I was considering redoing a "glitched" all dungeons run of this game I did a while back (never submitted, but might if people want it). In the process I noticed that the glitched any% run could be improved.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: VisualBoyAdvance re-recording 19.3
- Aims for fastest time
- Abuses glitches
- Manipulates luck
- Takes damage to save time
This is an improvement of 10 frames over Swordless Link's run. Time was saved in screen warping to first obtain the sword.
Tricks used
Screenwarp
By pressing select right as link exits the screen he is on, it will warp him to the otherside of the next screen, allowing large portions of the game to be skipped.
Up/down + A or B combos
This allows link to do a variety of glitchy things. The most notable use in this is picking up the sword with this trick. It can also be used for effects like turning link dark or making his sword look strange.
Corner Boosts
When you walk past a corner you can walk into one to boost link forwards slightly. This was only used a few times.
Comments
Only thing changed at the beggining of the game was waiting 1 extra frame on the 3rd screen warp so the object on the screen would dissapear. This resulted in less lag and saved 15 frames initially. After collecting the sword, there was lag I was unable to aviod costing 3 frames getting into the 8th dungeon.
Somewhere between reflecting the 4th fire ball with the sword and the ghost nightmare dissapearing, there were 2 frames of lag that I couldn't make up, after trying many manipulation methods I was able to get it down to this leaving me at 10 ahead. Hitting the fireball at an angle did not change the lag so I decided to leave it in for variation.
During the nightmare ganon fight, I was able to save frames of lags in some cyles while hurting the boss, just to loose them next cycle, not changing the total.
The only real improvements I can see for this is if the lag can be manipulated better. As a side note for possible improvements, it appears that there may be a frame rule in regard for loading screens and lost frames. I did a test where I waited x frames before picking up an instrument. For the sake of this example, waiting 0 frames got link to load at frame 63, waiting 1 loaded at 73; however waiting 2 and 3 loaded it at 71. Frames 4-8 then all loaded on 73. This should be considered when TASing this in regards to missing frames.
Thanks to Swordless Link for his run, it was very usefull to look at to compare progress.
Also thanks to Brandon for encoding this, looks great!
Nach: Accepting improvement to existing run.
Brandon: Publication underway.