Here is a WIP through chapter 2 of an improvement to my previous movie that I've been working on.
At the end of chapter 2 I'm 2050 frames ahead. However, some of that will be lost to the fact that the day/night cycle is off at the beginning of chapter 3 (the game doesn't reset the day/night cycle between chapter 2 and 3!)
The main motivation for this movie is that I have a much nicer computer than before and could bot increasingly unlikely events with shorter delays. Previously I took the approach of attempting to have generic scripts for things like manipulating a critical hit. This time I made an easier framework for which I could write custom scripts for every situaiton I encounter and the ability to chain unlikely events together. From this I've been able to remove nearly all the delay frames even from insanely unlikely events (such as rnd 1 of the first chapter 2 boss fight). In general, I'm doing more manipulations, and more chains. And the likely hood of success is orders of magnitude more unlikely than the previous movie's maniuplations.
In addition I have a few mistakes in the previous movie, some of which I'm even embarrassed by:
1) The day/night cycle is manipulatable!
Believe it or not, a step doesn't necessarily increase the cycle. Not catching this in previous movies is sloppy on my part. I had the wrong address for day/night and never noticed lol.
It looks completely random that any given step will fail. However, it looks like there are rules. For instance you can't have 2 failed steps in a row. From this I was able to manipulate night in chapter 1 about 60 frames faster. And a much bigger boost from not needing to use the inn in Endor on chapter 2 by making sure it is still day when I get there (however, there may be little to no gain from this, depending on how I deal with the bad cycle in chapter 3).
2) Screen transition lag
In the previous movie, I didn't notice that lag is random in screen transitions. Yes, random, as in the rng. Is there anything that isn't random in this game? No.
I figured this out somewhere in chapter 5 in the previous movie. Not a lot of time is saved from this but it does add up over the course of such a long movie.
3) Better (worse?) stat manipulation. Ragnar for instance has about a 1/1000 chance of not getting vitality on early levels (up to lv 5). I was able to manipulate 3 levels to be only strength from this, saving a good deal of time. 2 of those manipulations were back to back, which given that the rng has almost no ability to be manipulated through level ups is incredible. I was able to use some of the boss fight (which had its own difficult manipulations) to manipulate essentially a 1 in a million scenario!
In addition I was able to minimize Alena's stats too in some 1/1000 situations.
4) Better skeleton fight in chapter 2
This is a mistake I figured out too late in the making of the previous movie. I did realize that the lowest HP for a Skeleton was 42. However, It failed to occur to me that if I manipulated 1 more str (1/1000 chance) then Alena's max critical would be 21 and therefore make the fight only 2 rounds long.
