Breaking rocks by BREAKING the GAME Jarlyk 2024-03-12 | This is a tool-assisted speedrun where the goal is to break all of the rocks and chests, collecting all the geo. In particular, we want to collect exactly the maximum amount of geo provided by this sources, without picking up any enemy geo along the way. And to do all this, we're going to break the game with some major glitches, notably the glitches permitted by the nmms (no main menu storage) speedrunning ruleset. If you'd prefer to watch a version without commentary, that's available here: youtu.be/486ir83MCAUMuch thanks to everyone who helped make this video possible, including the many folks on the HK TAS Discord and, specifically: @Krythom for a ton of help with learning major glitches and applying them to this particular run Rose for finding the dupe to the latern-locked rocks in toll room @staxis3955 for finding the hazard load warp to Frogs room @BlueSR for hosting a viewing streamTechnical notes:This video was created by using libTAS to provide deterministic playback with a few custom game modifications to improve the viewing experience. The game version used was 1028, the most commonly used patch for nmms runs due to the wide range of glitches it makes available. In some places the inventory/map background has been made transparent to reduce occlusion of the gameplay, since major glitches often involve a lot of control with inventory open. The camera has also been modified to track the knight's position, allowing observation of out of bounds movement.The knight was given lantern from the start (also to improve viewing experience), but all routing was performed as if lantern was not present. The knight was also given gathering swarm, both to make the actual geo collection less tedious (the related rta category just breaks all the geo rocks and has no requirement to collect the geo) and to add in a few fun geo dodging segments calling back to the old 0 geo with gathering swarm TAS. Due to its length, the TAS was built with three separate segments, which were then edited together into one continuous video. It also used TAS rng sync tooling to improve stability and reduce the amount of rework required for desyncs.
[TAS] Beast Den Rocks Jarlyk 2024-01-14 | A short preview from my upcoming Tool Assisted Speedrun of emgorac: exactly max geo, only rocks and chests. This run is being done with a large set of glitches, so I take some time in this video to explain a few of them, including a very fun use of delayed interaction.
[TAS] Perfectly Normal Kings Pass Jarlyk 2023-12-13 | What happens if you cross a zero geo run with a max geo run? EMGORAC; Exactly Max Geo, Only Rocks and Chests. The challenge is to gather all the geo from every rock and chest, but we can't pick up any geo from any other sources. And we can't buy things, just like zero geo. And, while we're at it, let's use some major glitches to spice things up. And let's have gathering swarm for some geo dodging when we do kill things. Here, we're doing King's Pass, except we've already picked up dash and have done a Save+Quit to respawn in KP, since we used airwalk to get dash through Cliffs earlier.
Happy Couple TAS: Alice Perspective Jarlyk 2023-12-05 | A few people asked to see individual perspectives, since it's hard to follow everything that's happening with both TASes playing simultaneously. Here is the first of those videos, covering Alice's perspective and giving a bit more commentary as well. If you haven't seen the original video, that's available here: youtu.be/P65O1j1v59E
Happy Couple, but Twice as TAS Jarlyk 2023-11-12 | The Happy Couple achievement in Hollow Knight normally takes a bit over an hour to complete. But what if two players did it collaboratively, sharing their progress? And what if those two two players were both TAS? In this tool-assisted speedrun, our knights Alice and Bob work together to unite Sheo and the Nailsmith as quickly as possible.Much thanks to everyone who helped make this video possible, including the many folks on the HK TAS Discord and, specifically:@mathulu for the starting point of the route and for the itemless blue lake setup, as well as hosting the reveal stream@quacksilverplays for providing the teaser audio at the end for the alternate ending@dragon_nyx for the wonderful title artTechnical notes:This video was created by using libTAS to provide deterministic playback, with custom scripting to synchronize progression between the two separate TASes. To improve viewing, the knight was given lantern from the start, with the 'dark rooms' then altered in post-production to clarify that they're intended to be dark; this has no gameplay effect, as the TAS doesn't do any hazard respawning in the dark rooms. Once both TASes were complete, going back and forth to keep them in sync, the two videos were encoded and then edited together to produce the final product.The link mentioned near the end of the video: youtu.be/8hVybV6Hbio
[TAS] Colo One for Two Jarlyk 2023-10-14 | Tool-assisted speedruns are fun, but you're still always limited by the knight only being able to be in one place at a time. But...what if there were two knights? Here I'm sharing one knight's fight in colo 1 while the other knight was busy in Crystal Peak. For the final run, they'll be working together to achieve a very important goal, sharing their progression and synchronizing their routes to achieve things far more efficiently than only one TAS could do alone. I look forward to sharing the final video with you all sometime in the near future. :)
[TAS] Sundered Any% in 33:01 Jarlyk 2023-07-22 | This is a Tool-Assisted Speedrun of the game Sundered in the Any% category, which beats the game in 33:01 RTA (32:46 IGT). After all the Hollow Knight lately, it was refreshing to work on something a bit different and I hope you all enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed making it. This game isn't super well known, but the speedrun is actually quite interesting, with a lot of technical nuance and with a high skill ceiling for the movement.If you'd prefer to watch an unedited version of the run without commentary, that's available here: youtu.be/a9tPAfag6iYThanks to all the folks on the Sundered Speedruns Discord who helped me learn the tech for the run and gave suggestions for routing and improvements.Technical notes:This TAS was developed using libTAS, which unfortunately is not fully stable for this game. Due to issues with desyncs, it had to be developed in 26 segments, which then were spliced together for the final video. The actual gameplay state is fully contiguous, but it's not strictly reproducible, since I could never get the game to sync longer than about 20 minutes at best and thus the endgame segments were all created by just never closing libTAS.Also, while it's always true that TAS really can't be compared with human runs, I'd highlight that it's especially true for this game, simply because TAS is able to know so much about the rng in advance. There was also some rng manip used for crits in the end game fights, though not extensively (on the order of getting two rolls to get a crit instead of one by slightly tweaking input timing.) A highly optimized TAS could do much more extensive rng manip and I think the route could be cut down quite a bit further too, such as removing the entire Negociator split and maybe just keeping moonjump for the entire latter half of the game.
Sundered [TAS]: The Valkyrie jumps over the moon Jarlyk 2023-07-05 | This is a snippet from an upcoming Any% TAS for the game Sundered. After we've unlocked some movement abilities, we die in a mysterious purple fountain and achieve true power, referred to in the speedrunning community as 'moonjump'. This video is a taste of the kind of shenanigans that happen as a result in this segment of the run.
Sundered [TAS]: Coming in Hot Jarlyk 2023-07-01 | The various runs I've been playing with for Hollow Knight haven't been as interesting as I'd hoped, so I decided to liven things up and try a different game. This is Sundered, a Metroidvania with crazy movement tech and massive swarms of enemies. This is a first draft of an early part of the game. The movement in this game is a lot of fun to TAS with, so looking forward to seeing how the final run comes together.
[TAS] Walking on air to stay on the ground Jarlyk 2023-05-05 | After the Floor is Lava TAS, several folks suggested I should make one with an opposite ruleset, where you try to stay on the ground as much as possible. At first I thought it would be a bit boring, but then I remembered that HK has a glitch called airwalk. And during airwalk, the knight is technically grounded midair. This little preview shows how this run is going to be a bit...different from the ones before.
TAS vs THE FLOOR IS LAVA Challenge Jarlyk 2023-02-26 | Is it possible to complete the game without touching the ground? Well, no, the game forces you to touch the floor in too many places. But how much time do you _actually_ need to be on the ground? In this tool-assisted speedrun, we explore this question. Expect lots of jumping around, some crazy routing and a ridiculous amount of wall cling storage.If you'd like to watch a version of this video without commentary, that's available here: youtu.be/baOKf3Mbj5IThanks to @enderonryo4912 @peekadutchu4928 @jalepinojoe6285 @74v13r for help in labbing and developing the routeThanks to @quacksilver3393 for hosting the reveal streamThanks to folks in the HK speedrunning community for their support and encouragementThanks to you for watching!Technical notes:This TAS was developed using libTAS and was run on patch 1221. It's intended to follow the spirit of the nmg ruleset, though there is one part involving text storage that would be classified as a major glitch (it was worth it.) The game code has been modified slightly both to help with stabilizing TASing and to track grounded time, but these changes should not impact the game's mechanics in any way. This route does not get lantern, but, by popular request, the tooling gives the knight lantern to improve the viewing experience.
TASing fast groundless movement through Fungal Jarlyk 2023-02-12 | Here is another behind the scenes video for the upcoming tool-assisted speedrun of the floor-is-lava challenge. At this point we've got full movement, so we can make short work of these rooms through Fungal on the way up to Archives and our last dreamer, Monomon.
[TAS] Dismantling the Devout Jarlyk 2023-02-11 | When you can't touch the floor and don't have any spells, the Devout can be a surprisingly tough obstacle. This is a snippet from the upcoming floor-is-lava tool-assisted speedrun, where we try to minimize time spent on the ground. Among other interesting implications of that goal is that we need to avoid drop floors where possible, meaning that we have to fight the Devout twice, courtesy of patch 1221.
[TAS] The Path Not Taken Jarlyk 2023-02-05 | Sometimes when working on a gimmick tool assisted speedrun like this one (floor is lava / minimum grounded time), you discover a subtlety that requires you to roll back a routing decision and take a different path. Here's one such occasion where a typical route into Deepnest ends up requiring more grounded time than expected due to an unlucky arrangement of geometry in the room before the drop. As such, we're going to go through Fungal Core instead. Still, might as well share the footage of the path that might've been.
[TAS] When the floor is lava, bathe in acid instead Jarlyk 2023-02-03 | Here is another clip from the upcoming floor-is-lava tool assisted speedrun. The Hwurmp early control here is not especially hard normally, but the combination of not touching the ground and needing to prevent the womblings from blowing it up made it a lot trickier than I expected. There's also a very interesting shade skip we've set up here...which we in turn skip because wcs rules are dumb and we want to avoid the grounded time.
[TAS] Dancing without setting foot in the ballroom Jarlyk 2023-01-20 | This segment took a ridiculously long time, as the Watchers take a lot of hits when your only damage is base nail and glowing womb. I'm pretty happy with the final result, however. This is part of my upcoming TAS for the 'floor is lava' challenge, which aims to minimize the time spent on the ground.
[TAS] Banger Pogos Jarlyk 2023-01-16 | Turns out the Broken Vessel fight takes a while when your only damage is nail0 and glowing womb. Oh, and when you need to try to stay off the ground as much as possible. Please enjoy this latest snippet from my upcoming tool assisted speedrun for the 'floor is lava' challenge.
[TAS] Surfing on the Hopper Sea Jarlyk 2023-01-12 | Previously, the knight had to hop to try to stay off the ground. Now, though, they can leverage the ridiculous power of dashmaster wcs to literally fly through rooms, taking advantage of pogoables as needed to stay in the air. This is one more not-step toward completing the upcoming tool-assisted speedrun for the 'floor is lava' challenge.
[TAS] Hit Me, Baby, One Last Time Jarlyk 2023-01-09 | Not quite as exciting as dodging geo in this arena, but still pretty fun; fighting without touching the ground isn't too hard, but lining up the perfect timing for the early control on the pickup is much trickier. For those who may be seeing this video out of context, this is a snippet from my upcoming tool-assisted speedrun in a 'floor is lava' category, where the goal is to minimize time spent on the ground.
[TAS] ShroomPog(o) Jarlyk 2023-01-05 | This is a snippet from the upcoming 'floor is lava' tool-assisted speedrun, which aims to minimize the time spent on the ground. The route is very weird and ends up going through Shrumal Ogres; TAS can get through here without touching the ground, whereas the other path back up through Fungal has some mandatory ground touches through Cloth room. Enjoy the shroompogoing.
How to TAS when you cant touch the ground Jarlyk 2023-01-02 | Been a while since I made a behind the scenes video, so thought I'd share a bit of what goes into navigating rooms when the ground is off limits. We don't yet have wings, but we have wallcling storage, which we're going to abuse extensively throughout this run to avoid the floor whenever possible.
[TAS] Through the Mantis Door: The Floor No More Jarlyk 2023-01-01 | Lest folks think this TAS is just going to be a bunch of hopping around like a goofball, here's a quick taste of how things change once we get claw. This is a snippet from an upcoming tool assisted speedrun that attempts to minimize the time spent on the ground. Here we unlock the power of wall cling storage, which gives us a ton of new flexibility and means that there are going to be far fewer places where we are forced to use the floor. For reference, after getting claw, the knight never touches the floor again in this room.
[TAS] The grass is green, but the floor is lava Jarlyk 2022-12-31 | This is an early draft of one the segments from the next tool assisted speedrun I'm working on. The goal of this run is to complete the game while minimizing the amount of time spent touching the ground. In the early game, we don't have a lot of movement options, so this entails a lot of rather goofy-looking jumping and pogoing.
[TAS] Hall of the Aspid Queens (Bonus Geo Dodging) Jarlyk 2022-12-23 | We had many fun moments with the swarm in the full 0 geo TE TAS, but there was one particularly fun arena that didn't make sense with the route. Please enjoy this rendition of the battle for the glowing womb.
[TAS] 0 GEO vs THE SWARM Jarlyk 2022-12-11 | Is it possible to complete Hollow Knight and defeat the Radiance without ever picking up a piece of geo...while having gathering swarm permanently equipped? In this tool-assisted speedrun, we do just that. Thanks to @Icefire3339 for help in developing the routeThanks to @dragon_nyx for the wonderful thumbnail artThanks to @constructivecynicismsr for the prior work on the White Palace and Abyss Climb TASes, as well as help in working out some of the more technical input sequencesThanks to @mathulu for hosting the reveal streamThanks to folks in the HK speedrunning community for their support and encouragementThanks to you for watching!If you'd like to watch a version of this video without commentary, that's available here: youtu.be/tNOv6THa-yATechnical notes:This TAS was developed using libTAS and was run on patch 1221. It's intended to follow the spirit of the nmg ruleset, though there are a handful of wcs underplats that are either questionable or outright illegal per topology rules. They don't make a huge difference to the final time and this is a TAS anyway, so I didn't bother to go back and redo things. The TAS was encoded as three separate segments and then spliced together for technical reasons, but all splices were at save and quits and the timer was adjusted accordingly to line up. The game code has been modified slightly both to help with stabilizing TASing and to force equip the gathering swarm charm at the beginning of the game, but these changes should not impact the game's mechanics in any way (other than the obvious difference of starting the game with gathering swarm.)
[TAS] Pauper Parkour in the White Palace Jarlyk 2022-12-03 | The tool-assisted speedrun for 0 geo TE with Gathering Swarm is very close to complete now. This white palace segment is largely based off the routing/strats developed by CC, with some adaptations for having sharp shadow. I didn't have the patience to execute it quite as cleanly as CC did, but I'm still fairly happy with the final result. You can see CC's TAS here: youtube.com/watch?v=ZWurcxANqp8
[TAS] Goodbye Markoth Jarlyk 2022-11-28 | It's our last dream warrior of the run and I found this fight rather satisfying. Pretty soon the tool-assisted speedrun of 0 Geo TE with Gathering Swarm will be complete. Looking forward to sharing the final result.
[TAS] Petrified of getting caught by geo Jarlyk 2022-11-25 | This is a clip from the upcoming 0 Geo TE with Gathering Swarm tool-assisted speedrun. I'm saving Upper QG arena for the final video release, but sharing this one now. Of note here is that we can't do the hazard respawn (as the respawn area is at a distance that guarantees we can't dodge the geo during the time we don't have control.) Still, there are some fun tricks here.
[TAS] The Watchful shall be rewarded? Jarlyk 2022-11-24 | Another clip from my upcoming tool-assisted speedrun of 0 Geo TE with Gathering Swarm. We've got all our movement and spells now, so now we're just gathering all the remaining objectives around the map.
[TAS] I have no masks and I must scream Jarlyk 2022-11-23 | This is part of the tool assisted speedrun for 0 Geo TE with Gathering Swarm. This segment doesn't have any geo, but posting it mainly as a reference for other speedrunners, since this particular drop on 1221 isn't seen very often. If you're wondering why the knight has zero masks, this is a visual glitch from the Lost Kin early exit, which we did just prior to heading down here. Yes, this 0 Geo TE route is weird. Timing from room entry to exit is ~19.1 s. Timing from door open to room exit is ~8.2 s.
TASing Surprise Geo Dodging Jarlyk 2022-11-20 | I thought there wasn't going to be much geo dodging for a while, but turned out I was wrong. Some unexpected geo showed up and made the Mawlurks section a lot more interesting than it otherwise would have been.
TAS vs Hornet 2: Behind the Scenes Jarlyk 2022-11-19 | Things are still progressing well on 0 Geo TE with Gathering Swarm. There's not a lot of geo in the mid game (though the QG Arenas are coming up soon...), but the ddark fight with Hornet 2 is still pretty fun and I thought it was worth sharing. The encode for the actual fight is at a the end of the video if you just want to see the final result.
[TAS] Dodging geo while False Knight has a bad time Jarlyk 2022-11-12 | At this point in the run, we're way over-equipped for False Knight, since we're only fighting him to get access to Failed Champion. Still, it's not trivial, thanks to the real boss of this fight, the geo swarm. TAS needs to be very careful not to catch any geo while casting spells and unable to move.
[TAS] With a little help from a friend Jarlyk 2022-11-11 | This is a snippet from the upcoming tool assisted speedrun for 0 Geo TE with gathering swarm. This route can use buggy skip, just like the original 0 Geo, but this time we use a slightly different technique, taking advantage of wcs to sneak around the trigger area rather than needing to do the awkward activation from below.
[TAS] Wall cling silliness with lasers Jarlyk 2022-11-08 | I'm currently working on the part of the run that's a lot of movement and not much fighting or geo, so there hasn't been as much to share. In the interim, please enjoy this laser cycle room with some ridiculous wcs.
[TAS] Dodging pancakes in the fourth dimension Jarlyk 2022-11-05 | Folks seemed to like the last behind-the-scenes video, so here's a longer one that covers everyone's favorite boss fight: Elder Hu. This is an excellent chance to showcase RNG manipulation, as we want to avoid teleports and pancakes as much as possible. The resulting fight is at the end of the video.Background music from YT Audio Library:Light Awash by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100175Artist: http://incompetech.com
[TAS] This is a Mistake Jarlyk 2022-11-04 | We've defeated the Soul Master and Soul Tyrant and now it's time to escape. Fake dive was not cooperating whatsoever, so instead we just dive into the thick of it and dance through the room, narrowly avoiding our myriad follies.
[TAS] Breaking an egg by yelling at it Jarlyk 2022-11-02 | This is a snippet from the upcoming tool-assisted speedrun of 0 Geo TE with Gathering Swarm. We're not dodging geo here, but I enjoyed this fight, as it turns out fury/wraiths is actually pretty good against Soul Master when you can manipulate timelines.
Behind the scenes: 0 Geo, much TAS Jarlyk 2022-10-30 | Ever wondered how tool-assisted speedruns are actually made? Here I show the process of TASing a room from start to finish, including a demonstration of wall cling storage, a quick fight and some fun geo dodging. The final resulting gameplay is at the end of the video.
[TAS] Gruz Mother Geo Waltz Jarlyk 2022-10-28 | Another snippet from the upcoming 0 Geo TAS with Gathering Swarm. This room was surprisingly tricky, as there's not much space to maneuver and there's a second round of geo that drops after the children are cleaned up.
[TAS] 0 Geo: Eye of the Swarm Jarlyk 2022-10-23 | This is a clip from the upcoming tool-assisted speedrun of 0 Geo TE with Gathering Swarm. For this section, we finally have dash, which is a good thing, as we need to both fight the squits efficiently and dodge the geo they keep dropping along the way. One fun bit here is at the end, where we lose control of the knight for the duration of the Wraiths pickup. It took a fair bit of careful positioning to manipulate an orbit that successfully transfers between both the upper and lower positions of the knight during the animation; the geo absolutely _can_ hit the knight during that animation.
[TAS] 0 Geo: The Baldurs Revenge Jarlyk 2022-10-19 | No fancy music video this time, but this room took a while to get to work and I just had to share the ridiculousness. One more step toward the tool assisted speedrun of 0 Geo TE with Gathering Swarm.
TAS: The Gatheringnt Jarlyk 2022-10-16 | What if you were doing a 0 geo run...but the geo followed you everywhere you went? The next TAS is going to explore this question while also defeating the Radiance.
[TAS] Banishing the ghosts of Hallownest Jarlyk 2022-10-15 | Hallownest is haunted and in this tool-assisted speedrun, we're going to banish the ghosts and bring peace to the land. This run involves a lot of interesting tech and a unique route that's not human-viable in the slightest.The run is on patch 1432 and is developed using a tool called libTAS. Due to technical limitations with the stability of TASing on 1432, it had to be encoded in several segments and then the video spliced together from those segments. As such, you may notice a few subtle discontinuities at splice points. The nature of the splicing also means that we don't have a load-removal timing for the run, but honestly for a meme run like this, the time isn't super important.If you'd like to watch a version of this video without commentary, that's available here: youtu.be/6cCbM2TSgV0Thanks to folks on the various speedrun and TASing Discords who provided feedback and assisted with routing and strats.Thumbnail art by dragon_nyxDue to the nature of this TAS and the heavy segmentation, it's not really feasible to replicate a sync on your own, though I'll send the lts files and rng sync data on demand if anyone really wants them.The best place to find me is on the Hollow Knight TAS Discord: discord.gg/AZjaQaJ49R
Traitor to the Beat Jarlyk 2022-10-12 | The full Ghostbusters TAS drops this weekend, but in the interim, please enjoy this dropping of the beat.
[TAS] Cant Touch This Jarlyk 2022-10-04 | As part of the Ghostbusters TAS for Hollow Knight, I thought it would be fun to go through Glade without actually deflecting Revek. Please enjoy the resulting segment. If you have thoughts on this format for short clips of the larger TASes, let me know; experimenting with #shorts
[TAS] A story of betrayal: making a ghost Jarlyk 2022-10-01 | This is a segment from my upcoming tool-assisted speedrun for Hollow Knight in the category Ghostbusters. This fight takes quite a while on low equipment, but TAS has fun with the fight. In particular, it uses Dashmaster in conjunction with shade cloak as a poor man's DDark, taking advantage of the iframes to dodge the dashes without having to awkwardly jump and risk getting a parry on the portion of TL's swing that extends behind him. And, finally, we're ready to banish the one ghost in the run that requires so many of the shenanigans in the route, the one ghost that we need to create ourselves in a most traitorous fashion.
[TAS] Dancing with death in the queens ballroom Jarlyk 2022-09-25 | This is a snippet from the upcoming tool-assisted speedrun for Hollow Knight in the category Ghostbusters. The arenas are definitely where TAS most struggles with not having VS, since it's challenging to get damage on multiple enemies at once with only nail. Fury helps, but it's still nail0, so it takes quite a few nail swings to kill enemies. On the plus side, though, TAS gets to abuse dashmaster like crazy and weave in frame-perfect nail hits between dashes.
[TAS] Petra Party: A Study in Circular Motion Jarlyk 2022-09-24 | This is a snippet from the upcoming Hollow Knight TAS in the category Ghostbusters. Not having VS or wings makes this fight particularly spicy; TAS compensates with some roundabout tactics.
[TAS] A slight detour through another world in Ato Jarlyk 2022-09-23 | I'm still working on the Ghostbusters TAS, but discovered another fun indie Metroidvania called Ato, which also happens to be an excellent speed game. Here's a very first attempt at TASing the opening area of the game; I'm likely missing a lot of optimizations here, but it's fairly fast.
![[TAS] Purity Ending](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/8hVybV6Hbio/hqdefault.jpg)