscene has played but the metal head invasion is still underway).
This begs the question, has anyone tried to glitch into the construction site DURING the metal head invasion but before you're supposed to go there in the story? If that works that could skip a few missions...
If this is what's happening, than it would certainly kill the idea of construction site as a skip you could pull in the beginning unless you were able to get Underport skip first. But i've checked the underport myself using debug mode and there's nothing there unless I just missed a specific trigger.
@@UBvtuber could still save some time though
@@masterreaper115 It definitely could, but again people should probably start looking for a way to load the underport early.
@@UBvtuber The best thing to do is really to find a working trigger. Even if the conditions required make it unviable, there could be something learned that could lead to a viable skip down the line.
Okay, so I actually tried to load construction site during the metal head attack before the actual mission....... and yeah, it still just shows the bomb raised.
I wonder if Touval could pull off this miracle
We need a true legend to return
koann
After doing some research into this, the reason the cutscene doesn't load is because the construction site, while loaded, isn't *fully* loaded. Some objects pop in and out here and there as if the game still treats you as inside the room. There may be two separate triggers that need to be hit in order for the site to properly load.
For the benfit of the Jak 2 community, I'll point out that Construction Site Skip WAS possible in a different (non-retale) version of the game:
ruclips.net/video/bJhk0GMT7mM/видео.html (august build)
ruclips.net/video/7xf-jRqMHEY/видео.html (july build)
Maybe the simplist solution is to find the difference between the versions of the game where it's possible vs the current Jak 2 where we havn't found it yet with Debug Mode to see if a work-around can be triangulated - it'd be the death of Any% for Jak 2 if RTA viable Construction Site Skip as found
I've never even been interested in speed runs, even a little bit, but for some reason I can't stop watching your breakdowns of the glitch hunting involved.
It's truly impressive just how much some of these games can be broken to save time, and the glitch hunting involved is fascinating
great video! very interesting. Would love to see more videos similar to this!
As a kid I used to wonder what the dark eco tastes like
Salt Liquorice and peach, is my guess
Would be great to see further development of this potential skip. Also enjoy these types of videos which explore theory and history of speed running.
Unsure if I'll do more, we shall see
@@ThaRixer Do whatever works out best for you my guy.
@@terrabull1639 yea it takes some time and I don't really make money or want to make money off of yt videos
@@ThaRixer Understandable. The grind of life hits different. Just make sure you take care of yourself mentally and physically.
Someone look up the summoning spell to direct Touvals attention over to this game... wed have a skip in a week max
Love the switch up. You have good potential to make these types of videos. You’re editing is good, voice is good, you have your info down pat. Keep up the good work! Looking forward to more content from you!
Thoughts:
I watched the August Build version that has a construction skip ability. I assume no such thing can happen that way in the main game.
1. As Zeddessell said below, after Metal Head Mash when the city is under attack, a different state of the city compared to any other time except immediately after escaping the fortress, skip underport & stadium & try it then.
2. Like Lava Tube Skip (LTS) in J&D: TPL, a pose (that I think Jak 2 left out but 3 didn't), between Haven City/Underport or Haven City/Construction Site (maybe even Air Ferry in Port & Metal Head Nest), trick the game into thinking you're in a different level when one is not fully loaded & go into Underport or Construction Site to skip ahead like LTS.
Regardless amazing to see these games completed so fast; my childhood initial playthroughs: Jak 1: April 6, 2003 - October 6, 2003, Jak 2: December 25, 2003 - June 24 or 25, 2004, Jak 3: December 25, 2004 - December 31, 2004
i feel like the best chance anyone would have, is possibly skipping into the area where the ashlyn palace cutscene plays where she gives you the pass
Excellent video, I'm not into speedruns but I have used the Mar's Tomb glitch just for goofing around. I gotta say I've never thought about the potential of the Construction Site I'm intrigued at the possibilities. But now that debug mode has been found I'm not so sure we'll find the trigger within the city itself, I'd bet it's buried in another area.
Interesting. Short, sweet, and to the point.
More youtubers need to take note of this presentation platform.
clicked for the vince staples pfp, stayed for the epic speedrun content
I've always wanted to play this and Ratchet and Clank
Somewhere is a Level Designer who created that Construction Site mission and knows damn well that it requires certain conditions to trigger the cutscene that can't be met by simply managing to load the level or get there.
that level designer is probably waiting for someone to actually crack the code lol
The way i see it, it's impossible as you presented it. I've fucked around with debug mode, the only way to get that area to load the cutscene is to have it loaded as the "check the construction site" mission. it's linked to it as a mission parameter. So the only way to do the skip is somehow tricking the game into thinking you're in that mission, which means pulling a skip to/after "defend the stadium" mission before it. Of which i'm not too sure how to pull that off.
My suggestion is to see if a stadium skip is possible. It could be a case of attention being focused in the wrong segment.
That game really is the hardcore one that will always resist
Really interesting video. I do love the work and prep required behind getting these crazy times.
This video is incredibly well made and really interesting, I love speedrun mechanics :) Also holy shit the likes to views counter is incredible
my only idea is to open the disc tray maybe as the door opens? same way you can interact with sandover from the starting cutscene. worth a try
Wait a second people found lap skips recently? I knew about that since way back in 06. I remember shitting my pants the first time it happened to me lmao I legit thought God was throwing me a bone
Not sure if it meant recently finding a specific and repeatable way to do it.
Great video Ricky, really informative for someone who isn't too much into the Jak games
Funny how the game in the trilogy most prone to crashing is the one with the least amount of % warps and any% is still something people run
Your vids are always very fun to watch!
That whistle at 0:00
Im getting into glitch hunting and I love the Jak series. I just found my first mark. Wish me luck!
Maybe the knowledge uncovered by the people currently decompiling jak 2 will give us a answer.
Is there any research into what causes the cutscene to trigger? I'd assume it's just completing the mission before (or something in that line of thinking)
Is there any particular reason why any of the missions between hitting 62% and 90-odd% don't have the capability of being warped to?
Someone can correct me, if they know, but my guess is because the cutscene we trigger at 62% involves the character turning into Daxter. I think developers wanted to delete all early cutscenes from the game to prevent warping, but couldn't do so, because the game can't have Jak running through that certain hallway and needed to leave the Daxter change in.
Assuming the character change doesn't matter, there could be few other places to get the skip. Inside the hub and most revisited areas are obviously out of question, since they can be reached at any point during gameplay and could easily be abused (The first area you visit out of city is also a place you visit after around 70-80% of story). But places like the Underport and Weapons Factory/Krew have cutscenes in them and are only visited once, just like Mar's Tomb.
Still, Mar's Tomb has few cutscenes unavailable before the percentage warp, so I guess inactivating those cutscenes is the most likely scenario with the other places as well. Same with Construction site.
@@Shadnic You CAN actually play as Jak in that hallway and it will play alternate music.
maybe the cutscene trigger isn't activated until a specific point of the game, or maybe the trigger is there but could be out of bounds, could even be under the floor of the spot where it normally activates
Well explained and very interesting
The cutscene only triggers if the active task is consite-find-baron-resolution (essentially the mission Check the Construction Site), so there's no way to trigger it by glitching inside the construction site, that has to be the current mission in order to get the cutscene to trigger
it sounds like you looked through the game files for this...
Such a weird RUclips recommendation
I think someone said that you can do construction site skip in the July 2003 Preview version? I never checked it myself so I can't be sure.
Luminar Light yeah it was me. The cutscene is there the first time you visit. They removed it in retail version. Kor is impossible to beat without ammo refills though.
This might be the key in my opinion. Depending on how exactly the cutscene trigger was removed there may be points at different stages of the game where it may still be active or can be triggered by another sequence break. Might take some code digging between both versions to figure out the exact requirements but it may reveal some clues to what changes were made to the cutscene loading sequence.
My wild card guess would have any beneficial mission triggers useful to a speedrun would be at a point before the 66% skip and if known probably linked to mission made early in the development cycle and also shuffled to an earlier point in the game. Those usually have hidden triggers or other exploitable features that get missed during crunch time and never removed due to dev priority, similarly for any missions/cutscenes/characters which have interactions that change aspects of the hub world. If one of those still has code which loads a normally unreachable sector or scripting which can jump into the trigger chain for the construction site or closer to it then the 66% it might represent a time save depending on how far into the normal progression chain it sits. The E3 Demo disk might be a good starting point too given it's earlier March 2003 build date.
That would utterly wreck Any%! Holy crap!
Has anyone thought of weapons lab skip? because you can access that area of the game via the water pump station
Really loved the video! On a separate note, I also really liked your haircut on Twitter
Ty 🤠❤️
This is gonna take of like SBFBB
Ya know I was thinking about this at a point
if you trigger the metal heads first on the sewer mission it will load in the trigger
Love your vids dawg keep grinding❤️👌 From California
When would you do the mar tomb skip? Maybe you could do it a mission before that skip? I'm not a speed runner so sorry if all this sounds a basic, but there has to be a way to trick the game into playing the cut scene
0:17 SPIDER
i didn't know about that! that's a really good video
is there any way to see all the checks and flags in JaD 2?
Could you now tell me how we get them to bring Jak Back!!
I love videos like that
Feel like this in combination with some type of Arbitrary Code Execution (ACE) might have some promise.
i just saw this and it blew my fucking mind
like wtf how do people figure this shit out
Sick vid!
Mar's Tomb is the only way to skip amount of the game.
Cool vid! I'm excited
Maby try glitching into the mission before the construction site (idk what mission it is because I haven't played in a while)
Defend the Stadium
Now that Jak 2 has been ported to PC... do you think it's gonna happen?
Probably has already been tried but what if you save and reload while inside the construction site?
Is there a checkpoint on the other side of the construction site entry area? If so could you not trigger a load error, forcing the game to check your location against the progress, it may load the cutscene using a debug.
Just a thought.
I wonder if the trigger has anything to do with metal heads being in the city?
I wonder if the game devs are any good at theorizing skips.
I've thought about this. Maybe there is a alternative to mars tomb skip?
Guessing you cant wrong warp in Jak?
Is this what the early release speedrun is based off?
Make it happen gamers *.*
Someone discovered it
And now the record is about 5 mins
Feed the algorithm by commenting :)
Weird how its possible now...
proof??
i remember doing this skip as a kid but idk how i did it anymore
Why has nobody come back here to say you were right? lol
Because i wasnt, this hasnt been found. Maybe you watched an alpha build of the game, where it works
Hey let me hold your money little niqqa
Analytics.
0:45 mmmm
Late comment, but is there an explanation to why the minimap disappears after you go oob and make your way towards construction hallway (before resetting your checkpoint)?
@j thanks for the comment but that's not what i meant 😅, I'll change the comment so it's better to understand
late comment but im fairly sure the minimap goes away when you are indoors. it goes away because it thinks your inside the construction site, even though the construction site isnt there.
@@leigonlord5382 oh right, thanks
hey, vsauce, tharixer here. what if i told you, you could theoretically do a construction site skip? s:/c
Every time I read about skips in a videogame I just have one thought: LAZY/BAD PROGRAMMING. I find it insane that programmers allowed shit like Spyro's "dive-flying" or superjump, the hoverboard thing you showed here or just walls not being tall enough. Why is it so hard to make walls a couple of virtual meters higher? How could they not check that crap while making the game?
a game would never be released if you had to comb over every sing spot for glitches and patching some might make new ones pop up
@@bugdracula1662 - It's one thing to have "unavoidable" bugs like the ones that prevent you from getting stuck under certain structures. It's much more different to literally make the collision of a wall like 2m lower than the wall actually is. They aren't even saving on fucking disk space!
Human error
Assigning collision to textures costs memory, which given how visually detailed Jak II is, and some other early PlayStation games, there wasn't much memory to spare with the PS2's 32MB of RDRAM, hence why walls ended not far up.
Meh.could have explained at 2.32 a bit better
It was a failsafe programmed in by the developers. Basically the game gives you the equipment you should have by that point because it knows you'll need it.
What exactly was poorly explained? Always looking to improve
ThaRixer nothing