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Learning

This site is meant to collect information that's immediately relevant to people who want to start learning the KD speedrun. If you would like to contribute, feel free to create a pull-request on github, or mention it in the Katamari Speedrun Discord.

General

  • VSync introduces a significant amount of input lag, so it's highly recommended to turn it off.
  • To change the VSync setting, interact with the bird on the overworld and press the "Display Settings" hotkey on the bottom of the screen.
  • The practice mod is highly recommended to learn and practice the game.
  • Install the practice mod with the mod launcher.
  • Feel free to ask questions about the mod (or report bugs) in #mod-discussion on the discord server.
  • The RTA mod is recommended for full-game runs because of its standardized, built-in A-button turbo. It includes additional optional QoL features that don't affect the speedrun (e.g. playing as a cousin or displaying level times during the credits).

Timing

  • Any% timing starts when the "start a new game" prompt disappears and ends when 300m is reached in Moon.
  • It's recommended to use the autosplitter to automatically stop your timer on the correct frame.
  • Always use the second right trigger (R2 on PS2/PS3, RT on 360, ZR on Switch) on the overworld to fly to Earth between levels.
  • Always use Start to skip king dialogs during levels. This applies both to the dialog at the start of each level and to the mid-level dialogs that open a new area.
  • Mashing Start in addition to A slightly speeds up all post-level dialogs (example here).
  • The "press start" dialog at the beginning of the tutorial is bugged and ignores most input. The best way to get past it is to mash both Start and A until it advances.
  • Higher game FPS is worse for advancing the prompt. If you find the prompt consistently difficult to advance, check your FPS and externally cap it to 300 if it's much higher than that.

Getting ready for your first run

Currently, the easiest first step towards learning the game would be to play along with this no boost run with live commentary. Additionally, gameit's no-boost guide.

Your goal for each level should be to be able to play through it from memory a couple of times in a row without getting lost or stuck.

It's probably easiest to learn one level at a time, but mixing up which level you play might be a good idea while you're still trying to memorize the basic routes, to reinforce the levels you haven't played for a while.

For each level, you could try:

  • playing along with the video in real time, pausing it when you fall behind.
  • watching a chunk of the video that you can remember, pausing it, then playing that part yourself from memory until you catch up to where you paused the video.
  • The practice mod currently supports (sort of stable) savestates, which can be helpful to quickly learn the later parts of longer levels. Refer to the practice mod documentation in resources for how to use the savestates.

Once you have a good idea of the overall route for each level (or before, since RTA is fun), jump in and get a few PBs under your belt! Feel free to post your times in personal-bests.

After you're comfortable with the route, here's a few things you can try to start optimizing your times further.

  • Use other people's PBs on speedrun.com to get a better idea of up-to-date routes that people use in their runs. The improvement that comes with actively watching other people play and analyzing their decisions can't be overstated.

  • Practicing the longer levels (8, 9, moon) is usually more effective for improving your full game PB compared to the shorter levels.

  • If you want to transition from no boost to using boosts, start including easy-looking boosts into your route to get more comfortable with the boost input (mostly when there's not a lot to pick up and you can afford to be a little inaccurate). Boosting is very difficult and it's probably going to suck for a while, but failing a lot is the only way to improve. Every time you do it you're getting a little bit better.

  • Use the size bottleneck list in the individual level pages or the spreadsheet in resources to help diagnose when you're unexpectedly too small to roll something up. A big part of optimizing your play is anticipating these bottleneck sizes and making sure you won't be too small for anything coming up.

  • If you feel like you're hitting a wall and can't improve, try a different category or even just take a break for a while. Remember the golden rules of Katamari speedruns: have fun and be yourself!