itsPersonal | FusionVaria
TAS: Green Hill Zone in 0:12.12
updated
Here's a little sneak peak of progress actually being made on the Dark Story full-game TAS!
The Dark Story TASing Team reached this stage in July 2022... Due to many factors (rng, open-ended routing, complicated and frustrating tricks, plus many of us being busy in our own lives) hardly any progress was made on this stage for almost 2 years. BUT we finally finished it! And by we, I mean me, I did almost all of it, which is why I want to post the video.
Rerecords: 27,041 (why, you may ask?)
This stage is crazy. Gravity abuse technology has improved so much in recent years. Dismounts can be used not only for clipping corners and speed building, but to initiate wallruns, which then allows speed farming by jumping off the wall and drill diving back onto it, and clips that rely on skewed gravity/gravity resetting.
The start of the stage uses a dismount to begin a wallrun, and then repeated drill dives with resetting gravity in order to make the wall relatively downhill, causing the drill to boost our speed. (There's a limit to how much speed we can build with this method, gravity won't reset after enough speed is gained).
The clip into the box following piece 1 is needed to trigger a glitchy spring launch. If rouge is climbing on a wall, and reaches the apex on that wall on the same frame she touches a spring, she will receive the spring launch speed, but play the wrong animation. Throughout the animation, the full speed of the spring is applied with no deceleration. You can watch the speed viewer on the left of the video to see what I mean.
Clipping into this box is super annoying, but I managed to find a really fast setup that saved 0.1s over every single other iteration we tested. I don't know if I could recreate this movement if I tried. It's too complex to articulate here.
For the top half of the stage, really the fact is that the game devs just put a billion different collision triangles all over the tops of these boxes. I can't fathom why, they're probably the most triangle dense collision in the entire game. The textures do not convey just how many different angles of standable floor these boxes contain... Through brute force, I was able to find ridiculous speed by chaining drill boosts, I almost reach 9 speed units at one point, which is absurd.
Hopefully now that this awful stage is done with, we can resume a more reasonable rate of progress on the Dark Story TAS. Many of the remaining stages have already been labbed out, and are much less frustrating than this. Mad Space worries me... But otherwise, most of the remaining stages should not take excessive time to TAS.
S/O to Edzan for having a Watery Hall TAS so I didn't have to do it myself.
This is 5.75 second timesave assuming Watery Hall SW to traverse to IDrone. (It is actually 7 seconds IGT, but I'm counting the pause against the strat because I hate pausing that much).
I'm quite certain this is faster than inbounds anyway. But even if inbounds saves time on that segment, I doubt it will be as much as is saved here. Wallcrawling into Charge Beam means I also have to wallcrawl out, so I don't have the option of inbounds if I enter this way. Should not be a problem!
Thank you for watching video.
Re-records: 15998
Inputs: FusionVaria
Let's just say this first...Sub 1 minute is definitely possible.
This TAS started out as a route test for the Dark Story TAS, but as more and more skips were found, it seemed apt to just make an IL of the stage and showcase all the new finds while also utilizing the Light Dash to save time in areas.
So yeah... the Mockbounce and Loopspeed meta has evolved significantly... I think that's where most of the routing improvements come from.
Thanks to Monkee for finding the mockbounce at 0:27.
Some sections of this TAS are very tightly optimized while others are a little more lazy/I just have a hunch they can be improved somehow.
The Loopspeed at 0:33 feels slow to me, I think this strat could be revised.
The skip at 0:40 was not frame grinded heavily. I got really lucky with conserving my speed and I just kept it and moved on because I'd never gotten that much speed in any prior attempt. It's probably not maxed though.
Setting up the Loopspeed at 0:46 can probably be improved and maybe even a setup could be found that doesn't jump. Jumping significantly slows down peak downward velocity and loses a chunk of time. But I didn't see a better method. I also didn't frame grind this or test every collision triangle. There might be a more optimal gravity rotation.
I'm sure within these areas, sub 1 is free. ...Maybe next year!
Previous World Record 1:09.80 by me (Nov 2018).
youtube.com/watch?v=gYVfMokDB4I
Nathan
Zelpikukirby
Goldfire
Chunk0
Four
Rubber
Quo
Smiley
Edzan
Vertigo
TomLube
Icefire
Whiskers
Flossy
Monkee
OnVar
USTA2877
Dennis and Rene
The entire SM64 TAS community (past and present)
Venick
Keeta
Ringrush
Cafde
Taylor
And many more throughout the years
DF
Touch Grass
Squat 225lb Below Parallel
This TAS was created using Dolphin Emulator. While Xbox is the fastest console to play Battle for Bikini Bottom, it has limited TAS tools. Compared to Xbox, approximately ~29.8 seconds were lost due to GameCube’s slower load screens throughout this run. A perfect conversion of these inputs to Xbox would yield an end-time of around 0:55.8.
0:39 Pineapple
0:53 HUB
1:06 Chum Bucket
1:21 Robo Spongebob
1:35 Brain
1:50 Ending Cutscene
Author: FusionVaria
Rerecords: 27,929
Platform: Gamecube
Dolphin: [cav-disc-drive] 4.0-3964-dirty
Want to learn more about how all the hectic nonsense in this TAS works? Check out the "TAS Explained" here youtu.be/6IZGESVIt1c
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This is the most optimized TAS of Battle for Bikini Bottom by a fairly wide margin, and for that reason, it was extremely exhausting to create. When pushed to its limits, Battle for Bikini Bottom TASing is kind of a nightmare of finicky micro-precision exploits. Generally in this game, if you can imagine it, it is possible -this is a double edged sword, because the rabbit hole of “if I could just chain these 7 extremely precise and unreliable things back-to-back, I could save 30 frames” is seemingly bottomless.
TASing to me has always been foremost about puzzle solving and creativity. It’s extremely fun to learn the ins and outs of a game engine, and apply that knowledge to the puzzle of getting from point A, to B, to C as optimally as possible. The answer is never straightforward …especially in this crazy game. But at some point along the way, ‘solving the puzzle’ and ‘putting that solution into action’ became flipped in terms of difficulty. (Maybe we just need better tools..?). As a result, this project took too long to create, and at times felt simply tortuous to uphold my standard of optimization. I’m so relieved to finally be finished with it. And with its completion, I think it’s time I move on to other ventures in life.
It’s truly incredible, to contrast what is possible in Battle for Bikini Bottom now to the silly little skips I remember working on in my bedroom, for example, back in 2012 when I was 14 years old, mapping out jumps across jank collision to skip a cutscene or 2. -BfBB now has become its own genre of speedgame, there’s nothing else in the world that plays like it, and it was only able to manifest it’s potential because of the creativity and effort applied by all those who’ve dreamed and desired for more. None of this was simply handed to us, we had to carve it out ourselves.
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I in no way regret my time with this game up to now, but I can’t see a world where I continue playing it. Just as this game has transformed radically in the past 10 years, I myself have transformed as well, and these days I would rather be outside in the sun, or spending time with loved ones, than cooped up in my room working on video game projects in my finite time.
Thank you all for the love, and for the memories we’ve made, sharing this journey to create something truly of our own within the medium of this game. It’s been a wild ride.
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Previous TAS Record - Cheat% in 1:42.350 by FusionVaria (2018):
youtube.com/watch?v=YTSza2ygMJY
Current Any% TAS Record - Any% in 39:20.10 by FusionVaria (2020):
youtube.com/watch?v=67JANjM_nDc
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Don't forget, you can watch the video playing at 0.25x speed if you want to appreciate the fine details better!
What does 'occluded' mean? It is the technical name for what happens when a room's textures unload. Sometimes called 'secretized' by the community, or, if you're real oldschool, we used to call it Where's The Room (WTR). This is performed by transitioning the map to an adjacent room and then closing the door. Since you're supposed to be inside the current room the map is on, things on the other side of a closed door stop behaving normally. The behavior of enemies changes when they're occluded. And, by "changes", I mean that they kind of just freeze in place after a moment. Some enemies respond to this situation slightly differently, but it appears that freezing certain enemies during specific parts of their animations or scripted sequences can have some nice benefits.
By going out of bounds, placing the map on the adjacent room, going back inbounds and eventually opening and closing the door at the right time, I was able to freeze Chykka in place while his weak point was revealed.
Oh, right, I almost forgot: I used the floaty jump glitch for this, which means it actually has a use now! If you're not familiar with what floaty jump is, don't worry about it. Samus just jumps real high.
Vertigo's Channel: youtube.com/channel/UCqIg0cari_7HphrmYmWdxGQ
When done optimally, this seems to save 13 frames/Super Missile
When you are switching Visors in this game with the Dpad, it's possible to input two directions simultaneously. The order of visor priority if this happens goes: Thermal, Scan, X-Ray, Combat. This means Thermal Visor is the only Visor that takes priority over Scan Visor, and is the only visor this exploit can be done with as far as my testing shows.
Long ago we discovered you could cancel super missile cooldown with scan visor, and now we can cancel both the cooldown, and the scan visor animation, but still reap the benefits. Just press Left and Down on the Dpad at the same time the moment the Super Missile leaves your weapon. This is also possible for speeding up Charge Beam spam but only by a matter of frames (youtube.com/watch?v=T0YOiUh4_NM)
I guess since Thermal Visor is hardly ever used/collected we just didn't notice this for the past 20 years??? Lol.
Re-records: 10,118
Inputs: FusionVaria
This TAS does not use a speedglitch that exploits repeatedly bouncing to build speed. Personally I think this game is a lot more fun without using this tech, and it much more closely resembles non-TAS play.
The current record using TAS Bounce is a 0:56.07 by me (2012, very obsolete):
youtube.com/watch?v=YiNdJT6JyAI
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I decided to copy over my inputs from my recent Mission 3 TAS and update the Mission 1 record. I originally did not expect sub 1 minute to be possible without TAS Bounce, I'm still kind of astonished that it is...
I discovered a new trick in the making of this TAS, a method of VHC that uses Bounce+Homing Attack on the lip of certain collision to convert the downward Bounce velocity into horizontal speed. It saves a substantial amount of time at 0:32 as a means of quickly building speed along this awkward collision, and again shortly after at 0:35
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This video was encoded by ModifiedMonkee.
Thanks for watching :)
Re-records: 2,230
Inputs: FusionVaria
Strat suggestions: Brianpso
This TAS does not use a speedglitch that exploits repeatedly bouncing to build speed. Personally I think this game is a lot more fun without using this tech, and it much more closely resembles non-TAS play.
The current record using TAS Bounce is a 0:14.17 by me:
youtube.com/watch?v=z7RMtDhEo6M
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I never would have imagined sub 20 was actually possible on this stage, every little innovation mattered in achieving this time. Brianpso reminded me of an exploit we discovered long ago, to use instant turnaround (a glitch letting you flip 180 degrees and convert positive speed into negative) to decrease deceleration, because decel works differently when Sonic is moving backwards. This allowed me to shave off 3 frames on the first platform in the stage.
Shier optimization was not enough to achieve sub 20, we needed innovation. Following the second jumppad, I used the downhill to build speed rolling, and then excited a very precise super bounce to VHC (vertical-horizontal conversion) and achieve a speed boost when converting to the flat ground. This also saved something around 3 frames.
The Carrier section utilizes the small slopes on the left and right of the main area to conserve high speeds captured by the 14-speed speedpad. Minimizing time spent on the flat ground conserved the most speed, and this zigzag path ended up being the fastest. Having extra speed at the final jump saves a substantial amount of time since aerial deceleration is so harsh, just have a bit higher starting speed equals a much sooner landing. A pause hover is used to conserve as much speed as possible.
The instant turnaround whistle at the end was just flashy entertainment, it did not lose or gain any time.
This TAS was a lot of fun to make. I have been on hiatus from TASing for a long while but perhaps there will be more Sonic Adventure 1/2 TASes from me in the near future.. Stay tuned(?)
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This video was encoded by ModifiedMonkee.
Thanks for watching :)
This trick is insanely precise, a position of very close to x=-103.063004 y=-158.393402 is required, this is the maximum distance Samus can be from the missile and still collect it, this video had position x=-103.073479 z=-158.393829. Being too close to the missile will not allow you to reposition out at the end, and being too far will prevent you from collecting the missile. An Aether Jump is used once the room's collision is loaded to touch the missile and fall to the reposition area. For some reason, Samus' collision box doesn't update properly during this time, which is part of why you're able to clip out at the end I believe.
Join the Battle for Bikini Bottom TASing Discord where this was discovered!!
discord.gg/Rqu4EucSNv
This video was created using an external program to read and display controller inputs/memory addresses alongside the game. The gameplay is identical to the 2020 TAS of Battle for Bikini Bottom, no improvements have been made since it's release.
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RTA Standard Timing (File Select to Final Cutscene): 39:20.100
TAS Standard Timing (Power-on to “Last Input”): 39:43.750
This TAS was created using Dolphin Emulator. While Xbox is the fastest console to play Battle for Bikini Bottom, it has limited TAS tools. Compared to Xbox, approximately 5 minutes were lost due to GameCube’s slow load screens, deaths, and oob-respawns throughout this run. A perfect conversion of these inputs to Xbox would yield a 34:xx time. (The lack of lag-based tricks also loses some amount of time).
Original Encode (Without Input/Address Viewer):
youtube.com/watch?v=-EYZ7dMCRqU
Previous TAS Record - Any% in 1:04:37.066 (2014):
youtube.com/watch?v=dRtf15EbS9U
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Early Game: 0:00
Robo-Sandy (Skip): 9:03
Mid Game: 12:22
Robo-Patrick (Skip): 22:22
Late Game: 26:35
Final Cutscene (End): 39:45
Credits: 42:13
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There are a couple of issues with the input display, as the information used to map the display is taken from the game's "pressed" and "release" events in memory. Because of how the B Button is handled when skipping textboxes, it unfortunately does not display on the input viewer when text boxes are skipped. There is also a bug relating to lag which can cause a button to not register as 'released', I believe this only happens twice in the video, during SBA the Start Button displays as held for a couple seconds when it shouldn't, and towards the end of Kelp Forest the Z Button does the same.
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Thank you: P3BK4C, THC98, Yoshifan for building off each other's work to create the tool used to visualize memory and controller inputs.
twitter.com/p3bk4c
twitter.com/Tales__98
twitter.com/yoshifan28
github.com/peb-adr/ram-watch-cheat-engine
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Thumbnail art by Klyx - twitter.com/KlyxTwit
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Feel free to stream this TAS on Twitch (or anywhere really) for viewing parties / reaction content :)
twitch.tv/rubbertoe64
👀👀👀
Sunday May 16th @ 4PM PST - 7PM EST
👀👀👀
There are 3 main barriers when climbing Geothermal Core under low% restrictions:
Reaching spinner #1
Getting to spinner #3
Accessing the bomb slot at the top spinner #2
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Thankfully reaching spinner #1 was solved in May 2017 (by me) through use of an RGBJ (Really Good Bomb Jump): youtube.com/watch?v=fP4vaMaV8eM
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Getting to spinner #3 was the final trick to be solved (in February 2021).
By doing a 4-bomb BSJ, with bombs laid every other frame, it is possible to gain 2.655 height units within 8 frames, the following 14 frames are used to pull out scan visor while still being able to jump, allowing a first frame scanpoint target on the final frame of jumpstate 4. (In other words: unmorphing on or before frame 8 allows a scan dash BSJ).
The BSJ is setup by using the camera angle provided by the spinner, you just have to enter it and leave by laying a bomb. The camera gives horrible IU facing angles, and therefore requires you to be on the right-hand side of the camera obstruction when the objective is to dash left. It is incredibly precise to snag the scan point lock-on from the position needed to be close enough to complete this skip.
The position required to land on the final spinner is 59.99, this height is impossible to achieve from the BSJ starting point without Space Jump. In order to clear this jump, a 'morph ball wall stall' is required, and, in addition, a BSJ window reset is also required. This is because jumpstate 2 can not snap up ledges during an unmorph animation, however jumpstates 0 and 4 can.
Stalling on the side of the spinner is extremely precise and unreliable. It can effectively only be done through brute force. Stalling on this particular object is quite common, though because a BSJ window reset is required, stalling at any point will not be sufficient. In order for the BSJ window to reset, a position of 58.99 or higher is required. Stalling at this height (from the starting position of the BSJ) requires stalling *On The First Possible Frame* of making contact with the spinner, after achieving the absolute maximum height.
This is the most precise trick in Metroid Prime that I know of.
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The final obstacle is to use the Bomb Slot to complete the puzzle. This has been possible using Space Jump for most of the game's lifespan. It is possible to Morph Ball stall on the Bomb Slot's collision if you approach it in a very particular way. Stalling allows Samus to complete the Morph animation without falling, and then snap to the Bomb Slot upon it's completion.
It is not anywhere close to possible NSJ to reach the Bomb Slot and Morph Ball stall without using a dash, and at first look, there doesn't appear to be a target with proper orientation to use. Thankfully, there is a hidden scan point tucked away behind collision which can be snagged by strafing off the Lava Hamburger, and then double strafing back to the spinner with a carefully timed target swap along the course. This scan point is within scanning range, so Samus must get into position and dash extremely quickly, else the scan will complete and render itself inaccessible. The timing on this ended up being either frame perfect, or with a 1 frame margin of error.
Following the scan dash, which to reiterate can only be attempted once because the point must be un-scanned, it is just barely possible to achieve a Morph Ball stall with perfect positioning and facing angle. The stall on this Bomb Slot is not understood on a technical level, and again, like so much in this room, in essence simply requires brute forcing.
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Following the Bomb slot activation is a bomb jump similar to the one used in the Any% TAS, and then a fairly standard climb to skip the spider puzzle and reach the top door.
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This TAS was made as a segment within the 21% Damageless LOTAD being created by Metroid0925 (http://www.youtube.com/user/metroid0925) which will hopefully be released sometime soon(?).
I began creating the input file for this TAS in December of 2019, meaning it took 10 months to complete. That said, the routing process for an Any% TAS has been essentially on-going since I first began playing Battle for Bikini Bottom in 2012. Of course many great minds contributed to the finalized route, through non-TAS and TAS findings alike. I do not take full credit for this route, nor the modern TAS meta. However, I have contributed my fair share, and the hundreds of timing/routing videos posted on my second YouTube channel, throughout the past 8 years, were largely responsible for the relatively short 10-month creation cycle of this TAS.
Since most timing/routing was done outside of this movie, the rerecord count (of at least 200,000) could accurately be inflated several times over. I have easily spent more time and effort on this project than on any other TAS to my name. This TAS was 8 years in the making, starting out as a funny side project in an underdeveloped cartoon game, and evolving into one of the most rewarding, fun, and passionate experiences of my life to date. I hope you enjoy the fruits of this questionable allocation of several thousand hours of my free time, across nearly half of my life: A Tool-Assisted ‘Battle for Bikini Bottom’ Speedrun, completed in 39:20.100, on GameCube.
Thank you each and every member of the Battle for Bikini Bottom community, for reviving this gem of a game after the first wave of runners had essentially retired. You all gave me a space to return to, and the collaboration necessary to achieve such a polished end-product for this 2020 revision of Tool-Assisted BfBB Any%.
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RTA Standard Timing (File Select to Final Cutscene): 39:20.100
TAS Standard Timing (Power-on to “Last Input”): 39:43.750
This TAS was created using Dolphin Emulator. While Xbox is the fastest console to play Battle for Bikini Bottom, it has limited TAS tools. Compared to Xbox, approximately 5 minutes were lost due to GameCube’s slow load screens, deaths, and oob-respawns throughout this run. A perfect conversion of these inputs to Xbox would yield a 34:xx time. (The lack of lag-based tricks also loses some amount of time).
Check out another upload of this TAS with an Input/Address Viewer:
youtube.com/watch?v=67JANjM_nDc
Previous TAS Record - Any% in 1:04:37.066 (2014):
youtube.com/watch?v=dRtf15EbS9U
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Feel free to stream this TAS on Twitch (or anywhere really) for viewing parties / reaction content :)
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Thumbnail art by Klyx - twitter.com/KlyxTwit
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We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
― T.S. Eliot
The full TAS can be found at youtube.com/watch?v=-EYZ7dMCRqU
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Thumbnail art by Azultite - twitter.com/Azultite
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Song: Can't Control Myself [Candyland Remix] by Krewella:
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/CandylandDJs
Twitter - http://twitter.com/CandylandDJs
Soundcloud - http://soundcloud.com/candylanddjs
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/Krewella
Twitter - twitter.com/Krewella
Soundcloud - http://soundcloud.com/Krewella
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Spongebob Text-To-Speech created with 15.ai - twitter.com/fifteenai
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Created using Dolphin 4.0-4222 and the original NTSC-U version of Metroid Prime
Rerecords: 47,996
Authors: FusionVaria and Edzan13
Contrasted to the 2015 Frigate TAS (which was used in the 2016 :37 Any% TAS), this is an improvement of 45 seconds! The addition of “Parasite Queen Wallcrawl” only accounts for roughly half of that, where the remaining timesave was due to improved movement and optimization standards. The TAS Meta has evolved quite a lot in these past 5 years, in my view, it is simply astonishing.
Previous Frigate TAS World Record (0:03:05.66):
youtube.com/watch?v=UvTG7hy_Rzs
This TAS was started in mid-August of 2018 …two years for two minutes of game-play -Yikes.
But in all fairness, progress has been halted for multiple months, several different times, since work began. The cumulative time spent actively creating this TAS was likely only ~3-4 months, just very spaced out.
Syncing both the address/input viewer, as well as the collision viewer, to this video was a lot of work. I painstakingly went through the timeline, accounting for lag in my screen-capture and rerecording segments until I was happy. It may not always be perfectly in-sync, off by 1 frame, but I believe the importance of these tools can not be overstated. I’m very excited about the collision viewer in particular, I hope this improves your viewing experience as much as it does mine!!
Thank you Pwootage for the collision viewer.
Thank you THC98 for sharing your input/address viewer files.
Thank you Icefire for reformatting those files to work with Metroid Prime
Thanks Aruki for your Prime World Editor
Thank you JustinDM, Vertigo, T3 and others for suggestions, ideas, and motivation.
And thanks as well to Metroid0925, for the gifted motherboard and processor which made creating this project much less of a hassle after my motherboard failed on me.
twitch.tv/fusionvaria
twitter.com/fusionvaria
sba too hard
The first planet you visit in Metroid Prime 3, Norion, is effectively unimportant to anything but plot. There is a single upgrade collected in the second room of the planet, and everything following is essentially just walking from point A to point B (and fighting mini bosses) to advance the in-game story/solve puzzles which are completely contained to this planet and unimportant to beating the game. So therefore, skipping Norion has no real implications or issues in a speedrun, as long as you collect that one upgrade at the start.
The elevator sequence activated at the end of this video is the trigger to leave this planet and continue on with the game. It is technically accessible through out of bounds navigation from any room in the entire planet, but, in an almost unbelievable reality, there were no possible Secret Worlds (out of bounds) until the one used in this video was discovered yesterday. Unfortunately, this Secret World is TAS-only, and also takes place towards the end of the Norion sequence. If someone finds an out of bounds sooner, this same skip could be done sooner, and save even more time.
This iteration of 'Norion Skip' saves ~4 and a half to 5 minutes (real-time) over Paraxade0's non-TAS segmented speedrun (the easiest rough comparison I could find). The IGT timesave for this skip is unknown, but it is most certainly faster for both in-game and real-time.
Sadly I couldn't record this video in 4k without running into desync issues.
twitch.tv/fusionvaria
twitter.com/fusionvaria
Inputs by me.
Completed 11/13/2019.
I've been sitting on this IL for a few months now because I was very confident that I could save one more frame from it. I'm quite sure that 3.80 is possible and I am just bad. Anyway, enjoy.
twitch.tv/fusionvaria
twitter.com/fusionvaria
Rerecord count is apparently 34385
Hello, I haven’t posted in a while. Lol.
I started the TAS of this level around May of 2019, but kept finding new optimizations and tricks, which prevented me from ever finishing it. This stage is massively more complicated than other Amy levels. I was never happy with how my tests would turn out- Even this video has room for improvement, mostly towards the ending, but this is so much faster than the previous record, with so many new improvements, it just begs to be uploaded now.
As for new tricks in this run:
The left-side door clip at the start seems to just be a matter of having a high enough velocity, which is achieved by hammer jumping forwards off the sloped collision.
The Zero Hop out of bounds seems to work for the same reason that the elevator clip works at the very beginning. If Amy’s V speed is negative, she can clip upwards through some ceilings. In the case of the elevator, she is falling slower than the elevator car is, and so phases relatively upwards through it. In the case of the Zero Hop clip, Amy is being pushed upwards by Zero, but her velocity follows it’s normal function and goes negative at the apex of the jump. You have to balance very precisely ontop of Zero to not slip off.
It appears that, In order to make my life more interesting, the SADX Gods left an unused water current trigger around the out of bounds room above the normal stage(?). I can use this water current trigger to farm speed and run around the collision. So, just to clarify, that massive speed boost was a result of weird unique triggers, and not something that can be done anywhere else. It wasn’t some new glitch.
In act 2, I discovered a method to wallrun throughout the cylindrical room via a very precise hammer jump with skewed gravity, to snap onto the wall. The collision around this room is quite wonky, and, despite having fairly high speeds, Amy physically moves slowly across some spots. There doesn’t seem to be anything which can be done to prevent this.
The puzzle room skip has been known for ~half a year now, but it was found in the process of making this TAS. By using 2 precisely spaced blocks, you can clip out and around the back wall of the puzzle room.
At the end of the TAS, in the final tunnel before the end, I wallrun on collision angled beyond 90 degrees. On this type of angle, Amy can run much faster.
Also, now every single Amy level has a wallrun that saves time. Hahaha this game never gets old.
And yes, I ended on a funnee time. I could improve the ending more, but that would ruin it. Someday, when I make the Amy Story TAS, I will get an end time of 1:22.xx or lower. For now, this is funnee.
Inputs by THC98, Flossy, and myself.
THC98's channel: youtube.com/user/THC98
Previous WR 0:39.10 by THC98 (2014):
youtube.com/watch?v=7kG5F4XXmSU
This has 61173 rerecords apparently. (If I had to guess it's probably more like 8000)
twitch.tv/fusionvaria
twitter.com/fusionvaria
This TAS was created on June 13th 2018. I never uploaded a video to the internet due to syncing issues, but these have been resolved now. (WR at time of creation and still on upload date).
Inputs by me
Rerecords: 6930
Previous WR: 44.15 by THC98.
(youtu.be/6-ndT-LMZr8?t=1078)
twitch.tv/fusionvaria
twitter.com/fusionvaria
Rerecords: 8275
The previous record was 1:10.62 by myself and THC98 in 2014.
(youtu.be/bB3L1-C2Rrw?t=269)
I originally uploaded this TAS to Twitter and to my second YouTube channel, because the optimization level was not as high as my ever-increasing standards are on this channel. This TAS is improvable by some frames here and there. 1:06.20 is probably easily doable for me. I've had a change of heart though, and I think that this does belong on this channel. I also felt that perhaps this deserves a better quality encode, since the Twitter video, where this got most of it's views, is rather poor quality.
twitch.tv/fusionvaria
twitter.com/fusionvaria
This is a tool assisted speedrun of Amy's Final Egg with a completion time of 1:07.55 (in-game time).
Inputs by me
Rerecord count is apparently 4959
Previous WR 1:14.83 (by me):
youtube.com/watch?v=luDkb005Fgo
I'm so happy to finally solve this Zero hop! And to make it actually useful in the route. The previous record obsoleted this strat by using the elevator wallrun in the top room, which can't be done if you do the wallrun at the bottom, as I did here.
This could be improved if there is a way to clip through the floor/ceiling section while remaining on the wall, but I can not find a way to do so.
In addition to Final Egg, last night I've also released a Twinkle Park TAS on my second channel (youtube.com/watch?v=y_hGKhJeeF8) with a time 1.7 seconds faster than the previous record (held by me, and uploaded on this channel in 2015).
The making of this entire run was streamed today on my Twitch account (twitch.tv/fusionvaria) and took approximately 4 hours including the RNG manip.
Follow me on Twitter also (twitter.com/fusionvaria). Lol.
Thanks to jellyfishswimmer for building a killplane viewer. Thanks as well to Dage4 for presenting me with an image, using said viewer, of the killplane gap abused in this video.
I can not believe this is real.
In order to orient my gravity, I had to preform two mid air gravity shifts, by dropping the hypotenuse of Shadow's relative vertical and relative horizontal speeds below a value of 5 for 1-3 frames, and then exceeding that value. I also use a short pause hover to increase positive relative vertical speed in order to take a "straighter" path, while still maintaining a that value above 5 to lock gravity.
This saves 1 minute and 40 seconds over the current Any% TAS.
twitter.com/fusionvaria
twitch.tv/fusionvaria
This is more or less just a render test to see how TASes of this game look in 4k. The screen flickered in a couple places and I'm not entirely sure why. Could have been an issue in the framedump or the render. I'll look into this more next time I upload in 4k.
Inputs by THC98, Flossy, and myself.
THC98's channel: youtube.com/user/THC98
Flossy's channel: youtube.com/channel/UCJFdMO4i66vNg9k51L7u_yw
My Twitter: twitter.com/fusionvaria
Rerecords: 7465
Previous record: 0:13.49 by Flossy
(youtube.com/watch?v=Vft0sX-KG5U)
This TAS showcases a lot of interesting tech. The "Speed storage through restart" that THC98 and Brianpso figured out recently (youtube.com/watch?v=X2Nm77b2smQ) is abused to displace Knuckles forwards at the start of the stage.
Following that, there's 1 frame when touching the bottom of the wind tunnel where it's possible to spiral upper (or jump), giving you considerably more initial upward momentum through the tunnel.
After, we abuse "glide zips" to displace Knuckles forwards on the lips of the stone boxes. I do not understand how or why glide zips work, and this is the first IL to take advantage of them. More research into those is needed.
Lastly, similar to the spiral upper possible in the wind tunnel, there's 1 frame upon touching a killplane where you may also sprial upper. Doing this stops the in-game timer, and leaves you with control over your character before the screen fades to black.
I believe aiming for in-game time for ILs is the most interesting approach which one can take. Story Mode TASes will always aim for RTA in each stage, and a theoretical "all A ranks" or "180 emblem" TAS would also aim for RTA (in addition to getting A ranks). Therefore, ILs, which don't aim for A ranks, but rather the best possible time, may as well show off the lowest possible IGT, using IL specific strats, such as the wind tunnel displacement, and death plane spiral upper to stop the timer. (Of course, this is within reason, and tricks that allow you to complete a stage with a time of 0:00.02 are not interesting, or something I ever plan on uploading a video of).
Inputs by THC98 and myself.
THC98's channel: youtube.com/user/THC98
My Twitter: twitter.com/fusionvaria
Rerecords: 3718
The main purpose of this video is to showcase the hunting character momentum tech that was discovered over this past summer; a variant of downslope abuse which can be done using flat ground and wall dismount gravity skew. I'm in the process of writing a video essay explaining Hunting character movement and will dedicate a sizable amount of that to explaining the terms just used.
This trick is essentially the same as the Hunting character wall dismount wallrun, but rather than run on the wall, you drill into flat ground and convert the downward velocity to forward. This trick caps at roughly 5 positive speed, whereas punch acceleration gives 3.15.
I also wanted to make this video to show off THC98's new and much improved input and address viewer.
I had space jump in this video but I unmorphed late enough that I had the exact height of a second frame unmorph without SJ. This is undoubtedly possible without SJ. Also you could ledge clip ghetto out rather than using 2 bombs but whatever. This solves 20% TAS?
This is a tool assisted speedrun of Spongebob Squarepants: Battle For Bikini Bottom Cheat% (Any% with use of in-game codes) completed in:
RTA Timing (file select→final cutscene): 1:42.350
TAS Timing (power on→last input): 2:05.317
My Twitter and Twitch:
twitter.com/fusionvaria
twitch.tv/fusionvaria
Rerecords: 9966
Created on the “cav-disc-drive” exe with Dolphin 4.0-3964, using an ISO with md5 checksum of 9e18f9a0032c4f3092945dc38a6517d3
dtm: dropbox.com/s/p1ckptcu2uiw35b/Ch%20eat%25.dtm?dl=0
Follow me on Twitter and Twitch and stuff:
twitter.com/fusionvaria
twitch.tv/fusionvaria
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Compared to Zelpiku's any% TAS this saved 4 frames.
I don't think my strategy at the start is optimal, but my jump to the crane was faster.
youtube.com/user/THC98
My Twitter and Twitch:
twitter.com/fusionvaria
twitch.tv/fusionvaria
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This is a tool assisted speedrun of Windy Valley (Tails) with a completion time of 0:14.78.
Re-records: 7936 (I think)
153 frames faster than the previous world record (youtube.com/watch?v=8DLzQfLBw-w)
Inputs by THC98 and myself.
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Over the past week or so, I've been working on gravity based skips in SADX, since it has similar mechanics to SA2B. I've also improved Tails' Speed Highway TAS record, though I've yet to optimize it, so it's on my other channel currently (youtube.com/watch?v=n458PT1N-74).
Follow me on Twitter and Twitch and stuff:
twitter.com/fusionvaria
twitch.tv/fusionvaria
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Compared to Zelpiku's any% TAS (youtube.com/watch?v=5VLKqijYrbA) this saved:
6 frames entering the Blooper
0 frames during Blooper fight
0 frames on Shine collect
Mine and Zelpiku's load times were not identical, as a result of using different versions of Dolphin. I don't see a point in timing this Shine in real time because of this. The end time of a TAS means nothing if Dolphin's load time alters it. This is 6 frames faster than the previous TAS record in the areas of having control over Mario.
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So it's been a long time since I've uploaded on this channel. Oops. I've actually been quite active with doing TAS things across SA2:B, BfBB, Metroid Prime, and SMS, but nothing I've been doing felt right to upload here. Rather than entire stages/levels(/entire games), I've been working on minor strat optimization and obscure glitch hunting. All of which is documented on my second channel: youtube.com/user/itsPersonnal2/videos
THC98's channel:
youtube.com/user/THC98
My Twitter:
twitter.com/fusionvaria
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This is a tool assisted speedrun of Radical Highway mission 1 with a completion time of 1:10:85.
Re-records: 52440
238 frames faster than the previous world record (youtube.com/watch?v=rCDOBrTlJ5A)
Inputs by THC98 and myself.
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The main time-save here over the previous TAS is the loop speed abuse after the final checkpoint, which skips a sizable portion of the last area in the stage. Unfortunately, the optimal movement for this trick requires passing through the camera trigger on the loop, which gives a not-so-entertaining view of the skip. It is possible to avoid this, and have the camera follow Shadow, but not without sacrificing frames. Sorry about that! :(
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THC98's channel:
youtube.com/user/THC98
twitter.com/fusionvaria
This is a tool assisted speedrun of Radical Highway mission 1 with a completion time of 1:14:82.
Re-records: 26180
Inputs by THC98 and myself. Check out his latest Windy Valley TAS in SADX:
youtube.com/watch?v=cE_vt_5OADM
Or the Sonic Adventure 2 Hero Story TAS that we made:
youtube.com/watch?v=bB3L1-C2Rrw
The old TAS record was 1:29:00 by me (2013):
youtube.com/watch?v=6zEInPVGvFs
This is made possible because of a handful of changes on Wii, namely "easy mode" and Spring Ball. Spring Ball speeds up Morph Ball movement a ton, and also allows you to activate IS without Boost/Spider. Other important changes on the Wii version include faster loading and Puffers in Triclops Pit dropping ultra energy's instead of small energy drops. (Which is really just a change they made after the 0-00 GC release, but whatever, it's a difference between Wii and 0-00 still).
youtube.com/watch?v=0RwyrG1KVOI
This is 16.5 seconds faster than my TAS... I knew my 0:37 didn't have a super optimized Essence but I didn't expect this much time to come off it. Something earlier today clicked in my brain and I realized that Essence standing still is an "attack" which can be canceled. Before I was really confused as to what made Essence do what it does but now I understand it.
This was done on the same dtm as my TAS, and finished with a time of 37:20.517.
I was using moon jump to test some things with triggers behind hand. I guess I also had the infinite health code on, because I didn't take any phazon damage for some reason lol.