A short run of a Sonic game that hasn't had any obsoleted movies? I haven't been too interested in doing TASes lately but I couldn't help myself from improving it. The old run was well-optimized (with solid routes) and broke the game pretty thoroughly, so this ended up being less than 40 seconds faster, but I think it's still a significant improvement considering the game.
I used Gens 10a with the Sonic CD Camhack/Speedometer/SolidityViewer/HitboxDisplay enabled to make this. Thanks to Upthorn for making and releasing such good tools for TASing this game, and also for making the first version of this run (which I used a lot of ideas from).
Goals
These are the same goals as Upthorn used.
In order of highest to lowest priority:
- No time travelling or level restarting
- Fastest in-game time
- Fastest real time
Categories
- Aims for fastest (primarily in-game) time
- Takes damage to save time
- Abuses programming errors
- Ignores semi-important goals in the game
Level breakdown
| Level | Time | Old Time | Seconds Saved | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Palmtree Panic 1 | 0'20"75 | 0'21"01 | 0.26 | Better angle on the high jump after getting the speed shoes |
| Palmtree Panic 2 | 0'16"60 | 0'16"80 | 0.20 | Took a slightly lower route |
| Palmtree Panic 3 | 0'17"71 | 0'17"88 | 0.17 | Hit the spring faster, manipulated boss to spawn earlier |
| Collision Chaos 1 | 0'15"83 | 0'15"83 | 0.00 | Very minor changes (no improvements found) |
| Collision Chaos 2 | 0'22"06 | 0'24"31 | 2.25 | Faster speedshoe route, skipped peelout at end |
| Collision Chaos 3 | 0'03"35 | 0'03"35 | 0.00 | Very minor changes (no improvements found) |
| Tidal Tempest 1 | 0'21"38 | 0'22"65 | 1.27 | Jumped to avoid walking down a slope underwater, early peelout speed trick at end |
| Tidal Tempest 2 | 0'31"65 | 0'40"61 | 8.96 | Went through wall to skip part of the route |
| Tidal Tempest 3 | 0'23"90 | 0'30"13 | 6.23 | Zipped in a different place to reach the boss sooner |
| Quartz Quadrant 1 | 0'18"65 | 0'19"55 | 0.90 | Rolled for faster speed off the first ramp |
| Quartz Quadrant 2 | 0'17"91 | 0'18"86 | 0.95 | Zip-launched into a lower route at the end |
| Quartz Quadrant 3 | 0'50"86 | 0'52"06 | 1.20 | Saved time by not skidding on the treadmill |
| Wacky Workbench 1 | 0'22"03 | 0'25"38 | 3.35 | Similar but crazier route |
| Wacky Workbench 2 | 0'27"25 | 0'29"48 | 2.23 | Didn't let the time posts slow me down, actually they helped a little |
| Wacky Workbench 3 | 1'03"05 | 1'04"90 | 1.85 | Zipped differently to reach the boss sooner |
| Starlight Speedway 1 | 0'14"75 | 0'15"08 | 0.33 | Would have been faster but the camera got too far behind for further optimizations to make any difference |
| Starlight Speedway 2 | 0'17"63 | 0'18"66 | 1.03 | Went enough faster to skip another loop |
| Starlight Speedway 3 | 1'05"01 | 1'05"80 | 0.79 | Saved time by making the game think the race was a close call at the end (Robotnik speeds up... and gets green jets?) |
| Metallic Madness 1 | 0'18"71 | 0'20"58 | 1.87 | Got enough speed to jump through the last wall |
| Metallic Madness 2 | 0'23"61 | 0'26"58 | 2.97 | Handled the circular conveyor belts faster, zipped for a speed boost at the end |
| Metallic Madness 3 | 1'07"56 | 1'09"40 | 1.84 | Faster zip, manipulated the bug things to be closer together |
| Total Time 2 | 9'40"25 | 10'18"90 | 38.65 | In summary... went faster? |
Emulator Settings
- Emulator: Gens 10a
- Bios used: v1.10 (U)
- Sound: 44100 KhZ
- Options: Sega CD SRAM Size = 64 KB
This movie happens to stay synchronized regardless of whether "Perfect SegaCD Synchro" is on, so if SegaCD emulation is chuggy on your computer, it might help to turn that option off for this movie. It would also help to use BIN+CUE instead of ISO+MP3, because it takes more processing power to decode MP3s than to not decode them.
Desync Issues
If you're getting desyncs, first make sure you're using the correct ROM and BIOS and emulator version and settings as described above. And don't try to load a mounted disc with "Boot CD", just use Open ROM on the file like normal.
Also make sure you have the right number of audio tracks on the CD... if you're using a cue file that means your cue file needs to have the right number of correctly indexed audio track sections, if you're using MP3s that means you need exactly 34 MP3s named properly and in the same directory as your ISO (if the ISO is "Sonic CD (U).iso" then the MP3s should be "Sonic CD (U) 02.mp3" through "Sonic CD (U) 35.mp3"). The actual contents of the audio tracks can be almost anything, but the number of audio tracks has to be correct otherwise the emulated loading times will be different enough to cause a desync.
Music
This was made with the US version of the game, but if you prefer the music from the Japanese version, you can tell Gens to run the US game but use the music from the Japanese game. The way of doing this depends on whether you are using ISO+MP3 or BIN+CUE. If you are using MP3s, simply replace the MP3 files with the ones from the Japanese version. If you are using BIN+CUE, you can edit the CUE file of the (J) version to use the (U) version for track 01 (data) and use the (J) version starting at track 02 (audio). It should look like this, except with the filenames matching the ones you have:
FILE "Sonic CD (U).iso" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE1/2352
INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Sonic CD (J).iso" BINARY
TRACK 02 AUDIO
PREGAP 00:02:00
INDEX 01 12:14:49
TRACK 03 AUDIO
INDEX 00 12:18:63
INDEX 01 12:20:63
TRACK 04 AUDIO
...and so on...
One thing those won't work for, though, is the ending music. For that, you'll have to use the actual Japanese version of the game, not only the Japanese audio tracks. You'll also have to use a different version of the movie file for it to sync and version 1.00 of the Japanese MegaCD BIOS. Be warned that Quartz Quadrant has slightly slower in-game times than in the US version (differences during lag frames) even though the movie is about 10 seconds shorter (mostly due to shorter level end music).
NesVideoAgent: Hi! I am a robot. I took a few screenshots
of this movie and placed them here.
I'm not sure I got the right ROM though. (I tried
BoltR I choose to clean them all, as that is very much the wrong ROM.
Sonic The Hedgehog (MP).gen, which was the closest match to what you wrote.) Well, here goes! Feel free to clean up the list. BoltR I choose to clean them all, as that is very much the wrong ROM.
mmbossman: Impressive work. Nice to see you back nitsuja. Accepting as an improvement to the published movie.
Raiscan: Processing.