Rayman 3 scores

[Cut]

Friendly reminder that there is a chaotic, sporadically active Discord where we love to obsess over points.

At the moment, I'm working on 133k points in LOTLD, a general idea of how that would work you can see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXBL51wBZCs

We have a bunch of other projects laying dormant as well, including an interesting possibility for cracking 130k points in SBTC (well, technically infinite). As you might know, MandM has like 133k in SBTC, and it's not hard to imagine how a game as glitchy as Rayman 3 might allow for a ton of kickflips somewhere, but finding those places is a whole other story.

[Hunchman801]

It's an ambitious combo! Have you been able to get each part to work separately, so as to validate that it's indeed possible as a whole? In any case, let us know how it goes.

[Cut]

Yes I have. The mistakes in my attempt are actually quite minor, the difficult parts all worked out, which is why I chose to upload it. Unfortunately, every attempt takes at least 10 minutes, and there's a good chance that the preparation itself goes wrong (for example the Hoodboom killing himself, or the red gem at the base of the tower disappearing), so even though it's not the most difficult combo, it still might take forever

The video shows the "simple" version which would yield 133.119 points total. There's a few extra yellow gems you can include (see the video description for that) which would bring the total up to 133.839, but they complicate things a lot.

I'm happy that it all works out so well at all. I've always taken LOTLD3 as a hopeless case for years, but it turns out the level can actually be strung together quite nicely. The points lost from items taken without a powerup is "only" 3350, so I'm confident that the combo is final and will remain free of IPG or PCM-headaches.

[Hunchman801]

That's very encouraging! Is the current maximum score still 122,659? If yes, then even the simple version would be a very significant improvement.

Also, how easy is it to get enough points in the sections leading up to part 3? Does that also involve difficult combos?

[Cut]

Actually, Maz released this monstrosity a couple of years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojqm_hBrDT4 which is the main reason I wanted to look into LOTLD3 at all, because nobody should ever suffer through this atrocity for such a meager improvement

Since the new combo takes quite a bit more stuff with a powerup, you only need 92.599 (for the simple version) rather than the 94.589 in Maz' video, so actually, it makes the first two parts a bit easier. You'd still want to finish part 2 with at least 91.000 points however, because otherwise, you will have to play a combo with the big stairs in the first tower, which will make preparation even more tedious and prone to failure than it already is.

These two walkthroughs have you covered pretty much exactly:
Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3OA2KKjnvM
Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL_g-yQ52WM

[Hunchman801]

Oh yeah, I remember when that combo was first shared. It certainly took some time to improve on it!

Also, I realize that the walkthroughs on the first page are quite antiquated, and that at least they should feature videos like the last two you shared. Same goes for the walkthroughs on the wiki. But then again, it probably makes sense for new scorers not to start with the hardest combos, so I'm not even sure what would be the best way to proceed here.

[Cut]

In case anyone has a hankering for infinite points, here go you. In theory, this should be stackable forever, but in practice, it's very finnicky and possibly RNG-dependent, so the highest Combo I ever managed to rack up was 16000. I haven't played around with this much and don't intend to, but this is a possible way to beat MandM's score of 133k (?) in SBTC.

[Hunchman801]

Any chance it could be combined with gems or enemies further down for a nice added bonus?

[Cut]

Any chance it could be combined with gems or enemies further down for a nice added bonus?

No, I tried that but it wasn't close. This is more of a proof of concept anyways. We always knew that infinite kickflips was a distinct possibility, and now we have an actual example, so I don't have to think about it anymore. At this point, I only play to find new Combos, so I don't intend to farm this trick (at least not anytime soon) for high scores.

[Hunchman801]

Anyway, what levels are you investigating at the moment besides those two?

[Cut]

After I've finished LOTLD3, I think most likely I'll look into TOTL again, as that level has not really seen any real progress since 2014, it's a big mess of sloppily connected ideas, and I don't even know what the final combo looks like at the moment. Apart from LOTLD, I can't really say that any level is finished at the moment however. Everything has at least something going on or some question unanswered.

[Maz]

Update since Cut brought up the topic, TOTL is kinda done already

The details might still need some working out, but bottom line is that a mid-combo launch has been found that allows you to start with the Green Gem at the bottom and get all the way to the top with the flying Hoodlums. Formerly, we were required to get those 7 flyers at the start of the final combo (for 3 x 400 and 4 x 600 combo points) because we had no good way to climb the whole tower before combo mode ran out, but now that we can get all of them for the maximum value of 1.000 points, TOTL is more or less solved.

[Hunchman801]

So, if I understand correctly, this is like the LOTLD combo, you've gotten all the pieces to work and it's just a matter of getting all of them right in one go? Also, does a video exist to illustrate the required steps?

[Maz]

This is the middle of the final combo. By "the details might still need some working out" I meant that we're not 100% sure yet which items can be included and which can't; as you can see in the video, there's a couple of awkwardly placed yellow gems around the SJ area.

But regardless of the details, the reason TOTL has been a question mark for the past 10 years is because we knew that getting to the tower mid combo would be a major improvement to the final combo (and by extension, the maximum score), but we didn't know how to achieve that. The exact value of the new maximum is still subject to investigation, but at least the biggest question has finally been answered, so TOTL is "done" in that sense.

[Hunchman801]

Any idea what theoretical maximum score this could translate into?

[Maz]

127.X29, with X probably being 2 or 3, but maaaybe something different

[Hunchman801]

That's a vast improvement! 119,009 is for finishing for the Armaguiddon combo, right?

[Maz]

Nah, anything above 110k is only possible in part 2, 119.009 is just a different combo order. I don't know who edited the Wiki on that, but 119.009 was also never the theoretical maximum, it was just a very good score without any of the combos that make you want to quit the game

The Armaguiddon "maximum" was platform dependent, and the highest it could go was 105.839 (if I recall correctly?). 1234 later found out that you can actually use a PCM during Reflux 3 to fly back to Xowar's secret, and get the 4 Green Gems with the yellow can for a final score of 110.499, so the whole Armaguiddon stuff was made irrelevant pretty quickly.

[Hunchman801]

The scoring information on the wiki is clearly outdated, but if anybody know which figures to replace it with, please let me know and I'll be glad to take care of it!

[Steo]

I've really not actually tried to play this game in a long time now. I broke 800k at some point and then basically started to not want to grind for the extra few thousand in any given level. I would still like to get back into it for fun at some point but I can't imagine being that good at it after not playing for so long.