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Bugs in Stunts

Slalom bug

This well known bug allows you to drive directly through a slalom block, provided you are going at a high speed. This renders the bug useless with almost any except the Indy. This bug is of great use if you are feeling completely dizzy from a winding part of a track, and, to your terror, find yourself in front of a slalom road without the slightest chance of going between the blocks. This is my theory about how this bug was discovered: Someone has just driven a long and hard track without replay handling, doing an extra fast finish, coming out of a chain of obstacles, finally spotting the finish line. Hope turns to despair as his eyes catch the sight of the slalom blocks approaching at a dazzling speed. Yelling a few unmentionable words and letting go of the keyboard to beat his fist on the table, he finds, to his surprise, that the game is asking him to type his name on the top of the high score list. He watches the replay, and there! Straight through the block... Not allowed in competitions with ISA rules.

Fence/water bug

This bug, which is not quite as well known as the slalom bug, allows you to drive over water if your car is facing and touching the black fence (also known as "the end of the world") all along. This yields great opportunities. For an example, say you are driving a track in the Corvette, let's call it "ZCT01", and you are discover that the others are doing much better than you, instead of actually driving the whole track, you could jump off something like a banked road and onto the water, crossing the water like that instead, and going through the rest of the track at power gear speed.

I find this bug very weird. That you can go through a slalom block is easier to understand, it probably has something to do with animation speed versus the size of the block and such. But this bug is very illogical. I think the reason is one of these two:

  1. Mindscape is a very religious company, and they want you to see that if you stick to the way of truth (the fence), you can actually walk (drive) on water. (like Jesus)

  2. The fence is actually highly magnetical, which means that it grabs hold of your car, and actually keeps it above the water. However, your motor is still stronger than the magnetism, so you can turn away at any time.

Loop bug

This bug is very similar to the slalom bug. It allows you to drive straight through an otherwise solid loop, saving valuable time and trouble. You have to go very fast in order to do this, and sometimes you may even have to try about a thousand times. It was probably caused by a Stunts competition the the programmers had before the release of the game. One guy particularly wanted to win, but it turned out that the others were just a little better than him. So he buys them all a ticket to a movie or something, and then when they've left, the little bastard goes and changes the code so that he can drive through loops. When they come back, he beats them, and of course blames the error on the others. Not allowed in competitions with ISA rules.

Bridge bug

Now here is a very very strange bug, that challenges gravity itself. It allows you to drive UNDER a bridge. Not just below it on the grass, actually right on the other side of it, with two wheels touching the underside. You have to turn sharply while you do it, and unfortunately, you will crash when you reach the other side of the bridge. That particular part makes sure that this bug is just as funny as it is completely useless.

Boulevard bug

This is, in contradiction to the others, a very annoying bug that causes you to drown. If someone has been cruel enough to make a track on water, and place a boulevard on it, then you can actually not land on the middle of that boulevard, because it is actually made of green water with some waterplants that look a lot like trees on it. Silly. However, those who made the game cannot be held responsible for this, since they had never actually allowed roads on water. So I guess it's just their way of saying "Don't mess with the game or you'll drown!". This bug is, unlike the others, very easy to do (or rather, not to do)

Tall building/Magician bug

I don't think many of you have heard of this curious bug. The big blocks - placed in some tracks to make them look like cities - all look very solid and safe, but I have proved that they are definitely not. You can actually drive right through them, if you use a little magic. What you do is drive up to the building, knock on the door (they will understand if you just crash the front of your car into the building several times), keep knocking the door, wave your magic wand, and then at one point, a nice invisible man comes out and opens it, and you can drive right through the building. Download this replay to see the trick performed by Bonzai "Wizard" Joe.

Jump bug 1

Sometimes when you come to a jump, completely unsuspecting, you will find that gravity is very strong today, and definitely pulls you down faster than usually. This has advantages and disadvantages. Of course if you are coming down in front of a slalom road or a corkscrew, you have a problem. But if, for an example, you are coming down right in front of a long long pipe, you're golden! It is these meaningless little coincidences that seem to often rule the Stunts competitions.

Jump bug 2

Sometimes when you come to a jump, completely unsuspecting, you will find that gravity is taking a lunchbreak, and definitely doesn't do it's usual effort to pull you down to the ground. This means that you make a beautiful, high jump - it almost tickles in your stomach. This is not often very good for anyone except your competitors, because most of the time, from above is not a very good place to approach obstacles from. In fact, I can't name one obstacle which is better to enter from above than from below. A tunnel maybe? A pipe maybe if you are Roy Wiegerinck?

Jump bug 3

Sometimes when you come to a jump, completely unsuspecting, you will find that gravity has finally gone totally insane and, instead of pulling you towards the ground, pushes you far up in the air. So far up that the office buildings down on Earth start to look like holes in the ground.

Now, the Stunts cars are well built. Actually the Stunts cars are very well built. Well, honestly speaking, the Stunts cars are more solid than any other cars in the world. They can drop about 200 meters and not crash.

The only advantage of this bug is that you can save your replay and then your friends can go "oooh" and "aaah" as they watch you fly. At least it would be if any of your friends liked Stunts.

Hill / invisible wall bug

Once you've fallen off a jump for some reason or another - gravity working better or worse, you being drunk, whatever - you may find that you are driving in the power gear. So far so good. Now, the problem comes when you try to get down from the hill you are driving on. This is because all hills are surrounded by a lethal force field that - if you drive through it - causes you to crash when you land on the ground. Now this bug is unlike any other, because it has a cure. If you don't think it's so cool to crash into invisible walls, you can press escape just before you come to the wall (and I mean JUST before), then continue and nothing happens :)

Power gear bug

This very well known bug allows your Car (if it's an Indy, Corvette, Ferrari or ACURA), when in the 5th gear, to get to top speed in a jump. Now that's all very fine, but when your car is driving at this top speed, it can drive over grass without losing speed. This turns Stunts into a completely different, and in my opinion, better game. It's another aspect to take into account when you consider how to make the optimal time on any track. And hey, more speed, more joy!

Paint bug

There are of course big unemployment problems in the USA, just like in many other countries. This has caused various different ways of activation to evolve. One of them is clearly visible in the Stunts tracks. Even unemployed people without qualification can go out and paint lines on the streets, and so they have done. As there are obviously far too many workers like these, some of them have been ordered to paint lines on the underside of bridge roads. This helps no one at all, but at least it gives the roadworkers something to do for a living. I don't want to think about how they did it, but it must have been expensive.

Death bug

This is a different bug from the rest. When we race with our 6 friends from the Mindscape team, they hardly ever make it through the track. In fact they have a nasty habit of banging into the wall at 100 mph. But even then, they somehow survive, and you can just drive with them again the next time. One of them has 28 years of experience, so there is probably an answer to this enquiry.

Replay bug

This bug is on the verge of being a felony! Just when you've driven a replay that you are really proud of, when you rewind and look forward to watching your nice driving, you are shown something completely different! Most of the time just a car that drives on to the grass, turns at various occasions, and then crashes at some weird place. But! This bug only happens if you've been cheating in one of these two ways: 1: Using the "Let's drive" button in the Main Menu, then quickly pressing escape and choosing "Continue driving" from the replay menu. This allows you to start driving directly from the truck, but unfortunately it messes up your replay. 2: If you have rewinded and continued your replay, this bug can sometimes occur. I haven't figured out why and when, but I think it's got something to do with power gear also.

Quick finish bug

If a track starts with a straight road, and then splits into two ways, you can take advantage of this little bug. What you do is go past the division (straight forward) and then turn sharply to the same side as the other road went. Then suddenly, without even coming close to the finish line, you're done, and can put a ridiculously fast time on the scoreboard. Actually if you ask me, this bug isn't much fun. The origin of it is obvious: After the guy I mentioned when writing about the loop bug had included the loop bug, he beat the other guys' times, but then a few days later, they beat them back because they are just better! Then our friend got really pissed and decided to make a super time that could never be beaten... and so did the quick finish bug come into existence.

Airplane bug

This bug is a very important factor in many competitions. It is very hard to predict, and it can be incredibly useful, but also annoying, in many situations. When you are driving at a very high speed. Most often when you are driving at top speed (245 mph), your car will sometimes leap off the ground like an airplane, for no apparent reason. This bug is so important because it increases your speed, or allows you to keep a high speed while going over grass. Thus, it can save you very much time. It takes very much luck to do, so it's a special reward to those who spend many hours on the tracks. On some tracks, there are situations where an airplane jump is almost necessary to do a certain track part fast, and that is a problem in competitions, because then the people who have the time to sit and try again and again will get much better times than those who don't, regardless of driving skills. The airplane bug can also be annoying, because it can mean you jump over the place where you had to rejoin the road, or turn to a side, and besides, it's a longer way than just going straight forward. But in most cases, it's a good thing. It probably exists due to the dubious (to say the least) physics engine of Stunts.

Submitted by Bonzai Joe on 2003-01-03.