Rough Drafts: Super Mario Bros. (PAL) warpless TAS in 18:46.723 @periwinkle.

periwinkle (RTA timing: 18:43.263)

Here's the second installment of my "Rough Drafts" series, where I publish TASes that I made for fun but don't care enough about to fully optimize and/or make entertaining.

Here's a warpless TAS of the European (PAL) version of Super Mario Bros. Compared to the NTSC release, this version runs at a slower framerate (~50 fps as opposed to NTSC's ~60.1 fps); however, the physics are scaled up to compensate, so that the overall feel of the game is (more or less) similar-ish to the original. This rescaling of the physics does introduce a unique set of glitches, most notably the ability to perform the "full flagpole glitch" (FFPG) on every flagpole in the game, without the need for clipping into the floor or bouncing off of an enemy like you'd need to do in NTSC SMB1.

This TAS improves chatterbox's TAS (youtu.be/oYiJDBOYX-8) by 137 (138?) frames. The improvements come mainly from using a faster method of accelerating from a standstill, and a faster powerup route (the 1-3/1-4 route is two framerules, or 36 frames, faster than the 1-2/1-3 route, in my testing). I didn't analyze their TAS so I don't know the precise breakdown of which levels the time saves/losses came from. (Hopefully I didn't lose a framerule in any level?)

By the way, I'd just like to point out how insane the 1-4 fire flower grab is: Grabbing the fire flower with running speed was one of the most recent improvements (2018) found in the NTSC warpless TAS, but PAL SMB1 physics are different so I wasn't sure if this was even possible here. So, I'm pretty amazed that I was somehow able to pull this off! What's more is that, if you subtract out the length of the powerup animation, I actually managed to finish the level on the *same exact framerule* as if I already had a fire flower and just ran straight through the level (note, the framerule timer pauses during powerup animations). In other words, grabbing the fire flower here doesn't lose any time besides the powerup animation.

Some things to test if you're looking to improve this TAS (not an exhaustive list):
• Whether score/coin count affects the amount of lag (3-4 in particular has an awful amount of it)
(Update: apparently duck-jumping magically removes all of the lag in the castle levels. Epic WTF moment.)
• Alternate 4-4 clip strategies (the level is currently 2 frames away from another framerule)
• 8-4 turnaround room is 1 subpixel away from another frame
• Several other levels are 1 or 2 frames away from another framerule (I don't remember which ones).

FM2 movie file download: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1965593719/PAL_warpless.fm2

updated 3 years ago

Rough Drafts: Super Mario Bros. (PAL) warpless TAS in 18:46.723

periwinkle 2021-07-02 | (RTA timing: 18:43.263)

Here's the second installment of my "Rough Drafts" series, where I publish TASes that I made for fun but don't care enough about to fully optimize and/or make entertaining.

Here's a warpless TAS of the European (PAL) version of Super Mario Bros. Compared to the NTSC release, this version runs at a slower framerate (~50 fps as opposed to NTSC's ~60.1 fps); however, the physics are scaled up to compensate, so that the overall feel of the game is (more or less) similar-ish to the original. This rescaling of the physics does introduce a unique set of glitches, most notably the ability to perform the "full flagpole glitch" (FFPG) on every flagpole in the game, without the need for clipping into the floor or bouncing off of an enemy like you'd need to do in NTSC SMB1.

This TAS improves chatterbox's TAS (youtu.be/oYiJDBOYX-8) by 137 (138?) frames. The improvements come mainly from using a faster method of accelerating from a standstill, and a faster powerup route (the 1-3/1-4 route is two framerules, or 36 frames, faster than the 1-2/1-3 route, in my testing). I didn't analyze their TAS so I don't know the precise breakdown of which levels the time saves/losses came from. (Hopefully I didn't lose a framerule in any level?)

By the way, I'd just like to point out how insane the 1-4 fire flower grab is: Grabbing the fire flower with running speed was one of the most recent improvements (2018) found in the NTSC warpless TAS, but PAL SMB1 physics are different so I wasn't sure if this was even possible here. So, I'm pretty amazed that I was somehow able to pull this off! What's more is that, if you subtract out the length of the powerup animation, I actually managed to finish the level on the *same exact framerule* as if I already had a fire flower and just ran straight through the level (note, the framerule timer pauses during powerup animations). In other words, grabbing the fire flower here doesn't lose any time besides the powerup animation.

Some things to test if you're looking to improve this TAS (not an exhaustive list):
• Whether score/coin count affects the amount of lag (3-4 in particular has an awful amount of it)
(Update: apparently duck-jumping magically removes all of the lag in the castle levels. Epic WTF moment.)
• Alternate 4-4 clip strategies (the level is currently 2 frames away from another framerule)
• 8-4 turnaround room is 1 subpixel away from another frame
• Several other levels are 1 or 2 frames away from another framerule (I don't remember which ones).

FM2 movie file download: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1965593719/PAL_warpless.fm2

(1299) Cave Story+ Machine Gun Challenge (Pauseless)

periwinkle 2024-10-06 | I messed up basically every strat and played very sloppily but this is still good enough for a sub-1'30" somehow??? Will clean this up someday.

I actually got this run offline a month ago (2024-09-05) but didn't immediately record and upload it because I thought I might try to beat it again later down the road. Well...I haven't gotten around to doing that yet, so I figured I may as well upload this one anyways in the meantime.

(2049) Cave Story (freeware) Hell speedrun (Snake/Blade)

periwinkle 2024-06-19 | Personal best as of 2024/06/19.

This run was done on the freeware version; the equivalent time in Cave Story+ (which runs at 60 FPS instead of 50) would be 1'44"1.

This was almost a perfect run for me until I messed up the boost-jump after the dog and lost 0.5s. I briefly considered continuing to grind this category until I got a similar run that fixes that mistake, but certain aspects of this run are so inconsistent (for me currently) that I feel like it would take me a long time to get another run on this pace again. Someday I'll probably still come back to fix it...but for now I want to go back to running Best Ending.

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/2175808838

#cavestory #洞窟物語

(5382) Cave Story+ Boss Attack speedrun

periwinkle 2024-06-04 | Personal best as of 2024/06/03.

I was rewatching my (now former) Boss Attack PB and thought "Wow, this looks really sloppy", so I decided to clean it up a bit.
This run is pretty decent aside from the XP situation before Toroko, the missed 1-cycle on Puu Black, the movement hiccup heading to Undead Core, and then losing ~5 seconds on phase 2 Ballos because I thought I could skip the refill station before Heavy Press (because I had full health) but totally forgot that I needed a missile refill too, so I ended up having to not use missiles on Ballos' second phase. (Also I messed up the Blade strat for that which cost me even more time.)

I'd imagine that 5'2x" is probably possible for me with a perfect run...but we'll see if (when) I ever decide to try for that.

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/2163060732
Cave Story+ time attack PB playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeKYCW86fVk2dI8dIZcXTp9VySj56eZAj

(54:47) Cave Story Best Ending speedrun (World Record)

periwinkle 2024-03-31 | Personal best/World Record as of 2024/03/30.

New Best Ending PB! It's been a while since the last one (over 1 year and 8 months, to be precise), and a lot of strats have improved since then. I can still take this down to at least a 54:3x, so follow me at twitch.tv/periwinkle9 if you want to see the grind for that live.

Also, I'm very disappointed that my "Best Pace Ever" component wasn't working during this run. :(

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/2106232095

#cavestory #speedrun #洞窟物語

(38:17) Cave Story Bad Ending speedrun

periwinkle 2024-03-15 | Personal best as of 2024/03/15.

Good run, minor time losses here and there (Lab M drops were also pretty bad) but I'm quite happy with this for the time being.

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/2091822849

(30:21) Cave Story+ (Switch) Normal Ending, Easy speedrun

periwinkle 2024-02-10 | Personal best as of 2024/02/09.

This was supposed to be a Best Ending run until I failed to grab the Tow Rope in time. It's very sloppy so I wouldn't be surprised if 29:xx is possible, but this category is very low on my current priority list so it'll be a while before I get around to actually grinding for such a time.

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/2058195201

[TAS] Cave Story+ (PC) Spike% in 13.164s (10.973s RTA timing)

periwinkle 2023-11-23 | Randomly felt like updating this due to a number of developments since my old 2019 TAS (youtu.be/Qj8uJzaR9qU), mainly:
• The framerate of the game on PC was discovered to not actually be 60 FPS. It's more precisely 1/0.0166 ≈ 60.24 FPS, which means the old TAS which was done at 60 FPS skipped a few frames and the final time wasn't calculated precisely.
• The old TAS missed a couple of instances where holding Z/X sped up the cutscene.
• I used a brute-forcer to optimize the Start Point movement, so I'm much more confident now that there are no more improvements to that room.
• This video is now uploaded at a higher resolution, which means YouTube should give you the option to play it at 60 FPS whereas the old video is limited to 30 FPS because I didn't realize at the time that videos needed to be at least 720p to have a 60 FPS option. Also, I did away with the holiday graphics, because yeah.

The TAS timing of 13.164s in the title is calculated from opening the game to the last input (pressing jump towards the spike), so it's pretty meaningless (IMO) but I included it anyways because that's how TASes are typically timed, as well as for consistency with my Mario TASes which also always include the TAS timing in the title. This movie also assumes the existence of a blank save file with the language set to Japanese; I considered starting from a clean slate which would include the time spent changing the language setting, but TASVideos guidelines permit either way so I went with the faster option. (Not that I'm planning on submitting this to TASVideos anyways.)
The RTA timing of 10.973s follows the speedrun.com category rules which begin timing from the first textbox frame and end on the frame that the player explodes when touching the spike.

(34:45) Cave Story+ (Switch) Best Ending, Normal speedrun

periwinkle 2023-11-17 | Personal best as of 2023/11/16.

Very sloppy run throughout, but mid-Last Cave through the end were pretty okay and carried the run.

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1979288079

Another Sand Zone pacelock?

periwinkle 2023-10-08 | If you haven't seen the first one, go watch this: youtu.be/dSEDAgkEOss
Here's another thing that can happen if you go too fast. Though, I think at least in this case, I could have avoided death by shooting the missiles earlier...? There should be some point, though, at which I'm forced to shoot the missiles later in order to hit the Polish at all, but by shooting later it won't die in time before I run into it.

リコリコed

periwinkle 2023-10-06 | Is it okay for a speedrunning channel to upload memes every once in a while? What happens if it's a meme format that doesn't even exist within the target demographic of said channel? (I'm probably also about a year late...)

Anyways, it's a slow day today and this idea randomly popped into my head so I made it for some reason. I have nothing further to say on this matter. :P

Sources:
youtu.be/cqCSJyFOaaw
youtu.be/WIKKyrGGaDk

#meme #gdq #リコリコed #リコリコ

(35:06) Cave Story+ (Switch) Best Ending, Normal speedrun

periwinkle 2023-09-30 | Personal best from 2023/09/29 to 2023/11/16.

The first big test of my TRUE abilities now that I have a keyboard adapter and therefore can now play on an input device that I'm more accustomed to. 34 soon!

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1938498756

(35:13) Cave Story+ (Switch) Best Ending, Easy speedrun

periwinkle 2023-09-30 | Personal best as of 2023/09/29.

Would've been a 34 if I hadn't failed Core quick-kill. We'll get 'em next time...

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1938498757

(11:39) Cave Story+ (Switch) Get Panties, Hard speedrun

periwinkle 2023-09-14 | Personal best as of 2023/09/09.

I got (won) a keyboard.gg adapter for Switch recently, so I decided to do some runs of various CS+ Switch categories to give it a whirl. Expect more Switch runs in the future. :)

This run is still quite improvable, even without implementing 3 HP Chako skip. I'll do more hard mode runs eventually...not sure when that'll be exactly, though.

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1921491154

(1369) Cave Story+ Wind Fortress speedrun

periwinkle 2023-09-13 | Personal best as of 2023/09/09.

I got (won) a keyboard.gg adapter for Switch recently, so I decided to do some runs of various CS+ Switch categories to give it a whirl. Expect more Switch runs in the future. :)

This run is super sloppy with a lot of mistakes, but my main goal was to be slightly better than 8th place on the Switch leaderboard (which was my standing before this attempt session). I achieved that with this run, so it's all good. :)

Twitch VOD with my commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1921491155
Time attack challenge PB playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeKYCW86fVk2dI8dIZcXTp9VySj56eZAj

(5439) Cave Story+ Boss Attack speedrun

periwinkle 2023-09-13 | Personal best as of 2023/09/09.

I got (won) a keyboard.gg adapter for Switch recently, so I decided to do some runs of various CS+ Switch categories to give it a whirl. Expect more Switch runs in the future. :)

5'3x" should be relatively doable with this route, but I'm not sure if I want to go for it just yet. For now I'm just here to reclaim my top spot on the Switch leaderboard (sorry Jayden) :P
Note that this is not the fastest known Boss Attack run across all Cave Story+ versions; for that, see youtu.be/PB8IHG2IkSc .

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1921491153
Cave Story+ time attack PB playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeKYCW86fVk2dI8dIZcXTp9VySj56eZAj

(17:56) Cave Story Get Panties speedrun

periwinkle 2023-08-18 | Personal best as of 2023-08-18.

IT'S OVER

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1902352644

(18:00) Cave Story Get Panties speedrun

periwinkle 2023-08-16 | Personal best from 2023-08-16 to 2023-08-18.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

(This run was literally perfect except for getting 4 cycles on Balfrog, which loses 5 seconds. Grr...)

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1900613084

(18:02) Cave Story Get Panties speedrun

periwinkle 2023-07-05 | Personal best from 2023-07-04 to 2023-08-16.

I skipped another Life Capsule but only saved 1 second in the end :/

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1863700564

(2076) Cave Story (freeware) Hell speedrun (Snake/Blade)

periwinkle 2023-06-06 | Personal best as of 2023/06/05.

This run was done on the freeware version; the equivalent time in Cave Story+ (which runs at 60 FPS instead of 50) would be 1'46"3.

Kind of a sloppy run, but I don't think cleaning it up would result in getting a 2'06" so I think I'll just leave it at this for the time being.

The bottom left corner of the video was supposed to have an input display, but it must've been minimized or something because OBS didn't pick it up. Sorry!

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1838659645

#cavestory #洞窟物語

(18:03) Cave Story Get Panties speedrun

periwinkle 2023-06-02 | Personal best from 2023-06-01 to 2023-07-04.

Trying to get sub-18...just 4 seconds away now...follow the journey at twitch.tv/periwinkle9 if you want to see THE RUN happen LIVE...

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1835220275

I accidentally saved 26 frames over the TAS...

periwinkle 2023-05-21 | I was curious how much time the TAS route for the Grasstown fan boost saves over what we normally do in RTA speedruns, so I booted up libTAS to test this. What I discovered was shocking...

Now, most of the timesave here is actually just at the very end (bottom path turns out to be faster than middle path), but even before the path split you can see that the video on the right is slightly ahead of the current TAS. I estimate the time difference based purely on the fan boost approach to be around 6 frames in favor of the RTA route, give or take a couple.
(Here's a comparison of just that: youtu.be/MeeMgYvc-L4)

#cavestory #tas

Get Panties PB (11:13), but the music is all Ikachan (CS+ Switch bug)

periwinkle 2023-05-01 | Personal best as of 2023-04-29.

On Pixel's birthday (April 29), Cave Story+ has an Easter egg that replaces the Cave Story main theme (i.e. the Plantation theme) with the main theme of Ikachan. However, in the Switch port of CS+, Nicalis messed up and made it so every track is the Ikachan theme, even the "silence" track. I thought this was super funny so I decided to try to set a speedrun PB with this, just for the lolz. Here's the result!

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1807291442

Speedrunning EVERY* Cave Story+ Steam Achievement

periwinkle 2023-02-19 | * except for the 2 calendar event achievements ("Happy Birthday Pixel!" and "Merry Holiday Happy Euphemism")

Up to now, I've always played on the Humble Bundle version of the game, but recently I decided to finally redeem the Steam key that came with it, and so I figured it'd be fun to speedrun getting all of the achievements!
I had a route planned out beforehand, but I wasn't quite sure whether it would work out as planned. (For example, I wasn't sure whether the Mimiga Mask ending would count for both that achievement and the normal achievement for beating the game.) As you'll see in this run, I did end up having to make some on-the-fly route changes, a couple of which were maybe not the best decision in terms of speed. Stick around for the ending plot twist...

I've lightly edited the beginning of the video to trim out some of the extra fluff and empty space before the start of the run. Here's the unedited Twitch highlight: twitch.tv/videos/1736763611

Some timestamps just to see if the chapters feature works:
0:00 Intro
1:43 Easy mode run
1:00:46 Normal mode run
1:54:52 Hard mode run
3:26:46 Wind Fortress
3:31:19 Sanctuary Time Attack
3:35:00 Boss Attack
3:43:15 lol

(1479) Cave Story+ (PC) Hell speedrun (Snake/Blade)

periwinkle 2023-02-17 | Personal best as of 2023-02-16.

I was only going for a 1'48", but I'll take a 1'47" any day :D

FAQ:
Q: What's the point of unequipping and re-equipping the Booster?
A: Unequipping the Booster allows you to preserve the speed from the boost. Otherwise, if you just release the button to stop boosting (or run out of fuel), you'll lose all of your speed. Note that the in-game timer doesn't count up while in the inventory, and so this technique can be done without any time penalty.
If you don't like the use of this technique, I also have a 1'51"5 that doesn't pause at all except to use the Life Pot: youtu.be/M6ZixKELfZk

Q: I saw that previous records used the Nemesis; is Blade faster?
A: It is now. :P
Nemesis was used previously because it allows for a phase 3 "ultra" cycle that starts the fight much closer to the left side of the arena, saving about 2-3 seconds over the usual strat that starts him all the way on the right (see youtu.be/vD8q9y42ifw?t=185). But sometime last year, I discovered that an equally fast (and actually even slightly faster) phase 3 ultra was possible with the Blade. Moreover, Blade is better than Nemesis for phase 1.
If you're not going for a world record-level time, though, I would recommend using either Spur/Blade or Snake/Nemesis, as this will make it easier to activate the last two Deletes at the same time (by using the Spur or Nemesis), whereas with the Snake/Blade combo you have to use missiles for them, which is quite precise and probably more difficult than I would bother learning initially.

Q: Do you use a turbo button?
A: No, I don't.

Q: Is this category dead?
A: No, of course not! There's always going to be more time to save. In particular, there's a decent chunk of time that can be saved in B2 (by doing more Booster unequips), and the movement in both B1 and B3 can be tightened up a bit in various places. For Heavy Press, I swapped to Blade near the end of the fight to conserve some missiles, but if you got luckier with missile drops from enemies then you could spam missiles for the entire fight and probably save a few tenths there. Then, of course, the Ballos fight can always be mashed faster...

All that being said, I'm quite happy with this time so I don't have any plans to return to this category anytime soon. Maybe if a new strat is found...

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1740229808

(1515) Cave Story+ (PC) Hell speedrun (Snake/Blade, no pause abuse)

periwinkle 2023-02-14 | Personal best (for the no-pause-abuse category) as of 2023-02-13.
Here's my best time with pauses (1'47"9): youtu.be/BLuOhNW4wJ4

Sorry, Altair...I was only trying for 1'53", but I got 1'51" instead...

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1737467448

(1575) Cave Story+ (PC) Hell speedrun (Spur/Blade, no pause abuse)

periwinkle 2023-02-05 | Personal best (using the Spur) as of 2023-02-04.

Watching this run back, it was actually kind of sloppy in several places...there were also a few damage-boosts that are common in high-level Hell runs that I didn't even do. Either way, I'm happy that I finally have a sub-2 of my own. I wonder what kind of time I could get with the Snake?

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1728578143

[TAS] The 2000 IQ Cave Story Quiz: Time Trial in 0452

periwinkle 2023-02-01 | Only minor quiz spoilers here. If you want to test your own Cave Story IQ first, go here: doukutsuclub.knack.com/database#search-database/mod-details/5ce12d882acb7100072dc926

The time trial mode of this mod is unlocked after completing the normal quiz and features only the "questions" that have non-trivial execution (i.e., more than just "pick the correct answer").
The spikes are _supposed_ to hurt you, but with subpixel-perfect precision (1/512th pixel) you can slip in between them without taking damage. (Don't try it at home, you'll never get it.)
I deliberately answered Q45 incorrectly because it would have been much slower to get the correct answer. Thankfully, it's not required to complete all of the questions perfectly in order to finish the time trial. :P

Fun fact: I realized after making this TAS in Hourglass and then trying to encode the video that there were some...issues with using Hourglass for this (mostly with the weird framerate of the game, and that I had mistakenly specified the wrong framerate for the movie). So I had to make a Linux port so I could dump the video through libTAS instead.
btw Enlight, wtf is that MOD command, it makes no sense-

(1243) Cave Story+ Nemesis Challenge (Pauseless)

periwinkle 2023-01-18 | I opened the game just for fun and got this on the second attempt?!???

Sand Zone pacelock??

periwinkle 2022-12-10 | Go too fast and it ends up being worse than if you were to go slightly slower

Although maybe you can still make it work if you mash fast enough...?

periwinkle 2022-11-30 | Some segments are hard to gold, but not because of gameplay reasons... :(

Watch my continued suffering at twitch.tv/periwinkle9

(3405) Cave Story Non-Stop Boss Rush speedrun (freeware mod)

periwinkle 2022-11-21 | Personal best as of 2022/11/20.
This is not the Cave Story+ Boss Attack challenge, but rather a mod of the original freeware game by SeriousFace (which did later become the basis of the CS+ Boss Attack challenge): cavestory.org/forums/threads/boss-rush-again.336

This beats my time from almost 3 years ago (youtu.be/56vZ0JoMmNk) by over 40 seconds, thanks to newer and improved strats on almost every boss. In particular, better use of the Spur allows for a cycle skip on Monster X, Core, and Undead Core; the Sisters and Ballos fights have also been vastly improved since the previous run as well.

There's definitely still much room for improvement, but I'm pretty happy with this run for now. (In particular, a different missile routing could allow for using missiles on the Doctor, which would save a bunch of time)

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1658518006

Rough Drafts: Air 2 (SMB Hack) TAS in 6:12.237

periwinkle 2022-10-14 | Here's another installment of my "Rough Drafts" series, where I publish TASes that I made for fun but didn't care enough about to fully optimize and/or make entertaining.

Someone sent me this hack a few months ago asking for help TASing a few levels. Afterwards, I ended up redoing the entire thing on my own, but never shared the movie file until now. I couldn't find their TAS uploaded anywhere, so I don't have a comparison for how much time I saved or lost compared to their TAS. Hopefully I didn't lose any time anywhere...
(It's very possible that there's an entirely different route that I never knew existed.)

FM2 download: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/714028546/Air_2.fm2

Mimiga Village 268f (5.36s) TAS improvement

periwinkle 2022-10-05 | Don't ask me when this TAS will be finished; I can't promise that it ever will be.

So, let me tell you a little bit about that mushroom bounce...
- It's actually more like a "mushroom jump", in that I land on the mushroom's head and jump off of it, as opposed to simply using the upward boost from taking damage. The normal jump height is higher than the height from a damage-boost, and allows me to make it directly onto the higher ledge, whereas otherwise I would have to land on the lower edge and do an extra jump to get onto the block, which ends up being about 5-6 frames slower.
- I used a brute-force program to find the best RNG state that would allow the mushroom to walk off as early as possible. After that, I used another brute-force tool to help me figure out which frames to shoot the chinfish so that I get that RNG. What you see here is not the theoretically fastest solution, but it's the best that I was able to manipulate without wasting tons of time (I still had to waste 2 frames in the end). There may still be a faster solution that I wasn't able to find.
- The weapon shots after entering the Cemetery are just to pass the time. They don't affect the RNG at all. (The one thing in that room that is necessary to complete the RNG manipulation is hitting my head on the ceiling, which has to be done on that particular frame that you see in the video.)

Combined with the previous 9-frame First Cave improvement (youtu.be/Q9cMBbEi7l4), which is actually now 11 frames (although I didn't post the video because the change is very minor), this means that I am now 279 frames (5.58s) ahead of nitsuja's TAS heading into Egg Corridor.

(38:37) Cave Story Bad Ending speedrun

periwinkle 2022-09-18 | Personal best as of 2022/09/17.

It's not quite the low/mid :3x that I was hoping for, but it's still a pretty okay run...

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1593906814

(38:43) Cave Story Bad Ending speedrun

periwinkle 2022-09-06 | Personal best from 2022/09/05 to 2022/09/17.

Decided to forgo skipping the Egg Corridor Life Capsule so that I could get more runs past Grasstown. I'll start skipping it again from now on and go for low/mid 38:3x next.

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1582980535

(48:37) Cave Story Normal Ending speedrun

periwinkle 2022-08-28 | Personal best as of 2022/08/27.

I've been wondering whether I've been invisibly losing time due to slower-than-usual text mashing, so I setup my autosplitter to track the "in-game time" of how long is spent in control of the player—that way I could see how much time I'm losing or gaining due to differences in text mashing speed. (For example, if I were to save 1 second in-game time but the real-time split shows me losing 2 seconds, then I would know that I had played that segment 1 second faster but then lost 3 seconds to bad text mashing.)
I had intended to do a bunch of runs to gather some data, but instead, my first test run ended up being a PB, so now I don't have enough data to draw any meaningful conclusions. What do I do now?!

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1574539523

The GOG release of Cave Story+ is flawless and contains no bugs

periwinkle 2022-08-05 | Just an ordinary playthrough of Cave Story+ from GOG.com...

(54:51) Cave Story Best Ending speedrun

periwinkle 2022-07-30 | Personal best/World record from 2022/07/29 to 2024/03/30.

It's still hard to believe that this kind of time could ever be achieved by human hands...I still remember when, not even that long ago, the record was magmapeach's 56:32 and the consensus was that 55:xx was "possible" but "wouldn't be fun to go for". Then 55 happened and I thought "perhaps this could be the last minute-barrier for this category". But now...how are we looking at a 54:xx?!? What times we live in...

The splits that I was comparing against in this run are not my PB splits exactly, but rather my "Balanced PB". Balanced PB is a LiveSplit feature that tries to make the splits more pleasant to run against by taking the mistakes made in the PB and spreading out that time across all of the other segments, in theory easing the pressure of running against bad beginning splits followed by extremely good late-game splits (as an example). My actual PB splits comparison can be seen after the run when I switch back to them (around 54:57 in the video).

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1546586043

(If I put Japanese text here, will people be able to find this video by searching for "洞窟物語RTA"?)

Grasstown Missile Route Comparison

periwinkle 2022-07-30 | Full disclaimer: I used a turbo mod to skip through the textboxes, in order to remove any possible variance due to text mashing speed.

In summary: The left side strat sucks, don't do it. Also, skipping the damage-boost is *technically* faster, but in practice is difficult to execute in a way that actually saves time. (I spent about 20 minutes getting an attempt that fast that also simultaneously got enough XP for Level 2 missiles. I almost uploaded a video featuring a very similar-looking segment that was slower than the traditional strat, but decided to re-record it only because it didn't actually get enough XP and I wanted to be a perfectionist about it. :P )

(55:01) Cave Story Best Ending speedrun

periwinkle 2022-07-16 | Personal best/World record from 2022/07/16 to 2022/07/29.

SIMPLY GOLD HELL
(but also don't fail Waterway skip twice in the future)

For those curious, I'm estimating that Hell to be around a 2'25"6 on the 290 Counter (equivalent to a 2'01"4 if this were CS+).

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1533853793

(48:54) Cave Story Normal Ending speedrun

periwinkle 2022-06-08 | Personal best from 2022/06/07 to 2022/08/01.

Just another dead Best Ending run...except this time, it died not because I failed Core quick-kill, but because I failed to grab the Tow Rope in time afterwards. :P
Lost a lot of time in Egg Corridor? and Plantation so I'll have to come back at some point to clean this up for a 48:4x (or :3x?).

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1497555222

(5560) Cave Story+ Boss Attack speedrun

periwinkle 2022-06-02 | Personal best from 2022/06/01 to 2023/09/09.

Pretty sloppy run but it still achieves a goal I had of getting a sub-6 time with the Machine Gun. (Is this the first known Machine Gun sub-6?)
The Spur route is probably still faster for RTA, but Machine Gun has a couple of advantages...that I didn't really effectively utilize in this run. Oh well :P

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1315254568
Cave Story+ time attack PB playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeKYCW86fVk2dI8dIZcXTp9VySj56eZAj

(1152) Cave Story+ Nemesis Challenge speedrun

periwinkle 2022-05-31 | Personal best as of 2022/05/30.

This challenge is officially dead. Not in the sense that the time is unimprovable (it most certainly still is), but rather that skipping basically 2/3rds of the challenge completely ruins any entertainment value this challenge may have had, from both the player's and the viewers' perspective. Sorry if you clicked on this video expecting any semblance of Professional Gameplay™. (But also, it was inevitable that it would eventually come to this.)

PB progression playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeKYCW86fVk27qUz8wpoGRWuc8ljWMXhP
Cave Story+ time attack PB playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeKYCW86fVk2dI8dIZcXTp9VySj56eZAj

[TAS] Cave Story+ Machine Gun Challenge (no Booster unequips) in 1148

periwinkle 2022-05-03 | Sensitivity warning: The inventory flickers open and closed in various places throughout this run.

This is a TAS of the Machine Gun Challenge in Cave Story+, made using libTAS with the Linux port of the game. It aims for fastest in-game time (290 Counter time) completion, and thus pauses in ways that saves in-game time but not real time. However, it does NOT use the Booster unequip technique (unequipping the Booster mid-boost to conserve the speed). Here's why you don't want to watch a TAS that does use Booster unequips: youtu.be/nBrejdxk6A0

Prefer the original soundtrack? Here is an encode with that music setting: youtu.be/WNKS4HC8mXk

Q&A:
• Why the goal of "no Booster unequips", rather than "no pauses" or "minimize real time"?
I wanted to strike a balance between optimizing for in-game time (which is what most people care about) versus making the video actually watchable (see video linked in first paragraph above). Now, pausing *does* actually save real time in several places, so eliminating all pauses would make the run *slower* in every way. So, given that a TAS optimized for real time would still use pauses, I figured I'd go one step further and pause everywhere where it saves in-game time, but just not to unequip.

• So, what do the pauses do, exactly?
I go more into depth about this in the description of my Wind Fortress TAS (youtu.be/V6IWKvAdRRk), but in short, most pauses are used to release the jump button during the pause, in order to do things like first-frame boost jumps or switching boost directions without stopping the boost. There's also a couple of instances where I pause to hold jump for lower gravity without starting a boost.

• How much (in-game) time could be saved by incorporating Booster unequips?
A couple of seconds, I think. (At the expense of maybe 20 minutes of extra real time. Yes, I said minutes, not seconds.)
Stay tuned...

Cave Story+ Nemesis Challenge, but I skip EVERYTHING (and still dont get WR)

periwinkle 2022-04-27 | The ending screen is a pretty good representation of how broken this challenge is.

(2092) Cave Story (freeware) Hell speedrun (Snake/Blade)

periwinkle 2022-04-25 | Personal best from 2022/04/24 to 2023/06/01.

This run was done on the freeware version; the equivalent time in Cave Story+ (which runs at 60 FPS instead of 50) would be 1'47"7.

B2 had a bit of an oopsie near the end, but otherwise the run was pretty clean. 2'08" is definitely possible by cleaning that up, but I'm satisfied enough with this for the time being.

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1466088189

I saved another frame in the First Cave TAS...

periwinkle 2022-04-24 | UPDATE: I saved another 2 frames over this TAS. The improvement is pretty minor so I'm not going to make another video about it. Basically, it involves hitting the player's head on the ceiling at the start to advance the RNG, which means I only have to wait 2 frames instead of 4 at the exit door to get the same RNG.

Alternate title: "nitsuja was right all along"

Compared to my previous TAS (youtu.be/6L8xFwMJJEg):
+4f in Start Point (intentional delay for better bat patterns in First Cave)
-5f on the turnaround after the first bat
+Heart drop for Egg Corridor :D

Compared to nitsuja's TAS (tasvideos.org/1917M):
-0f in Start Point
-9f in First Cave.

The turnaround is still a bit sketchy so I might have to mess around with that a little more.

First Cave 8f TAS improvement

periwinkle 2022-04-23 | UPDATE: I improved this by another frame: youtu.be/Q9cMBbEi7l4

An 8-frame improvement to the beginning of nitsuja's Cave Story Best Ending TAS (tasvideos.org/1917M). The breakdown of those time saves is as follows:
• –4f in Start Point by not delaying going through the door (nitsuja stalled to get better bat patterns in First Cave)
• +3f lost to the turnaround after the first bat (which I had to do differently due to the bat being in a different position)
• –7f throughout the rest of it from slightly better speed manips.

This was made using libTAS on CSE2-portable compiled for Linux. The loading frames at the start are different, but in theory, the rest of the gameplay should sync in Hourglass (I should probably double-check that).

This 40s or so of gameplay took almost 4 and half hours to TAS (and that's not even including the time spent writing a brute-forcer to optimize Start Point). Imagine how long it would take me to do the rest of the game... (In other words, don't expect a full TAS from me anytime within the next few years.)

(For those curious, the Start Point brute-forcer did not find a timesave over what was already known. The closest it got was about 1/3 of a pixel away from saving a frame.)

Also, I will have to go back at some point to manipulate a heart drop from one of the bats. Otherwise I won't have any health left for damage-boosting in Egg Corridor....

[TAS] Super Mario Bros. glitchless in 5:05.763 (5:02.485 RTA timing)

periwinkle 2022-04-16 | Apparently Kriller37 found a frame save in room 2 of 8-4, so here's an updated TAS. It also includes 2 frames of time saves in 4-2 found since the last glitchless TAS update: 1 frame by Gaster and samm_1703 in the underground, and 1 frame by me in the warp zone. (It's still far from saving a framerule, though.)

Individual level notes:
1-2: Still 2 frames away from saving a framerule. It's so close, yet so far...

4-1: I finish the level with 8 frames to spare in the framerule, but it's possible to finish with 9 frames remaining by delaying 1 frame to grab the flag on the first frame of 340 instead of 341. This would save a frame overall because you'd lose 1 frame slowing down to grab the flag later, but then gain that frame back by the timer being 1 less, and then gain another frame from not getting fireworks. (Yes, 1 firework does technically lose 1 frame.)
I opted to get the firework anyways for entertainment purposes, though.

4-2: A better subspeed on the movement up to the vine allows for getting speed on the vine platform earlier. That means something something and then you can grab the vine a pixel higher, saving a frame on the climb. I also saved a frame in the warp zone by being a better TASer than I was 3 years ago. :)
In terms of pellsson/Sockfolder ROM scores, this level would be 4-9 to 8-D (11 frames to spare).

8-2: The bullet shot I get at the end is fast enough for the TAS 8-2 framerule. Too bad it's a glitchless TAS...

8-3: I kick a koopa shell and it goes straight through a hammer bro without killing it. Nice glitch in a glitchless TAS :D
Also, apparently I hadn't manipulated the judges properly in my last glitchless TAS, so this TAS now finishes with 1 extra frame to spare in this level (8 frames compared to 7 in the last TAS).

8-4: B 9 C 1+2 (45.458s). The frame save in room 2 comes from faceplanting harder into the block, which makes you get pushed out of the block to the left much more than you otherwise would, giving you more room to accelerate and get up to speed quicker. You do land a frame later from that jump than the previous strat (which is why I didn't consider that possibility; shoutouts to Kriller37 for having a bigger brain than me), but I guess the extra wiggle room combined with doing the running speed jump strat (which didn't previously save time) more than makes up for it.

Total rerecords: 8888 (nice)

FM2 movie download: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/726294582/glitchless_v6.fm2

(2159) Cave Story (freeware) Hell speedrun (Spur/Blade)

periwinkle 2022-04-06 | Personal best as of 2022/04/05.
This run was done on the freeware version; the equivalent time in Cave Story+ (which runs at 60 FPS instead of 50) would be 1'53"3.

The last time I sat down to try to improve my fastest Hell time was almost 2½ years ago (youtu.be/IsifYhofFZk), so I figured I'd take some time to set a new PB. I wasn't comfortable with Snake strats, so I decided to go with my good ol' trusty Spur for these runs. Here's the result of that effort!

To my knowledge, this is the fastest recorded freeware time (as of this writing) that uses the Spur instead of the more-optimal Snake. The previous fastest Spur time (that I know of) is PPU's 2'19"6 from 2013: nicovideo.jp/watch/sm20332815 .

I'm starting to learn Snake strats now so let's see if I can eventually beat the WR of 2'13"8 (nicovideo.jp/watch/sm21443486). :)

Twitch VOD with commentary: twitch.tv/videos/1447443169