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Warp wrote:
"Useful comparison"? I don't understand what you mean. Comparison of what to what?
Anyway, in general, TASes are not driven by what's popular or unpopular in the real-time speedrunning scene. And we don't generally compare TASes to unassisted speedruns and make decisions based on that.
A few of us in the DR speedrunning server timed the TAS compared to our own PB splits, to see how much time could be saved. Also when I first broadcasted the TAS I had my own splits up to compare the TAS to my PB. It's a helpful comparison, and it would've been less helpful if it had the 3 minute school intro that no one does in their runs. I'll admit it's a bit hypocritical to say this considering I purposely did things that are slower, and I don't really have any good excuse except that it was more fun.
I know that there are a lot of standards in the TASing community (which I am very new to) and I'm still learning about the proper ways to make/publish a TAS. However both of the TASes I've made were originally for a small community to enjoy, and only afterwards did I decide to submit them to tasvideos. I'm trying to meet somewhere in the middle without having to make two separate TASes. In the future I'll probably sway more on the side of timesave, but considering this is a short TAS for a demo of an incomplete game, my choices felt a little more inconsequential than usual.
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I decided early on that I would purposefully lose time for entertainment in 3 areas: Name during Character Creation (18 frames lost), building the duck (70 frames lost) and visiting Sans (22 frames lost). Because the final time is just a number, I can tell you that if I hadn't done those things I could have achieved a final (RTA) time of 25:25.07 (25:25.00 if I hadn't lost speed in Prison). The only difference would have been that the run would have been a bit faster; nothing interesting would have been showcased that is missing from the current version. I also asked others what they thought and thought about what it'd mean to the Deltarune speedrunning community, which I made this for, before settling on any of the time losses. That's also the reason why I chose NG+. Starting on a clean slate or "True Reset" is one of the least popular categories in Deltarune speedrunning, so it wouldn't have been a useful comparison. I also considered making a tasvideos version and a personal version, where the tasvideos version would not feature any known time losses, but I didn't like the idea of one being considered better than the other, so I stuck with just one.
Anyways I'm personally really happy with the TAS in its current state and that people can watch it, and that's all I really wanted.
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Ok, so if you want to start the game with NG+ available, add the files in the .zip which I provided under "Saves" on the Resources section for Deltarune on src (link https://www.speedrun.com/deltarune/resources). Add the contents of the .zip to /home/<username>/.config/DELTARUNE and the TAS should work.
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@Spikestuff I'm not sure about what needs to change in the files to mark completion, it might be the dr.ini file or filech1_9
I know some people weren't going to like the areas where I wasted potential timesave, but I am happy how it is in its current state and am not planning on changing/redoing any parts of it.
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Just to be clear, whether it was optimal or not to enter Expert twice to get the fastest power on -> end game time, I did not put much thought into that timing while making this TAS. If it happens to have been fastest to enter Expert twice, that is totally incidental to what my goal was for this TAS (finishing a 9 Hole Game, RTA timing, as fast as possible). If I knew how to manipulate the wind RNG, I wouldn't have hesitated to add minutes to the total time if that's what it took to save 10 seconds in RTA. That being said I've still given my estimates based on my knowledge of the game for how much extra time would be added if I had not entered Expert once/twice before beginning a 9 Hole Game.
As Memory said it is quite a task to re-TAS this run without Expert entries, and I don't see it as a being worthwhile, though I understand the concern that it made the TAS overall slower.
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I don't think this game uses the clock for RNG, at least what I found is that waiting in the menu did not change what RNG I would get. The fastest way I could generate new RNG was to enter a course, immediately open up the menu, and hit restart.
TheProJamer, I think I understand now. If I had simply entered 9 Hole Game before entering any other course, there would have been some unfavorable winds, but not as many as if I had only cleared the AB check and then went into 9 Hole Game. Hole 5 would have had 28 mph Southeast wind which is very hard to play with. Depending on where the ball could get to on the first shot, it might not be possible to hit the flag on the second. And if pin placement on the green was also not favorable, it might not be possible to Double Eagle that hole. So that would likely add 3-8 seconds. Also Hole 8 would have 26 mph Southwest wind, which I think is strong enough to prevent the possibility of a Hole in One, probably adding 4-7 seconds depending on how fast I could get to the second shot. The winds on the other holes are fine, though on Hole 1 (0 wind in this case) I'd estimate a small time loss, maybe 1-2 seconds, from not having any helping wind. Hole 7 (4mph South wind) would probably still need to be an Eagle rather than a Hole in One, but it's hard to say without a lot of experimentation. Overall I'd estimate anywhere from 8-17 seconds lost.
The wind RNG that I got after 2 entries into Expert was the best wind RNG that I could've gotten at that point, and even though I would have continued searching for the perfect wind RNG I realized there are literally billions of possible combinations and I had no way of influencing the outcome, so I just decided to start the run at that point. I plan on making another TAS where I change the memory to set the winds to be perfect, which I'm sure is against certain rules here but opens up the potential to save 20+ seconds from the total time of this TAS because it would be much more optimized.
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Apologies for not providing the checksum, I'll post it here, and can edit the submission myself if needed:
Name: Wii Sports [RSPE01].wbfs
Size: 337641472 bytes (322 MB)
SHA1: 50F4F32B10A0B88D45B286EE24A992BE4F4315A8
To answer your questions Memory, entering/exiting the Expert course saved me 1 second the first time (by preventing the AB check from appearing again). The second enter/exit is hard to estimate, but essentially multiple strategies would not be available: On Hole 1, the wind would be 22 mph East, which has a chance of making the bunker strat impossible, and if not adds some time for turning much farther left to account for the wind. Hole 7 would be the worst timeloss. The wind would be 16 mph West, possibly making the shortcut through the forest unavailable, meaning the strategy on that hole would change to trying to use the bunker strat on the bunker down the fairway and then attempting to get a flagshot from there. The problem with that is there are trees in the line of sight from that bunker to the green, so it is possible I would actually need to land it on the fairway instead. Best case I would lose 4 seconds, worst up to 7 on that hole. Hole 9 also might present some issues, as the wind is 10 mph South and landing on the left-side island requires a nearly full powered shot if there is NO wind. It's possible that the left-side island would be unreachable, and instead I'd have to go to the right side island first, then to the green. The problem with that is the right-side island has a low elevation, and to get the ball in the hole might require rolling it in. And the problem with rolling it in is the ball needs to be moving quite slowly or it will simply bounce off the pin. So Hole 9 has up to 4-7 seconds timeloss as well. Overall I'd estimate in the best case scenario I'd lose 12 seconds if I hadn't entered the Expert course twice before beginning the 9 Hole Game.
The power of the swings can be fully controlled. In practice, it is difficult to hit weak shots (below the first dot) as the minimum threshold for movement isn't so low. In TAS this isn't a problem, but what was an issue was hitting powerful shots (above 2 dots) fast. If I tried to hit earlier any earlier on shots like Hole 2, the swing would whiff and hit at the weakest power level. It should be possible to hit faster strong shots in TAS but I could not find any way while building this run.
I spent the majority of my time with this TAS optimizing the flag hits. In most cases, it was actually not too hard to find the correct positioning needed to hit the flag. From there the difficulties arose from getting the ball to not only drop directly into the hole but also not bounce or roll around once they fell in. In some cases I could have hit the shot weaker, and the ball would have hit lower on the flag, but it would have resulted in not landing in the hole/bouncing in the cup/extra time spent waiting for the ball to stop rolling in the hole. Hole 2 is an example of the best case scenario: the ball hits low on the flag, goes directly into the hole, and comes to an instant stop. You can hear in the video how the ball makes a sudden chirp as it wedges itself between the flagpole and the hole, and then there is no more sound from the ball. The audience only cheers and the announcer only calls the shot once the ball has come to a complete stop, so there was at least 1 second to save on each hole from optimizing the flag hit and in some cases I shaved off 2-3 seconds from my initial flag hit.