Siren/Advanced techniques

These are methods for producing unintended gameplay manipulations by using glitches and/or in-game mechanisms. A thorough understanding and ability of the normal gameplay is necessary for both the comprehension and implementation of these techniques.

Gliding
This is a special glitch which is utilized via the in-game menu. As you close the in-game menu, the characters' current movement-related animation resets. If you open and close the in-game menu fast enough, a new animation will not get a chance to start during the small lapses of time between each in-game menu opening. This results in a movement in which the character doesn't have an animation, he simply "glides."

So what's the use of this? Characters' movement speeds are dictated by their animations, while acceleration is handled by a partially different mechanism. Avoiding activating the actual animation while keeping the acceleration rate constant will enable the characters to eventually move in superb speeds, too fast for even the game's camera to keep up.

The game's collisions work as normal only when your character is engaged in an animation. While gliding you can sink into walls and even pass through some of them. For some reason walls hinder acceleration, so the character's speed is not very high when doing this.

You can glide the easiest during either a strafing or backwards walking movement. You can do it while running too, but your speed will never increase over the normal running speed. If you're crouch-moving, the in-game menu won't reset the animation, resulting in un-glitched movement.

Instructions

 * 1) Start moving in some way that is compatible with this trick.
 * 2) Open in-game menu (with psx: T).
 * 3) Close it (with psx: C or psx: X, preferably psx: C), then open it again very quickly. The timing is excruciatingly sharp. If you do this in Time Attack, you'll see that the time progresses only a mere 0.08 seconds between each time you open and close the in-game menu.
 * 4) Repeat step 3 until you're happy or you fail.

Remember that each character has different strafing and possibly backwards walking speed. Risa and Reiko are the best in strafe-gliding, and for male characters it's easiest to walk backwards. This trick is not too suitable for normal gameplay, because it's so hard to time right. It works pretty well in hardcore speedrunning, though!

Uses

 * The character's speed supercedes normal running speed if done long enough.
 * You can pass through cramped spaces or even obstacles.
 * You can climb small heights quickly. By gliding inside a low-height wall - the character will pop up through the floor without any animation. At some places it is possible to climb even mid-height walls!
 * Descend down some cliffs.
 * Gliding is completely noiseless, which means good things for your stealth.


 * What you can't do with it
 * Avoid activating cutscenes by gliding through the activation spots. For example: Reiko's Day 1 - 02:00, when you meet Eiji.
 * Avoid getting hit by any bullets or the trolley.
 * Enjoy the advantages of any kind of movement or action that has an animation (e.g. climbing).
 * Turn (however, see the turbo-gliding section below).

Turbo-gliding
For turbo controller owners: it's possible to emulate some effects of gliding in real time with a turbo controller. Set psx: L1 on turbo. Now, a wide variety of real-time gliding options open up for you:


 * Normal strafing. Works just like gliding, except seemingly slower to kick in, not to mention the character turns all the time you're doing this.
 * Crouch-strafing. The character turns slightly slower, which means you can control the movement better.
 * Diagonal crouch-walking. Your character suddenly starts moving at very high speeds to the direction you're pointing at. Eventually the movement stops for some reason, might be something that's built in gliding itself. But you can re-do it instantly. You gain extra speed by doing certain kinds of curved turns (only possible at high enough speeds) or combining this move with the crouch-strafing move. Has lots of usage possibilities!
 * Weapon stance strafing. The second most useful option you have, since you can move in a straight line forward or backward, which is not possible with other stances. You can also do the traditional type of strafe, and it seems to be quite similar to normal strafing: not too useful by itself, but at least you can mix things up. Obviously you need a weapon to do this.

Gliding with text messages (OBSOLETE)
If you want to mix things up a bit, you can do gliding with text messages, just not with any text messages. First of all, find a place where you can stably activate a command in the in-game menu which results in a text message afterwards (e.g. Tamon's Day 2 - 18:00, trying to "Squeeze through" the gap in the second floor door). Then, do normal gliding, with the exception that you don't psx: C yourself out of the in-game menu, but instead choose the in-game menu option which results in the text message. The character nudges on, quite inelegantly for any kind of gliding, but it still works. The timing may be slightly easier than with normal gliding because of the text message's existence, even though the distance traveled isn't any larger (in fact, it may be smaller).

Unfortunately this type of glide is not as functional as the first one. You can only do it at certain places (even though you can do it in succession with normal gliding, so it's not that bad). And the text message stops all the player-character's momentum, so you can't get very high speeds with this one (unlike with the first).

For people new to gliding, this may help to understand what's it all about. It's easier to get a hang of at the start.


 * What you can't do with it
 * Accelerate.
 * Do whatever normal gliding couldn't achieve.
 * Grows obsolete if you can do normal gliding.

Why not only text messages (from examining normal scenery)? You can't activate text messages fast enough by themselves, and the aid of the in-game menu is inevitable. Not to mention that normal text messages do not reset the player-character's animation, which means that you couldn't actually breach walls or do anything else like that.

Illegal Weapon Switching (IWS)
You can't open up the normal menu as long as you're in attack stance - probably thought of by the developers to prevent the player from switching weapons during an attack. But - during an attack animation you can release psx: R1, causing the game to think you're not in the attack stance. This means that you can switch weapons anyway, causing some interesting stuff to happen.

As mentioned, there are three weapon properties - melee, projectile and "other." If you do this switch from one property to another, from melee to "other" for example, the attack animation resets and you get a quick new attack for yourself. If you do this switch from projectile to unarmed melee, (meaning: unequipping your weapon) your character will do a weak punch that won't hit anything.

The properties of this trick are still being explored. A strange thing that sometimes happens when switching from a melee weapon to a projectile weapon right as you damage your opponent is that the melee attack does very high damage, about double damage. It's most likely some sort of duplicated code glitch that activates because of the menu.

For characters with both a projectile and a normal weapon, you can switch between them for ultra-quick melee hits. Attack with the melee weapon, then switch it to the projectile. Then, the first instant possible, switch it back to the melee weapon.

However, you cannot attack through walls. Doing an attack without a weapon is something the game's walls won't react to, but quickly switching a weapon in and hoping it would reach the other side of the wall is futile.

Pre-emptive 180
The 180° turn of this game consists of two parts: the "input" part and the animation part. The "input" part is the time you activate the 180° turn, in addition to the small pause during which you can cancel the move or do many other things which either cancel or stall the animation part. The animation part is just that, the turn itself. You can't cancel the turn to anything else, so it isn't the most versatile of moves. But because of its two-phased nature, it can overall be used in interesting ways.

The pre-emptive 180 is in effect a technique in which you activate the 180 right before activating something else. After the "something else" has went its course, the game 180's you the first possible moment, which is almost without exceptions a lot faster than what any human could do. So if it doesn't cost time to do a 180° turn before activating a necessary "something else," and you benefit from a 180° turn in any case afterwards, it's always worth it to use this technique.

For fun: start doing a normal 180° turn. Right before the turning animation begins, go to FPV. Walk around like normal, then release FPV.

Attack canceling
There are only three ways in this game by which you can cut your attacking animations short: getting hit by an opponent, doing IWS (explained above), or suddenly deciding to open or close a door. This section is about the lattermost, because it's the only one of them which isn't yet explained or which has any practical use as a technique.

What would be the advantage of attacking and then closing the door? Stalling an opponent is one. Your enemy always has to re-open the door in order to get to you, and during that time you can easily get additional hits in. Secondly, the door thwarts your opponents attacks, giving you a safety advantage too.

Strategic wallram
Ramming into walls is in most circumstances a very bad thing. It happens easily and wastes about a second each time it happens. But, it has an unexpected stress-free side too: it replenishes your character's stamina sometimes. The conditions are not completely clear, so it's best to try out different solutions and see what happens (if you intend to abuse this mechanism). With its help, it's possible to pass even long levels without getting exhausted and slowing your speed down to a laughable crawl.

Your character's stamina replenishes by other ways too, but sometimes this is the fastest way.

Acceleration
Whenever moving, there's a certain mechanism which starts increasing the player-character's speed stably. The speed increase is dependent on (and restricted by) the animation in which the player-character is partaking, e.g. is it running, walking, etc. Acceleration works differently depending on how complex the animation is too, the normal forward moving animations being the most complex and stuff like strafing or walking backwards less complex.

Acceleration works separately from the animations. Therefore, by eliminating the animation but retaining the acceleration, it's possible to get your speed up to impossible heights, as explained in the "Gliding" section.

Walls block acceleration. Text messages reset acceleration. The acceleration variable for sideways movement is different from back or forward-movements' momentum. This may need some more testing.

Auto-positioning
There is a mechanism in this game which moves the character models in some required position/place before they begin doing certain animations. For example, opening doors or climbing of any kind requires auto-positioning. The character is first positioned towards the object in question, and then right in front of the object in question. This is done so that the character's soon to be beginning animation would avoid collisions with the nearby walls, etc.

In effect, the speed of this positioning movement is much greater than what you can normally achieve. This kind of movement could almost be called "zipping," because that's what it can literally look like in the worst/best cases. The player can spare some time by abusing this mechanism (well, not really abusing. "Using it consciously" would be a better term), opening the doors as far away as possible or making the auto-positioning turn the character for you.

If the auto-positioning tries to move a character model in a place where there already is someone, the latter is instantly zip-pushed away to the same direction the former was moving. If there's something in the way of this movement, the latter is instead pushed to another direction, wherever there's clear standing space.

If a character gets hit while auto-positioning, the mechanism aborts. That's the only way it'll get interrupted, the player has no control over stopping it normally.

Small in-game cutscenes at the start of the level have their own glitch. These are mentioned solely because you may activate a small bug in most levels that have these. If you try to move the player-character before the animation begins, the stage will usually start with the player-character suspended in mid-air and in the running/walking position. The game doesn't consider you to be moving, though, and will accelerate you as if you were starting from a normal idle position. Activating this bug doesn't help you in any way, actually.

This may also happen if you restart from levels' checkpoints.

Game events
This is a little information on how they are handled.

The game has (at least) five different ways of handling different "uncommon" events. These are: picking up items or manipulating some region-specific things via the in-game menu. The lists below are for listing what the player witnesses, and what it means in practise, when something inside the game changes with the player's active effort, but outside the most common gameplay-related activities. This listing is based on results from activating the in-game menu, so some things could be different in other circumstances.

Character reaches down to pick up something

 * Time and movement is stopped.
 * Can enter normal menus after closing the in-game menu.
 * Can't sightjack or use FPV, though.
 * The pick up-animation overrides all other player-character-animations happening (e.g. crouching animation, attacking, movement, etc.).
 * There's a text message with a screen black-out at the end.
 * Example: Shiro's Day 1 - 03:00, picking up the flashlight.

Character stands still (text message or picture)
The character stands still, then either a text message or a picture appears.
 * Time and movement is stopped.
 * Can't enter normal menus after closing the in-game menu.
 * Can't sightjack or use FPV either.
 * Player-character's animations follow their course until the end (e.g. if you were attacking while this happened, the attack would continue like normal).
 * There's a text message with a screen black-out at the end.
 * Example: Shiro's Day 1 - 03:00, picking up the wrench or the flare.

Character stands still (cutscene)
The character stands still then an in-game cutscene happens.
 * Time and movement is stopped.
 * Can't enter normal menus after closing the in-game menu.
 * Exception: If it's the start of a level, you can usually enter the map screen.
 * Can't sightjack or use FPV either.
 * Player-character's animation stops in its tracks.
 * Pressing psx: Start skips a brief amount of "character stands still"-animation, doesn't save any time.
 * Example: Tomoko's Day 1 - 17:00, ringing the bell. Or at the beginning of several of the levels.

A text message

 * As with every text message, (except the sub-objective messages) the game time and movement is utterly stopped. Also, you can press psx: X any time to skip the message.
 * Can't do anything in particular, since there's nothing else but the ordinary text message after the in-game menu.
 * Player-character's animation continues afterwards like normal.
 * Example: Examining most things with psx: X. Trying to activate the ventilator at Risa's Day 1 - 04:00 without turning the power on first (but having tied the kite string).

Time won't stop, quick fade-out

 * Variable rules, sometimes allowing you to sightjack or use FPV (e.g. the phone at Tamon's Day 3 - 03:00).
 * Sometimes can move normally before the cutscene takes place, at other times there's some special animation (e.g. when hiding in closets).
 * Character can die before the actual event after the fade-out, sometimes even during the event (e.g. Risa's Day 1 - 22:00 window ledge event's last part before Risa appears on the ledge).
 * Example: The two listed above.

Even though the findings are slightly interesting, the fact is that very little of it can be used in anything useful, at least as of now. Visiting the Archive and messing around there right before the game picks up an item for you does nothing. The map screen is impotent! This info is here only for curiosity and the sake of completion.

The game activates these different event-handling procedures in different circumstances and times, so that some exceptions and loopholes are still possible. They just have to be found. For example, the "Character standing still" event handle happens on Reiko's Day 1 - 23:00 just by walking into a certain area. Because of the very flexible "entrance" - not from the in-game menu but from normal gameplay - there are several other things you can do which are not listed here.

Shouting and reloading animations
The reason these two are bundled together is that both of their animations share some strange properties. First of all, they are interruptable by normal movement or opening the in-game menu (unlike pretty much every other animation in the game). Secondly, they can't be canceled by opening/closing doors, which is strange too. They do have certain differences between them, though. For example, you can interrupt reloading by sightjacking, something you can't do while shouting.