Instant Morph/Unmorph

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Revision as of 07:15, 19 October 2021 by Whiskers (talk | contribs)
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Normally, unmorphing and morphing are fairly lengthy animations that can cost time in certain areas of a run. However, there are ways to skip this animation. To dertermine when to give Samus an Instant Unmorph, the game calculates the position the Camera should move to and performs a raytrace along this spline checking if there is collision along this path. If the camera is found to be blocked, the game will skip the unmorph animation entirely resulting in an instant unmorph. This calculation happens after you press X to unmorph and before it draws the next frame and therefore cant be viewed in memory. This trick is required for Bomb Space Jumps to work.

Prime

The camera in this game follows Samus much more strictly and will only allow for instant unmorphing. The camera can also pass through Actors, limiting ways to block the camera. Some ways to block the camera in this game are:

  • Walls/Collision
  • Enemies
  • Breaking the Camera Follow Feature


Echoes

Thankfully, in Prime 2 you can completely (or sometimes just partially) skip either animation in many places, which can save lots of time over the course of a run.

Common ways to obstruct the camera include:

  • Rolling off a ledge
  • Having your back against a wall
  • Quickly boosting around a wall
  • Jumping up towards a ceiling
  • Being in an area where you are cramped in between lots of nearby objects

In runs, the most common usage is to jump into the top of door frames and morph, which in almost every door in the game can give you an Instant Morph.

Note that there are some types of collision that will not give you an instant morph even if all of the above requirements are met, such as collision that is marked as "Camera Thru". (see also: Prime World Editor)

Corruption

The camera in this game is extremely broken and lenient. Instant Unmorphs can happen pretty much anywhere, even when there isn't even a wall. If the camera is even slightly blocked, an Instant Unmorph is possible.