Bugs:Superliminal
This page details bugs of Superliminal.
Contents
Physics Interactions
 | Please elaborate. Having more detail is always a good thing. Specifically: The explanations here are deliberately a bit vague since I don't really understand the code that causes warps and launches to happen |
Warps
If you rotate an object so that it's inside of yourself, dropping it will result in the object becoming extremely large. This is likely because the game doesn't know where to place the object, so it instead resorts to placing it in the void (this is a glitch in itself, see the Void Placement section). Since the object is being perceived close to the player but is being placed far away, the perspective mechanic then causes it to become massive. The object will become so massive, in fact, that in most cases it will disappear on the next frame, because the game deletes it as a failsafe for being so far away from the center of the map.
This can be combined with a normal physics mechanic to result in by far the most broken glitch in the game. If the player is ever inside of an object, UnityEngine.CharacterController will attempt to push them out, seemingly by launching them upwards. However, if there's no space above the player, the game will teleport the player to the edge of the object instead. So, if you rotate an object inside of yourself and drop it whilst underneath a ceiling, you will be teleported across the map to wherever the edge of the massive object is instantly. The size, position and rotation of the object can be manipulated to teleport to specific places.
Launches
As mentioned above, the player will be launched upwards if they are ever inside of an object. This is very easy to trigger in this game, and these launches can often clip you through ceilings and will increase in speed and height with a higher framerate. Some scenarios which can cause the player to launch:
- Pushing an object into a wall
- Jumping into an object which is on top of you and is touching the ceiling
- Placing an object inside of your feet, which is only really possible in Clone where you can look directly downwards
- Placing an object inside of yourself in the same way as you do for a warp whilst you are not under a ceiling
- Vaulting onto uneven pieces of geometry whilst not holding any directions
- Walking into a corner which sticks out, such as those in Blackout
- Being inside of or on top of a thin wall, such as between the chessboard tiles in Whitespace
Portals
Who knew that seamless portals to other parts of a map might not be easy to make bug-free?
Glitches
On the first two versions of the game, 1.0.2019.11.11.963 and 1.0.2019.11.12.1005, portals would trigger far too easily. This meant that simply bringing an object with a portal attached to it too close to the player would cause you to teleport to the other side of the portal, regardless of size - if the object was small, then the player would become massive and clip out of bounds, often hitting so many objects and triggers at once that the game could crash. Since gravity wasn't changed based on player size in these versions, being this massive could also make it seem as though you were flying, since you fall incredibly slowly for your size. "Entering" a portal in this way is known as a portal glitch.
Slides
As of version 1.10.2020.7.6.877 (and presumably before) you can slide out of bounds by slowly walking against the edge of most portals. This is likely a side effect of how portal glitches were fixed, since these portal slides are seemingly possible due to portals being too unlikely to trigger - the opposite cause to portal glitches. This is possible on most portals in the game, although it's usually only possible to get out of bounds on one side of each portal, and not the other.
Vaults
When the player vaults up a ledge, their collision is completely disabled until they've finished vaulting. This sounds exploitable, but the game checks if there's something between the player and the ledge before it initiates the vault, so surely that couldn't be the case, right?
Clips
When looking for things between the player and the ledge, the game will often miss walls which are very thin. This means that if one of these walls is the only thing separating you and a ledge, then you can often vault through the wall. There's a surprising amount of locations where this is possible; you can clip through a wall if you jump into:
- Induction: The wall in front of the green pallet truck which is in the area past the ending fall
- Optical: The invisible wall under the second set of stairs after the illusion door, jumping from the barrel underneath it
- Cubism: The top of the constellation room entrance
- Cubism: The top of the window past the cube which is attached to the floor
- Cubism: The wall that the grabbable vent is on, jumping from the pipe
- Cubism: The top of the horizontal sliding cube after pushing it into the wall
- Cubism: The right side of the doorway which is behind the final blueprint
- Clone: The wall above the entrance to the clock room, jumping from the pipe which you can get up to by cloning clocks
- Dollhouse: The wall above the entrance to the bouncy castle hallway, jumping from the lockers which you can get up to by doing parkour on the various objects in the hallway
- Labyrinth: The wall above the door which you click, jumping from the pole next to the sideways doorframe
- Labyrinth: The wall above the entrance to the room with the large broken painting, jumping from the light next to the sideways door
- Whitespace: The middle of the garage door, jumping from the thin ledge at the bottom of the door which you can get up to by jumping from the barrel
- The top of most constellation room exits
- The wall of any elevator, jumping from the right side of the fire extinguisher if it's in an ending hallway, or from the ground if it's one of the others in Labyrinth
- This includes the beginning of Labyrinth, allowing you to skip the entire level by entering the inaccessible elevator
This is not a comprehensive list - vault clips which require you to jump from an object or vault clips which go from out of bounds to inbounds have been excluded, and there's probably some others that have been missed as well.
Redirection
CanJumpLerp.canLerp is the Boolean which determines if there is something between the player and the ledge. Fortunately for us, it's delayed by a frame - a detail which essentially allows the player to redirect vaults.
To perform a vault redirect, you need to move your camera on the same frame that a vault starts (which is easier said than done). Since it's a frame behind, canLerp will still be set to true regardless of if your new camera position is valid for a vault or not, meaning that the code for vaulting will pass. The target position is then set based on your new camera position, and you will vault towards it whilst ignoring all collision. canLerp will be set to false on the subsequent frame, but it will be too late.
The result of this is being able to clip out of bounds almost anywhere, performed by moving your camera to face a wall on the same frame that you start a vault next to it. You can also partially clip into things, meaning that you can displace objects or get launched. This glitch is significantly easier at a lower framerate (20-30 is recommended) as you will have more time to turn your camera, because the frame that the vault starts on is longer.
In case you're curious, canLerp is delayed by a frame because of the order of execution in Unity. In the context of this glitch, there are three relevant events which happen every frame, those being the general game logic, the physics and the mouse input handling. Unity orders them like this:
- Physics
- Mouse input handling
- General game logic
Crucially, canLerp is set using the OnTrigger events, making it part of the physics. You might be able to see the problem - this variable is set at the start of the frame, before the mouse input is handled, meaning that it is set based on the camera position from the previous frame. After this, the mouse input is handled and the new camera position is set, and the vaulting logic will then use this to determine the vault's target position.
Portal Entry
A minor bug which doesn't abuse the fact that collision is disabled is vaulting into a portal. If a portal has a ledge directly above it then the player can vault into the top of the portal, teleporting them through it once the vaulting animation finishes. With static portals, such as the exit to the astral city in Whitespace, this can simply look weird and place the player in an unintended position. With portals that are part of grabbable objects, this can result in you exiting the portal with a bigger player size than intended, such as with many of the objects in Dollhouse or the painting in Labyrinth.
Objects
Pushing Through Barriers
If you have the right technique, the barriers in this game aren't as strong as they seem. Some objects only require pushing yourself up against them whilst they're in front of the barrier, whilst others can be glitched through by double clicking on them whilst they're at the player's feet.
Void Placement
If the game can't figure out where an object should be placed, it will place it really far away in the direction that the player is facing instead, which is almost always in the void. Since it's far away from the center of the map, it will also become static. The main situations where this happens are:
- Placing an object above you when you are directly beneath a ceiling
- Placing an object in a portal when you are very close to entering the portal
- Placing an object whilst you are inside of a wall or another object
Preservation
The area that you can grab an object extends slightly further than its collision. This means that you can position an object in such a way where you can grab the edge of it whilst clicking on something else behind it at the same time, since it won't be blocked by the object's collision. This can be used in Labyrinth and Whitespace to bring an object past the clocks and light switch respectively.
Miscellaneous
Hall 06
In the exit sign puzzle in Labyrinth, it is possible to reach a sixth hallway by grabbing the dice block in the pool staircase room, placing it near the entrance of the hallway, and making the dice block big enough so you can jump back into the door. Then by walking back to the start of the hallway, the sign above the middle doors will now read "HALL 06", and then the player would be softlocked in a never-ending hallway maze.
Do note that it's not possible to re-enter the hallway puzzle area if the dice block has already teleported in the pool staircase room, or if you have reset to checkpoint (otherwise the room would've turned into the egg room instead). Also, Hall 06 is not an unused room, since all the hallways use the same room and all the doors (except for the last one) are portals, and it's not possible to increase the number from here.
Intro Reverb
If the player decides to turn the Music volume all the way down to zero (or to a low volume) and play the Intro cutscene, Dr. Glenn Pierce's voice will now only have reverb. This is probably because the FMOD audio system is playing both the music and voice tracks in the music section of the audio, while the reverb effect is being output to voice section.
