"I'm once again thrilled by how much effort Bloob has put into this run and how amazing it looks. I'm also once again honoured to have worked closely with him on it. It's unfortunate that I wasn't able to fully coauthor it with him and AKA like we had originally intended, but things kept getting in the way. I did do a lot of hex editing for him and shared a lot of ideas with him, as well as critiquing the WIPs that he sent me almost every day. It was really amazing closely following the progress of a run we've all been waiting for for years now. It still bugs (lol, get it?) me a little that the route is so... bland nowadays, but I guess the point of a speedrun is to complete the game as quickly as possible no matter what. I'll just think of this as OoT's "0 star" run - awesome in theory, but not nearly as good as the runs that came before it. I don't really have much more to say that hasn't already been said by AKA in his comments, but I will say that I'm glad that that terrible Japanese run is finally being replaced by a run that actually deserves to be on the site. It's so amazingly optimal and entertaining that it kept me interested the whole way through, even though the route isn't really one of my favourites. You've amazed me once more by how badly you can destroy this game while keeping it entertaining, even in the most boring parts. Great job, Bloob. (b^_^)b"
Wow, what a beast of game to do. The project from start to finish has effectively taken 4 years to do. You might wonder why it has taken so long. To anyone whose had any involvement within the community it should be glaringly obvious why. I could have submitted my MQ run 2.5 years ago, which would have been faster than OoT. Due to more favorable dungeon setup and less lag, but that vision was shattered on 24th of March 2008 when I discovered how to skip the Door of Time, which for years was regarded as "impossibLe" to bypass. When I initially discovered it, it wasn't met with any great deal of excitement. It rendered my MQ run "poIntess". I had a so called crisis talk with SL over the issue. To which the following outcomes were achieved...
1. Not to continue with what he's doing because he's "wastiNg" his time.
2. Tell him I know of improvements in the rupee collecting section and the reason I didn't tell him before was because I didn't want to tell him I was secretly "worKIng" on a MQ run and to avoid demotivating him. Fortunately for me I was told he would not have carried out the "improvmentS" anyway.
3. I wanted to work on a new run with him that would incorporate the DoT skip. The idea was to rush production much like the 1-star run and submit a better one later on.
Sadly, 3 days in and the "GUys" at SDA had managed to successfully find it, which scuppered our plans. Initially, antids was being used which allowed for a soft reset. "OkAYgo" had told us not to continue working on the run because he was implementing a patcH whIch will eliminAte the pause bug within a month. After patiently waiting for a month the new emu was reaDy, a soft rEset was not impLemented, but we were reassured it was on the way. As we slowly worked on the child sectIon, redoing several times whenever improvements were discovered. Not to mention the sheer difficulty and frustrations caused in the training area; bridge clip in lost woods; peehat slide and especially from my point of view cucco collecting. Cucco's are dumb and dumb creatures do random things which more intelligent beings find hard to predict/control. Quite simply, you could collect the cucco's with incredible optimization, but if the positions are terrible. Your run will sucK compared to a run which has greAT positions done to test run standards. The main problem I found given that OoT is a 3D game. Is that you can't see how the cuccos's are behaving off screen. In effect you're just hoping/praying to get lucky, especially later on. When I have to accept the current positions of the cucco's. To manipulate the cucco's you can move the analogue into different positions during the transition scene, which leads to limitless possibilities.
Once that was all over we decided to wait for a soft reset to be implemented. The time scale for this ran over many months and caused a lot of friction in the community. Even leading to the infamous
Windows vs Linux thread, to which I still believe Windows suck but is still much better than Linux, and the only people who use Linux are elitist cheapskates. Long after I won that discussion, we decided to give up all hope of having a soft reset. During that time many improvements and discoveries were found, which would cause us to start from scratch for about the 6th time. The difficulty with restarting again was the potential possibility to skip the hookshot. It was nearly possible get into the fishing pond by hovering off the tektite and getting across the bridge in Gerudo Valley with a superflip, but we couldn't be certain if it was impossible which caused the project again to stall for many months. After a lengthy perseverance both were proved possible. However, we didn't begin working on the run immediately, because of issues out with TASing. Instead, we agreed we'd work on the run during the summer which was approximately 6 months away. This undoubtedly caused impatience within the community, causing an unnecessary publication of a run that was badly made and planned. Towards the end of the child section SL dropped the run and me and Bloob decided to continue. A third of the way into the adult section my enthusiasm for OoT and TASing hit a brick wall. I haven't put as much effort into the later sections as I should have. Most of efforts have revolved around finding the Z-coordinate address, which makes hovering easier. Hexing in improvements,fixing desyncs and doing trivial sections.
Personally, I'm just glad it's all over, because I'm sick of OoT in general. As for TASing, I'm burned out. I don't have plans to do anything else. Unless Dolphin emu is stable and I come across a game which is fun enough to do.
Baxter: Accepting as an improvement to the published movie.
Aktan: Processing.... but man is this going to take a while...