Techniques

There are several **techniques** for reducing lap times and increasing speed in Sanicball. These are some general ones that can be used.

## Ground-based

For most of the characters, ground acceleration is greater than aerial acceleration until just before max speed is achieved, so it's recommended to stay at the ground until this limit. Before v0.7, it was better to stay in the air for a greater portion of the characters speed, so if you play any version before v0.7, it's best to stay in the air rather than on the ground.

### Horizontal Spinning (Side-spin)

While using gravity manipulation, your ball will spin on a different axis. For instance, holding left will cause your character to spin counter-clockwise with respect to your own viewing/camera angle (holding right has the opposite effect, namely, clockwise spinning). This stays the same when you move your camera up or down, changing the axis at which your ball rotates. This can be utilized to gain more traction on walls and inclined planes.

This advance technique works the best when you learn the camera angle needed to create a horizontal, or side-spin on a wall, and acceleration in the same direction. This is almost never the intuitive camera angle for playing regularly, and you may not be able to see the track ahead of you.

## Aerial-based

Aerial speed is limitless, unlike ground speed. However, it's only good to jump for more speed once you've met with almost max ground speed.

### Jump Stacking

If you spam your spacebar (jump), you can do double or triple jumps from a stationary position. Doing this while ascending a slope can make your jump off the slope go much farther, which allows you to build up more speed. Previous to v0.7, this can also be used to scale walls and large ramps, such as ones in the Lobby and slopes in Ice Mountain.

This works particularly well because the jump in this game strictly adds speed in the vertical direction. As long as you are touching a surface, you can jump and instantly move upwards faster. However, in the updates of v0.7 and after, the jump now adds velocity perpendicular to the ground you are touching. This makes jumping up ramps a less optimal strategy.

### Gravity Manipulation

    You can change your fall speed to keep you in the air longer, or to force you downward faster. To do this effectively, you will need to use the "manual camera" option in settings.

If you look directly at the ground or at the sky, then turn your camera parallel to the direction you are traveling and press either "a" or "d", you can change your fall speed. Holding "a" will force you downward faster and creating the illusion of increasing gravity. Holding "d" will force you downward slower and creating the illusion of decreasing gravity. These controls are inverted when looking upwards.

This will work with every ball, but is much more noticeable with Super Sanic.

## Super Sanic

Even though Super Sanic shares the same size and gravity as the other normal characters, his incredible aerial acceleration creates a character that is far more difficult to control than the rest, which means that it has its own special stats. He has the same controls as the rest of the cast, and can use the same techniques, but the importance of each technique differs for Super Sanic. Side spin is less important, while gravity manipulation is much more important, and can even allow players to fly.

### Controlling Super Sanic

Controlling Super Sanic isn't an easy task to do. It is recommended to go slow and to keep towards the ground if one does not have mastery over gravity manipulation. Going through a series of checkpoints in quick succession usually gets you into the lead, but trying to travel too quickly into some checkpoints may give a bad angle on the next checkpoint. For times like these, it can help to immediately respawn by pressing R to stop all momentum.

## Miscellaneous

### Checkpoint Warp (CPW)

This technique allows players to mark a checkpoint while respawning at the previously obtained checkpoint. This can only be down on an online server because it abuses the time it takes for the server to communicate with the players. To be done, a player must press R to respawn after hitting a checkpoint, but before the server recognizes the checkpoint as achieved. Simply put, respawning right before the checkpoint pings. This action's window of impute is dependent on the players connection speed with the server, but is usually around 0.05 - 0.30 seconds. By checking the ping of the server you are entering, you can see how much time you have to CPW: ping of 50 corresponds to 0.05 seconds, while a ping of 300 corresponds to a 0.30 second opening.

This can be difficult to perform consistently at first, but practice makes perfect.

CPW can be useful in lowering times in some stages. If used correctly, it will lend a quicker route than rolling through the course normally.

However, as of version 0.8.2, if one respawns to a checkpoint, the game adds 5-seconds to the player's race's record time as a penalty, making CPWs essentially useless if trying to beat a record.