MDK Speed Run

Tricks and techniques for speedrunning the game MDK. There are spoilers - don't read this if you're going to play the game yourself before.

Descriptions here obey the rules of speeddemosarchive.com; anything that violates them (and thus preventing a speed run from being accepted) should be marked as such.

This description also assumes that the reader has already played MDK. Thus this is not a playthrough but rather a collection of tricks for speed runners.

Game overview
The game consists of 6 levels. Each level consists of the following parts (in that order):
 * Freefall (not in level 6)
 * Traversal
 * Stream (not in level 6)

Freefall
This part has a constant duration that cannot be influenced AFAIK. During this part you can collect 3 to 4 extras and should avoid radar (or missiles if you touch the radar ray). Getting hit by a missile will lower your health.

Traversal
The most interesting part and the only part that's truly different between levels. General tricks:
 * Turbo: don't forget to press the turbo key which makes you run much faster.
 * Strafe running: run and strafe at the same time. Velocity vectors are added, accelerating you by about 40% compared to running forward.
 * Try to end this part (except level 6 where it doesn't matter) with health as low as possible in order to end the "Stream" part quickly.

Level 2

 * Caveat: You cannot take a shortcut in the "big gun room" by jumping over the trench. Although you seem to run through this room two times during this level these are two different rooms; beyond the trench there's just void.

Stream
This is your chance to collect health for the next level.
 * If you manage to reach the powerup you'll start the next level with health 150.
 * If you don't reach the powerup you'll start the next level with health 100.
 * If you lose too much health by touching the wall too often (or die right before this part starts) it'll end immediately and you'll start the next level with health 50. This is of course the best choice for speed runs.

Other stuff
This game can be played as individual levels. The only thing that's transferred from one level to the next is health.

This run is done on the PC version, if anyone ever tries to run this game on PSX feel free to add differences between platforms if there are any.

If levels themselves are to be segmented you might need to download "F2 save" patches which enable you to save almost anywhere within traversal. Although these patches are official they are difficult to obtain nowadays, unfortunately. Some game versions already have this "F2 save" ability and don't need to be patched.

Whether you use the "95" (software rendering) or "D3D" (hardware accelerated) version is up to you. The D3D version has smoothed textures and (if you change gfx settings) also antialiased edges. But IMHO this too clearly exposes the fact that this games uses few polygons. And the "D3D" version has some gfx glitches that aren't present in the "95" version.

Unaccepted tricks
These tricks are possible but will not be accepted by SDA. Maybe they can be appended to the speedrun as a kind of "outtakes".


 * Mapping mouse axes to movement. This allows much faster movement than usual but possible performance is heavily influenced by available mouse hardware (and possibly driver software). Running too fast can also crash the game.


 * In level 1 in the shooting range you can jump from the entrance over the side walls and glide around most of the shooting range into the bottommost room: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL4ZoOcZnwQ