Neon White Tech Document 2.0

Simple and Advanced Techniques used in competitive Neon White speedrun times

Intro

Read The Google Doc[docs.google.com]
By: shovelclaws (shovelclaws if you see this message me on here so i can add you as a contributor)

Hello! Welcome to the full release version of the tech document. This will cover both simple and advanced techniques used in competitive Neon White speedrun times. If there’s anything you have questions about, you are free to join us on Discord [discord.gg]for help. If there’s anything missing, please contact me on Discord at shovelclaws#1931.

Movement Funamentals

The fastest line is typically a straight line. This is a general speedrunning principle, play with it in mind. If you can get to the goal in a straight line, play that way. This is, of course, not always applicable and much more complex.

Walking on water is the fastest form of movement. Sometimes it’s worth taking a more roundabout line if it means going in water. Generally maximizing your time in water will save a significant amount of time, as long as it isn’t too out of the way of the optimal line.

Holding jump will jump on the first available frame. You don’t have to time your jump inputs to be as soon as you’re on the ground. Applicable in places where you want to jump as soon as possible.

Jumping up stairs is faster than walking up stairs. This seems to be a lesser-known tech, but holding jump up stairs is significantly faster.

Water has a zone above the ground that still gives you the speed boost from water. Staying in that boost zone causes you to go significantly faster, as you don’t have ground friction and air resistance is very low. See Movement 17.64.

Jumping up steep water slopes is faster than running up them. This applies to any air-time, even from soul card discards. If the geometry doesn’t slope steep enough, try to jump to where you’re landing near the top. See Barrage 28.62 for an example of this.

Enemies can be jumped on. Simple enough. See Elevate 15.235.

Neon White has a 0.3 second coyote jump window. Coyote jumping is a popular game mechanic that allows you to jump for a small window of time after walking off a ledge. It’s generally used to help game feel.

Gunplay Basics

Spread is consistent. The only variance in weapon spread is the range, where shooting more will give a wider spray. Tap shooting will have the same initial pattern.

The following actions all triple your card pickup radius for 0.4s:

• Being hit by an explosion (of any kind)
  
• Hitting the ground with Stomp
  
• Ending a zipline
  
• Dashing through a breakable object

Shooting/meleeing any bullet will give you a small speed boost. This is called Bullet Boosting, and is vital to saving time at a top level. Shooting multiple bullets will stack the boost. Easiest seen with the Ringer enemies.

Meleeing (most) bullets will parry them into enemies, killing them. This can be used to save ammo and open up strategies, and additionally will give you a bullet boost.

Bullet boosting in the air or while running down stairs is faster than bullet boosting on the ground. See Jumper 12.28. Air resistance is much lower than friction, meaning that boosts will last longer and go faster in the air.

Bullet Boosting and Parrying

Bullets can be shot out (and destroyed, if they are destructible projectiles) for a one-time speed boost. They can also be parried with your Katana for the same speed boost.

The speedboost that is applied is a bit weird - it just amplifies your movement direction (wasd) briefly. The speed boost effect is stronger on the ground than in the air to make up for ground friction; you can jump immediately after the speedboost is applied to preserve your momentum for longer.

This applies to all projectiles in the game - you can shoot your own slower-moving / longer-lived projectiles, like rockets and purify bombs, to get repeated bullet boosts, as they are not destructible.

Phantom Bullets

Bullets enter a ‘hit decay’ state for 1.25s after hitting anything (except if they hit the player, where they enter the hit decay state for 0.25s).

In this state, bullets are frozen at the point of impact and marked as ‘dead’, and cannot be bullet boosted off of. However, they can still be parried in this state, and will still give the parry speedboost. This applies to any destructible bullets that give a bullet boost.

Cards

Purify

Bullet Boosting works with purify grenades. You can either melee a purify grenade after shooting, or spray down a purify grenade with another gun. Either way, you will get a boost.

Meleeing a purify grenade launches it forward. This only really applies when meleeing a purify grenade while it is in the air. The direction it launches is (seemingly?) related to the direction you are moving; moving left will give it a slight left arc, moving right will give it a slight right arc, etc.

Elevate

Using Elevates at the very tip of your jump maximizes height. This can often open up much faster strats. See Cascade 9.17.

Discarding Elevate while being propelled upward will change how much height you get. It applies an additive force to the barrel, meaning that if you get propelled by the barrel and then discard, it will add momentum to your vertical movement. Vice versa is not true, as the barrel will first cancel any momentum from the Elevate card before propelling you based on your distance from the barrel. It’s a bit complex, but Elevate before Barrel =/= Barrel before Elevate.

Godspeed

Discarding Godspeed in the air is faster than on the ground. Being in the air will carry the momentum for longer.

Jumping after discarding a Godspeed on the ground is faster. Similar to using it in air, the jump will carry the momentum for longer.

Godspeed sets your speed to a specific value, meaning that spacing out your discards will maximize your speed. You gain the most speed by letting all the speed run out, then discarding again.

It’s possible to melee during a Godspeed dash. This is incredibly situational but can be used to make up for mistakes or get a bullet boost. Also applies to Fireball, Dominion, and even BooF.

Stomp

It’s sometimes optimal to avoid stomps in order to take a tighter line. This is why you spray enemies down instead of stomping on certain levels.

Stomping on an enemy ends your stomp early. This can open up movement options, such as using a discard ability earlier than if you stomp on the ground.

Discarding Stomp can kill enemies through walls.
Discarding Elevate while using a stomp cancels the stomp, but keeps its downwards velocity. Card ability velocity is handled separately from normal velocity and is then generally added together. However, Elevate applies directly to your ‘normal’ velocity, and is the only thing in the game that can cancel a stomp without also overriding its movement velocity. (Normally, a stomp just locks the movement velocity to -70u/s and locks your ‘normal’ velocity to 0u/s, but Elevate unlocks the ‘normal’ velocity without resetting the movement velocity. You will briefly slow down as the Elevate jump applies and reaches its ‘peak’, then gravity takes over and you will fall faster than a normal stomp would let you fall. This is not currently used in any ILs, as it’s both complicated and of limited use, but might possibly be useful on Apartment.)

Fireball

Discarding Fireball on the ground is faster than in the air. Think of it as a reverse Godspeed. This effect lasts for 4 seconds on discard.

It’s possible to coyote jump after discarding Fireball off a ledge. The Fireball dash extends the window for a coyote jump, where you can jump after walking off the ground.

Dashing into a Shocker using Fireball will launch you much further. This can be used to travel much further. See Prepare 24.228.

Dominion

You can bullet boost off Dominion rockets mid-air. This isn’t always practical, but who knows what’s possible!

You can dismount Dominion ziplines before reaching your destination by jumping. This can be instrumental to saving time, as you won’t get the amount of height you get from reaching the zipline’s target. Additionally…

Boof (Book of Life)

Boof is called Boof because the font on the card looks like it says “Boof of Life”, if you’re curious. :)

Boof has a max range. This range is about 500 units. The only exception is teleporting to the actual Book of Life, where you can only teleport to it once it has opened (short range).

Certain walls can be clipped through with Boof. This isn’t so much a technique with BooF as it is faulty collision detection, but still good to know.

Explosion Mechanics

There are three main explosion sources in the game: explosive barrels, Purify bombs, and Dominion rockets. They all use the exact same underlying mechanics. All explosion forces stack additively and do not ‘overwrite’ each other. Distance from explosions is calculated from the explosion’s center to the player’s camera (not your feet).

The inner 99% of the explosion radius always applies the full knockback force to you. The outer 1% of the radius tapers off from the full knockback force to no knockback force. To explain with a sh*tty not-to-scale diagram, the red zone around the outer edge is where the explosion force will feel inconsistent and depend on precise positioning. All of the other following mechanics are written as if you are in the green zone here, but the dropoff does otherwise apply to them.

All explosions handle vertical knockback and lateral knockback separately. Vertical knockback is always applied at its full force, regardless of if the explosion center is above or below you. This is why Dominion rockets can ‘pull’ you up to ceilings.

Lateral explosion knockback has two main considerations. The main takeaway is that in order to maximize lateral explosion knockback, your camera must be directly level with the explosion source.

Lateral knockback is calculated in two steps: the *direction* of knockback is calculated by taking the direction from the explosion center to your camera, ‘normalizing’ its length to the same length, and then flattening it. That direction is then just multiplied by the explosion force. Since the flattening of the line is after the line is normalized to a fixed length, that means that the more vertically offset you are from the explosion center, the less lateral knockback you get. However, this also means that if you’re perfectly parallel with the explosion source, it doesn’t matter if you are right next to it or a few steps away - because there’s no vertical component being removed after normalizing the length, it works out the same. See Swing 14.945 for a good example of this.

Side view, not top view.
The more of a vertical difference there is between you and the explosion source, the less of a lateral component there is.

The lateral knockback force is only 55% of the vertical knockback force. This is probably because vertical momentum deteriorates more quickly due to gravity than lateral velocity, and is why explosions in the game feel like they push you up more than out - because they do.

Jump "Capping"

Neon White generally handles vertical and lateral velocity components separately. Because of this, there is one function that handles applying all upwards forces to the player, aside from gravity [note: fireball is excluded, as it’s a directional dash with sustained momentum, and not a one-time jump force].

• Upwards forces are applied in three steps:
  
• Subtract the stored “capped” jump, if there is one.
  
• If you’re falling, set your vertical momentum to 0
  
• Apply the upward force

The jump penalties is the interesting bit here. When you jump (by either hitting space or discarding an Elevate for a second jump), they are stored as the active “capped jump”. On the next time you’d get an upward force applied to you, that force would then be subtracted back out before applying the next upward force. Balloon pops, Elevates, and regular grounded jumps are the only “capped” jumps in the game.

This is best explained with how explosive barrels and Elevates interact. If you jump or use an Elevate and then shoot an explosive barrel, the upwards force from the jump will be subtracted out before the barrel force is applied, meaning you get the same overall result from the barrel, except you start out a bit higher. However, if you shoot the barrel and then use your Elevate, the forces then stack additively - because the explosion force is uncapped, nothing is subtracted out when you use the Elevate.

Explosions, shockers, exiting a zipline, and telefragging with the Book of Life are “uncapped” jumps and can have an Elevate used to additively stack with their upwards force.

Scroll Wheel Jumps

Binding jump to scroll wheel can help with coyote jumps. This works because the game doesn’t register jumps if done with the scroll wheel on the ground. However, the game does register jumps done with the scroll wheel when in the coyote jump state. See this video[www.twitch.tv] for more details.

Conclusion

There’s plenty more to discover. If you think you have a discovery not mentioned here, or know something that hasn’t been covered, let me know. I’ll do my best to keep this one updated. Check threads in general, discuss in #suggestions, or DM me on Discord if you think you’ve found something.

Thanks for playing,
shovelclaws

[The Furious Charles Darwin]

I did not know half of the stuff here. Great guide.

[The Don]

Thank you. This is very in depth and easy to read and answered all the questions I had