Disco Zones and other Disco Stuff

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This is a Gateway Article. It gives an overview about different things in Journey, that the community calls "disco".

**Disco** means "fast changing colors or flickering in different colors".

**Disco Zones** - areas where disco stuff happens.

As far as known, disco things exist only in Out of Bounds (OOB).

### What is it?

Known disco-things in *Journey* are:

* Disco terrain / Disco areas, where the terrain becomes disco.
* Disco War Machine / Disco WM - is a War Machine that can be found out of bounds in the Underground level, notable for its flickering colors.
* Disco Wayfarer - can be found in the Underground OOB level. The most impressive Disco WF is on the PC version. Though on PS3/PS4 you can get a Disco Wayfarer for some seconds, while sliding too. See videos here: videos about the PlayStation Disco Wayfarer

#### Related Phenomenons

* Color ripples and Rainbow symbols in Paradise.
* Rainbow sands that occur right before Zimcloak is triggered.
* Starfields

### How and where to do it

To add: Information about Disco Zones in each level (could be also "not found yet / assumed there is no") how to get there and eventual platform differences.

There is a theory that for example in Underground, the whole area to the east and below the surface is a Disco Zone. Some holes to slip below to the North and the Disco WM to the South.

### Disco areas / terrain becomes disco

A part of the surrounding or terrain becomes disco.

See a video here: Paradise\_(OOB)#Disco\_Zone.

Known disco areas were found in the Out of Bounds areas of Pink Desert and Paradise.

   If the effect looks (a bit) different on those platforms, should be verified by adding short videos about the effect.

#### Paradise

This Disco Zone is located on the North-East slope of the main mountain, near its base. Although the area is obscured by white fog, it's very easy to find knowing the exact location.

The following is perhaps the easiest path:

* Start from the East side of the Monolith (at terrain level right below the Farewell Area i.e. mountain peak). Be sure to clear the East wind wall by following it towards North until the wind ends.
* Head straight East using the light ray / mountain peak behind you as a reference (walk with your camera pointing backwards).
* Keep walking until you cross a dark blue wall which is the base of the Mountain mesh. The area is foggy and washed out but the wall is pretty obvious when you hit it.
* Hug that wall and follow it to the North until the fog changes from bluish white to somewhat clearer milky white, you'll see a sudden change in the mountain slope's geometry.
* Walk a bit further making sure to get outside of the Mountain mesh, and the Disco Zone will be right there.

This area is very close to the Northern Blackness so be careful when walking further North as you may fall into a gravity well, hit the Blackness at the same time, and get disoriented.

The video below shows how to locate this Disco Zone consistently (the video follows the path explained above):

 This Disco Zone is different from other Disco Zones such as Disco Wayfarer and Underground Disco Zones as it doesn't rely on terrain clipping. Whether or not it is unique to PS4 is unclear.

A similar area exists on the West side of the map, but the glitch there is just a black bar (no disco colors).

#### Original discovery

Below is the first known video of this Disco Zone. For a long time it remained the only recorded observation, until a thorough investigation revealed the exact location of the zone which made it possible to navigate to it quite easily.

The Disco Zone can be observed near the 3-minute mark.

### In-Depth-Analysis

Space to talk about, why it happens and other further information.

Although details differ, all disco effects are produced by some unexpected behaviour in the pixel shaders (the GPU code that is responsible for generating elements of the 3D world on a 2D viewport).

The following appear to be common patterns in Journey:

* **Mesh shaders:** Disco zones at the lower edges of meshes (mountains) where regular color textures (sand/rock etc) are not applied correctly and instead interim values such as normal vectors are exposed as colors. These seem to occur with the parts of the meshes that are below terrain level.
* **Cloth shaders**: Flickering wayfarer robe occurs when clipping below terrain (such as in the Underground), likely because surround illumination color cannot be resolved accurately affecting the colors cast on the cloth. In the case of Underground it also happens outside the skybox (another element that's expected to provide some color values and may not work as expected when going beyond "normal"). In some other areas the effect is just plain color rather than disco. Clipping into terrain also confuses cloth dynamics (spinning scarf) which results in rapid changes to various attributes, combined with shader bugs this may produce rapidly changing colors.
* Glitches outside the skybox where environment and fog colors are not calculated correctly resulting in flickering and other effects.

## Videos and Images

### Disco Zone in Paradise

* Enhanced contrast
* Matching non-disco zone on the west side

## See also

 Other general Out of Bounds (OOB) articles

Blackness • Chapter Select (OOB) • Crash Zones • Dune settings and PC glitches • Hidden chirp symbol • Hidden symbol • History Lesson Banner (HL Banner) • How to find Nick • Level Cube / Sky Box • Liquid Sand • Out of Bounds (OOB) • Out of Bounds Levels • Paradise (OOB) • Peeling Grounds and Sanded Wayfarer • Pink Desert (OOB) • Snow (OOB) • Starfields • Sunken City (OOB) • Tower (OOB) • Underground (OOB)
 About OOB and more links
Broadly speaking, a **glitch** is where something in the game does something it wasn't meant to. We do not distinguish between a "wanted Glitch" and actual bugs.

Browse Categories (bottom of articles) to find more related articles:

* Category:Out of Bounds, Glitch per Level: Category:OOB-Levels
* Category:Challenges , Category:Tricks

**Robins Guide for Newcomers** . 26 Minutes, full of tips, tricks, dos and don'ts.

Expert Mode
**Expert Mode** introduction article to everything beyond the most basic gameplay.
Expert Mode topics:

 Challenges  Fancy Flying  Glitches & OOB  OOB-Levels Surfing, Slides and Drops  Tricks

Expert Mode Glossary

Black Cloth • Black Sand • Blackness • Breaking the Shrine/HL • Carpet Chase • Carpet Warp • Crash Zones • Dirty robe trick • Disco War Machine / Disco WM • Disco Wayfarer • Dragonfly War Machine • Faceplant (FP) • Faceplant Jump (FPJ) • Fancy Flying • Ghost • Glossary • Happy War Machine • History Lesson Banner (HL Banner) • How to find Nick • Infinite Flight (IF) on PC • Infinite Flight (IF) on PS4 • Level Cube / Sky Box • Low FPS glitch • Off-sync • Peeling Grounds and Sanded Wayfarer • Sky Painting • Starfields • The ID rule • The Tumbler • Triggers • Unmotivated War Machine • War Machine Capture (WM capture) • Zen Jump • Zimcloak

 Other general Out of Bounds (OOB) articles

Blackness • Chapter Select (OOB) • Crash Zones • Dune settings and PC glitches • Hidden chirp symbol • Hidden symbol • History Lesson Banner (HL Banner) • How to find Nick • Level Cube / Sky Box • Liquid Sand • Out of Bounds (OOB) • Out of Bounds Levels • Paradise (OOB) • Peeling Grounds and Sanded Wayfarer • Pink Desert (OOB) • Snow (OOB) • Starfields • Sunken City (OOB) • Tower (OOB) • Underground (OOB)
 About OOB and more links
Broadly speaking, a **glitch** is where something in the game does something it wasn't meant to. We do not distinguish between a "wanted Glitch" and actual bugs.

Browse Categories (bottom of articles) to find more related articles:

* Category:Out of Bounds, Glitch per Level: Category:OOB-Levels
* Category:Challenges , Category:Tricks

**Robins Guide for Newcomers** . 26 Minutes, full of tips, tricks, dos and don'ts.

Expert Mode
**Expert Mode** introduction article to everything beyond the most basic gameplay.
Expert Mode topics:

 Challenges  Fancy Flying  Glitches & OOB  OOB-Levels Surfing, Slides and Drops  Tricks

Expert Mode Glossary

Black Cloth • Black Sand • Blackness • Breaking the Shrine/HL • Carpet Chase • Carpet Warp • Crash Zones • Dirty robe trick • Disco War Machine / Disco WM • Disco Wayfarer • Dragonfly War Machine • Faceplant (FP) • Faceplant Jump (FPJ) • Fancy Flying • Ghost • Glossary • Happy War Machine • History Lesson Banner (HL Banner) • How to find Nick • Infinite Flight (IF) on PC • Infinite Flight (IF) on PS4 • Level Cube / Sky Box • Low FPS glitch • Off-sync • Peeling Grounds and Sanded Wayfarer • Sky Painting • Starfields • The ID rule • The Tumbler • Triggers • Unmotivated War Machine • War Machine Capture (WM capture) • Zen Jump • Zimcloak

## References

. . .

1. ↑ Decision about naming. Nathan and ravingmadness on discord #disco wayfarer, 2020-11-12: both said, that we call disco zones everything where disco stuff happens.

since people already used it for different things and it makes things less complicated.
2. ↑ nathanj on discord