Jellopuff
[MKW TAS] Mushroom Gorge (Ultra) (Spear) - 40.376
updated
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TAS Flap BKT Cut: -0.025
Previous BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=hH9cdEMP9cw (by Ejay and myself)
Ejay's channel: @EjayB
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Soooooo this took longer to upload than I expected. Sorry about that. This is the final of four flaps I completed at the end of 2023, and its one that I had never really expected to return to either. Grumble Volcano has, for the past four years, been the home of the fastest single lap in all of Mario Kart Wii, and after all that time, the Grumble Volcano Unrestricted Flap is still the only category in the game to have been pushed under two seconds. The result of this unparalleled shortness was a flap that went from a mere proof of concept to a fully fleshed out run that utilized every improvement we could have possibly thought of, all in less than a month. Much of the community felt that this TAS was effectively unimprovable, and as such, we moved on from it. However, with some motivation from the MKW TAS Competition and four more years of experience under my belt, I finally returned to the category to improve the seemingly unimprovable.
First, let's lay the groundwork for this flap to explain why we felt it was at its limit. At its core, the GV UR Flap is incredibly simple: backwards hop into the lap, then instantly accelerate forward upon landing. That's it. There are literally zero frames where we aren't moving as fast as the game can physically allow us to move in those circumstances. Further, the former BKT delays the flap as long as possible to minimize time wasted in the air, and it also hits the final KCP for only a single frame upon accelerating towards the finish, so how can this possibly be improved? The answer...a new vehicle, and an incredible amount of precision.
Let's start with the easy one, the vehicle. Throughout the entire flap, we are moving at shroom boost speed (and we're in the air for half of that time anyway). Thus, the only place where our vehicle's speed stat matters in this flap is in the drift after landing from the backwards hop, and it only matters marginally. As such, it seemed clear that using a vehicle with better drift and handling than the Spear would be preferable, and the Mach Bike solidly fills both of those roles while still having a great speed stat (just to minimize any timeloss from the drift). So, by using Mach Bike, we are able to more quickly straighten our line towards the finish line, and as such, we also gain the ability to throw in a wheelie before going airborne to gain some more speed.
Now for the complicated part. Remember when I said that the former BKT minimizes the time wasted in the air? Well, that was actually a lie. This new flap lands a frame earlier than the former BKT does. But how? The former BKT only hit the final KCP by one frame, so surely landing a frame earlier would cause you to miss the KCP outright. Normally, this would be correct, but there's a crucial detail that was missed when the former BKT was made. We land on the rock outside range of the final KCP, and then upon accelerating, the facing angle of the vehicle causes us to drive just barely into the KCP from the side. Therefore, if we land too far to the left, our vehicle will need an extra frame enter the KCP from the side, and to compensate for the distance we travel in that frame, we also need to land a frame later so as to not miss the KCP. This ended up happening in the former BKT without us realizing. To fix this, we needed a midair trajectory during the backwards hop that keeps us as close to the checkpoints as possible. But remember, to enter the lap optimally, we need to hit the finish line as late as possible which, due to how the checkpoints are laid out, means we must have a trajectory that passes through CP 37 (the final regular checkpoint on the track) but with frame alignment that allows us to avoid CP 37 entirely. As a result of both of these optimizations being put in the same run, our vehicle comes within a FOURTEENTH of a unit from hitting CP 37. In the real world, this would be like avoiding a randomly placed obstacle by roughly half a millimeter while driving at 110 mph (178 kmh) blindfolded with your arms tied behind your back entirely on purpose. This insanity allows us to land far enough to the right to land a frame earlier than the former BKT while still hitting the final KCP. So yeah, that's the run. Enjoy TAS!
Music: Snowball Park - One of the composers for the Super Mario 3D World soundtrack
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
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TAS Flap BKT Cut: -0.032
Previous BKT: youtu.be/n_P6eyJdDAQ (by Estaloy and myself)
Estalon's channel: @Estaloy
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Happy New Year everyone! 2023 has been an incredible year for Mario Kart Wii TASing, and to celebrate the coming of the new year, I decided to publicize four new flap BKTs! This video showcases the third of these flaps, one which is LONG overdue at this point: a new verified optimization to the Mushroom Gorge Unrestricted Flap! Finally a TAS that isn't a nightmare to write a description for! :D
Since this is such a short lap without too much variance in maneuvers, I'll be brief in this explanation. This flap uses the same lap 1 setup as the previous BKT (since we still have access to that, and it gives us for the unreplicated giga-reject setup that we need for the flap). We then complete lap 2 with an emphasis on building up external velocity from gravity and converting it to lateral EV. We then enter lap 3 as high up as possible while still hitting the invisible wall of the finish line. By hitting the finish line, we convert our EV back into the vertical direction, allowing us to quickly ride back up the wall, hit the finish key checkpoint, and then giga-reject off the wall directly into the finish line. Pretty technically straightforward, but really heccin' fast overall!
Music: Yarn Yoshi Takes Shape! - Tomoya Tomita & Misaki Asada
Composed for the Yoshi's Woolly World soundtrack.
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
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TAS Flap BKT Cut: -3.940
Previous BKT: youtu.be/Yi2FNGnoj0Y (by me)
Kierio's channel: @Kierio04
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BONUS FLAP: DS Yoshi Falls Flap (No Ultra Shortcut) - 12.190
TAS Flap BKT Cut: -0.250
Previous BKT: youtu.be/orZH-X4fhJg (by Mikul, Marth, Monster, and Ejay)
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Happy New Year everyone! 2023 has been an incredible year for Mario Kart Wii TASing, and to celebrate the coming of the new year, I decided to publicize four new flap BKTs! This video showcases the first two of these flaps, both on DS Yoshi Falls, and oh boy these are a treat. A lot has changed on Yoshi Falls since Mikul discovered the ultra shortcut back in April, and with the knowledge we now have, we can now push this track to its absolute limit.
Let's first discuss the Unrestricted Flap, this video's premiere run! This track's ultra has two parts: the delayed lap count, and the ultra itself. The major development showcased in this run is a method that allows for the second part, the actual ultra, to be performed without utilizing a respawn. Doing this, however, is far easier said than done. The original method for the ultra uses only one shroom to do the ultra, and as a result, comes nowhere close to landing and in fact barely gets far enough for even the respawn method. A few months ago however, I discovered that using three mushrooms, one before the launch for increased external velocity and two more during the egg bounce to maintain speed and height, it's just barely possible to land back on the track after performing the ultra. Already, this maneuver is incredibly precise and requires meticulous manipulation of our flight path to hit the egg in the right spot to get the right clip. However, the biggest challenge of this is actually HAVING three shrooms to use for the ultra.
Unlike most other ultras, the Yoshi Fall ultra shortcut REQUIRES a delayed lap count for timesave to be possible, and unfortunately for us, that means performing an absurd supergrind ejection into a wallclip off the egg in the middle of the falls. When Mikul first performed the ultra, he used not one, but TWO shrooms to pull this off, hence why he only used one shroom to perform the ultra itself. For my respawnless route to work though, I would need to pull off the delayed lap count without shrooming at all. Fortunately, by getting a better starting angle for the first supergrind and optimizing my external velocity building from it, it becomes just barely possible wheelie eject out of the supergrind and clip the egg in the right spot without falling into the out of bounds plane. By combining this discovery with the aforementioned three shroom respawnless second half, I was able to string the full route together!
The flap itself is pretty straight forward after landing from the ultra. With careful positioning, we land on the edge of the track and get a barrel roll that allows us to quickly rotate towards the finish line despite our shroom boost still being active. We then hop up onto the ledge and, with help from my good pal Kierio to hyperoptimize the final miniturbo, complete the lap in an incredibly nice time!
Now let me briefly explain the second run showcased here, the No Ultra flap. This run is moreso here for documentation purposes since, technically, it's not the fastest run we currently know of. It has, however, been the de facto best-known time for the past couple of months or so since the strat that outdates it, which utilizes the shroomless delayed lap count that the UR flap uses (but with Spear), has not yet been optimized or finalized. For this reason, I felt that it would be a nice addition to this video. The flap itself uses a similar starting process to the unrestricted flap, setting up a supergrind to build up external velocity. However, instead of launching towards the egg immediately, I enter the lap and build up more external velocity before ejecting at the first waterfall. I carry this ludicrous amount of external velocity around the entire first turn using barrel roll wall bonks and then use the rest of it to perform Mikul's egg bounce shortcut with one shroom instead of two. I land with a barrel roll and then use the other two shrooms combined with a barrel roll on the ledge to boost all the way to the finish.
The other two flaps I have prepared for New Years will be released in a few days, so make sure to stay tuned for those!
Music: 6969 (Level Up) (Instrumental) - Ninja Sex Party & TWRP
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
Disclaimer: This run takes advantage of the analog inputs of the Wii Wheel. In order for this run to be performed in real-time in a playback, pause buffering would potentially need to be used.
“In this game, you always want to get less air”…but sometimes, desperate times call for desperate measures, and by desperate measures, I mean 27 seconds of uninterrupted airtime.
GCN DK Mountain has annoyed MKW glitch hunters for well over a decade at this point. The track is home to some of the most bizarre interactions in the game, and yet it has still gone over 15 years without an ultra. In fact, it’s been widely considered to be one of the least likely ultras that could possibly be discovered due to the incredibly high invisible walls lining every one of the winding turns in the second half of the track. So, how did we go from THAT to THIS?
Well, for starters, our understanding of velocity stacking on this track has improved thanks to the MKW Backwards Challenge. Velocity stacking, for those unaware, is a rigid body interaction with incredibly specific requirements that gives the vehicle an absurd amount of stored momentum (or external velocity) in the negative Y direction that can then be converted into lateral momentum. Due to the track-specific requirements of the technique, DK Mountain is, to date, the only track in the game where velocity stacking is viable. Since the release of my DK Mountain Backwards video, the first documented application of velocity stacking, we’ve made some further optimizations to expand the potential of this wacky technique. The main improvement is the discovery of a shroomless method of entering the Xnik Spot (or Velocity Stacking Spot) on the top ramp since this simple change allows us to sacrifice less momentum thanks to the increased height (youtube.com/watch?v=q8Lh4i-JOts). The other improvement comes from our character and vehicle. As it turns out, the Standard Bike M gains more external velocity from velocity stacking than the Standard Bike S, so by using it, we effectively gain an extra boost to our max distance.
The other main development was the creation of a linear route. Earlier in the day of discovery, I decided to analyze the track’s checkpoints and collision to see if skipping KCP 1, the key requirement in getting the ultra to happen, could be done in any way. What I found was that, assuming our external velocity is high enough, it is in fact possible to angle our vehicle to travel in a straight line from the Xnik Spot all the way to the northern-most portion of the track which passes through key checkpoint 0 and skips key checkpoint 1.
These two ideas are what we see in the final run. We set up the velocity stacking and start to build up stored momentum. We store roughly 8300 external velocity, the highest ever achieved, in the negative Y direction. After building up this speed, the plan is relatively straight-forward: take as much of this momentum as we can and launch it straight towards the finish line while also making sure to gain enough height to clear the invisible walls. We rotate out of the Xnik spot, causing the vertical momentum to be converted into lateral momentum, and perform a 360 degree rotation to gain the required vertical EV while simultaneously setting up the perfect angle for the ultra. The shroom used during this section, for those wondering, allows us to rotate the vehicle much faster (which is crucial since we have only a limited amount of time in the air where the vehicle steered). Then, for the next 27 seconds, our external velocity forces us across the entire length of the track, letting us hit KCP 0 and dodge KCP 1 along the way, before barely dropping us onto the rightmost extension of the track. We must enter the cannon far to the right to avoid passing over checkpoints that would break the 95% rule, and by crossing through the final key checkpoint region mid-cannon, we complete the ultra.
Is this actually useful for anything? Absolutely not, no. However, we still care a lot about ultra longcuts due to their potential to develop into a faster strat (for reference, this year saw three ultra longcuts, rBC3, MMM, and MH, become ultra shortcuts). And even if nothing ever comes out of this, at least we can finally say that this track, has, in one way or another, finally been broken.
Huge thanks to my good pal and fellow TASer Kierio (youtube.com/@Kierio04) for recording and editing the video for me while I dealt with my schoolwork. I really appreciated the help, man!
Music: Starsiege - Jarvis9999 (youtube.com/watch?v=SBFR1fZRqko)
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
TAS Flap BKT Cut: -5.451
Previous BKT: youtu.be/4oAqso5Tbcg (by myself and Ejay)
Police's channel: @thepolice3822
Blaze's channel: @MalleoSquirrelX
Justin's channel: @justin3055
This is the most absurd Mario Kart strategy that has ever been seen through to completion. There's simply no better way to say it. If you told a 2013 MKW player that in ten years the Daytripper would become the fastest vehicle on a track, they'd likely respond by asking what the Daytripper even is, promptly accusing you of heresy after finding out, and then locking you up in super jail with the thwomp on N64 Bowser's Castle. Nobody ever had any reason to predict that the second slowest kart in the game would ever serve a practical purpose, but thanks to the black magic of @xnikmkw and various other top glitch hunters, we have pushed kart physics far beyond what the game was ever meant to handle.
Roughly six months ago, xnik publicized a brand new exploit exclusive to the Daytripper with properties unlike anything else in the game. By driving the vehicle onto the edge of a seam with only one of the front wheels in contact, he found that the Daytripper is capable of driving with only one wheel on the ground while the rest of the vehicle is suspended beneath the floor (youtube.com/watch?v=p9_WVBvIk9M). This state, known as a Dayclip state, is extremely volatile due to the lack of support from three of the vehicle's four wheels. One side effect of this is that the vehicle has a hard time dealing with steep slopes and slope changes, often causing the vehicle to snap back onto the road. The other main side effect, however, is far more crucial. About a month after xnik's discovery, Thomas (@MKWiiTomas) discovered that some interactions can cause the Daytripper in that state to fall through the floor. At around the same time, Justin posted a ghost entering a dayclip state on Dry Dry Ruins where he figured that an alternate ultra method might be possible with a floor clip. It was from this point that I started planning a setup with a flap strat in mind.
There's so much to this setup that it really deserves its own video, so I'll try to be brief and just go over the major details.
The setup is divided into two parts:
1. Get a dayclip state and bring it to the end of the lap so as to perform a delayed lap count with a floor clip.
2. Get another dayclip state and bring it to the beginning of the track where a floor clip can be used to perform the ultra shortcut without going over the invisible wall.
To start, we get OOB by using a mushroom to trick off a fallen pillar and go over the invisible wall at the temple entrance. Once there, we can get into a dayclip state using the seam, and take that forward in the lap. There are a few places in this section where it is incredibly difficult to maintain the state without ejecting or falling. In particular, the final boost ramp requires a precise double up-trick double floor clip to land past the ramp in a dayclip state. After reaching the finish line, we perform the first of two crucial floor clips by shrooming and hopping between the intersection of two angled slopes. Following the hop, we get a wallclip which barely gets us to the bridge while staying in the final checkpoint before the finish line.
Now that the DLC is set up, we drive back to the temple to enter a dayclip state again. Having used two mushrooms already, and with the ultra requiring the final one, this setup needs to be shroomless; fortunately, our boy Mikul (@mikul958) found a perfect method for this. We use RFH to clip through the zipper and get into the dayclip state using the OOB seam. We can now drive back to the start of the lap in this state to begin the actual flap. We use our final shroom to accelerate into the wall, causing a bunch of suspension related weirdness that ultimately drags the final wheel through the floor. Upon entering CP0, the lap starts, and using the speed of the shroom, we are able to reach the second to last checkpoint before respawning. We then finish off the run by simply turning around, hitting the final KCP, and then supergrinding into the finish courtesy of Police.
Thank you to everyone who helped out with this run, and thank you to the game for existing! :D
Music: Tostarena: Ruins (Hotline Sehwani Remix) - SilverIceSound (youtube.com/watch?v=EeiPcI34_Lc)
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
TAS Flap BKT Cut: -0.563
Previous BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=kJlx67QVd1g (by Mikul)
The MKW TAS BKT history will now forever be stained with a random Dry Bones BKT. Massive W.
So this came out of nowhere. Yesterday I decided on a whim to try performing rYF Ultra since it was the only one of the three "Precious JEMs" (BC, MMM, rYF) that I had yet to TAS. I was in call when making the decision to do the ultra, and as such I decided to use Dry Bones to be funny. What I was NOT expecting was for my first successful completion of the ultra to be over .4 faster than the BKT despite using a suboptimal character. Since this run is improvable before the race even begins, I figured I'd just improve what I could and upload it since further optimizations to the ultra are going to require more work. This run's main improvement is the angle hit the egg with prior to respawning. To put it simply, egg push me more directly into CP15, me run go faster than Mikul run.
Thanks to Mikul for helping me understand a few miscellaneous details regarding the ultra, and thanks to Kierio for making the epic very good thumbnail.
Music: Monochromatic Life - HyunTaek "DINY/INID" Yun
Composed for the La Tale soundtrack.
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
This isn't a typical upload from me. Whenever I post something, it's usually to document a new strategy, publish a completed best-known time, or both at once. This, however, is something entirely different. My love of this game roots not only from TASing and optimization but also from the miscellaneous parts of the game which aren't often thought about. This video serves to showcase one of those obscure details in a never-before seen way.
DK Summit is one of very few tracks in this game to have item boxes that are inaccessible to the player through direct means. At the second bend of the S-turn, there's a set of three item boxes located far below the track. These items can be seen from a distance by turning around after the cannon and tricking over the invisible wall (this was how the items were discovered in 2012). The reason for these items' existence and placement is unknown, but one thing's for sure: they're there. For 15 years, these items have gone untouched in regular play, and they've long been written off as completely inaccessible. However, given the glitch hunting scene's vast knowledge of the game in 2023, I started to get curious if these item boxes really were as inaccessible as we've come to believe.
Let's get a bit more specific about the boxes to illustrate the problem. The items are located roughly 32000 units below the track directly above them (for reference, the Spear is roughly 275 units long), and they're positioned at Y = -22000. Already we have a pretty major issue since the game has a hardcoded failsafe to count the player out of bounds if they even fall below Y = 0. The teleport caused by a respawn takes 130 frames to occur from the moment the player crosses Y = 0, and if we consider that 120 units per frame is the fastest the game will allow us to move, we have a maximum range of 15600 units below Y = 0, which is still over 6000 units away from the item boxes.
While this alone may seem to immediately confirm the items' inaccessibility, we have a trick up our sleeve: the Mega Mushroom Fast Fall. In the past year or so, glitch hunters have discovered that, while in a mega mushroom, the XYZ speed cap is increased substantially. This allows us to move faster in situations where our external velocity surpasses 120, such as with a supergrind. Since gravity in MKW is caused by a decrease in EV in the Y direction, using a mega mushroom while airborne has the same effect, leading to our terminal velocity increasing. This boost to our fall speed allows us to cover the remaining 6000 units needed to reach the item boxes vertically, so that just leaves reaching their lateral position.
The main problem here is that the items are in a REALLY awkward spot. All three are positioned underneath either drivable road or a higher killplane, so we have to get out-of-bounds and somehow get underneath the track at the same time. Thankfully, there's a unique solution we can use. For whatever reason, the Cheep Charger (and apparently other vehicles) can clip through the halfpipes on DKS by performing a trick and landing upside-down. This allows us to clip out-of-bounds while simultaneously facing towards the track rather than away. While this has no uses in time trials, it certainly works for this specific purpose.
To summarize, by using Cheep Charger, we can perform a trick off the zipper to clip through the floor with an angle directed towards the item boxes. We then use the mega mushroom and move in such a way that by the time we reach the universal killplane, we've already reached one of the item boxes laterally. The increased speedcap of the mega mushroom allows us to then fall fast enough to reach and break one of the item boxes just before the game teleports us back onto the track.
Major props to Gaberboo for helping me with the No Respawn Blackout visual, and thanks to Police for bringing the "Cheep Charger" Zipper Bypass to my attention!
Music: シーモアバトル (Fight With Seymour) - Nobuo Uematsu and Tsutomu Narita (youtube.com/watch?v=o8UELk--E8Q)
Composed for the Final Fantasy X HD Remaster soundtrack.
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
This is a tool-assisted speedrun. This time will not count on any real-time rankings. Done on Dolphin 5.0 with savestates, slowdown, frame advance, TAS code, Info Display (created by SwareJonge), and TASToolkit Lua Scripts (created by LuigiM). Input Display overlay created by WhatIsLoaf. Debug Panel created by Gaberboo. Texture Hack is a modified version of "Night Desert" v1.0 by JorisMKW.
Disclaimer: The texture hack used in this encode has been altered from the original to use the same KCL as the official track file for Dry Dry Ruins, making it functionally identical for the purposes of verification and recording. The run would still sync if performed on official hardware on an unmodded version of the game.
TAS Flap BKT Cut: -2.167
Previous BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=clN8JQ8Nr1s (by Blaze)
Ejay's Channel: bit.ly/3jTcSrO
This run is long overdue at this point. Very few people ever had the motivation to TAS this category simply due to the straight up dummy tier prospect of optimizing this track's ultra which is still one of the hardest in the game to TAS. Further, any time a solid flap would be created, something new would be discovered that totally obsoleted it, requiring the ultra to be redone over and over again. Despite the post respawn inputs being able to be spliced, it took a really long time for me to finally get the motivation to optimize this, and then around the time that the run was finished, I discovered the BC Ultra shortcut and diverted almost all of my attention onto that. But regardless, after three years of this ultra's existence, we finally have an optimized TAS of it.
There's not a huge amount to say about this run. One of the key differences from the original discovery is the use of a supergrind discovered by Ejay to enter the lap at a higher speed, saving about 0.7 seconds. The rest of the time was just saved through massive amounts of optimization to both the pre-respawn and post-respawn sections, with the post-respawn specifically having a completely different route.
As of now, the ultra has not been successfully performed with an outside drift bike, and the closest attempt has to go out of the way to get more speed, drastically losing time over the speed of the setup for the Bullet Bike. We're uncertain of the timesave that an ODB would provide for the post-respawn, but it would have to save a lot to break even. That being said, the ultra in this TAS could potentially be improved since in a previous version of the TAS, I got an ultra that respawned about 0.1 seconds faster than the ultra in this run. However, we ultimately had to scrap that ultra since that flap didn't include the supergrind, and in the final run, the time lost to the ultra is more than made up for by the faster approach I got. There is one more known timesave however. I won't spoil it yet since the run for that improvement is currently being created, but it's pretty wacky. Stay tuned :)
Of course, I gotta give some props to my man Ejay for his work on the non-ultra related sections, namely the post-respawn and the first supergrind. It was great working with you on this one!
Music: Summit (No More Running Mix) - Kuraine (Lena Raine) (youtube.com/watch?v=_YLk0kJ3Naw)
Composed for the Celeste soundtrack.
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
This is a tool-assisted speedrun. This time will not count on any real-time rankings. Done on Dolphin 5.0 with savestates, slowdown, frame advance, TAS code, Info Display (created by SwareJonge), and TASToolkit Lua Scripts (created by LuigiM). Input Display overlay created by WhatIsLoaf. Debug Panel created by Gaberboo.
Disclaimer: This run takes advantage of the analog inputs of the Wii Wheel. In order for this run to be performed in real-time in a playback, pause buffering would potentially need to be used.
TAS Flap BKT Cut: N/A (-16.523 from No Ultra)
No Ultra Flap BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=3anjf7Go2hE (by Monster and Marth)
Over the past few years, it has become somewhat of a tradition for MKW TASers to create fake ultra shortcut reveal videos for April Fool's Day. However, in all that time, there has never actually been a real ultra revealed on April 1st. Today, I'm finally changing that. This is Mario Kart Wii's 24th ultra shortcut.
Before I get started, I want to apologize for not revealing this earlier. I discovered the ultra back in late January (youtube.com/watch?v=pX9UX0v7s4g) but chose not to reveal it until now since there's a very real (but not certain) possibility that this is the final ultra shortcut we're ever going to find in this game, and having the opportunity to reveal an actual ultra on April Fool's Day was too good to pass up. If you don't believe me that this is real, check mkwtas.com. Unless you're watching this within the first few minutes of its upload, this run is going to be on there (and it's not going to go away).
Now that we're through with that, what's going on here? How does this ultra actually work, and how did it take us this long to discover? I'm glad you asked! Let's get into it!
This ultra is fundamentally similar to the Dry Dry Ruins ultra shortcut. We start by performing a supergrind off of a declining portion of the offroad and use the supergrind and a grounded shroom to build momentum (or more formally known as external velocity), in this case in the -X direction. Where this ultra largely differs from DDR's ultra is in its second half. Unlike DDR where we eject off of a pillar into a wallclip, we have no good option here other than to eject from the supergrind directly into a wallclip that maintains as much of our external velocity as possible. Using the two remaining shrooms to keep our speed high while airborne, we travel far enough to land on the halfpipe while in checkpoint 0 so that driving the rest of the lap will result in a lap count.
As for why this took so long to discover, I've included a pastebin that goes more in-depth on this ultra's nightmarish nature. If you have a question about the more intricate parts of the ultra, please read this first before asking: pastebin.com/fmjXJgWN
This TAS, as far as an Unrestricted Flap BKT is concerned, is a super solid run. The main improvements to the run are to get a better ending geyser cycle and to use Baby Daisy instead of Toadette. However, both of those things would require me to redo the glitch entirely, and I didn't feel that was super necessary for this reveal. This flap, thanks to both the ultra shortcut and left side shroomless spiral skip being stupidly hard to do, much less optimize, is one of the most daunting categories to TAS in the game now. However, at the very least, the two strats combined will almost certainly allow this ultra to be faster for 3lap by a little bit (especially if Baby Daisy can do it).
I wanna give a special thanks to Kierio04 for joining me on this journey of discovery and for agreeing to plan the TAS Competition around revealing the ultra. You really helped me get through this, man! Much love!
Music: Supernova - Xtrullor
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
Disclaimer: This run takes advantage of the analog inputs of the Wii Wheel. In order for this run to be performed in real-time in a playback, pause buffering would potentially need to be used.
TAS Flap BKT Cut: -8.521
Previous BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=A_38TZSWDDk (by Ejay)
A little over a week ago, Ejay proved the newest and most elusive ultra shortcut in the game, the Moo Moo Meadows ultra, to be possible. If you haven't already, go give him some love for his discovery. He really deserves it :). But anyway, before the ultra shortcut was formally released, I had been given some insider info that got me theorizing as to how the time could be brought down from the low 17 Ejay got in his demonstration. This run is the result of that theorization.
Before we begin, let's make something clear: yes, this run is an official best known time. For whatever reason a lot of people seem to forget that Flaps are considered official categories, and so whenever an ultra with a long setup shows up, they immediately think it doesn't save time. This track is by far the most extreme example that we currently have in the game (though it may not last too long). The idea for this lap is to perform the shroomless out of bounds entry the same way Ejay did, but after getting out of bounds, we drive an entire lap without going back in bounds. This is where 95% of the time for this strat execution comes from since we can't use any boosts while on the heavy offroad. However, because we don't care about the lap 1 time, how long we spend isn't really important.
After driving out of bounds for about 5 minutes, the actual flap starts. The main difference from the original discovery of the ultra, as you can probably tell, is that we perform the outside drift clip (or ODC) before the flap begins. This section is a lot harder than it looks since the wall becomes double sided too early for us to clip using the same method Ejay used. If we used that method, we'd never enter the finish line and the lap wouldn't begin. To circumvent this, I had to figure out some weird shroomless momentum nonsense that would allow me to initiate the shroom while already having momentum directed towards the wall. The space we have to get the clip without bonking early, missing the wall, or being respawned is quite small, so I was quite surprised that this ended up working at all. Upon clipping, we steer the vehicle midair to start the lap as late as possible then perform an OOB bounce to land on the OOB seam. Notably, we land on the seam far enough forward that we don't need to back up to get enough room to perform the final part of the ultra. We can simply turn around and shroom as soon as we turn far enough to the left. The final bit utilizes a technique that we've coined the seam swing. By landing on the OOB seam as low as we can while performing a right drift, we can land back on the seam, start a drift to the right (which sends us to the left due to outside drift bike physics), and then immediately fall off the seam using precise control stick movements. The end result is a redirection of our speed while underneath the floor. If done properly, we are able to barely reach the final key checkpoint without having to delay our acceleration with a hop prior to the seam swing. We respawn right before the finish line and do a small wiggle to shave one final millisecond off the run, nearly cutting the flap time for this ultra in half.
Special thanks to Ejay for telling me about the ultra being confirmed early as well as for helping me understand what I was doing wrong when attempting the shroomless clip! Thanks for all the help you've been to me, and congrats again on discovering this behemoth of an ultra!
Music: Mt. Chill - Thegur90
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
Disclaimer: This run takes advantage of the analog inputs of the Wii Wheel. In order for this run to be performed in real-time in a playback, pause buffering would potentially need to be used.
Done on VS Mode:
150cc
Easy CPUs
All CPU Vehicles
Aggressive Items
Cut From TT Ultra Flap: -21.209
For many years the idea of ultra shortcuts exclusive to Grand Prix/VS Mode has circulated throughout the MKW TAS scene, and while there have been some GP ultras found in the past (most notably RR and rDKJP), this ultra is by far the most convoluted GP ultra that has been demonstrated (though certainly not the most convoluted ultra in general).
Before I get into the ultra itself, I'd like to clarify something. Yes, there is already an ultra on this track, but 1. this ultra is way faster, and 2. the time trial ultra is soon going to be obsoleted by superhopping, thereby making it an ultra longcut. For those reasons, I decided to look into finding a faster ultra on this track through the use of VS Mode.
VS Mode gives us access to two very powerful tools not present in time trials: items and CPUs. For this run, I found a method that only requires the former. The general idea I started with was to perform a wallclip around the finish line while holding a bullet bill, then using the bullet to redirect my movement in midair to fly into the checkpoint. Eventually I adapted this by adding a star to the equation to get more distance from the wallclip. This method is deceptively tight due to the 95% rule forcing us to go much farther than the 2nd to last CP.
Of course, this poses a challenge. How do we perform a fast enough wallclip while being in a star and while holding a bullet? You can't hold two power items at the same time, much less three. Well, the solution is to not hold the mushrooms or the star. Conveniently, mushrooms and stars are the only two items that can be used without being the held item. The way to do this is to have the item at an earlier point in time and get hit by another item to drop the shroom/star. The most convenient item to do this with is the thundercloud which not only allows you to hold a 2nd item but also allows you to voluntarily drop the item rather than having to hope that a CPU uses a POW or shock at exactly the right time. So, the route goes like this: I start by driving up to the first set of item boxes where conveniently, one of the CPUs gets a thundercloud. I bump into the CPU to steal the thundercloud then drive backwards, manipulating RNG to get triple shrooms from the 10th place box. I get onto the wall and wait for the TC to shock me, at which point I strategically jump of the wall so that two of my shrooms will land on it. From here I drive the rest of lap 1, having some fun while I do it. Once I reach the last set of items, I wait for the CPUs to catch up and get my own thundercloud followed immediately by a star. I drive to the end of the track and get up onto the wall just in time for the TC to shock the star out of me and onto the wall. We now have 2 ground shrooms and one ground star in place. After respawning, I drive back to the last set of items to get a bullet, then drive back to the end of the track where I once again clip onto the wall. The flap starts with me driving into the star to activate it and driving past the two shrooms to reach CP 1, at which point I turn around and use the two shrooms to perform a high clip off the side of the wall. I narrow avoid crossing behind the finish line, and as I'm about to land in the lava, I use the bullet to steer into the checkpoint region far enough back to satisfy the 95% rule. After respawning all I need to do is drive forward since we respawn in the last KCP.
This was a very entertaining run to create, but recording it was pretty terrible since I'm not used to creating the input recordings/DTMs needed to TAS in VS Mode. Somehow I forgot to disable Dual Core and Idle Skipping before starting the run, which makes the CPUs non-deterministic. Additionally, I forgot to enable to no music code or speedometer code before starting the run, so activating those codes would desync it, and since I made the run on 5.0 Lua Core, I couldn't framedump at a high bit rate since DTMs aren't cross compatible with different Dolphin versions, and Lua Core doesn't let you adjust bitrate.
Special thanks to Citrinitas and Xander for helping me remove a few rogue X inputs in the middle of the final run. I was pulling my hair out for hours trying to find a way to remove those. Also thanks to Ejay for helping me with recording. You guys are all the best :)
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
This run was created on Dolphin Lua Core with savestates, slowdown, frame advance, TAS code, and Info Display (created by SwareJonge). The video overlays were created by Stebler (bottom right) and Melg (left).
This video is an improvement on the previous strat which doesn't complete the track backwards. Since then, we figured out that we could complete the track backwards. Pretty simple really.
A couple of months ago, xnik demonstrated that it was possible to go over the invisible wall on DK Mountain (youtube.com/watch?v=VLOAtrxIJh8). The way they did this was by getting stuck in the final ramp on the downhill section of the track, somehow causing the vehicle to pick up momentum (but not speed) in the -Y direction. He then performs a hop and a bonk against the ramp collision to perform a External Velocity transfer from the Y vector to the X and Z vectors. We've coined this specific example of rigid body physics "velocity stacking" since it sounds cooler and stuff. So, in making this run, I went about the same method with the intent of driving the track backwards.
After getting lodged into the ground, I build up about 5900 -Y external velocity, and with reversing, I was able to get this speed up to about 6400. Then, as I turn to prepare for the speed transfer, my speed drops by around 1000 from turning the vehicle, ultimately leading to the remaining ~5300 -Y external velocity being transferred to the other vectors. This means that, while my actual speed can't exceed 120kmh in any direction, the game will keep pushing me along at 120 XYZ speed as the forces dictating my movement are so much higher than my actual speed. I take advantage of this by driving all the way up the volcano and using the sloped ground to repeatedly rotate the vehicle in midair. This bizarre movement leaves me with enough positive Y external velocity to completely surpass the invisible wall reaching ~64000 units into the air. Simultaneously, this also allows me to hit checkpoint 23, setting my respawn position to region 1, placing me right in front of the cannon.
To summarize, here are the statistics GCN DK Mountain has to offer:
did it :)
Music: Gran Turismo 4 License Music (Remix) - j0hnnys1nz (youtube.com/watch?v=0blvziYuzU0)
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
Disclaimer: This run takes advantage of the analog inputs of the Wii Wheel. In order for this run to be performed in real-time in a playback, pause buffering would potentially need to be used.
We have finally discovered Mario Kart Wii's elusive 22nd ultra shortcut, and no, it isn't a prank this time. Over 2 years of speculation and several hours of seam riding, ground bouncing, mushroom ramping, and vehicle testing has at last culminated in one of MKW's most sought-after strats to date: the Luigi Circuit ultra shortcut.
Here's a pastebin of the events and progressions that led up to this point: pastebin.com/LjydDpAD
Also, I'd like to acknowledge dm248 for coming up with an idea not unlike what I performed in the video. While the strat performed in this video was both independently and, to a certain degree, accidentally discovered on my own (I only found dm's post about 30 minutes before this video's release), dm still deserves the love for their help in pushing this game to its limits. Huge props, man.
With that out of the way, let me quickly explain the quality of the run itself. If we're thinking about this as an LC Glitch Flap rather than just a demonstration, the run is improvable in a few regards. First, I'm like 500% sure the 2nd shroom timing and turnaround could be improved to optimize this run further. The glitch itself is actually fairly solid since I had to delay my 2nd shroom a little so that I would get enough distance after the OOB Bounce, but I do think that it's possible to land a few frames earlier and still bounce into CP21. Everything after the glitch is prelim, but I did still put a little time into optimizing the wall bounce, and the ending as a whole is a good starting point for future runs. So no, this run isn't optimized, but it's still pretty good for the first LC Glitch Flap TAS ever, and it's very clearly faster than the theoretical best SG flap, so we're good on this actually saving time. As for the RTA viability of it, I'd say it's about on par with the difficulty of the rMR ultra (AKA not happening RTA lmao). The wallclip OOB and seamride is easier for LC, but I'd say its checkpoint manipulation glitch is significantly harder than that of rMR's easiest variant.
I don't think I've ever been as emotionally overwhelmed to accomplish something in a game than I was during the minute between landing in CP21 and completing the lap. It's one thing to be a contributor towards an ultra shortcut, but being the sole discoverer of an ultra shortcut this convoluted is absolutely a dream. I never expected when I started TASing that I would ever reach this point, and seeing how far I've come in striving for perfection, it really makes everything I've done feel worth it. Without a doubt, this is my proudest individual achievement, and I thank you all for joining me on this journey of a lifetime. I couldn't have done it without you all. Here's to many more future discoveries!
Music: Jeez - VenomWave (youtube.com/watch?v=8xzcRCdE5Jw)
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
Disclaimer: This run takes advantage of the analog inputs of the Wii Wheel. In order for this run to be performed in real-time in a playback, pause buffering would potentially need to be used.
TAS Flap BKT Cut: -5.175
Previous BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=J4ZqU5gJSFE (by myself, Marth, Ejay, Citrinitas, Kierio, Marth, Blahpy, and Charlie)
Kierio: bit.ly/36pRWip
Ejay: bit.ly/3jTcSrO
Ancient: bit.ly/3tUgezT
Marth: bit.ly/310ycRo
Abby: bit.ly/3tY3GaR
Zappg: bit.ly/3Lxf9E7
I discovered that we can perform the glitch without respawning and save over 5 seconds as a result. That's it. I'm going back to bed. I'll elaborate more once I get back home from my trip. Happy Arpil Flool.
5 DAYS LATER...
We did it. We have reached our holy grail. We have discovered a method to perform the Mario Raceway Ultra Shortcut without Respawning. Before I get into how huge this is, bear with me as I provide some background.
In the description of the previous video, I stated that "If we are ever able to prove a bounce across the gap possible without going back in-bounds, we should be able to perform the glitch as a whole without respawning, and if that happens, the category is easily getting taken down by another few seconds. However, after the amount of time I've put into attempting this to no avail,
I'm willing to leave it to the imagination". Well, in the 7 months since that run was uploaded, some things have changed.
My Platinum Runner TAS Strats video hit one million views on November 17th of last year, and after deciding to create a sequel, I began to theorize fitting strats to execute and include. Of those, one of the first that came to mind was the Mario Raceway ultra shortcut respawnless. This strat would be perfect for Platinum Runner due to how absurdly high its handling and drift is, and since the strat had not been performed, it would be an excellent showcase of a Platinum Runner-only strat. I proved the respawnless ultra with Platinum Runner to be possible on December 13th.
For the rest of the month, I continued to focus on PRTS2, but on New Year's Eve, Kierio inquired for me to revisit the strat with an unmodded vehicle. Though I had tested Bullet Bike in the past, for whatever reason, I had never tested the Quacker, a vehicle with substantially higher handling. I only tested BB since I thought that Drift would be the important stat to performing the seam bounce without going back in bounds (coined "Parallel Cross"). However, as it turned out, the handling stat was what made all the difference. Less than an hour before 2022, I executed the first ever respawnless rMR ultra shortcut with full setup (youtube.com/watch?v=e8CvZOlOmsc).
The rest is pretty self-explanatory. We perform the same setup as in the former BKT and then perform the ultra shortcut respawnless. There are plenty of miscellaneous details, but those are for another time. As far as I can tell, the only major ways this could be improved is either by using Toadette instead of Baby Daisy (hypothetically not faster) or by proving Parallel Cross to be possible with Bullet Bike. Hopefully we won't need to do this setup a third time though lol.
Music: Morning Star - Hydelic (youtube.com/watch?v=x47CRjxuz6A)
Composed for the Tetris Effect/Tetris Effect: Connected soundtrack.
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
On Wednesday, November 17th, 2021, my first Platinum Runner TAS Strats video hit 1 million views on Youtube, the tenth time an MKW TAS video by an individual has ever reached such a milestone. I figured that there was only one proper send off to that video, and that is this video. Platinum Runner TAS Strats 2, my largest non-BKT TAS project to date, a compilation that took over five months to finally complete.
If you don't know what the Platinum Runner is, it is a stat modification originally created by Atlas for TWD98. The mod takes the Flame Runner and Spear vehicle bodies and gives them both "max" stats, filling up every stat bar on the vehicle select menu. These stats provide the vehicle with the capability to perform stunts that no other vanilla vehicle in the game can replicate.
As you might have expected, this video was kind of a nightmare to create. My goal was to make a compilation that is at minimum on-par with the first. The problem was that in making the first video, I already used many of the most obvious strats. For this reason, I had to dig deep to find new interesting strats. At least in my opinion, while this video definitely has a few clips that are underwhelming, the highlights of the montage far surpass those of its predecessor's. I do hope that you all enjoy what I have put together. Thank you for all being so patient with me. Much love.
Special thanks to Atlas for creating this mod, LuigiM for helping me with installing the mod, and Wade474 for creating the custom Dolphin Platinum Runner design, and Kierio04 and Ejay B for giving me feedback on the editing process.
Music: Confronting Myself - Celeste
Song by Lena Raine: youtube.com/watch?v=b_oEDGONSc4
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
Disclaimer: This run takes advantage of the analog inputs of the Wii Wheel. In order for this run to be performed in real-time in a playback, pause buffering would potentially need to be used.
TAS Flap BKT Cut: -0.017
Previous BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=9fXow7-fNG4 (by Akari and myself)
Akari's channel: youtube.com/channel/UC5Mam86LKrjOMSCIfGG-ngQ
Music: N/A
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
This is a series Kierio originally planned to collaborate solely with Charlie on, but too bad, I'm throwing my hat into the ring lol. The series will primarily be uploaded gradually on both of their channels, though I may chip in every now in then if it appears that something has been missed (as was the case for Abyssal Ruins). Once there are videos on both channels, a playlist will be set up so that people don't miss out on uploads. We will be going through the tracks of the CTGP 1.03-1112 update alphabetically, and returning to any past tracks if breakthroughs are made that change the statistics of the progression of the challenge (more on this later in the description. And again, this video is an example of this).
Abyssal Ruins poses a ton of problems when it comes to completing a lap backwards. The track is almost entirely sticky road which makes certain tech (notably RFH ejections) impossible. Further, there are multiple points on the track that go from a higher platform to a lower platform when driving forwards, and this translates to there being large walls inhibiting progress when driving backwards. Respawns also don't help here since the final jump cannot be cheesed with a respawn. It HAS to be done respawnless, and doing that requires a shroom, thereby making respawns anywhere else also useless. Finally, there are four backwards road blocks that in isolation all require one shroom, but we only have three to work with, so something has to be done to get all four in one run.
So, how did I do it? My first priority was to simply overcome the obstacle that halted Kierio's failed attempt. Kierio mentioned in the comment section of his video that clipping the pillars wasn't possible because of the sticky road. I don't know if he tested this, but regardless, that statement is incorrect. While the sticky road clearly does have an impact on the clip, it doesn't outright prevent it, so we can use it to get onto the bouncy pad.
Then there was the second obstacle. Around this time, I had learned that respawning on the third obstacle wasn't an option and that both it and the final obstacle required a shroom to even theoretically perform. So, I had to figure out some way to do the second obstacle shroomless. To do this, I incorporated the ending of the first setup as a solution to the second by hitting the bouncy pad in such a way that it traps you under it with tons of vertical momentum. I quickly break away from the ceiling, and with precise movement, bounce off of two of the pillars on the surrounding ruins. This gets me far enough to use my trick boost to perform a wallclip. The clip was only barely high enough, but regardless, obstacle two was bypassed.
Obstacle three was much easier to ultimately accomplish, but it required its own discovery. Kierio tried to clip the side of the track to no avail for his attempt, but by narrowly driving on the edge of the road, we can get low enough to get a highclip using the wall on the side of the road. Not only does this let us bypass obstacle three without respawns, but it also allows us to perform the first obstacle shroomless, allowing for an alternate method of completing the challenge on this track(shroomless bouncy pad, and one shroom for each of the other three obstacles).
The final obstacle simply requires breaking free of the sticky road while our bike is facing up, something that can easily be done by using the small part of the road where the main rain and offroad are at different elevations. The final shroom gives us enough speed to cross the gap, and by extension complete the entire lap backwards.
There are a few statistics and various versions of this challenge that we will keep track of that allow for a better understanding of what's going on. Below is a list of all of them:
1. Completing the track backwards with the minimum number of respawns, where you have access to a certain amount of mushrooms (a = Infinite, b = 3, c = 2, d = 1, e = 0)
2. Completing the track backwards with the minimum number of respawns, then minimizing the number of mushrooms from there
3. Completing the track backwards with the minimum number of mushrooms, regardless of respawn count
Previously, Abyssal Ruins had no statistics to offer due to not being completed. Now that it has though, we officially have our first CT with backwards statistics. Nice!
1a. 0 Respawns
1b. 0 Respawns
1c. N/A
1d. N/A
1e. N/A
2. 3 Shrooms
3. 3 Shrooms
Music: Joy - Hydelic
Composed for the Tetris Effect/Tetris Effect: Connected soundtrack.
____________________________________
MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
This is a tool-assisted speedrun. This time will not count on any real-time rankings. Done on Dolphin 5.0 with savestates, slowdown, frame advance, TAS code, Info Display (created by SwareJonge), and TASToolkit Lua Scripts (created by LuigiM).
Disclaimer: This run takes advantage of the analog inputs of the Wii Wheel. In order for this run to be performed in real-time in a playback, pause buffering would potentially need to be used.
TAS Flap BKT Cut: -2.217
Previous BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=C_Nq2s8qKxU (by myself, Ejay, Kierio, Citrinitas, Snoop, Marth, Blahpy, Charlie, and cf)
Marth: bit.ly/310ycRo
Ejay: bit.ly/3jTcSrO
Kierio: bit.ly/36pRWip
Citrinitas: bit.ly/38Ihfh7
Blahpy: bit.ly/3aGvMMd
Charlie: bit.ly/2uyCWRV
For information on this run's development, please check out the Pastebin here: pastebin.com/RS2W3qA3
As for the run itself, this is one of, if not the single most optimized MKW TAS in history. The only part of the run that can be improved in millisecond intervals is the ending, but this run already saves .002 from the already incredibly optimized ending of the 16.169 Flap. As for the respawn itself, the margin of error is much more forgiving due to respawns being locked to frame cycles. Even still, it took a lot to get the respawn as earlier as we possibly could. Since the lap is not started the way the game expects it to be, the exact finish time calculation doesn't occur, and as a result, the lap will always start on an increment of 16.667 milliseconds. This allows us to alter the starting position of the lap without changing the starting time, which was ultimately crucial in optimizing the respawn. Even if we ignore the lap count and simply nosedive as much as we can, it's still not possible to improve the respawn. If the respawn can be improved, it's ridiculously hard to do so.
So what is the future of Mario Raceway's ultra shortcut? In my eyes, only one thing could theoretically shave time from this already absurd category. If we are ever able to prove a bounce across the gap possible without going back in-bounds, we should be able to perform the glitch as a whole without respawning, and if that happens, the category is easily getting taken down by another few seconds. However, after the amount of time I've put into attempting this to no avail,
I'm willing to leave it to the imagination.
Whether I'm considered one of the discoverers of the ultra or simply the first to perform it, I'm honored to have contributed towards the category's creation and the development of what could potentially be its last major strat. I really do hope to see the no-respawn happen someday, but for now, it's time to step away from the category once and for all. I wish the best for anyone who comes back to it. Much love!
Music: Grand Turismo 4 - Final Lap (Remix)
Remix by j0nnys1nz
____________________________________
MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
Disclaimer: This run takes advantage of the analog inputs of the Wii Wheel. In order for this run to be performed in real-time in a playback, pause buffering would potentially need to be used.
TAS BKS Cut: -3.204
Previous BKS: youtube.com/watch?v=ArZuAHsfo8k (by Kierio04 and myself)
This is a preliminary run made for two reasons:
First, the run showcases not only the new fountain strat (found by Ancient), but it also does it with Flame Runner, something which has never been done before (at least to our knowledge).
Second, the run puts into perspective just how much time this strat saves. We're not even doing the best route possible and yet it still saves over 3 seconds (and it can be done all three laps too o_O).
As I just said, however, this run is not perfect. I only partially optimized the majority of the lap since I knew the route I used is slower. Why did I choose this route? Well, I didn't even think to do the right side standard glitch entry and the left side entry requires completely redoing the banister tricks. Everything up until after the banister IS optimized and was done by Marth, Monster, and myself. Everything after that was done by me. With proper optimizing and routing, a sub 25 lap 1 is certainly possible.
Music: Starbound OST - Arctic Battle 3
____________________________________
MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
Disclaimer: This run takes advantage of the analog inputs of the Wii Wheel. In order for this run to be performed in real-time in a playback, pause buffering would potentially need to be used.
TAS Flap BKT Cut: -1.547
Previous BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=XTzsIYwlsLs (by Thomas and myself)
cf's channel: youtube.com/user/Caatfish1
Malleo's channel: youtube.com/user/ShwaMalleoMK
Thomas's channel: youtube.com/user/MKWiiTomas
Remember a while back when I said Luigi Circuit Supergrind 3lap was the biggest project I ever finished? That's not true anymore. The previous MT Flap BKT was finished in December 2018, and I started working on improving the run less than a month after. Therefore, this TAS has been over two years in the making, and good lord this was rough. I'm legitimately considering making a separate video detailing the progression of this TAS. For now though, I'm just gonna explain what we improved upon
First off, you may notice that the video starts by showing that we charge an SSMT before entering the flap. While the video doesn't show this, there's a good reason why we do this: That. Damn. Net. The dreamcrusher that is this net has a whopping 69 (nice) possible cycles since a single cycle takes 70 frames to repeat itself. In order to test various net cycles, we start the flap by charging and holding an SSMT before starting the lap itself. This way, we can just shift the input file of the run to a different frame to change the net cycle. There's a bit more to this since the idle animation can actually desync the run, but that's a topic for another day. Just know that the net cycle here is extremely similar to the net cycle on the first lap of the current 3lap TAS, or in other words, it's a really good cycle.
Back to the start of the lap, you may notice that we begin the flap completely differently from the previous flap. In fact, we use the same no-stop glitch strat that the current 3lap uses, but slightly faster because we spent two years making this shit. Since we're already facing the wall we need to clip from, we simply need to back up a bit to gain enough speed to make the glitch, significantly faster than the 90+ degree turn that the previous BKT uses.
Another big change, as you may have noticed, is that we perform the flap strat under the tree instead of clipping over it, which reduces airtime and is just overall much faster. Our bounce to the cannon is also significantly faster (cf is a wizard. I don't know how else he could have gotten that bounce).
The next noticeable change is our way of performing the "NLC" shortcut. Rather than ramping off the support beam, we simply use the slope of the ground to cross the gap. This is actually one of the biggest timesaves of the run for two reasons. First, we don't have to drive forward after colliding with the pole. We can simply start turning in an SSMT immediately after landing. Second, there's significantly more room for us to accelerate from our shroom boost, meaning that we have a much higher airspeed and therefore land earlier. Funnily enough, I only found this out when completing a prelim lap with whatever I could get. I couldn't get the right pole collision to do the old strat, so I just did that to have something, and incidentally, it saved a ton.
Our next timesave comes from Malleo strat, and dear god I hate this strat. Thank you Malleo for saving us from it. It took us three revisions of the approach to actually get it. Following that, like I mentioned earlier, we have a much better net cycle than the previous BKT, and since it's so similar to the 3lap TAS's lap 1 cycle, I used the movement there as my reference and threw a wheelie trigger in there just to save a tad.
Finally, the ending ramp. I was the sole contributor to this trick and yet even I don't totally understand it. The general idea is that we're combining a walltrick with side trick abuse. Normally this isn't possible since walltricks usually fling your vehicle in the direction of your trick, causing left and right tricks to normally not work. However, if your bike is naturally facing down and you perform the trick on the same frame that you collide with the wall, you get the same effect as a down-walltrick. I perform this here and also add in a jammed trick to optimize the distance/ground speed ratio, making this a side trick abused jammed walltrick . . . I don't even know man. Just take my word for it, it's fast as hecc.
Can this TAS be improved? Of course. Will I be the one to do it? Fuck no lmao. Happy April Fools!
Music: Forest Maze Remix - jatzy
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
Disclaimer: This run takes advantage of the analog inputs of the Wii Wheel. In order for this run to be performed in real-time in a playback, pause buffering would potentially need to be used.
TAS Flap BKT Cut: -0.043
Previous BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=F2YNSlDlezI (by Ben and Abby)
Marth's channel: youtube.com/channel/UClkb9VBvCEq3SMxE9HKS2kA
Wade's channel: youtube.com/channel/UCK5Y7c_46GkYSzB5nurtWaQ
One day, a young boy named Jello woke up from the most pleasant of dreams. He could not contain his excitement that the new Maple Treeway Glitch Flap was completed. He immediately got online to share his excitement. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the Coconut Mall Glitch Flap had been improved by a mere 8 milliseconds. At first, the naive Jello boi thought nothing of it. However, upon taking a closer look, he noticed something. One of the TASers credited for this flap went by the name of "mkwii PENIS". The gelatinous puff cringed at the mere sight of this immaturity on an official TAS BKT. He knew something must be done to undo this injustice. He called fellow TASer Marth and the most recent TASLabz recruit Wade474, and the three got to work.
In all seriousness, this run improves upon the previous run in two ways. First, we use our first mushroom prior to the lap starting. The reason for this is that the wallclip needed to start the lap drops our speed to around 55 km/h no matter what our initial speed is. However, if we're in the middle of a shroom boost when clipping the wall, this speed is increased to 75 km/h. Therefore, we use the first mushroom on the same frame that the wallclip occurs to maximize the shroom's timer during the flap while also getting the fast entry. The second improvement comes from taking the turn tighter and returning in-bounds before completing the flap. This means that we don't need to turn as much directly after starting the lap. Can this be improved? Maybe, but doing so would require completely redoing the entire flap with a different entry and different QM while still starting the lap around the same area where we did.
Music: Coconut Mall vGH - the meme fbi
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
TAS Flap BKT Cut: -0.663
Previous BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=9F7yGD1u6Bo (By Kierio)
Kierio's Channel: youtube.com/channel/UC2vKYn2AMivCi27nNZ6tB2Q
Marth's Channel: youtube.com/channel/UClkb9VBvCEq3SMxE9HKS2kA
Sorry that this isn't the Strat Compilation I promised in my community section. Since this project was already so close to completion, I decided to just go ahead and finish it. Hopefully I'll get around to working on the compilation soon. But anyway, this TAS. Where did I shave off over half a second? Well, the short answer is everywhere, and the long answer is everywhere because the previous BKT was trash. No offense to Kierio btw (we've already talked about this, don't worry).
The primary improvements in this run come from the basic lines at the beginning of the flap, the spiral skip, the general movement started from after the cannon until the supergrind, the supergrind ejection, and the final shortcut. The first turn of the lap could actually be taken significantly tighter than Kierio thought, which gave us at least a frame of timesave there alone. On the spiral skip, we manage to get a more favorable wall bounce that doesn't push us nearly as far back while still allowing us to hit the key checkpoint needed to count the lap. After the cannon, pretty much every turn received some kind of improvement simply due to using updated versions of the strats. Special thanks to Marth on this section in particular. There's no way I could have done this without him. Then, there's the supergrind ejection which is one of the largest timesaves in the run. The reason is that rather than charging a mini-turbo after ending the supergrind, we simply take advantage of our momentum to maintain the speed of the supergrind throughout the cave, and by using some lucky bounces and a wheelie, we drop back down to around max wheelie speed. Finally, we improved the final shortcut by hitting the wall significantly closer to the ground, which lets us accelerate faster and even lets us drift on the final straight to face the finish line more directly.
I'm pretty happy with how this came out. It just feels way more solid than the previous TAS (again, no offense, Kierio). I highly doubt this could be improved by all that much, but at this point, what do I know? The only thing I could think of to save time would be some ridiculous supergrind ejection to skip the cave entirely, but that seems like a stretch to me. Now that this TAS is finished, look forward to the Jellopuff Strat Compilation and the Coconut Mall No Glitch TAS. Those are gonna be pretty nice.
Music: these days it's hard to find the words - Lily (@comfibeats)
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
This is an alternate method for performing the Waluigi Stadium Ultra in real time. Although it's true that there's already an RTA method for this glitch found by Benny, this method is significantly faster, saving over 10 seconds over Benny's method. That being said, this version of the shortcut is still very difficult, so just be aware of that if you plan to go for it.
This version of the shortcut had been assumed to be impossible for quite a while. Sam F had theorized it in the past, but it seemed that the distance you needed to traverse was simply too great. Fast forward to a month or so ago, and I decided to independently test this strat using the Mach Bike, coming close, but not quite making it. Then today, I decided to give Bullet Bike a go, and sure enough, after enough tinkering with the angle and drift, I was able to clear the gap.
This glitch could potentially be simplified by using an outwards drifting bike, though based on my testing, that's likely also very difficult. Despite the difficulty of this ultra, I wouldn't be surprised if someone performs it RTA some time in the future.
I'd like to shoutout Malleo for making his own attempts at this in vc. If not for the new TTYD TAS showcase occupying his schedule, he would have certainly gotten it before me, so thanks for offering to help out, man :D.
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
For those who don't know, the Platinum Runner (and Platinum Spear) is a mod created by Atlas that maxes out the bar in every stat (every stat has a value of 80). On top of this, turning while in a wheelie doesn't cause the vehicle's speed to drop, giving it the ability to make minor adjustments without losing speed.
This is a video concept I've wanted to do ever since Troy made his videos showcasing the mod. I've dabbled a little bit with making montages in the past, so I figured this would be a pretty fun idea for a video to take a small break from doing fully optimized TASes. The main problem wasn't even the compiling of clips; rather, it was getting a hold of the mod itself. Due to the fact that this vehicle is completely overpowered compared to the actual vehicles, this mod has been kept pretty exclusive in the MKW community. I'm honestly surprised that I managed to obtain the official version of the mod.
Overall, I feel I did a pretty decent job showing what this vehicle can do. It's fairly hindered by the combination of insane handling and drift, which makes most turns awkward, but it also benefits the vehicle in certain situations. Of course, having a speed stat of 80 also lets it do a lot more than other vehicles, and the offroad stat comes in handy at times as well.
Special thanks to Atlas for creating this mod and LuigiM for helping me with installing the mod.
Music: Colony 9 (Day) - Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition
First, I'd like to explain why I decided to do this in the first place. This run was the winning submission for task 10 of the MKW TAS Competition, and I was actually the person who initially came up with the idea for the task. I thought of this primarily due to Pannenkoek's video on the maximum amount of time Mario can fall after collecting a star before landing (youtube.com/watch?v=rWKEn8Zb2ZQ). In his video, he maximizes the fall time by using a block positioned on an edge in Wet Dry World, and then uses a wall kick while collecting the star to perform repeated star dance clips. The interesting aspect about this challenge to me is actually setting up such a scenario to happen, since once the star is collected, Mario can no longer be controlled. Naturally, being a Mario Kart Wii TASer, I was curious as to what the MKW equivalent of this challenge would be, and this is probably it. Similar to SM64, after completing the race, you lose all control of the vehicle, meaning that all of the run goes into the setup rather than the actual execution of the challenge.
In my attempt to maximize the possible airtime, I chose Moo Moo Meadows due the existence of a horizontal wall directly above the finish line. Further, it has already been proved that we can ride on this post, so I felt that it was perfect for this challenge. All I had to do here was clip onto it, and seemingly, I would be finished. To clip on top of the post, I used a delayed wall clip to give me the air necessary to then clip the fence, would give the height I needed to land on the post. After carefully adjusting my angle to ensure I wouldn't overshoot the post, I was able to land on it. Interestingly, however, was that with my first attempt at doing this, my bike simply fell through the top of the post shortly after landing on it. This is likely due to the interactions between the horizontal wall and the Spear allowing me to fall through the changing slope on the post. After changing my height in midair slightly, I succeeded in landing on the post in a way that wouldn't force me to fall through it. Despite this, I had so much horizontal momentum that after enough time, I eventually passed through the invisible wall on the side of the track and fell into the small out of bounds section. While I initially thought this was good enough, I eventually found that with more adjustments to my height, I would start moving away from the invisible wall before clipping through it. This strat ultimately led to what is performed in the video. The final part of this is actually resetting the airtime counter back to zero since for the purpose of the task and the challenge itself, we weren't allowed to stay in the air infinitely. Fortunately for me, the game just sorta did that on its own due to a silly looking respawn while on the sign. This is similar to how a CPU that doesn't know where it is will eventually force a respawn to get back on track. After the computer has gone basically nowhere for long enough, it forces Funky to be counted out-of-bounds, which resets the airtime counter. And with that, my submission was finished.
I can't guarantee that this is truly optimal, so if anyone would like to try for yourself, go for it. It's pretty fun to test, and I'd like to see how far this could be pushed.
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
TAS Flap BKT Cut: -0.300
Previous BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=FEtt591hxcU (by LuigiM)
LuigiM's channel: youtube.com/channel/UCfmhvolEb57CvpJS649_89g
Hey guys! Remember when I tried TASing this category last year and failed? Well, I finally got around to helping LuigiM improve the flap. Huge thanks to him for allowing me to work off of his flap and for helping me with making improvements.
This flap has two significant strat changes that contribute to the majority of the timesave in this run. First, I discovered a completely different strat for skipping the red mushroom right before the cave entrance. Instead of just wheelie-ing straight off the green mushroom, we perform a fast RFH ejection and a wheelie to the left and hit the final boost pad on the leftmost route. Doing this allows us to maintain a higher top speed after landing, and by using RFHA to realign for the turn, we are able to save a few frames.
The second new strat implemented in this flap is less noticeable, but also contributes greatly towards the total timesave. Specifically, on the second mushroom in the cave, we manage to obtain a faster mushroom abuse than previous MG TASes (peaking at 92 km/h as opposed to the usual peak of 86 km/h). Why this occurs? I'm not entirely sure, but hey, I'll take it lol.
Both of these new strats can be implemented in the No Glitch 3lap TAS, as both can be performed shroomless, though it's gonna take a while for any real progress to be made on that TAS. As for potential improvements to this TAS, all I can really think of is the shortcut at the beginning of the flap since we used the shortcut from the previous BKT and didn't ever test it. However, after putting in as much time as we have improving just the second half of the flap, I don't think that either of us have much of a motivation to redo everything. Sadly, however, I don't think the sub 30 is possible unless Luigi did something very wrong with that shortcut, which I doubt is the case.
Special thanks to Ejay and Malleo for helping me learn how to edit videos on my own with Vegas, WhatIsLoaf for creating the program that allowed us to record the input display overlay for this video, and _tZ for the high quality "Speed" text.
Music: Celeste - Mirror Temple (Mirror Magic Mix)
Remixed by 2 Mello
Mastered by Lena Raine
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
TAS BKT Cut: -3.593
Previous BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=m0p8yW8sGcM (by Malleo, Monster, Rocky, and Thomas)
After over 8 months of work, my largest TAS project has finally been completed. It's incredible to me just how far we were able to push this track, and I feel that every collaborator on this project is honoured to be able to present it. I'd like to thank Ejay, Kierio, Malleo, and Thomas for helping in the creation of this run. They've all been great partners in assuring the quality of this run.
Ejay: youtube.com/channel/UCL6IvK60jAvowbyeDnu0Ybw
Kierio: youtube.com/channel/UC2vKYn2AMivCi27nNZ6tB2Q
Malleo: youtube.com/user/ShwaMalleoMK
Thomas: youtube.com/channel/UCDEHhWQA0LX9DDZLaj8BuVQ
This TAS improves upon every aspect of the previous TAS and makes use of several routing changes. The most prominent of these changes is the new supergrind that is used across all three laps. The timesave from this supergrind mainly comes from it allowing us to travel down the straightaway before the ramp at a consistent 120-119 km/h. Further, it gives us a seamless transition into a fast ramp trick that conserves most of our speed from the supergrind in the air and allows us to accelerate back to full speed upon landing due to the trick boost. This essentially nullifies the lap 1 and 2 shroomspot in the previous TAS.
For those wondering, the supergrind can't be performed shroomless since it can only be properly performed by using the slope of the off-road. There's currently no known way to set up the supergrind using the curb alone, and so we're forced to use a shroom. Since we can still perform the ramp trick shroomless though, this really doesn't matter that much for laps 1 and 2. For lap 3, however, the previous TAS's shroomspot changes to the final grass cut. As it turns out, using this new supergrind on lap 3 in combination with the pre-existing SG is actually faster than using the grass cut overall, which makes this the first ever Luigi Circuit TAS to not use the ending grass cut at all.
Aside from the new supergrind, there have also been several improvements made to the old supergrind. For starters, we start the supergrind on the 2nd boost pad as opposed to the 3rd, which allows us to take the final turn tighter. We also make heavy use of a trick called softgrinding on the following straightaway. This trick simply involves us turning at a slower rate during a supergrind by using a less sharp angle on the control stick. This allows us to turn significantly slower while still conserving our supergrind speed, which is perfect for straightaways. At the end of the old supergrind, we use a precise series of hops and bounces to conserve the majority of our speed while simultaneously adjusting our angle for the new supergrind setup. At the end of lap 3 specifically, we cut off our final supergrind early in order to maximize our horizontal speed by spindrifting to the left to end off the run.
I'm extremely satisfied with how well this run turned out. Since pretty much every strat is new to some extent, it is hard to tell if it's perfectly optimized, but if it's not, it's pretty damn close. I doubt that a 1:02.3xx would even be possible, but honestly, who knows at this point.
Special thanks to Ejay and Malleo for helping to record and edit this video, and thanks to WhatIsLoaf for creating the program that allowed us to record the input display overlay for this video. And also, since this video is releasing on his birthday (April 13th), happy birthday Malleo! It was a pleasure working with you on this!
Music:
Laps 1 and 2: Octopath Traveler - Battle I
Lap 3: Octopath Traveler - Decisive Battle II
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
THIS IS AN APRIL FOOLS VIDEO. THE REAL LUIGI CIRCUIT ULTRA SHORTCUT CAN BE FOUND HERE: youtube.com/watch?v=lWVkvLACPCo
We've been looking into potential ways to break this track for months, but it had seemed that basically every possible lead was a dead end. Much of the reason behind this was a lack of an out-of-bounds exploit in the center of the track. We knew that the checkpoints don't extend nearly as far on the center out-of-bounds area, and Jaden even discovered a tangible platform that we could potentially reach if we found a way out-of-bounds. However, our biggest problem was just that we couldn't get out-of-bounds there. This all changed while I was experimenting with the ramp during the creation of the new Luigi Circuit supergrind 3lap TAS. I did some testing to see if a supergrind ejection off the ramp would provide enough height to get over the extreme high invisible wall, and what I found, to my surprise, was that a supergrind ejection combined with a wallclip off the left side of the ramp offered more than enough height to jump over the invisible wall.
The next problem I faced was landing on the out-of-bounds seam since anywhere aside from that would give me an unwanted respawn. This meant landing on the track while simultaneously remaining in the wall. To accomplish this, I switched from Spear to Bullet Bike, which is known for getting higher jumps off of ramps. This gave me a high enough clip to turn while in midair to setup for a wallclip off the invisible wall, giving me enough height to clear it while remaining nearly parallel to it, albeit facing slightly to the right so as to stay out-of-bounds.
From here, I had to maneuver the out-of-bounds seam to complete lap 1 and start the glitch lap. For the most part, this was trivial, but there was actually a significant obstacle I had to deal with here. At the very end of the lap, there's a pole whose collision extends slightly out-of-bounds, and I had to get around this shroomless. Luckily, a well-timed hop while clipped in the floor gave me enough of a bounce to avoid the pole entirely.
This was the point in the run that I had believed we could go no further. Yes, we were out-of-bounds on the right side, and we had a shroom to spare, but a glaring issue I had noted in the past was the respawn point on this track. The devs never intended for the player to be counted out-of-bounds on this track, and as such, there's only one respawn point on the track. The problem with this is that the only respawn position places us in the final checkpoint of the lap, which the game sees as us driving through the finish line backwards. Because of this, I did not believe it would be possible to use a respawn in the glitch. However, there was something I had previously overlooked. Once we've gotten behind the finish line without the game noticing, we can drive as far forward as we want without the game updating our lap completion as long as we don't cross through the line before hitting the final key checkpoint. With this is mind, I first drive far enough forward to enter CP 1, which would allow me to enter CP 21 while still following the 95% rule. After this, I turn around and use my final shroom to get a precise bounce around the finish line. While in the air, I adjust my angle so as to arc around CP 22, avoiding it entirely, and then enter CP 21. I then get respawned into CP 22, but since I've already hit CP 21, the game doesn't update the lap completion, so it still considers me to be at the end of lap 2. At this point, the ultra was as simple as turning around, hitting the final key checkpoint, and finishing the lap.
This ultra is certainly only useful in flaps due to its long setup time and unfortunately small timesave over the current flap (around 3 seconds). If there was a way to do the initial supergrind shroomless without getting a forced ejection, then surely we could use 2 shrooms during the flap instead of 1. I also still need to do more testing with Spear, since it might still be possible to get out-of-bounds with it.
Special thanks goes out to Benny, Jaden, and cf for their speculation on the ultra potential for this track. It really helped me a lot when creating this run.
BennyMKW: youtube.com/channel/UCdTdWU04eo11GrylNAsP7g
Jaden: youtube.com/channel/UCaP0A_r4SA3l8CuvVgPcWPQ
cf: youtube.com/channel/UCPfb0RuttHWFvPd1oyPx6tg
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
TAS Flap BKT Cut: -0.163
Previous BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=NKDxrxdmiaY (by myself)
Ejay's channel: youtube.com/channel/UCL6IvK60jAvowbyeDnu0Ybw
So remember when I said the previous run likely couldn't be improved and stated the reason why? Well, it turns out that all of the points I mentioned were improving points in this run. First was the issue of getting onto the ? Block shroomless with Spear. Cf initially found that it was possible to get onto the block shroomless with Bullet Bike, so he and I both decided to try getting the same jump with Spear. The problem is that when landing on the block, you also have to already be in checkpoint 37 (as shown in the video) for the lap to count. It was a challenge to even get onto the block, so having to go further to the right to hit checkpoint 37 just made it that much harder. Eventually, however, I managed to get onto the block with my own input. Of course, doing this allowed us to use three shrooms during the flap instead of only two, which constituted about six frames of the timesave. Next, we managed to improve the lap entry by simply entering the lap one frame later than the previous TAS. The only big issue with this is that it requires entering the checkpoint region on one frame and then immediately exiting the checkpoint region on the following frame. After enough brute forcing minor adjustments on the control stick, Ejay and I slowly got closer and closer to optimizing the flap entry until we ultimately got it perfect. This, as you might expect, saved an extra frame off the run. Finally, I found a way to improve the backwards hop and, by extension, enter the final key checkpoint for only one frame before entering the checkpoint directly after. All I had to do to accomplish this was to simply delay the use of the second shroom by a couple frames. Doing this allowed us to travel less distance before landing, meaning we travel an overall shorter distance. This saved about three frames over the previous flap.
Thanks to Ejay for editing this video. This video would be nowhere as professional without his help. Also, he added in the checkpoint IDs manually for this video. Major props for that. And of course, huge thanks goes to him for helping me in the creation of this flap. He really made things a lot easier.
Music: Snowball Park - Super Mario 3D World
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
TAS Flap BKT Cut: -0.885
Previous BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=ccmTRMfeBPY (by Marth)
So, I was at school today, and this idea just sorta popped into my head randomly. I was pretty confident that something like this could be done, but I didn't expect this large of a timesave. Regardless, first ever sub 2 second flap hype! :D
I think the strats in the lap are self-explanatory for the most part. However, there's a few things I need to point out about optimizing this thing. First, if there was anyway to get on top of the ? Block without using a shroom, there would absolutely be timesave here, but I doubt that it's possible to do anyway. Second, I don't believe you can get a backwards hop that's any faster than this one. If there is, then that's also potential timesave. Third, once I exit the boundaries of the checkpoint after getting the lap count, my lap completion remains at a constant 2.000012. For this reason, there's basically no way to improve the lap count since lowering the lap completion any further would come about by changing my horizontal position by less than a pixel, which obviously isn't very practical or useful at that point. Finally, I'm only in the final KCP of the track for 3 frames. I can't bring that down since I actually don't land directly into the KCP. Instead, I land to the side of it and simply get pushed into it due to my momentum to the right. I can't land in the KCP region directly because of the initial hop position and the sheer precision of the lap count manipulation. As a result, I can't enter the KCP for only 1 frame, but hey, 3 frames is still pretty damn fast. That's all I wanted to point out. Hopefully that will clear up some of the questions regarding this run.
Remember that DDR video I posted a little while ago? Well, before I made that video during my testing of the glitch, this just randomly happened to me when I was finishing the race. This is why MKW outsold MK8 by a 5:1 ratio in 2018 :p
I'm aware that many may not agree with the validity of this strat being in the No Glitch category, but for the most part, we do treat it as such. For a little background, the Rockless Rock Hop Shortcut was first found by Timey all the way back in 2013 (youtube.com/watch?v=m6Rzbdz3y3o). To do this, he used the Spear, 2 mushrooms, and a wild turnaround RFH setup with the rock out of the way. This was clearly only intended to be a cool TAF trick, since the wild setup and requirements really gave this no real application in a TAS. However, in 2018, Luke managed to revise the method to not only perform it without needing to stop, but also perform it even when the rock is still in the way (youtube.com/watch?v=2PGPdH8IXLc&feature=youtu.be). Since the cut still required both Spear and 2 shrooms, it only application was in the No Glitch Flap for about 2 years. However, after deciding to test Mach Bike's viability with this cut (I initially wanted to test if a 2-1-0 shroomstrat with Mach Bike would be faster than the current BKT's shroomstrat), I managed to gain enough height to make it using only 1 mushroom. This discovery completely reroutes the No Glitch 3lap TAS, and by performing this strat all 3 laps, it will likely save ~8-9 seconds in the completed TAS.
For those wondering, the reason why this strat is No Glitch instead of No Ultra like the normal Rock Hop is simply because it never touches the rock. Not touching the rock essentially turns the Rock Hop into a regular gap jump comparable to those on MG and DKS. I know, it's wacky, but that's how the rules currently are.
UPDATE: The MKW TAS community has decided that Rockless is officially a "community shortcut". That is, it is separated from the No Glitch category despite not technically abusing any unintended exploits, similar to the large skip on rBC3.
This was the result of me just dickin' around with the DDR glitch at school after I had already TASed the glitch. Pretty cool that you can do it without the respawn, but unfortunately, it probably won't have any practical applications unless the ultra becomes possible with 2 shrooms, and even then it's probably a stretch. I'll probably redo the start to make a proper flap at some point, but since this glitch is pretty annoying to TAS, I'm not sure when I'll do that. I'm almost positive the flap can go below 27 seconds though, so there's that at least.
Also sorry for stealing your job @CHARL1E
We're only nine days into 2020, and a new ultra shortcut has already been found. The development of this ultra has been a large collaborative effort between both TASers and non-TASers alike that started with an observation that a player named Jaden made on the invisible wall collision near the large mushroom on the track. As seen in this image: media.discordapp.net/attachments/214574342137315328/664692197106515988/OOB_Location.png?width=573&height=474 , the invisible wall that borders the brick wall extends significantly beyond where the visible wall ends. More importantly, Jaden noticed that the underside of the extension had no collision or ceiling, meaning that it was a direct out-of-bounds entrance that could potentially be entered using a wallclip. This was brought to our attention, and very soon after, Snoop managed to wallclip out-of-bounds and land on the seam. From here, we were then faced with the task of actually performing the ultra. As a proof of concept, I drove the lap backwards to reach the finish line without having to do some of the more difficult out-of-bounds movement later in the track. Looking at the checkpoint map (cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/578019896860999711/664741449031745547/JCJNT.png), cf noticed that the checkpoint we needed to reach to perform the glitch, CP 24, extended slightly farther than the checkpoint before it. Because of this, cf theorized that we could hit this extended region and then respawn to perform the glitch. To hit this region, I experimented with the bounces that were possible with the Spear using the edge of the track, and eventually came to the conclusion that we could reach the checkpoint by using a precise drift off the edge to gain air and then arcing around the finish line to barely reach the extended portion of CP 24. After enough brute force testing, I finally managed to hit the checkpoint, confirming the ultra's existence.
As stated earlier, this run was only a proof of concept, so there's not a great flap time in this video. However, Snoop managed to quickly make the glitch with the Flame Runner and on lap 2 instead of lap 1, giving her a sub 20 second flap. We still need to test whether Spear or Flame Runner is faster for the flap, but we're thinking that Spear has an edge here. Regardless though, this ultra, like the one on rSGB, is only applicable in a flap to save time, and it is likely the hardest technically humanly possible ultra in the game to date due to its wild setup and precise movement overall.
Snoop's Flap: youtube.com/watch?v=SJpDLD4TjFc
Special thanks to:
Jaden - Finding the opening that allowed us to access OOB
youtube.com/channel/UCaP0A_r4SA3l8CuvVgPcWPQ
Snoop - Getting the clip OOB and helping with the round-track OOB movement
youtube.com/channel/UC6Gl9V7l_GLI_GFWmxvVpKQ
Charlie - Helping with getting around the hardest corner of the OOB movement
youtube.com/channel/UCi9kq_vjnv-_d89fs05vRSQ
cf - Theorizing the general idea for performing the ultra (and always keeping me sane in voice chats)
youtube.com/channel/UCPfb0RuttHWFvPd1oyPx6tg
Ejay - Recording and editing this video
youtube.com/channel/UCL6IvK60jAvowbyeDnu0Ybw
Myself - Saying this in May of last year
cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/214574342137315328/664684815466889216/SmartSelect_20200108-010114_Discord.jpg
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MKW TASing Discord Server: discord.gg/EPD9yCu
MKW TAS BKT Website: mkwtas.com
This is a tool-assisted speedrun. This time will not count on any real-time rankings. Done on Dolphin 5.0 with savestates, slowdown, frame advance, TAS code, Lua scripts (input writer/reader), and RAM watch (created by Swarejonge).
TAS Flap BKT Cut: -0.026
Previous BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=JgvwJ09JnxQ (by Ejay, Kierio, and myself)
Ejay's channel: youtube.com/channel/UCL6IvK60jAvowbyeDnu0Ybw
Kierio's channel: youtube.com/channel/UC2vKYn2AMivCi27nNZ6tB2Q
After Ejay uploaded the previous run, he sent me the ghost file and I got to work optimizing everything after the respawn. I also tried getting a better clip for the glitch, but I wasn't able to fall OOB any faster than Ejay's ghost, so I just left it as is. Overall, this run is just the previous one with a more optimized ending.
Also, thanks to Ejay for letting me know a few tips with recording quality. Really appreciated, man :D
Music: GBA Shy Guy Beach - Mario Kart Wii
omegaLUL
TAS BKT Cut: -1.539
Previous BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=ipuQLSPxFP8 (by Grim)
Authors:
Akari: youtube.com/channel/UC5Mam86LKrjOMSCIfGG-ngQ
Jellopuff: Yeah idk who this guy is lol
Marth: youtube.com/channel/UClkb9VBvCEq3SMxE9HKS2kA
Rocky: youtube.com/channel/UCFRStOn2sGGtyb0rRFF5CeA
Thomas: youtube.com/user/MKWiiTomas
Music: S.S.H. - Wish
TAS BKT Cut: - 2.705
Previous BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=6GAIz2O8hq8 (by Kierio)
Now with 100% more audio :D
Now with 0% more sub 1 minute :(
Now with 100% more glitchiness :D
Now with 100% more incorrect character choices :(
Now with 4.4456% less time :D
Now with 1000% less Kierio :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDXDDDDD
Flamin's video on the challenge: youtube.com/watch?v=eL047LOmo6Q&
Rules of the challenge:
1. At the beginning of the race, drive backwards to the wall underneath the final ramp in the factory.
2. Turn around, and complete lap 1.
2a. You're not allowed to drive on the trick ramp before the crate section.
2b. You have to take the left side in the conveyor section after entering the factory for the second time. If you're doing the glitch, you have to reach the left conveyor without touching the right conveyor.
TAS Flap BKT Cut: -0.011
Previous BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=nC1xsn_2iWw (by myself)
Like with the BC NG Flap, this is being uploaded mostly for sake of documentation, since the run is essentially the same as the previous run, but with a slightly improved ending. I managed to improve the ending by wheelieing a frame earlier than before, and also by taking the final turn slightly differently. Everything before the respawn is the exact same as in the 16.573. I also decided to include the speedometer in this upload, since it just shows that I don't hit anything during the wheelie after the respawn. Unfortunately, the SOM can't be seen during the bomb clip, but it's still nice to have for most of the other parts.
TAS Flap BKT Cut: -0.317
Previous BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=a_m3DePsbfc (by Ejay B)
Using manual transmission, the 3:24 bomb instead of the 3:00 bomb, an improvement to the SSMT found by Ejay, and overall improvements to the whole run, I was able to improve the SGB Glitch flap by another .3 seconds over Ejay's .3 second improvement uploaded earlier this morning. At this point, there are only two possible improvements I can think of. First, of course, is the use of the Magikruiser to skip having to charge an SSMT after the respawn. However, still, nobody has managed to TAS the glitch with Magikruiser, so we're not certain of its viabilty. The second is a bomb that drops at 4:16. I have not yet checked to see where it lands, and therefore, don't know if it's any closer to the checkpoint than the 3:24 bomb. Depending on where it lands, it might be faster to use it. Regardless of either strat's viability, this run is still very solid and is a good representation of this track's limit with Spear.
TAS Flap BKT Cut: -0.543
Previous BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=S_SMQQiTWRo (by Aus Tom)
cf's channel: youtube.com/channel/UCPfb0RuttHWFvPd1oyPx6tg
Ejay's channel: youtube.com/channel/UCL6IvK60jAvowbyeDnu0Ybw
The creation of this run was mainly separated into two parts, specifically before and after the respawn. By using Ejay's basic alignment, cf managed to improve the bomb clip by a significant amount. At the same time, I was improving the 2nd half of the flap by using the Lap Completion tool in RAM Watch and an improved landing from the respawn. By using Lua scripts, we managed to put the two runs together to create the final run. I would like to give a special shoutout to Derek/TASPlasma for spending the time to combine the inputs of the two runs for us. Thank you for helping us out, man. :D
This run is still improvable by a fair bit. Improvements could be made in a few ways. First, Luke showed that it is actually faster to use the Manual transmission on this flap simply due to better lines and a miniturbo near the end of the run. Another possible improvement may come from the use of the Magikruiser, which actually benefits from its high acceleration stat allowing it to not have to charge an SSMT after hitting the last KCP. While we're still not certain if the glitch is possible with Magi, cf has come close to making it with it, so keep your fingers crossed. And the final possible improvement simply comes from waiting for the 3:24 bomb to drop, since it's slightly closer to the position we need to fall in for the lap to count. With further optimizations, the sub 17 second flap is pretty much inevitable.
TAS Flap BKT Cut: -0.010
Previous BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=dw2ISRlI5iA (by Akari and myself)
Akari's channel: youtube.com/channel/UC5Mam86LKrjOMSCIfGG-ngQ/featured
This is really just an updated version of the previous BKT, with the only change being at the very end. I worked on the entry to the flap, the first shroomspot, and the very end of the flap. Everything else was done by Akari, so thanks to him for helping.
Music: Lake - Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum
TAS Flap BKT Cut: -0.114
Previous BKT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBX_I... (by Estaloy)
Estaloy's channel: youtube.com/user/MKwiiTiger/featured
Special thanks to Estaloy for allowing me to look at the ghost of his previous flap on this track. The whole of the first lap and the first half of lap 2 are his input, while I edited the movement on lap 3. This would have taken a lot longer if not for him, so thanks to him for that.
Also, with this time, Mushroom Gorge once again has the fastest flap in the game, beating the Grumble Volcano flap by just 0.052. I'm not sure how much lower this flap can go, but then again, I also don't know how much lower GV flap can be taken. The only place I can see a significant timesave on this flap is from a faster reject, but since both Estaloy and I are still unsure of what determines the position of the reject, this flap will have to do for now.
The red shell shenanigans, on the other hand, didn't happen to me RTA, but I thought it was funny and added a nice touch to the video, so why not.
TAS Flap BKT Cut: -0.264
Previous BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=hKBbQw-so10 (by Rocky)
Kierio's channel: youtube.com/channel/UC2vKYn2AMivCi27nNZ6tB2Q
Looks like Kierio finally got the credit he...didn't want? Idk. Anyway, the sub 20 flap is here! Aside from just using the Spear, Kierio managed to perform the start of the supergrind that allowed us to move through the grass for quite a few frames without losing speed. He also found a Spear friendly first shroomspot, which I added onto using the mini-turbo at the end of the supergrind. The supergrind setup and the layout for the first shroomspot were both his doing, and he also helped me with slowly lowering the time in general, so props to Kierio for that.
This is my first time doing real TASing on Luigi Circuit, and I handled many of the difficult tricks near the end, so hopefully I didn't do too bad with optimizing. As of now, I don't know how much this can be improved by, but I'm happy with this result regardless. After comparing the supergrind in this flap to the strat used in the 3lap BKT, it appears that the supergrind used here is slightly faster, though I'm not certain whether setting this particular supergrind up is fast enough to use in a 3lap run without losing time. I may test this later, but I'm satisfied what we have done for now.
Music: Hard Bass School - Nash Gimn
Throwback to this video: youtube.com/watch?v=60T9re8pwG0
Music - machinimasound.com (I guess)
So I figured out that if you start the race in 2nd gear, MKW turns into MK64. Pretty cool glitch if you ask me.
In all seriousness though, April fools!
Huge props go to my man LuigiM for editing the collision of the track by removing the two wall triangles (to allow me to perform the MK64 version of the glitch) and also making the offroad driftable (for further MK64 accuracy). None of this could have been done without him. I would like to point out that none of the key checkpoints were edited to make this version of the glitch possible. The only thing that makes this version of the glitch impossible is the wall itself, not the position of the checkpoints.
Of course, this run won't actually count on any real-time rankings (or any tool-assisted rankings). This TAS was done on Dolphin 5.0 with savestates, slowdown, frame advance, TAS code, and RAM watch (created by Swarejonge).
Community Playlist for the MKW No Joystick Allowed Challenge: youtube.com/watch?v=O_21BcMRIiI
Kappa
This track is likely the hardest track to drive backwards without falling off using only three shrooms. This is because there are ten different cases where it's require to jump up to a higher platform. Two of these can be skipped by using a shroom to perform the backwards shortcut, the flap of GV uses a strat that clears the first two jumps, and the final jump of the lap is slightly ramped upwards, so it's trivial. The other five, on the other hand, are more difficult to work around, since we only have two shrooms to deal with them. I found a way to get past the first of these platforms shroomless by getting a high wheelie angle using the edge of the lower platform and then using a SSMT during a high point of the lower platform's cycle in combination with a bounce to barely make it on top of the platform. From here, I used my second shroom to wallclip straight into the cave. The final shroom was used to perform another wallclip using the wall formed by the falling rock. After landing from this clip, I got a bad landing which caused me to gain a lot of air, which I used to barely make the final problematic jump.
TAS BKT Cut: -1.162
Previous BKT: youtube.com/watch?v=B0lbGJP2jUc (by myself)
Estaloy's Channel: youtube.com/user/MKwiiTiger
17.4xx? C'est pas possible.
MAIS SI C'EST POSSIBLE AVEC LA CARTE KIWI!
(Translation: 17.4xx? It's not possible.
BUT YES, IT'S POSSIBLE WITH THE KIWI CARD!)
The new kiwi card is here! After completing my previous TAS on this track, Estaloy and I decided to work together to lower the time as much as we could. I was able to improve lap 1 myself by getting a faster wallride to the finish line, and this lap 1 led to a much better lap 2 transition. Estaloy and I both worked on improving laps 2 and 3. Estaloy was an big help with the creation of this TAS. His improvements to lap 2 are the reason why this run even subs 17.6, and his 2.655 Flap video was what I used as a reference for the lap 1 transition to lap 2. He also helped on several occasions with optimizing lap 3. Overall, huge thank you to Estaloy for helping with the creation of this run. :D
Lap 3 is one of the biggest question marks of the entire run for us. For some reason, our reject from the wall occurs far later than it does in Estaloy's Flap. The sub 17 would definitely be possible if we were able to get a fast reject with the same lap 1 and 2 splits, but from what we found, we simply couldn't get it. Lap 1 may also be improvable, but because of how precise the mushroom hop is, we're pretty limited with time we can save on lap 1. Unless a fast reject on lap 3 is possible, the lowest this can go is somewhere around a low 17.3xx to a high 17.2xx.
Music: youtube.com/watch?v=mABNyz9bBZg