Hey everyone, it's Mark H-Spider-Man, that's who I mean. Spider-Man.(!!!)
Spider-Man 2000 revolves around Spidey trying to hunt down an impostor who stole an invention of Doc Ock, framing him and setting off a whole chain of events that shrouds the city in mist and turns Spidey into Public Enemy #1.
This run is a 8305 frame, or 2:19, improvement to my old run thanks to analog control, new routes, and copious use of the new Web Dome Ascension (WDA) glitch, all detailed below.
- Manipulates luck
- Very heavy glitch abuse. Even more then last time.
- American made.
Basics
Web Swinging
Web swinging, unlike many other 3D Spider-Man games, is based entirely on what object Spidey is swinging towards. For example, if the distance between you and the object is far, Spidey will do a slow, long swing to get you there. If it's medium distance, Spidey will do one fast swing, and so on.
Optimizing web swinging is all about finding the magical object that Spidey will fast swing towards.
Another aspect of web swinging is a 'web zip', which is where Spidey shoots a line forwards and launches to that point. It's very fast, but it only works in special situations, such as being in tunnels or on the ground.
Web Abilities
Spidey has four different web abilities that can be done by picking a direction on the C-Stick.
The first is web gloves, which greatly boosts Spidey's punching abilities. They always last for 5 punches, no matter where they're used in a combo. Used for every boss fight.
The second is Impact Webs, which lets Spidey shoot a ball of web at an enemy. It's quite similar to normal webbing, except it deals damage and also takes time to reach its target. Used in a few situations where I need to travel immediately or to deal with multiple targets at once.
The third is the Web Dome, which protects Spidey in a dome of webbing that explodes after a certain amount of time or when a button is pressed. Unlike the previous TAS, this is used extensively.
You see, whenever Spidey falls off a ledge, he has 2 frames to do any ground move he wants before the game puts him in an 'air' state. If Spidey uses Web Dome during that time, the game will rocket him upwards. This is used to speed up long climbing sections, and also to pull off some unique skips.
Finally, there's the web yank, which...yanks an opponent. I never used it outside of playaround stuff.
Movement
Fun fact, this game DOES use analog control. When I made the original TAS, I didn't know this. So, yeah.
The fastest form of movement is to web swing and web zip, but Spidey does have a variety of other ways to move around, including dive kicks on enemies and jumping. All of these get application in some way or another.
Level by Level comments
1. Get to the Bank!
4 seconds was saved avoiding the building climb.
2. Bank Approach
Used a Web Dome Ascention to skip watching a cutscene before killing the goons. It triggers as soon as I touch the ground, which is why I do a web ball and kick before finishing them off with a web dome. Saved about 10 seconds here.
3. Hostage Situation
I optimized getting out of bounds via very precise movement to just barely avoid grabbing the wall. Besides that, time was saved optimizing web zips on the way to the elevator. 5 seconds saved here.
4. Stop the Bomb!
Mostly optimization in this level. The bomb automatically begins to activate once the cutscene is skipped, so messing around a bit with the goons doesn't waste time. A jump is done at the end of the level to trigger a minor glitch. About a second saved here.
5. Race to the Bugle
Optimized the route extensively so that it no longer requires climbing on any buildings. 6 seconds saved here.
6. Spidey vs. Scorpion!
Something interesting that was discovered, doing two kicks followed by a punch finisher not only allows Spidey to use his web gloves for five combos instead of 1.6, but it also deals more overall damage. Besides that, dive kicks were used in-between combos to not only get in more damage, but also to cancel the input lag at the end of combos. Roughly 3 seconds saved doing this strategy.
In case you're wondering why Scorpion is just sitting there, whenever an enemy is stuck in another object their state gets all screwy as long as you keep wailing on them.
7. Police Chopper Chase
Mostly just optimized the route. No other significant changes. 3 seconds saved.
8. Missile Attack
Used Web Dome Ascention extensively here to skip a lot of boring climbing.
9. Building Top Chase
More route optimization.
10. Scale the Girders
Improved the climb with Web Dome Ascention, plus some good old optimization.
11. Police Evaded
Route optimization.............
12. Spidey vs. Rhino!
Same as Scorpion, I get Rhino stuck to prevent him from attacking me. His hit timer is slightly different from Scorpion, so i use less dive kicks to avoid a long delay that would happen by using them too much. Think about 5 seconds was saved here.
13. Catch Venom
This entire level is actually an autoscroller in disguise. For the first half you need to wait for Venom to reach the southeast corner to prevent him from getting stuck, and for the second half you need to make sure Spidey doesn't get too far away and cause the game to trigger a game over.
A few trivia notes on this level. One, I have no idea why Spidey launches if you interrupt a web zip. Two, I didn't grab the Spidey Armor to make this TAS feel visually different compared to my old one.
14. Spidey vs. Venom!
Used kick combos to reduce this to a 3-cycle fight instead of a 4-cycle one. American made.
15. Sewer Entrance
Mild optimization doing the swings. The lizards don't take a lot of damage from Web Dome, so I use two Web Balls each on them.
16. Sewer Cavern
Some of the web swinging is far easier with Z-targetting, but you can avoid it by just swinging. I optimized the end of the level by jumping into the cutscene as late as possible.
17. Subway
3 minute autoscroller. I tried my hardest to make it worth watching, but there's only so much I can do.
18. Sewage Plant
Optimized the web swings. No more awkward jittering around. The end of level cutscene is on a timer, presumably to get Spidey aligned if you mess up, which is why he pauses for so long.
19. Hidden Switches
Level trigger is hidden just outside the level, so cancelling a web zip at just the right time lets me reach it.
20. Tunnel Crawl
The titular tunnel crawl was improved with some Z-zips and using B to keep bringing Spidey up from a fall instead of crawling. A Web Dome Ascention is used near the end to skip two switches and a few cutscenes.
21. Venom's Puzzle
Fun fact, there's a way to get out of bounds in this level, but it's far slower then just doing it normally.
Besides that, I improved hitting the switches by doing a web ball on the last switch so Spidey can start ascending while the cutscene is playing.
22. The Lizard's Maze
Did B falls instead of crawling to save time. A tricky OOB is used to skip most of the maze, which I missed in my first TAS.
23. Spidey vs. Venom Again!
Same as last time, only with more Mary Jane about to drown-ing. 1 cycle less then my old TAS thanks to good ol' kick combos.
24. Symbiotes Infest Bugle
Is this gonna be a standup fight, sir, or another bughunt?
25. Elevator Descent
You have to wait for the elevator to destroy the symbiote webbing, but they were sane about the wait this time.
26. Stop the Presses
I destroy the first two symbiote generators in order to get a door to open, which I then use to clip OOB and skip the rest of the level. Much more optimized this time around.
27. Bugle's Basement
Around 10-12 seconds was saved by tricking the game into deloading chunks of the level, which lets me reach the exit immediately.
28. Spidey vs. Mysterio!
What a tough boss. Saved time by tricking Mysterio into doing attacks with his arms.
29. Waterfront Warehouse
Saved a few seconds skipping Spidey's 'Geromino!' cutsene. It doesn't look like it, but figuring out how to get that skip was far harder then it looks.
30. Underwater Trench
Swing forward, the level. In harder difficulties those walkways don't exist, which is ironically faster.
31. Stopping the Fog
Hit switches until stuff blows up. The Black Cat cutscene is one of only a few that can't be skipped, so enjoy some 5th gen graphicx.
32. Spidey vs. Doc Ock!
Doc's switches can be activated much sooner then you would think. Saves lots of time. Also you can clip into his barrier with a weird enough crawling angle, but he's invincible.
33. Spidey vs. Carnage!
Wow a fight even easier then Mysterio. Knock him into the sonic generator and impact web him for days. I ended the level 1 frame before I died.
34. Spidey vs. Monster-Ock!
As long as you stay ahead of him, he'll be doing some Mario Kart shit behind you to keep up. This means you have to wait for him to reach the end trigger before the level ends. Lame. You also can't run out of webbing in this level, thank goodness.
Final input is skipping the last cutscene. In case you're wondering why Symbiote Spider-Man is in the credits, you unlock the costume by beating the game without running out of webbing, which mean never having Spidey expel 'air' from his web shooters.
Q/A
Q: How long did this take you, 3 days? klappa
A: Two months I think?
Q: What difficulty is this on.
A: Easy Mode. Hard and Normal requires you to beat up thugs to rescue hostages, so no OOB stuff. Also, you get less webbing on higher difficulties, which means that Web Dome strats are much harder to do. Likewise, Kid Mode prevents you from skipping cutscenes, which is dreadfully slow.
Q: Do it again on Hard Mode!!
A: If I ever end up doing All Comics I will.
Q: What's next?
A: Idk something even better then this game if that's even possible hahahahahahdjfks
Q: You should redo Enter Electro next.
Possible improvements
-A way to skip the tunnel crawl in....Tunnel Crawl. I know that it's apparently possible, but I have no information on it. It'd would maybe save a few seconds.
-Finding a way to skip Stopping the Fog. Getting out of bounds with Web Dome Ascension is pretty easy, but I couldn't find a trigger to end the level anywhere. Would save a good 20 seconds via skipping the Black Cat cutscene.
Thanks
Thanks to the RTA runners, once again, for still continuing to find new things in this game.
Suggested Screenshots
Here's an album of four images I took during the making of this run. If any of them have an incorrect frame count please let me know!
http://imgur.com/a/NSeOc
Samsara: Sure, let's swing.
Samsara: Maybe less swinging and more clipping, but there was still a good amount of swing. Accepting as an improvement to the published run.
Spikestuff: thecoreyburton is doing all the work for this. So whoever he contacts when he's done (preferably the seniors feos or fsvgm777) will be publishing it... unless he ranks up to Publisher during the time for this.
feos: That'll be me.