This is the current fastest any% speedrun by Paraxade (5:39:56).
One of the biggest glitches in this run is the BiT (Back in Time) glitch. A paragraph by Paraxade from this page explains how it works:
Mkay, so there's a new glitch in Skyward Sword that breaks the game fairly significantly...Basically, you kill yourself, then on the Game Over screen, select "continue" and immediately reset the game in the home menu. This results in being spawned on the title screen, so you can access the file select screen while running around in Skyloft. If you go to a bird statue, then save and load a file with the same A button press, then you'll spawn in the map you're saved at, but at the XYZ coordinates of the statue in Skyloft. This leads to breaks where you can be teleported to rooms halfway through dungeons or to OoB spots which allow you to access places early.
Support for the Wii MotionPlus accessory was added to an old revision of Dolphin, but the current master and more-save-fixes builds do not support recording movies with the accessory, and it would take a lot of work to implement MotionPlus in current Dolphin builds. Unfortunately, this means a TAS of this game cannot be started at this time.
Until a run can be made, strategies and route plans can be discussed here. I will be updating this first post of the thread with the newest WIP and other important information so it can be easily found without requiring viewers to search through dozens of pages to find what they're looking for.
Jpeterson did a ton of work on emulated motion plus, and i believe he added support for recording it. It's very old though, and is never getting merged into master, which would take a massive amount of work to do at this point.
Joined: 3/8/2012
Posts: 398
Location: Windfall Island
Honestly, I don't see a SS TAS in the near future. Not only is motionplus not supported, but optimizing motionplus seems ridiculous. As is the case with TWW right now, stuff is still being found and many small time-savers are all over. It's not late enough for a Skyward Sword TAS. Give it some time. Also, I don't see Wii MotionPlus recording as too big of a priority for Dolphin, so this could be a while.
IronSlayer wrote:
Your counterargument would be like me saying that the Earth is round and then you telling me that I need to show it's flat so I can "prove us all wrong".
Honestly, I don't see a SS TAS in the near future. Not only is motionplus not supported, but optimizing motionplus seems ridiculous. As is the case with TWW right now, stuff is still being found and many small time-savers are all over. It's not late enough for a Skyward Sword TAS. Give it some time. Also, I don't see Wii MotionPlus recording as too big of a priority for Dolphin, so this could be a while.
Like i already said, motionplus support is already there, just not in master builds.
Joined: 4/26/2014
Posts: 8
Location: Santa Cruz, CA
Hi, I'm new to TASvideos.
I started by TASing Mario Kart Wii, but now that I have learned how to optimize that game, I think I am ready to move to bigger and better things.
I am interested in working on Skyward Sword. I am very new to the game (haven't beaten it casually yet, and have only seen two full any% speedruns of it), so I have a few questions:
1. Are there some issues preventing the game from being TASed easily (I would think this game would have a run by now if there wasn't)?
2. Are there/is there a list/playlist/any non humanly possible/very difficult glitches that save time and the general basics of how to perform these?
3. Is the Japanese version of the game only faster (to speedrun etc.) because of textspeed?
4. If yes to the previous question, I read somewhere that Japanese is 10 minutes faster just from textspeed, is that enough to be an exception and TAS the game on the Japanese ISO (I read on this site that TASvideos does not care about the time gained from text by switching region)?
I might think of a few other questions later, but this is it for now. Any help will be greatly appreciated!
1. Some Wii games as well as Gamecube games have a lot of desyncing problems due to emulator issues. so that makes it hard to record and replay correctly if it cannot synchronyze well.
3. Japanese games are usually only faster due to textspeed, every once in a while there is a game from a different region that has a certain glitch that others do not.
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2174
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
TASPlasma wrote:
4. If yes to the previous question, I read somewhere that Japanese is 10 minutes faster just from textspeed, is that enough to be an exception and TAS the game on the Japanese ISO (I read on this site that TASvideos does not care about the time gained from text by switching region)?
If that is all that is different between the versions, the US English version is preferred, but it would be acceptable in Japanese as well.
---------------
Make sure you check out http://www.zeldaspeedruns.com/ss/ as well as their forums, they also have an IRC channel if you want direct interaction with some of their members. ZeldaSpeedRuns collects a lot of tricks and glitches about Zelda games, including Skyward Sword.
I'm sure they would be very interested in helping you and giving you feedback along the way.
Hi, I'm new to TASvideos.
I started by TASing Mario Kart Wii, but now that I have learned how to optimize that game, I think I am ready to move to bigger and better things.
I am interested in working on Skyward Sword. I am very new to the game (haven't beaten it casually yet, and have only seen two full any% speedruns of it), so I have a few questions:
1. Are there some issues preventing the game from being TASed easily (I would think this game would have a run by now if there wasn't)?
2. Are there/is there a list/playlist/any non humanly possible/very difficult glitches that save time and the general basics of how to perform these?
3. Is the Japanese version of the game only faster (to speedrun etc.) because of textspeed?
4. If yes to the previous question, I read somewhere that Japanese is 10 minutes faster just from textspeed, is that enough to be an exception and TAS the game on the Japanese ISO (I read on this site that TASvideos does not care about the time gained from text by switching region)?
I might think of a few other questions later, but this is it for now. Any help will be greatly appreciated!
1. If Skyward Sword was a gamecube yes it would probably sync for several minutes or hours. But Skyward Sword is a Wii game, you'll get problem with saves, and it uses Wii Motion Plus so no, you'll not getting that game to sync enough to have a full TAS at first try. :)
Current:
Rayman 3 maybe? idk xD
Paused:
N64 Rayman 2 (with Funnyhair)
GBA SMA 4 : E Reader (With TehSeven)
TASVideos is like a quicksand, you get in, but you cannot quit the sand
As noted here, the absence of MotionPlus emulation means that you would have to TAS the game with an actual Wii Remote and MotionPlus accessory. Of course, doing that would make it very difficult to optimize your run.
And while some Wii games have desync issues, others don't. The only way to know how well a run on Skyward Sword syncs is to test it.
Joined: 4/26/2014
Posts: 8
Location: Santa Cruz, CA
CoolKirby wrote:
As noted here, the absence of MotionPlus emulation means that you would have to TAS the game with an actual Wii Remote and MotionPlus accessory. Of course, doing that would make it very difficult to optimize your run.
And while some Wii games have desync issues, others don't. The only way to know how well a run on Skyward Sword syncs is to test it.
I was actually planning on doing a very short test run with a real Wii Mote/Motion plus, then manually adding in any frame perfect inputs. Thanks for everyone's help.
I was actually planning on doing a very short test run with a real Wii Mote/Motion plus, then manually adding in any frame perfect inputs.
That seems rather nasty to do, at least without writing some helper programs to decode/encode DTM files or somesuch.
Traditional hex editing does not work well with DTM files (because of the variable stride).
Joined: 4/26/2014
Posts: 8
Location: Santa Cruz, CA
Ilari wrote:
TASPlasma wrote:
I was actually planning on doing a very short test run with a real Wii Mote/Motion plus, then manually adding in any frame perfect inputs.
That seems rather nasty to do, at least without writing some helper programs to decode/encode DTM files or somesuch.
Traditional hex editing does not work well with DTM files (because of the variable stride).
Apologies for my ignorance, but what is variable stride?
I was actually planning on doing a very short test run with a real Wii Mote/Motion plus, then manually adding in any frame perfect inputs.
That seems rather nasty to do, at least without writing some helper programs to decode/encode DTM files or somesuch.
Traditional hex editing does not work well with DTM files (because of the variable stride).
Apologies for my ignorance, but what is variable stride?
A way to think about it is with most of the emulators we have with rerecord, inputs are recorded in plain text or have a taseditor to help read the inputs.
for Dolphin, the frame inputs start like 0x100 in the dtm file and are only read in 00 to FF.
so like standing still is 00 00 00 00 80 80 80 80 or something like that.. you'd need another program to help read and change inputs.. which should have been DTM Reader's next update if it ever happened but all DTM reader can do is look at the input for a certain frame you entered sadly.
I was actually planning on doing a very short test run with a real Wii Mote/Motion plus, then manually adding in any frame perfect inputs.
That seems rather nasty to do
I agree that it would be nasty. That would mean using the hex editor to rewrite each section with increasingly higher/lower Nunchuk positions until you get an optimal time, and doing that for every section, every room, every area for more than 5 hours. That would require inhuman patience.
I really think you should just stick to the testrun idea. If you frame advance just for text boxes and BiT, you should be able to beat the real-time records anyway, and the result might even be good enough to submit here.
Joined: 4/26/2014
Posts: 8
Location: Santa Cruz, CA
CoolKirby wrote:
Ilari wrote:
TASPlasma wrote:
I was actually planning on doing a very short test run with a real Wii Mote/Motion plus, then manually adding in any frame perfect inputs.
That seems rather nasty to do
I agree that it would be nasty. That would mean using the hex editor to rewrite each section with increasingly higher/lower Nunchuk positions until you get an optimal time, and doing that for every section, every room, every area for more than 5 hours. That would require inhuman patience.
I really think you should just stick to the testrun idea. If you frame advance just for text boxes and BiT, you should be able to beat the real-time records anyway, and the result might even be good enough to submit here.
Ok, I just need a wireless sensor bar to get started. Also, I think I will do the test run in English.
Hasn't been mentioned here yet, so I don't know if I'm stating the obvious, but given the fact that the frame difference due to language would be ignored, wouldn't NTSC 1.0 be fastest anyway because of Cistern Clip? There's little RNG to be manipulated (rupees aren't an issue as the route uses little/none, depending on if you get an Air Potion- would be interesting to see the TAS go potionless, but only if it's overall faster) so the slower text wouldn't matter for that reason.
I still think a TAS should use the J version, simply because the game is very long already and it doesn't add anything to have longer conversations.
If this will ever be TASed..
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
That in no way is a legitimate category, because it uses a glitch to copy the contents of the third files inventory into the Hero mode file. I made a demonstration of it a couple of years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYGQwm5TAJM
I mostly did it as a protest to runs that were being submitted here with pre-made files.
That in no way is a legitimate category, because it uses a glitch to copy the contents of the third files inventory into the Hero mode file. I made a demonstration of it a couple of years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYGQwm5TAJM
I mostly did it as a protest to runs that were being submitted here with pre-made files.
You couldn't call it a new game+ or something?
Then again, afaik there isn't anything special a TAS could do to the route that can't be done in RTA, unless you could abuse the old save file enough
I see this playing out in three variations. The regular any% on the first run, using that for the validation movie for 100% Hero Mode, then using THAT movie for an optimized glitch% run.
