What Took You So Long?

[LMDAVE]

My mind is blown.

I was just reading Steve Sanders very, uh, interesting Donkey Kong book from 1981 and it actually taught me something that I did not know (and believe me, for this book, that is a feat).

I haven't seen anyone else mention this either so here goes:

It turns out you can actually leech Kong on the rivets WITHOUT pressing the stick left/right! You just have to get superclose (you need to get closer on the left side than on the right). Obviously you have to be on the exact pixel, and you're screwed if you get too close, but if you're able to nail it, you can leech Kong just by pressing jump!

When I read that I just thought it was incorrect (this book has at least one inaccuracy per paragraph), but I fired up MAME just to make sure and I'll be damned.

Am I the only one who did not know this?

Actually, back in the day, that was the only way I did it. Funny thing is when my daughter was watching me play when I first got my machine, she ended up playing and she got to the rivets and I walked up on her and there she was leeching kong because she saw me doing it, she just got close enough to make it work.

The reason it works is because when you jump the program looking so many pixels left and right for an object that can kill you (say 5 pixels), when you press left or right, the range is increased to I think 19 pixels left and right, because it thinks you are running and jumping and it is neccesary to open it up that wide to complete the detection during a barrel jump. However, we've exploited this program routine to make it work for tons of more situations than was intended. (leeching kong, leeching springs as they pass, leeching fireballs as the chase you, etc..)

And if no one has ever read D2K JEFF's analysis of certain DK bugs, this reading is a treat to describe behind the scenes stuff:

http://www.jeffsromhack.com/products/donkeykong_tech.htm

[lakeman421]

From the point of starting the game last year from scratch and not knowing anything about the game I had some parts about the game I didnt know that was kind of embarrassing.  It took me a month to realize that firefoxes can't cross a rivet hole after it's been cleared I thought they could just go wherever at anytime.  I had already been a kill screen player and on my way to a million before I knew that you only get 500 points for a 3 object jump.  Vincent was the first one that ever mentioned it to me and I thought he was joking at first until I actually looked and saw for myself.  I guess I just focus so much on Jumpman and the game itself to realize some of these things. Then seeing Ross bouncing off the walls on the top two platforms on the rivet stage I had never seen that or knew you could do that.  It's funny how I didn't know about these things but knew to steer barrels platforms above me and could steer while on the ladder and to retreat within the first month of playing elevators.  That's what makes this game great is that everyone learn every aspect of the game differently because there are so many possible situations and results, along with how we all see things differently at first glance.  Playing the game for a while and experimenting with ways out of tight situations result in discovering these little tricks.  Like that video I posted when I jumped the oilcan in the pie factory because two fireballs were on the conveyor, I had no idea you could do that until I was in that situation and just went for it.

[hchien]

Interesting topic.  In my very early days of playing DK, I had seen videos of people leeching Kong and had no idea how to do it.  If you had no idea how to do it and no one to ask, the first thing you would try is standing as close to Kong as possible and jumping.  This was indeed the way I did it for the first x weeks of playing.  In fact, I clearly remember not doing it past L2 as the risk/reward was too high.  Pressing left or right never occurred to me back then as modern games are not programmed that way.  It wasn't until I saw a youtube video (I believe of Wiebe) where he spelled it out that I realized you didn't have to stand right next to Kong.

Still to this day it is not spelled out anywhere (at least anywhere that people frequent).  When I read Jeff K.'s explanation of why you sometimes don't get 100 points for jumping a barrel everything made sense.  It's common knowledge these days, but I guess it's spread more by word of mouth.

[John73]

Still to this day it is not spelled out anywhere (at least anywhere that people frequent).  When I read Jeff K.'s explanation of why you sometimes don't get 100 points for jumping a barrel everything made sense.  It's common knowledge these days, but I guess it's spread more by word of mouth.

Where did you read this explanation?  I assume it has something to do with the sprite detection as to why you miss out on the 100 points.

I'm exactly the same with the leeching next to Kong, it would have never have thought about this on my own, guessing someone back in the day did it by mistake and worked it out.   

Same goes for jumping next to the fireball on the spring stage, I think the first I knew of this was when I watched Dean's 1.167M Mame recording, he does so many other little point pressing things that I would have never have worked out in a 100 years.

[stella_blue]

Where did you read this explanation?  I assume it has something to do with the sprite detection as to why you miss out on the 100 points.

Take a look at this page, John:

http://www.jeffsromhack.com/products/donkeykong_tech.htm

The explanation is under the "More Reasons why you're not getting your points!!!!" heading.

[ChrisP]

Here is Steve's book, for Jon or anyone interested.

It's long out of print, so nobody's losing any sales on this, but I'll remove it if anyone thinks I should.

[John73]

thanks guys, I'll give both of them a read now.

[Bliss1083]

I also forgot. Not that it's really useful past 1-1 but the double barrel jump on the 6th girder when you climb up the far right ladder and then move I believe about 4 paces to the left for lack of a better way of explaining it. You can run with a barrel jump and then jump towards that same barrel getting the 200 for that one barrel. Also has anyone done a straight jump on the top hammer getting a 100 for the jump and the barrel smash. I have once or twice. I have gotten the running with the barrel jump and smash a bunch of times but the vertical jump for me is rare.

[ChrisP]

Oh wow...

-You can leech barrels rolling down a ladder *without* having to hold left or right (you just have to be super close, kinda like how you can also leech kong without using the joystick)

Haha, Mitch mentioned it weeks ago in this very thread...

Shows how closely I pay attention!

[marinomitch13]

 Haha, Chris. No worries.


Another, 'what took you so long' could be the leeching of a barrel twice in a row -either 1) by leeching it once while it travels down a ladder (can be done from either side of the ladder), then once right away as it rolls away on the girder, 2) simply two back jumps on the same girder near the end of a girder, with the first one a little early so that you are still close to the barrel for the second jump just as it rolls off the edge, or 3) right as a barrel rolls off the girder above you, once while it is in the air, then another immediately once you land (you can actually have your second jump be a standing jump if you time it well). And, of course, there's always Jeff's triple jump which incorporates both options 1 and 2 to get 3 leeches of the same barrel.

[Fast Eddie]

cheers Chris, some funny stuff in there all right, i spent 15 mins trying to survive a falling fireball smash on the rivets but no doubt its BS...

the illustrations are cool tho, especially bigfoot kong 

 

[stella_blue]

Here is Steve's book, for Jon or anyone interested.

It's long out of print, so nobody's losing any sales on this, but I'll remove it if anyone thinks I should.

Hey Chris, any significance to the naming of the subdirectory where Steve's book is located?

Or is "crap" simply another term for "miscellaneous"?   

[marinomitch13]

Haha, Fast Eddie, I contacted Steve Sanders about his DK book (for legal help on Vince and my manual) and the pictures were the thing he most hated. He said he had really well-drawn, precise pictures he had made himself that the publisher rejected and just replaced with crappy pictures of their own. He seemed like he was still quite bitter about it all.

[Fast Eddie]

i love the total 'wrongness' of them...

in O and V jumpman looks like hes doing the nazi goosestep!

 

[stella_blue]

Oh wow...

-You can leech barrels rolling down a ladder *without* having to hold left or right (you just have to be super close, kinda like how you can also leech kong without using the joystick)

Haha, Mitch mentioned it weeks ago in this very thread...

Shows how closely I pay attention!

Hey Chris (or perhaps I should say "Sir Chris")

Congratulations on the "Elite Member" status!  I'm assuming it kicked in at 250 posts.

So where do you go from here?  Does 500 posts get you "Grand Poobah" member status, and the coveted "Elevator Spring" icon?

Mitch should be joining you in a few days.  I'm still more than 80 posts away, but I'd really like to ditch the Firefox icon (my least favorite DK enemy) in favor of the Conveyor Pie.  Since the majority of my posts are devoid of any insightful game analysis, maybe I should scour the forum and tack on a few meaningless "LOL" replies to anything I find even mildly amusing.