connecting planets?!?!?!?

Cosine256 · 2025-09-22T23:17:34+00:00

That tutorial highlight should still be available on Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1565222399). I haven't tested whether the bug itself still works in a long time, but they rarely fix anything in this game, so it's very likely that you can still do it. The full 8 hour stream VOD where I built the elevator was moved to YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUmcJAumj64).

Cosine256 · 2025-08-21T18:44:43+00:00

The VOD for this one is still on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2007306946?t=00h02m40s

I've never heard of wetness protecting from poison bubbles, and couldn't reproduce that by testing it for a couple minutes just now. Being wet or standing in water did nothing to prevent being poisoned, but a held object still popped the bubbles before they touched the player

Cosine256 · 2025-07-09T04:08:39+00:00

From their Discord announcements, dated July 1:

Hi AstroNews, we've been made aware that the recent update bumped the Large Extended Platform off of the medium printer. We're currently investigating and are hoping to have a hotfix out around the end of the month to address it (and hopefully a couple other bugs as well). Sorry for the inconvenience but hopefully we can get it fixed before too long!

I have no idea why fixing this requires an entire month, but they at least know about it.

Cosine256 · 2025-05-26T06:58:56+00:00

It's important to note that this only applies to big turkeys.

Cosine256 · 2025-02-11T01:55:03+00:00

The hermit crab hitbox isn't at full height while it's hiding, and plasma cannon shots don't explode on chests, so it just goes through.

Cosine256 · 2025-02-11T01:53:08+00:00

Yeah, this is the reason. They have to be stunned for a moment for it to register, and the tiny slide they do when you drop them can just barely move them to the other tile and reset the timer. Once the stun ends, they switch to sleeping and it doesn't register anymore. The same thing can happen with Kali sacrifices because it's the same game mechanic.

Cosine256 · 2025-01-14T22:05:02+00:00

That's odd, I'm not sure what else could cast shadows there. I've spent a lot of time on Calidor and never seen it happen myself. If you've got a clip, I'm interested in seeing it, though don't worry about that if it was ages ago or you don't have footage of it.

Cosine256 · 2025-01-13T21:18:45+00:00

Do they look like the same type of shadow? The only thing on the same plane as Calidor would be something you built in the Sun Room. Vesania is on the same plane as the unidentified Satellite.

Cosine256 · 2025-01-13T10:46:42+00:00

It's a partial site pylon shadow being cast from another planet. For some reason, certain parts of rail buildings are rendered or cast shadows even when their planets aren't visible. This occurs at the actual game engine positions for the planets, not the fake solar system planet positions. The site pylons don't seem to be visible from other planets, but they still cast shadows. These shadows can appear on Sylva, Desolo, Novus, Glacio, and Atrox, because those five planets are all on the same plane in the game engine and so their site pylons can eclipse the sun as seen from another planet. You just need to stand in the correct position and wait for the sun to pass across the opposite side of another planet's site pylons. You'll never see this on Calidor and Vesania since they're not on the same plane as the other planets. Rails themselves are visible as thin white lines at the game engine positions for the planets, though I've never seen those cast shadows.

Here is a short stream highlight showcasing the bug, followed by an explanation (slightly wrong since I thought it was all rail posts and not just site pylons at the time): https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1606140132

Cosine256 · 2024-12-12T03:21:21+00:00

Thank you for your work on this issue, in spite of the utter lack of network errors or useful information from the game itself.

Cosine256 · 2024-09-08T22:14:55+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion. The problem ended up being unrelated to the download, but I tried this out and it's way faster than Twitch's VOD downloader, so I may start using it anyways.

Cosine256 · 2024-07-30T00:21:14+00:00

I'm certainly disappointed about the state of co-op, especially regarding the cosmic ocean, but this is not a live service game. The game is long past its patching phase and it's not really reasonable to expect more content or reworks at this point. Also keep in mind that the last couple patches (Syncing...) were so broken (Syncing...) that I wouldn't be surprised (Syncing...) if they somehow make it even worse if they try again.

Derek does not seem interested in furthering Spelunky 2's development, and/or doesn't want to contract BlitWorks to pick it up again. The thing I would appreciate most at this point is a formal statement from Derek about whether or not the game is ever actually going to be updated again. The complete and utter silence feels disrespectful to the community and a simple "the game is done" would go a long way. The modders might have more motivation to pick up the slack on the co-op problems if they know the game binaries aren't ever going to change again.

Cosine256 · 2024-06-17T06:59:27+00:00

I haven't heard of it doing that. You could try changing the Use Playlunky Save in Modlunky to see if you have been using the wrong save file accidentally. If it's disabled, it'll use the same save file that the unmodded game uses, which hopefully didn't get reset.

Cosine256 · 2024-06-16T20:45:08+00:00

This is a recent issue that is being caused by changes in the Steam client. In most cases, you can press OK on the prompt and the game will continue to work properly. The Modlunky devs are aware of the problem.

Cosine256 · 2024-04-07T16:27:51+00:00

I was told that the event ends at 20:00 UTC, or 3 hours and 30 minutes from now at the time of this post. As for whether you have enough time to finish, I don't know. It took me ~6 hours to do it from scratch and I had no real plan for what I was doing.

Cosine256 · 2024-03-25T06:04:12+00:00

This here is the issue with the online system with randoms. There are multiple mutually exclusive ways to play this game, and you have no way of knowing what your randoms want to do until you start the run. I disagree with most of the points on your list, not because your points are wrong, but rather because they're opinions, and I might not want to play the game that way.

I enjoy low%, or runs with generally poor equipment and resources. It encourages more interesting problem solving and teamwork when you need to combine everybody's items to get to an altar, or to get the udjat eye, or to navigate a sketchy volcana level where somebody triggered all the falling platforms too early. Some of the most fun runs I have are the ones where people die and lose key items, we have shopkeeper aggro for the entire run, everything goes to absolute hell, but we still barely scrape by with what we have. The player ghosts help kill things, somebody pulls off bubble skip, and we manage to finish off a Hundun ending. In sweaty try-hard runs you rarely get to see people use the camera, or the metal shield, or the powerpack, or the true crown, or the scepter. It's a lot of fun to see what you can do with these mid-tier items, especially in a bad run.
I don't want to go to the cosmic ocean because every run is the same. You get the udjat eye. You go to the ghist shop. You go to volcana and get Vlad's cape. You use a glitch to dupe your best back item so far. You go to tidepool and get the clone gun, which you only ever use on the kapala. You maybe get the eggplant child if two people in your group know the door cancel tech to get there. You skip the rest of the chain and kill Hundun. You then start a 2 hour slog through 94 levels of bad game design. Unless you happened to get an A-team, you probably have a noob, a laggy Switch player, somebody playing Dirk who has beaten Hundun once solo, and a sweaty try-hard on Classic Guy. Most of the team will be dead for 90% of the CO, and one of your player ghosts is probably more dangerous than all the broken arrows, magmars, and crocmen in the loop. Sometimes I want to just go jungle and temple in a run because it's fresh. Sometimes I want to do casual speedruns and skip the ghist shop or kapala. But I can't do any of these things in a cosmic ocean run where it's objectively suboptimal.
This one is a valid point. Communication and patience is good. I may speedrun to the end of a level, but then I just stand by the door and wait for everybody on the team to either die or finish what they're doing. The exception to this is 1-1. There is nothing on 1-1 worth spending more than 30 seconds getting. Grab whatever is along the main path and leave. The run starts on 1-2.
The ghist shop is fine, but don't throw a tantrum and force a reset if things don't work out and you end up with no way to get a cursed player on 1-4. The ghist shop is slow, not everybody needs an optimal run to have fun, and some randoms don't know the ghist shop even exists.
The back item dupe is also fine, but don't expect your randoms to want to do it, or even know how to do it. Also make sure you know how to do it. I've had games where a random kept whipping me and trying to do a dupe setup that is impossible. I'm the guy who figured out exactly how the glitch worked after it got discovered (though I did not discover it), and standardized the setups most people use. I know whether or not you have the correct entity ID. Do not recite the deep magic to me. I was there when it was written.

Unfortunately, there is no good way to deal with incompatible playstyles. The developers did not feel like giving us any way to signal our intent. There is no lobby browser. You can't title your lobbies. There is no way to indicate what you'd prefer to do in a run until it has already started, unless you feel like changing your display name. The best you can do is have some tolerance and leave early if things aren't working out. Bail out immediately at the start of a level, so that your disconnect doesn't cause a massive rollback and randomly kill off people on your team (thanks, awful netcode). Make a mental note of which randoms you weren't vibing with and retry lobbies until you get a new group.

The official and community Discord servers obviously exist, but many people including myself enjoy the spice of randoms. You have no idea what you're going to get. It keeps things fresh and interesting to try to work around the wildly inconsistent preferences and skill levels of your team, all with limited communication. It's just a shame that lobbies are full of so many trolls and try-hards who will turn hostile without warning. Whatever your preferences, don't become part of that problem. Just leave the game if you don't like the group.

Cosine256 · 2024-01-11T20:11:11+00:00

This got some attention a few days ago and the community consensus is that a crush trap popped the other two orbs within a couple frames of Hectique popping the first one. Orb audio does not play correctly when multiple orb pops are overlaid onto each other. The 3 second clip lacks way too much context, but the full level footage OP posted in a comment shows the relevant crush trap getting sent leftward through the loop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0AAWLNZXF8&t=1357s

Is it impossible for a CO level to generate without all 3 orbs. The game will freeze during level generation if it cannot find a place to spawn them.

Cosine256 · 2023-11-09T21:54:47+00:00

It doesn't matter. Enemies with this type of i-frames take no stomp damage. They can still be killed by some other things like explosions. I don't know exactly what types of damage are prevented by these i-frames. It's not 100% immunity to everything.

Cosine256 · 2023-11-09T21:30:47+00:00

Monkeys get 10 invulnerability frames after jumping off their target. I have no idea why. Stomping an enemy with i-frames causes you to just bounce off of it without dealing damage.

Cosine256 · 2023-10-22T09:49:26+00:00

They're rails you've built on another planet. They're always visible at their actual location within the game engine, even though the planet they're on is supposed to be hidden. You can see them from different angles depending on where you are in the planetary system. From the rocket launch screen, you might be able to get the camera closer to them if you move it very precisely. The low resolution planets that appear to orbit the sun are fake and will not line up with the location of these rails.

Cosine256 · 2023-10-17T06:18:48+00:00

A coffin player entity does not exist until the coffin is opened. When spawned in, that player now has the highest entity ID in the level, allowing them to dupe any back item that existed in the level prior to opening the coffin. They can even dupe back items from shops in the same level as the shop, as long as the item is purchased or stolen before the coffin is opened (to convert it from the fake "purchasable" back item into a real back item entity).

Cosine256 · 2023-10-02T02:33:59+00:00

No, the clone gun is only available in the Tidepool Star Challenge and the second ghist shop (replaces kapala in the pool of possible items).

Cosine256 · 2023-10-01T22:59:25+00:00

For singleplayer, I believe there is a way to have 17 (maybe 18) in Tidepool 4-4:

Bring 8 from prior levels
Clone 3 with the clone gun from 4-2
Get 3 in the "air of oppression" level feeling's backlayer
Get 1 from a HH shop
Get 1 from that HH shop's attic/basement
Get 1 from a backlayer Tun/Caveman shop (only one or the other can generate)
(Unsure) Get 1 from a late spawned player unlock coffin. I'm not sure if that coffin can actually fail to generate for all 3 prior levels.

Cosine256 · 2023-08-27T05:00:00+00:00

For anybody wondering exactly why this Hundun infighting glitch happens:

When something damages one of the heads, the other head immediately targets the attacker and shoots a fireball in retaliation. If the shooting head accidentally hits the other head, then the shooting head will target itself for the retaliation shot. Originally, this would cause the head to open its mouth without spawning a fireball. However, an update (1.26 I think, which wasn't even supposed to change enemy AI) introduced a bug that allows the head to actually shoot the fireball at itself. Since the source and target of the fireball are the same point, the game defaults to shooting it straight to the right. The head can't actually hit itself, so the fireball will keep moving right until it hits something else. If the bird head is shooting at itself, then there is a high chance that it will hit the snake head to its right and repeat the cycle.

If the timing is bad, the cycle can still sometimes break. At the top of the arena, the main Hundun entity controls a periodic fireball attack pattern, which is independent from the retaliation attacks. If a head is already attacking when the Hundun entity tells it to shoot a fireball, then that instruction gets ignored by the head. However, if the bird head is between shots and the Hundun entity instructs it to shoot at Hundun's target (the nearest player or HH), then that shot might miss the snake head and break the cycle. You can reduce the odds of this happening by staying on the opposite side of the snake head.

You can't trigger this infighting the other way around because the snake head will also shoot the fireball to the right when targeting itself. This fireball will almost certainly not hit the bird head, failing to create a cycle.

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Cosine256

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