Cloud City Trap: The Climax of LEGO Star Wars Speedruns

Lego Star Wars the Complete Saga any% speedruns are filled to the brim with difficult skips and as the years have passed even the most basic of levels have become complex tests of skill through all of the optimization and refinement however one level has reigned Supreme as an ultimate test of skill since early on in the game's history as the second to last split of the any% route Cloud City trap has consistently proven to be the peak of anticipation in the late game giving Runners a chance to pop off for a clutch finish or kill a great Pace to one skip or another but why is this level in particular so difficult let's take a deep dive into Cloud City trap and break down what makes this level the climax of Lego Star Wars the Complete Saga speedruns to understand how all the skips in this level work it is helpful to First have a better idea of how the level is laid out Cloud City trap is broken up into seven distinct rooms the X-Wing room the turret room the Carbonite chamber with the first dir Vader boss fight a fourth room with some balconies the Turn Style room with the second Darth bidder boss fight the window room with the third Darth B boss fight and finally the seventh room with the fourth Darth B boss fight between each room room is an invisible door that we call a transition which takes the player character from one room to the next when touched despite this level having seven rooms the game doesn't distinguish them the way we do each level in the Complete Saga is broken up into distinct map files and Cloud City trap is made up of only three of these files the first three rooms are loaded from file one rooms four and five from file two and the funnel two rooms from file three commonly when multiple rooms are stored in the same map file they tend to be physically located next to each other you can see this in a few places throughout the level most notably the turret room can be seen through a giant window on the right hand side of room one the carbonate chamber can clearly be seen through the transition into room three and even though the last two rooms are not physically located next to each other room six can still be spotted off in the distance from room seven this seems mostly in consequential but I promise that having a basic understanding of this will help later on when the player first spawns into the level they are faced with crossing a large gap on the right to leave the landing pad and enter the main building instead of extending a platform to allow Luke to cross over to the door and build a panel for R2D2 we can actually strand Luke and continue on with just R2 fly around behind this wall drop R2D2 out to give control of him back to the AI and then you're just in the second room pretty confusing if you don't know what's happening but it's actually not too complicated when an AI controlled player character gets stuck for a few seconds the game will trigger a soft lock prevention mechanic that forces the stuck character to LEAP to safety we call this animation a super jump and they have a few properties that are worth noting first the location that a character jumps to is not arbitrary but rather the last respawnable ground that they were standing on since this game treats floor right next to walls as non-responsible it's actually fairly easy to manipulate the leap position for a super jump especially if the character getting stuck and fly like R2D2 additionally super jump characters have no clip for the duration of the animation for almost all objects The Only Exception is room transitions which interrupt the animation for a few seconds so knowing that we can manipulate the leaping position and that characters jump in a straight line from their stuck position if we can intersect that line with a transition we are able to enter rooms early even if walls or doors are still in the way let's take another look at that first Cloud City trap room R2 walks to a specific spot on the floor and then flies to the right Landing against the wall so as not to change the respawn position and then flies around behind the wall since all the floor on this back platform is non-responsible and r2's AI tries to path back to the front platform he walks into the corner behind this wall for a few seconds before triggering the Super Jump since the door to the second room is rather large aru hits it right after the Super Jump begins and simply dropping in player two will cause a transition to instantly be hit H wow that's a lot of words for such a short room fortunately Room 2 is fairly basic since Cloud City trap is played at the end of an any% run all of the red bricks that are normally collected throughout the first two hours of gameplay in the Run are already unlocked including the exploding Blaster bolts extra which causes friendly Blaster fire to explode on impact although neither of our characters have blasters deflecting a blaster Bolt from one of these Stormtroopers turns it into a friendly bolt and deflecting strategically allows the explosion to clear out the wall you're supposed to shoot with the turret without needing to bother with any of the puzzle after clearing out the straggling Storm Troopers while opening the door to room three we are faced with the first third fader boss fight the general naming convention associated with the fights in this level is DV short for Darth Vader and then the number of the fight which is why this fight and room are both referred to as dv1 Lego Star Wars boss fights tend to be slow and repetitive and this one is no exception fortunate this room is not very well designed and there are actually two different ways to skip this fight the most commonly used method often nicknamed panel fly involves flying with R2 from the staircase Landing just on the edge of the white part of the gas panel and then flying around invisible kill plane to barely reach the other side of the Gap funnily enough the whole point of this kill plane is to prevent you from doing just this but it's small enough to still allow the player to fly around and have enough fuel to make it across the Gap from here R2 walks to the right to bring out this PL platform for Luke to jump across then Luke opens the door and continues to the Next Room leaving Darth Vader alone to sulk in his misery the stormtrooper helmet needed to open this do is equipped at the beginning of the room with the slow animation of the helmet dispenser being overlapped with triggering this Cuts scene of Darth Vader entering the room to avoid accidentally losing the helmet while doing the skip Luke is left near the top of the room so that Vader doesn't have enough time to reach him while aggro this helmet plays a pretty vital role in the second method of skipping this room commonly called fast dv1 it is just barely possible to make a jump across the Gap with Luke which ends up being around 7 Seconds faster than the panel fly method when executed correctly the problem is that it is very difficult involving two frame precise inputs and a specific stick angle and failing this trick is costly since Luke loses the helmet when he dies and running back to get a second one loses a whopping 15 seconds since this trick is so hard and only saves time when executed on the first try it is only used at the high level by a few Runners and isn't even in the current world record entering the fourth room of the level loads up the second map file like I mentioned earlier rooms four and five are stored together and if we take a look at how they are physically laid out you can see that the exit of Room 5 is pretty close to the start of room four the Casual way of going through this room goes considerably out of the way to reach the exit and that's if you disregard the incredibly long second boss fight thankfully we don't have to play any of that remember that super jump Tech we used in the first room we can do that again here pushing R2 into a corner created by this forcible fan and setting his respawn position on the other side of this panel to intersect with this wall aside from transitions Force pushing a Droid with a Jedi also cancels super jumps which allows r2's jump to be interrupted so that he lands on the out of- bounds portion of this platform after some careful movement to avoid popping back in bounds a strange piece of angled Collision can be walked into to gain quite a bit of height this Collision is coincidential just tall enough for R2 to fly off the top of it directly into the transition at the end of the second Darth Vader fight skipping both rooms completely there's actually a second way of skipping this room that is now obsolete but it was such a crucial part of the speedrun for over 2 years and I wouldn't feel right if I didn't give it a mention I'm of course talking about the infamous dv2 skip later on in this room by positioning Luke on a small slippery panel as this elevator starts to descend players can wedge Luke between the elevator and the wall and then with a little extra push from AR to clip out of Bounce everything involved with this is hard and since the elevator is on a cycle each Mis attempt ends up losing a lot of time which is one of the main reasons that this level killed so many runs back in 2021 even after getting out of bounds and walking under the floor in the Next Room players still have to navigate a tight rope between being too low as to hit the kill plane respawning back at the beginning of the trick and being too high as to pop back and bounce as iconic of a trick as it is it cannot be overstated how many runs this trick killed while it was still the fast fastest way to beat these rooms rest in peace dv2 skip you will not be missed shortly after entering the sixth room at the level a brief cut scene plays that shows Darth Vader acting all menacing this sort of cut scene has a short camera pan when it starts during which the player character can still move for a few moments if the player swaps characters after the camera pans completely away from them the cut scene is interrupted and gameplay continues as usual the third Darth Vader boss fight features one of the oldest most obvious and most iconic skips in the game DV3 conceptually it's incredibly simple just a well spaced jump straightforward which skips the whole lengthy scripted boss fight but in practice it's rather technically challenging the jump is very precise allowing only three frames of error between its two inputs that means the first jump can be either on this Frame this Frame or this Frame and if the second jump is frame perfect then the skip will be successful frame perfect in this case means the latest possible frame that the input can be pressed and still register as a jump by the game so while these three work one frame earlier will short the jump and one frame later won't even jump to begin with likewise with a frame perfect first jump this Frame this Frame and this Frame will all be successful for the second jump but one frame earlier will short it and one frame later will result in no jump at all since this game runs at 60 frames per second three frames is around 1 12th of a second and that window of error is spread between two different inputs making it even hard harder to be close to frame perfect with the trick fast dv1 actually has the same frame window as DV3 except you also jumping at an angle instead of straightforward introducing a new variable and the camera is in a much less desirable spot making it harder to see how close you are to the edge on your first jump and fast1 only saves 7 Seconds where DV3 saves 70 it's clear to see why one is a Surefire staple even for runners far off of record while the other is so rarely utilized once DV3 is passed only the final boss fight remains one that is fundamentally unskippable since the level ends when Luke delivers the last heart of damage to Darth Vader that doesn't mean the room is without its optimizations though the forcible platform is bypassed with another Well spaced jump though this one is twice as lenient as DV3 and rarely missed as a result after that another relatively simple jump can be done off of the white portion of the R2 panel to skip the elevator though in practice this one proves to be easy to mess up under pressure a rare variation of this last skip Nick named fast dv4 is occasionally attempted by Runners by Landing a jump on the extreme edge of a platform the player's position is slightly displaced forward giving a later first jump than otherwise possible coupling this Edge boost with perfect spacing allows the otherwise Impossible Jump to be made off to considerable hype it's going to be fine okay oh oh my God oh my God no way Jared oh my God that is the crazy craziest thing anyone has done at this event oh my [Music] God after that just a few final slashes on Bader ends this Gauntlet of a level with how high of a skill ceiling exists in Cloud City trap and how punishing small mistakes can be it's no wonder that this level has killed so many runs throughout the years regardless Runners do manage to execute Cloud City traps where they hit every skip first try recently top Runner frostbite have the first ever split done in under 3 minutes and 10 seconds in a full game Run there's no way I'm getting a CG on this run there's just no way and not too long before that Runner Zach grinded out the first ever sub three in practice oh I I'm so good dude with the level of optimization seen throughout the game splits like these May soon become more commonplace as the game continues to get faster but how much more room is there realistically for this split well as we have seen most of the rooms are already pretty linear with players skipping most if not all of the intended puzzles and heading directly to each room's exit based on that it would seem like there's nothing left to skip well that's only mostly true there is one Strat that hasn't been mentioned yet but that's because no human has ever pulled it off and I highly doubt anyone ever will let's check out fast dv1 demonstrated here tool assisted by p-53 first R2 is positioned away from the door to allow it to close on a jumping Luke clipping him into the wall then Luke does a series of jumps off of the Collision of the walls from out of bounds these walls are incredibly thin and Luke can only get a jump off of them if he's exactly centered on their Collision after seven of these jumps the camera shifts as Luke jumps up to the top of the walls of the Carbonite room and then after another five just as precise jumps in this room the ceiling in the foreground passes in front of Luke and the last four jumps of the room have to be done completely blind before he can drop into the transition to the Next Room obviously this is ridiculously hard but more than that after all of that effort due to all of the setup needed in the wide line taken in the second room the trick only saves about 6 seconds over the fastest RTA viable strats done in these rooms needless to say I don't think anyone is going to try and make this meta anytime soon and that is Cloud City trap Lego star wars's most impactful level has grown a lot since the game's early history and For Better or Worse the level has solidified itself as the game's iconic climax I hope this video helped elaborate on why this level has earned the reputation it has and if you enjoyed it consider dropping a like or subscribe for more videos like it thank you for watching and have an excellent day

Channel: Chimkin

Views: 64,108

Keywords: lego, star wars, lego star wars, speedrun

Id: FV6fV0yFeSA

Length: 15min 14sec (914 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 31 2023