metal_gear:mggb_faq [Metal Gear Speedrunners]

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=====Metal Gear: Ghost Babel FAQ=====

=====Game Mechanics=====

**Q: What are the vision ranges of guards, dogs, and cameras?**

**A:** You can find visual representations here, from the Japanese guidebook {{:metal_gear_ghost_babel:ghostbabel012.jpg?linkonly |}}. Guards are a linear column with a peripheral bulge in the middle. Cameras are a linear column that extends slightly outside of the camera's model. You cannot go against the wall to avoid cameras. Dogs have a diamond range around their model, which explains why lines to avoid them are so complicated.

**Q: Why are dogs so dangerous?**

**A:** This enemy type spots Snake very easily due to the diamond range. When a dog spots you, all other dogs on screen come to attack. The dog attack is long range jumping bite that lasts a long time with a lingering hit box. Snake doesn't have many i-frames after getting attacked, leaving him vulnerable to another bite by the other dogs. In combination with Snake's low starting HP (you only encounter the dogs on Stage 04), the dog screens are very punishing if you don't plan out your movements.

**Q: Why do guards look around when hearing a noise?**

**A:** Whenever a guard hears a noise, they will go and investigate. At any point during their pathing to the noise, they can stop, look around (aka peering), and then continue. This is completely random, and you must be prepared for it when using noise strategies.

**Q: How does Being Found (alert) work?**

**A:** Being Found is a strange statistic with multiple factors. When Snake uses a grenade or C4, it will cause an alert. However, unless a guard spots Snake during the alert, it does not count as Being Found. Running through IR lasers counts as Being Found, and if a guard spots you afterwards, that counts as a second Being Found. Additionally, if you go into Evasion phase and get spotted again, that counts as an additional Being Found. However, if you die on the same screen where you were Found, it will not count towards your total. Thus, the thermal goggles skip on Stage 05 is possible for Rank 1 runs.

**Q: What is a corner punch?**

**A:** For unknown reasons, punching while at a corner (wall, box, etc.) extends the punch's range. This allows us to attack guards from seemingly impossible distances. Just remember that guards also can corner punch you if they decide to melee attack at a corner.

**Q: How do you manipulate the guards' AI?**

**A:** Guard AI attack relative to the direction you are moving. For example, if you are moving along a bottom wall to the left, a guard to the right will shoot left since you are moving left. However, if you move downleft along that wall, the guard instead will shoot downleft and attack the wall. Abusing this is very helpful!

**Q: How do you efficiently deal with being found?**

**A:** If you are found at a bad spot, go back and forth at a load transition across screens. This will wait out the clock, as guards take a moment to investigate the area you entered.

**Q: Why is it bad to hide in the same screen when you are found?**

**A:** Ghost Babel guards have surprisingly good pathing and searching. Even when the alert is cleared, guards will still wander around and search for you. This is particularly annoying at an elevator. That's why the load transition cheese is preferable.

=====Speedrun Mechanics=====

**Q: Do I need to mash to skip codecs?**

**A:** No, this is not MGS1. You just need to hold B to skip codecs and dialog.

**Q: What does the In Game Time track?**

**A:** The IGT tracks purely gameplay on a frame by frame basis. Game Boy refresh rate is 59.7hz, so there aren't 60 frames in a second. This means cutscenes, load times, menus, codecs, and result screens are not tracked. Additionally, any lag in the game is accounted for. The only place where IGT fails is in Stage 13, as Viper's dialog ticks through IGT. This makes the Japanese version slightly faster. Due to these factors, the IGT in Ghost Babel is robust, and allows for //mostly// fair competition between any version.

**Q: What are the differences between versions?**

**A:** Depending on the language you select, this will affect how much real time the run takes. For example, the Japanese script saves approximately 5 minutes over English. PAL languages (Spanish, Italian, German, and French) have not been tested for speed. In addition, non-Japanese languages lose IGT on Stage 13 due to Viper dialog not stopping the timer.

**Q: What is the thermal goggles skip?**

**A:** This is an intended sequence break by the developers. You can avoid picking up the thermal goggles in Stage 05, removing a conveyor belt cycle entirely.  If you die in the dark room where the lasers are, you can manipulate the laser pattern by exiting and re-entering the room. Then, perform a timed buffer to get through the lasers. On the way back, we stay in the room without exiting and re-entering to manipulate after death. It is very important that you DO NOT talk to Jimmy if you are doing thermal goggles skip, or else the story flag will continue you at Jimmy, rather than the dark room.

**Q: What is the Nikita skip?**

**A:** In Stage 08, we can skip picking up the Nikita on the second floor. This removes the entire maze section and some boring vent crawling on 2F. This skip abuses the fact that the electric floor preventing our progress on 1F is only active for a small portion of the floor. By causing an alert and luring a guard, we can go into a pixel perfect position by the floor, take damage, and abuse i-frames to go past the electrified floor.

**Q: What is the camshot glitch?**

**A:** By firing an unsuppressed gun, at certain distances turrets and cameras will not shoot or see you. This allows for faster strategies and avoiding the use of chaff grenades. 

**Q: Why menu during every elevator?**

**A:** The animation of the elevator door closing and opening when inside the elevator happens regardless of whether or not the menu is open. Thus, you can save IGT by menuing when Snake presses the directional button or when the elevator lands at the floor. You want to do as many item and weapon menus as possible during elevators because of this.

**Q:  What is the best way to move?**

**A:** Diagonal movement should be done as much as possible in this game, due to its benefits against guards and how easy it is to round corners. Running diagonally does not lose speed over running linearly!

**Q: What is the best way to turn?**

**A:** Snake must literally rotate his model to move in a new direction. This is most obvious from a standstill. Optimally performed, it is best to rotate Snake manually. For example, if he is facing down and must go up, you would roll downleft, left, upleft, up very quickly, OR downright, right, upright, up very quickly. This is more relevant for VR Missions and Stage Individual Levels, as the time loss in a Full Game run is fairly minor (frames) compared to simply holding up.