Today marks 10 years since I joined this site! Thought that would be reason enough to warrant the making of a new TAS. As Sonic games are the ones I've had the most fun with due to their complex physics, and the fact that I didn't already have the record for this one, made it a wanted target to improve. Only problem was that in order to do so I had to beat Tee-N-Tee... big challenges are great motivators though and in the end I improved his run by 473 ingame frames (~7.9 seconds) and about the same amount of real time. The input file still became a few seconds shorter than that due to ending the input earlier by pure greediness.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: Gens 11b-s1 (Camera Hack + Solidity Display + Hitbox Display) + sonic-hud.lua + predict-animals-v2.lua (syncs with Gens 11b)
- Aims for fastest in-game time
- Takes damage to save time
- Abuses programming errors
- Manipulates Luck
Timetable (the times are correctly read as minutes:seconds::frames)
| Act | New time | Previous time | Frames saved | Total frames saved |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Green Hill Zone 1 | 0:23::40 | 0:23::42 | 2 | 2 |
| Green Hill Zone 2 | 0:12::50 | 0:13::03 | 13 | 15 |
| Green Hill Zone 3 | 0:30::30 | 0:30::45 | 15 | 30 |
| Marble Zone 1 | 0:15::04 | 0:15::04 | 0 | 30 |
| Marble Zone 2 | 0:10::32 | 0:10::33 | 1 | 31 |
| Marble Zone 3 | 0:24::28 | 0:24::41 | 13 | 44 |
| Spring Yard Zone 1 | 0:21::09 | 0:21::31 | 22 | 66 |
| Spring Yard Zone 2 | 0:25::49 | 0:26::10 | 21 | 87 |
| Spring Yard Zone 3 | 0:37::42 | 0:40::15 | 153 | 240 |
| Labyrinth Zone 1 | 0:33::43 | 0:34::06 | 23 | 263 |
| Labyrinth Zone 2 | 0:25::30 | 0:25::34 | 4 | 267 |
| Labyrinth Zone 3 | 0:26::59 | 0:27::26 | 27 | 294 |
| Star Light Zone 1 | 0:15::04 | 0:15::36 | 32 | 326 |
| Star Light Zone 2 | 0:10::19 | 0:10::20 | 1 | 327 |
| Star Light Zone 3 | 0:26::06 | 0:26::20 | 14 | 341 |
| Scrap Brain Zone 1 | 0:28::25 | 0:28::39 | 14 | 355 |
| Scrap Brain Zone 2 | 0:11::43 | 0:11::45 | 2 | 357 |
| Scrap Brain Zone 3 | 0:07::49 | 0:09::42 | 113 | 470 |
| Final Zone | 1:11::58 | 1:12::01 | 3 | 473 |
- New total time: 07:39::20
- Previous total time: 07:47::13
Level-by-level comments
Green Hill Zone 1
Several micro-improvments throughout the first half of the level added up to 1 frame, the other one came from building up higher speed before the loop in order to enter it earlier.
Green Hill Zone 2
The wasp got backstabbed.
Green Hill Zone 3
Found a later spot to start the bounching sequence.
Marble Zone 2
The previous run had a margin of 5 x-subpixels to perform the level wrap. Doing it 1 frame earlier required subpixel perfection :)
Marble Zone 3
Managed to hit the boss 3 times before jumping over to the left platform.
Spring Yard Zone 1
Subpixel positioning to hit the yellow spring after the downhill. Compensated that by not using the springs at the end :)
Spring Yard Zone 2
Different strat at the beginning saved about 20 frames. Unfortunately that advantage made me have to wait for a spike ball to move a little upwards to fully abuse the downslope. I even found a faster way to start the level than what's shown here, but that would only result in having to wait even longer for the ball which would look rather anticlimatic. Here's a demo of this other strat.
Spring Yard Zone 3
Through carefull speed management and breaking thorugh multiple 32-pixel wide walls I could gain enough speed at the uphill to break through the ceiling and extend the zip to the end of the level.
Labyrinth Zone 1
16 frames saved by managing to start the zip above the rising platform and not having to to wait for it to pass you vertically and then pass under it.
Labyrinth Zone 2
Quite simple level - the strats up til the zip are almost identical to what was done in the first ever published run.
Labyrinth Zone 3
Plain faster movement from the start to the level wrap.
Star Light Zone 1
lol-improvement.
Star Light Zone 2
Better x-positioning during the zip.
Star Light Zone 3
1 Frame gained up til the first zip, 1 frame gained during that zip and 12 frames gained on the boss by delaying some of the earlier hits to deliver the final hits faster.
Scrap Brain Zone 1
Got on top of the platforms right away after the big jump while zipping, unfortunately this didn't save much as I had to wait for the camera before advancing further.
Scrap Brain Zone 2
Got clipped forward a little on the first wheel.
Scrap Brain Zone 3
Used the slope glitch found by Tee-N-Tee.
Final Zone
At the final hit, by jumping while rolling, you can hit him 3 frames later. And as he descends by 2 pixels/frame before being hit and 1 pixel / frame after being hit it results in 3 frames being saved.
Thanks goes to Tee-N-Tee and the previous authors, plus tasvideos.org as a whole - for being the objectively best Internet community :)
GoddessMaria: Judging.
GoddessMaria: This is an excellently made movie, Aglar! Improving the current published TAS which was already tight to begin with by 8 minutes is no easy feat, but you did it! Optimization was very on point, entertainment value was very high, and the audience reaction was generally extremely positive! Excellent work, Aglar!
I'm accepting this as improvement to the current movie.
feos: Pub.