Jarlyk | [TAS] The Path Not Taken @jarlyk | Uploaded February 2023 | Updated October 2024, 3 hours ago.
Sometimes when working on a gimmick tool assisted speedrun like this one (floor is lava / minimum grounded time), you discover a subtlety that requires you to roll back a routing decision and take a different path. Here's one such occasion where a typical route into Deepnest ends up requiring more grounded time than expected due to an unlucky arrangement of geometry in the room before the drop. As such, we're going to go through Fungal Core instead. Still, might as well share the footage of the path that might've been.
Sometimes when working on a gimmick tool assisted speedrun like this one (floor is lava / minimum grounded time), you discover a subtlety that requires you to roll back a routing decision and take a different path. Here's one such occasion where a typical route into Deepnest ends up requiring more grounded time than expected due to an unlucky arrangement of geometry in the room before the drop. As such, we're going to go through Fungal Core instead. Still, might as well share the footage of the path that might've been.
![[TAS] The Path Not Taken](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/R9pv47Ud5mE/hqdefault.jpg "[TAS] The Path Not Taken
Sometimes when working on a gimmick tool assisted speedrun like this one (floor is lava / minimum grounded time), you discover a subtlety that requires you to roll back a routing decision and take a different path. Heres one such occasion where a typical route into Deepnest ends up requiring more grounded time than expected due to an unlucky arrangement of geometry in the room before the drop. As such, were going to go through Fungal Core instead. Still, might as well share the footage of the path that mightve been.")
![[TAS] Worlds Ugliest Piñata](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/RGiicgzmYxA/hqdefault.jpg "[TAS] Worlds Ugliest Piñata
The Spelless TE category is rather geo-hungry, so we grab some quick loot from Vengefly King on the way through Greenpath.")
![[TAS] Rage Against the Mushroom: Evil Endomycorrhiza](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/RdI87-DQ1wk/hqdefault.jpg "[TAS] Rage Against the Mushroom: Evil Endomycorrhiza
So turns out that longnail lets you slash the Shrumals pretty easily even while theyre head-banging. Seems strange to start with mushrooms for breakfast, but well have pancakes soon enough.")
![[TAS] Angry with Mom](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/RncPcVtc9bU/hqdefault.jpg "[TAS] Angry with Mom
For my next TAS, Im working on the Spelless TE category, which involves beating the game to true ending as quickly as possible, but without using any spells. This is using a route developed by GlowingIcefire, which should be a lot of fun to TAS, but might be a bit, uh, spicy for human runners.")
![[TAS] Hall of the Aspid Queens (Bonus Geo Dodging)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ryk5l6hcz20/hqdefault.jpg "[TAS] Hall of the Aspid Queens (Bonus Geo Dodging)
We had many fun moments with the swarm in the full 0 geo TE TAS, but there was one particularly fun arena that didnt make sense with the route. Please enjoy this rendition of the battle for the glowing womb.")
![[TAS] Unsung Spider Secretion](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ShgYur6Chxg/hqdefault.jpg "[TAS] Unsung Spider Secretion
This is a first draft of the Hornet 2 fight for the Spelless TE TAS. I couldnt get perfect rng here, but its still a reasonably quick fight.")
![[TAS] 0 Geo: Eye of the Swarm](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/SuNQK-w2eBU/hqdefault.jpg "[TAS] 0 Geo: Eye of the Swarm
This is a clip from the upcoming tool-assisted speedrun of 0 Geo TE with Gathering Swarm. For this section, we finally have dash, which is a good thing, as we need to both fight the squits efficiently and dodge the geo they keep dropping along the way. One fun bit here is at the end, where we lose control of the knight for the duration of the Wraiths pickup. It took a fair bit of careful positioning to manipulate an orbit that successfully transfers between both the upper and lower positions of the knight during the animation; the geo absolutely _can_ hit the knight during that animation.")
![[TAS] Sorry, sis, gotta run; ghosts to bust](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/TSN0iBNK87w/hqdefault.jpg "[TAS] Sorry, sis, gotta run; ghosts to bust
This is a first draft of the Hornet fight for the upcoming Tool-assisted speedrun of Hollow Knight in the category Ghostbusters. This is similar to the fight from the Spelless TE TAS, but of course subtly different rng means it plays out a bit differently. Its okay, though, shell get to make a fierce comeback later in the run, as, unlike in SpTE, we wont have nail 2 and strength for the fight.")
![[TAS] Weirdest Archives Escape](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UNdYHlLefzs/hqdefault.jpg "[TAS] Weirdest Archives Escape
CONTENT WARNING: STROBING LIGHTS
Possibly the weirdest glitch Ive ever TASed. Its pretty slow and not sure if its useful, but this is escaping archives with only claw. Might be possible without claw if theres a way to get airwalk out of this setup. In case its not obvious, this is a TAS-only glitch, as it requires getting precise control over t-ft (needs to be essentially 0), running at exactly 50 fps and switching direction inputs every frame.")
![[TAS] Hollow Knight 0 Geo in 36:37](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/U_12J2sUARk/hqdefault.jpg "[TAS] Hollow Knight 0 Geo in 36:37
This is a tool-assisted speedrun of the game Hollow Knight in the category 0Geo. The goal of this category is to complete the game as quickly as possible, but without picking up any geo. The TAS was created by entering every input to the game, frame by frame, then running the game with a special tool known as libTAS that allows for the same inputs to produce the same results (almost) every time. The run is on patch 1221 and also has the restriction of not using any major glitches; it does make use of several minor glitches, but it deliberately limits the scope of how it uses one of the more powerful minor glitches, wall cling storage, to only cases that are readily achievable by humans.
If youd prefer to watch an unedited version of this video (without the inputs display and geo dodging highlights), you can see that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_sSR-shIb0.
Acknowledgements:
Thanks to ConstructiveCynicism, the creator of the Any% NMG TAS, both for allowing me to use the Any% inputs for several of the early rooms (before the route diverges), as well as for general advice on strats and how to use libTAS
Thanks to DemoJameson, who developed some of the HK-specific tooling we use to make TASing possible
Thanks to Kilaye, the creator of libTAS, the black magic software that somehow wrangles a Unity game into a mostly deterministic state
Thanks to Blue, the current human world record holder in the category, for cheering me on and providing some feedback
Thanks also to all of the other members of the Hollow Knight TAS Discord who provided feedback, advice and encouragement
Links:
CCs Any% NMG TAS: https://youtu.be/XBpo9j-I4kI
Blues WR run of 0Geo for 1221: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1145542092
Krythoms Any% NMMS TAS (if youd like to see what major glitches can do): https://youtu.be/YGu732UYgjs
Hollow Knight TAS Discord: https://discord.gg/38Cw7EvB4u
Technical Notes:
TASing is a time-consuming process, particularly in a game like Hollow Knight, which has quite a lot of RNG and whose RNG is extremely volatile. What this means is that, normally, you cant make any changes whatsoever to prior portions of a TAS without completely invalidating all of the RNG for the rest of the run. To work around this issue, this TAS is built using a modification to the game code that allows for preserving a snapshot of the RNG for a given room, then restoring it on the fly during the playback. This makes it possible to make adjustments to prior scenes without having to redo the entire TAS. All random sequences within rooms were generated by using in-game rng manip techniques and this tooling was solely used to allow for edits without breaking later rooms.
The TAS was also run on a forked version of libTAS due to some issues with memory management in Unity causing it to crash late in the run; the change I made was to increase a buffer size to allow for HKs heavily fragmented memory mapping. If anyone wants to sync this TAS, feel free to contact me on the Discord (link above) and I can provide the movie (inputs) file, the tooling that I used, as well as instructions on how to get it to sync.
To address any questions about collisions that Ive seen come up in other TAS videos, there are several instances in this video where it looks like the knight should have been hit by enemies or projectiles, including some frames where the knight appears to be touching geo. There are two factors that cause this. The first is that the hitboxes used by the game are generally substantially smaller than the sprites, giving some margin for error when you play as a human. The other is that the game only checks collisions at 50 frames per second, even though the graphics are updating at 100 frames per second. This means that the knight can intersect with hitboxes for single frames if theyre timed to be between the physics checks.")
![Sundered [TAS]: Coming in Hot](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ujt_5oprZxw/hqdefault.jpg "Sundered [TAS]: Coming in Hot
The various runs Ive been playing with for Hollow Knight havent been as interesting as Id hoped, so I decided to liven things up and try a different game. This is Sundered, a Metroidvania with crazy movement tech and massive swarms of enemies. This is a first draft of an early part of the game. The movement in this game is a lot of fun to TAS with, so looking forward to seeing how the final run comes together.")
