The Tower Collapse: Explanation / History
(FAQ For Stream Viewers)
v1.2
April 16th, 2014
Q: What is this tower trick? What is Cosmo practicing for hours on end? What is Skater practicing for hours on end?
A: Cosmo and Skater have been practicing the Ocarina of Time trick that is called the "tower collapse skip". It is also called "void warp". The new variation of the void warp is called "instant clip" or "instaclip".
Q: What exactly is the tower collapse skip?
A: Normally, from the top of the collapsing tower, Link must work his way down the tower room by room, fighting enemies along the way. In the summer of 2013, it was discovered that if Link "voids out" (meaning that he jumps off the edge and gets teleported back to the top of the tower) AND enters the loading zone to the inside of the tower at the exact same time, a glitch occurs where Link can fall all the way to the bottom of the tower, essentially skipping all of the tower collapse sequence.
Q: Why is the screen all black?
A: It is normal for the screen to go black on a successful attempt of this trick. The game tries to do two things at once: Link is put inside the tower, but with the X, Y, and Z coordinates of the first barred door outside of the tower. This happens to be out of bounds, so Link immediately begins to fall through blackness.
Additionally, as per Nathan, void warping also loads the map number for the outside of the tower. This map number corresponds to the lowest room of the tower, which is why only the lowest room of the tower is visible, instead of the room that the loading zone should lead to.
Q: How does Link get from the blackness back to the "normal" bottom of the tower?
A: In OoT, it is possible for Link to be standing in an area without having loaded that particular area. (For example, this is how speedrunners are able to get into the Deku Tree as an adult.) In this case, by executing a jumpslash while falling to the bottom of the tower, it is possible for Link to land in the 2nd to last room of the tower collapse sequence. It is completed unloaded, which means that none of the textures (floor, walls, ceiling) and none of the actors (torches, enemies) will appear - Link can only see blackness. However, even though they cannot see anything, the ground and the exit loading zones are still there, and speedrunners can execute a certain series of movements (sidehops, and so forth) that will always get them to the exit for the final room.
Q: Is this trick legal in the No "RBA/WW" and "No Wrong Warp" categories?
No. A void warp is considered a wrong warp since the game tries to load two things at the same time.
(The specifics are actually more complicated than this. As per mzxrules, when you void warp, you revert to the coordinates of Link's last check point. However, from voiding out, the entrance is corrupted by setting the next entrance to that of the interior of the tower. Going to the checkpoint takes precedence over going to going to spawn point coordinates, so the spawn point is overwritten, so to speak.)
Q: How much time does the tower collapse skip save?
A: It saves around 2 minutes.
Q: What was the first iteration of this trick?
A: The ability to void warp in general was found by ObliviousB in March of 2013 by using the Odd Mushroom timer. Jbop made a video demonstrating the technique, although he uses the Eyeball Frog timer instead since it is more convenient :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8RWt3_1FmoThe use of void warping to specifically skip the tower collapse sequence was found by GlitchesAndStuff in June of 2013. He used the infinite sword glitch to hover through the air to get around the outside tower wall:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtgRz714Wjk /
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEILeMLabusSince there is no way to predict the timing or positioning of the falling rocks, this trick was thought only to be useful for a TAS run. Other people, such as ZFG, began to experiment to try and find a more consistent way to perform the strategy for use in a normal speed run by using things like hoverboots and bomb recoil. A few weeks later, after trying hundreds of different setups, Sockfolder found this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLm0mCEpzngThis setup is considered the first iteration of the trick. However, since it is for adult Link and uses bombs, it is not useful for the Any% category.
Q: What was the second iteration of the trick?
A: The next goal was to find a way for this trick to be performed in Any%. In other words, a method needed to found that didn't utilize bombs. Bloobiebla had the idea that by colliding with a wall at high speed, Link could clip through it. By utilizing a Hyper-Extended-Superslide that is started by shielding the falling rocks, he proved that it was possible to clip through the wall and void warp. Unfortunately, he didn't know of a strategy that would reproduce this reliably.
Based Sockfolder again came to the rescue with a consistent setup, also discovered in June of 2013:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XGxgvXcN8gThis is considered the second iteration of the trick. Now, the void warp could be used in all categories (except in the categories where wrong warping is explicitly banned).
Q: What is a Hyper-Extended-Superslide?
A: A Hyper-Extended-Superslide, or HESS for short, is a very precise trick where Link uses a shield to stop a source of damage. By holding a certain position on the joystick called the "ESS position", Link explodes backwards at a very high speed. (The ESS position actually be in any direction.)
With some small exceptions, a HESS is actually the fastest possible movement trick, giving Link a speed limit of -18. For more information, see
this page.
Q: What was the third iteration of the trick?
A: To accomplish the void warp, a faster method than Sockfolder's setup is possible by HESSing all the way down the tower from the very top, which Bloobiebla demonstrates here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxLYa06lx80This is the third iteration of the trick, called "instant clip" or "instaclip". At the time, this was considered much too difficult and inconsistent to perform by a normal player, useful only for TAS speedruns. However, many times consistent setups are found for TAS-only strategies and Cosmo also mentions that he will explore this possibility in his "Drunk Speedrun Plans for 2014 video":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrhAlSIQoBIUsing an emulator, Cosmo found that only 144 angles (of 65536 possible angles) will actually clip Link through the wall. The physics of the game dictate that when releasing Z to change the angle using a HESS, the angle changes in increments of 1800. Thus, the chance for a successful instaclip is only 144 / 1800, or 8%. (The reason you can't set up the angle beforehand is because if you try to lock your angle while starting a HESS, you will either
weirdslide or crash the game.) Cosmo has an excellent explanation of it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVYdxeBp8mgIn other words, since the rocks are randomly generated and that, in order to HESS from a rock Link will have to approach it with a random angle, Link only has an 8% chance to do the instaclip void warp. Since 8% is a very low percentage, this strategy would only be worth it in a run that has no chance of beating the speedrunner's personal best and/or world record. Incidentally, Cosmo utilizes this strategy in the current Any% world record of 18:51.
Q: What is the forth iteration of the trick? What is the most current iteration of the trick?
A: On the first week of April 2014, Skater experimented with targeting Zelda during the instaclip HESS that travels down the tower. It was found that if you target Zelda during a specific frame window, it increases the consistency of the trick to somewhere around 50%. In the second week of April 2014, Skater continued experimenting and found that if you align yourself parallel to the first downward wall, it increases the instaclip to 100% consistency. This is the forth iteration of the trick, called the "new instaclip". Stream viewers also jokingly referred to it as the "consisticlip" or the "god hess".
Essentially, this new strategy trades randomness for very difficult execution. During the initial HESS from the top of the tower, the speedrunner has to release Z at the exact frame with which to align Link with the wall. If they hit this alignment exactly, then they have a 4 frame window with which to target Zelda. Then, as the HESS takes Link far away from Zelda, Link will naturally untarget Zelda and Link will be given an angle that is guaranteed to instaclip.
If the initial alignment is off, the trick can still be performed, but the frame window with which to target Zelda drops from 4 frames to 3, 2, or 1 frame, depending on how much the alignment was off.
The next Any% world record is expected to utilize this forth iteration of the trick.
