My largest project is finally over. 1.5 years, tons of procrastination, and many many demotivation spikes later. I present to you:
Six Pack: VLDC Compilation. ALL 622 Exits
This is by far my most mentally draining project of all. So many good levels, so many incredibly long and frustrating levels. I'm very excited that it is finally over after all of this time.
Hack Download: https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=35347
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9.1 (BSNESv115+ core)
- ALL 622 exits
Strategy explanation
As this hack is WAY too long for level by level breakdown, i'll just go over some things that might stand out
- In some levels, you will see that i appear to wait for no reason before entering a pipe. That is due to how screen exits work. If a pipe on layer 2 is not in the correct screen on layer 1, it will bring me to an incorrect area. In some cases this can be faster, however in others, it just doesn't bring you anywhere. Therefore waiting a little bit before entering the pipe is sometimes necessary
- In the earlier levels of the TAS, there's a few parts where i scroll the camera to the right and then eventually land on a rotating grey platform break and teleport forward a bit. While I'm not sure exactly how this works, it does save a bit of time and possibly even more if there's multiple platforms in one level.
- I didn't think i had to go over this but if you see me jump before entering a pipe or door (despite the pipe being right there when i jump) that is to conserve takeoff timer. By taking flight with the cape, a timer starts at 80 and counts down one every frame. This timer has alot of implications but specifically for this, it determines if Mario can take cape flight by falling at all as long as he's not spin jumping. This timer persists through room transitions. By activating flight and entering the pipe/door, if you can jump and/or start falling before the timer hits zero, you can engage flight which instantly increases your speed to 51 instead of having to run and build up speed again.
- In many levels I go over a level or under a level. There are a few levels in which i go under/over only to a certain point, then go back to the main route (in some cases, under then over and vice versa.) This is because some levels have solid dirt which you cannot pass through unlike most levels. Only a certain area is accessible due to a random pit in the ground, whereas others that would normally be possible to access through the dirt, are not, due to solid dirt.
- Funkytown Survival was only partially done by me. I could not stay mentally motivated to finish it to save my life. If it weren't for Mischievous Marc this project probably still would be incomplete. Credit where its due! Thank you marc <3
- There's probably more stuff I missed
Other comments
There is very much plenty of room for improvement. I believe sub 14:30 or even sub 14 is possible even without ACE. But for a nearly 15 hour long TAS done all solo by someone with horrible stability, i think i did pretty well. This was originally planned to be done with a group of like 4 or 5 people when I first started theorising this TAS 3 or so years ago, however since I'm the only one who has no life I was the only one who did it (aside from marcs level). If a group of people can come together and improve this, that'd be very fun to watch. (Speaking of, who's gonna watch this entire thing haha)
Special Thanks
- IgorOliveira66X for helping me with understanding how certain things work when I was still learning
- Mischievous Marc again for doing that one level that would have taken forever to be motivated to do otherwise.
- thegugafá for allowing me to inspire him (unintentionally)
- Cemstrumental, PyroKastrix, SweatyNoodle for being some of the main people to be there with me during the TAS process,
- SMWCentral as a whole for making this all possible
Without you all, I don't think I would have made it here <3
Darkman425: Claiming for judging.
Darkman425: As a note: the last meaningful input until 622 exits is reached is at around frame 3231232 when the last goal tape is crossed. This means there's around 00:35.342 of extra input at the end but I don't feel it's exactly necessary to have a separate input when the main input is over half of a day long.
I want to start with the negatives since those personally bothered me as someone who has done a fair amount of SMW TASing. These for the most part are little things that I kept noticing throughout.
- A fair number of boss fights can be done with faster strats. The most noticeable ones are the Bowser fights (not a single one used the big steelie skip to save ~50-55 frames per fight, and a few Bowser fights didn't end with the optimal positioning to reduce Peach's walking time) and the Reznor fights (a majority of them didn't go for the fastest approach). I can forgive not using the fire flower quick kill strats against Morton, Roy, or Ludwig since a lot of other levels restrict entering with a power up through various means so keeping a fire flower in reserve might not have paid off.
- A few levels have differing amounts of noticeable optimization issues. Some are fairly small such as P-meter/flight timer management to get more cape flights into later areas of some levels. Others are more major such as routing errors by entering unnecessary areas that lose time.
- One example I know is true is in the VLDC 6 level Dimensions by Hobz. Taking the 1st blue P-switch from the starting area and flying through the 2nd area to the short bonus room saves about 4-5 in-game seconds compared to taking the intended route to the cave area and grabbing the 2nd blue P-switch at the top.
- While I understand wanting each of the VLDC sets in separate blocks, there's still a noticeable power up route that can be taken within each block to save time. At the start, visiting a later level with a cape would've saved a lot of time in the starting levels with cape flight.
With that out of the way, I want you to know that ultimately I'm positive on this. My complaints personally feel like nitpicking when most audience members aren't going to easily notice the small bits when the surrounding work is great. A lot of the levels are well optimized in routing and execution, especially considering the sheer amount of work to maintain with a game of this scope. Nice work!
Accepting to Standard.
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