Submission #7274: NEVERDOORS's GC Luigi's Mansion in 09:27.42

To sync the run:

• Emulator used: Dolphin 5.0-15260
• Dual Core off
• DSP HLE
• CPU Emulation Engine: JIT Recompiler x86-64
• Memory Card Slot A Enabled
• .dtm to create save file: download (should sync with any memory card data that has Hidden Mansion unlocked with no progress on File 1)

Objectives

• Complete the game as fast as possible (any%)
• Starts from SRAM
• Takes damage to save time (win)
• have fun :)

Overview

Route Differences

Door Skip

Once you clip out of bounds with the chest onto ‘Floor 1.5’, the first obstacle one encounters on the way to King Boo is the door between the foyer and main Area 1 hallway. Instead of opening this door (which causes an absurd 11-second long door opening animation), it was discovered that by getting a steep enough ‘skew’ off the Floor 1 ceiling bats, maneuvering Luigi correctly and knocking on the wall, you can clip past the door entirely. Additionally, I discovered a different method of doing this clip that uses the slight change in Luigi’s hitbox that occurs when you press A to call Mario instead, thus bypassing the wall-knocking animation as well.

Skew Retention

Skews are an interesting side effect of taking damage while standing on Floor 1.5, and their discovery is what originally made this route possible, almost a decade ago. It has been theorized that it may be possible to retain the second skew (used to cross over the ceiling beam into the main section of the Area 2 hallway) with a steep enough angle to use for the final clip down to the basement, thus eliminating the need to get a third skew off the bats in the northern section of Area 2. Unfortunately, even the best skew you are able to retain is not steep enough to do the traditional clip down to the basement. However, I discovered a slightly different method of clipping out of bounds in this corner, which requires a much less extreme skew but is orders of magnitude more precise and likely TAS only in its current iteration. This saves 2 seconds over getting a third skew.

King Boo One-Cycle

This is easily the biggest improvement to the published run, and it’s discovery just over a year ago is the reason why the current RTA record for any% is over 20 seconds faster than solarplex’s TAS. Saria100, Red, and Crazy8 discovered that by hitting Bowser’s head a second time with one of the extra spike bombs he throws out during the fight, after you have hit him once normally and King Boo is vulnerable in the arena, the timer that determines how long King Boo is able to be out for is reset, and this allows you to drain all 500 of his health in a single attack cycle, saving around 20 seconds.

Suck-Up Optimization

Aside from those few new strategies, significant time was saved throughout the run by optimizing ghost suck-ups. For the most part, draining ghosts of their HP optimally is a relatively simple process: hold away from the directions they are flying in for 10 frames with the C or analogue stick, input a neutral value on both sticks for one frame to reset the amount you are able to drain continuously, and repeat. The optimization comes after their health reaches 0, but before they begin the ‘suck-up’ animation into the vacuum: during this time, the game determines how long the suck-up animation will take to complete. It has been commonly understood that there are two types of animations you can get for every suck-up: a ‘wave’, or a ‘twirl’, with twirls being faster than waves in almost every instance. However, the mechanics behind getting faster than normal suck-up animations of either sort are very complex, and not even I understand completely what the game is actually checking for when making these calculations. In practice, there were several factors that seem to come into play:

1. Distance between the ghost and the vacuum
2. Direction the ghost is moving, as well as how fast they are moving
3. Vacuum suction shape
   1. RTA runners of this game, aware of the potential time save from faster suck-up animations, have long been in the practice of flicking the control stick back and forth repeatedly at the end of draining a ghost to help improve their chances of getting a fast animation, which seems to actually help in improving consistency. While it isn’t as simple as ‘more/faster flicks = faster animation’, there is a reason why this works. Again, I don’t really have a technical explanation for this but in my experience; it helps to think of the vacuum suction shape (the shape of the visible air-force between the vacuum and the ghost) as a rope. Before the animation starts, if the shape of the rope makes a really wide arc in any direction, you will likely get a slow animation even if you're physically close to the ghost. However, wiggling the stick in certain ways, all relative to the first two factors of speed/direction and distance mentioned above, allows you ‘pull the rope taut’, and doing this can decrease the distance the ghost needs to travel in order to finish the animation, thus speeding it up significantly. It is important to note that once a ghost actually enters the suck-up animation, the length of it has been completely determined and you can no longer influence it, which means that you are free to move how you’d like before the ghost actually ‘pops’ into the vacuum without worrying about slowing it down.

Other Optimzations

• Improvement going up the stairs to Parlor at the beginning of the run
• Improvement getting the key and leaving the room in Wardrobe
• Improvement in activating the blinds in Lydia’s room to expose her heart earlier
• Improved getting into the Chauncey fight
• Improved ‘pushing’ Chauncey while he is doing his body slam attack in between cycles to make him end the attack faster
• In the Chauncey fight, the ball you shoot at him in his first cycle becomes tangible immediately after touching a surface in the arena. However, the ball for his second cycle does not act like this, and requires some manipulation to be immediately tangible. RTA runners do this by taking damage from the last rocking horse before the second wave of balls spawn, and the previous submission gets hit by the actual ball, both of which immediately render the second ball tangible as soon as it enters the arena. I discovered that by manipulating the first ball so that it bounces off the side and not the floor as it enters the arena, you are able to make the second ball tangible instantly without taking damage in any way, which saves around a second depending on which method you are comparing against. Note also that for some reason, doing this seems to make the second ball bounce off the top of Chauncey’s head and land further down in the arena if you try to stand in the optimal spot to catch it, which is why it was necessary to take a slightly wider angle to catch/release the ball compared to the first cycle.
• Removed the need to pause and switch back to Standard mode for the last out of bounds clip

Individual Room Comparison

• Foyer –Parlor Movement: -1f
• Parlor: -8.5f
• Anteroom: -44f
• Wardrobe: -42f
• Wardrobe-Neville Movement: +19f (due to text/load differences)
• Neville: -5.5f
• Lydia: -6f
• Chauncey’s Room: -2f
• Chauncey Fight: -65.5f
• OoB Movement: -465.5f
• King Boo Fight: -603.5f

Other Notes

• All the time comparisons in this description are against solarplex’s movie. However, earlier this year ElectricMiles created a new TAS of this category, utilizing several of the new strategies discussed here (namely door skip and King Boo one-cycle). This submission beats ElectricMiles’ TAS by ~21 seconds, and thorough analysis of both of these movies (as well as the Area 1 in Malleo’s Any% No OoB TAS) was done during the creation of this run to ensure that every section was either beaten or matched in time to whoever had the best segment.
• There is a trick used in all RTA speedruns of this game that was not implemented in this run due to the nature of its setup: commonly known as ‘Map Glitch’, it is a trick that permanently disables the map from appearing until the console is hard reset, but persists through soft resets. It is performed by entering Egadd’s training room, and then inputting a specifically timed button combination during one of his text boxes. This would save frames every time Luigi collects a key, as doing so usually forces the map to appear and means that we have to spend time loading into the map screen and then closing it. I cautiously decided to not include this trick, as including the setup in the movie itself would be quite a bit slower overall (as this run collects only 4 keys), and including the setup in the verification movie would require you to start the run from a state other than power off.
• A note about modes of movement: there are two options you can switch between any time on the pause menu: Standard and Sidestep. With Standard, the analog stick controls Luigi’s movement direction and facing angle, while in Sidestep the analog stick controls only his movement direction and uses the C-Stick to change his facing angle (only in dark rooms, in lit rooms all controls are functionally Standard (?) ). It is technically possible to do at least the first two skews in Standard mode, with precise control of the C-Stick (holding it at a certain value allows you to enter ‘pseudo-sidestep’ mode, where you can move Luigi with the analog stick without changing his facing angle, thus still move around while retaining a skew). However, Luigi turns significantly slower with the C-Stick while in Standard mode, making both of the first two skew-related skips much slower to perform (I think knockless door-skip may be impossible without sidestep). Because pausing to switch between modes is so fast anyway, taking only several frames, switching to Sidestep for the OoB segment is the best choice (although I did manage to eliminate the need for the second pause switching back to Standard mode as mentioned previously).
• The orange ghost in the left wardrobe in Wardrobe is not connected to the timer that spawns the next wave of ghosts, only the ghost that spawns behind Luigi is. This is why I can take extra time to suck it up while waiting for the next wave.
• This run finishes while collecting only King Boo's crown, which qualifies as low% completion
• From the moment King Boo is vulnerable, there are only 3 frames spent not draining him

Run Creation & Thanks

Possible Improvements

• It is likely possible to save a frame or two blowing out the candles in Parlor, by delaying pulling out the vacuum until you are closer to them, like the blinds in Lydia’s room. Oops.
• It is likely possible to further improve some of the suck-ups in this run by a small amount. Despite improving every single one over the previous TAS, the vacuum mechanics in this game are complex enough to where I believe using a script of some kind to automate looking for faster animations instead of old-school trial and error could yield some frame improvements on several ghosts.
• It is known that by ghosts clipping out of bounds while they are being vacuumed, it is sometimes possible for them to essentially ‘die instantly’. I don’t believe that regular ghosts move fast enough for this to be possible in most cases (?), but portrait ghosts like Neville move significantly faster and have more HP, so with god-like manip and clip-able geometry in the room this is worth looking into.
• The biggest theoretical timesaves to this run involves the Chauncey fight. While not specifically hard-coded to be impossible, there is a timer that begins once Chauncey is drained of a certain amount of health during his first cycle, which will force-disconnect him from your vacuum once it reaches 0. Even with optimal HP draining, it is only possible to get him down to 6 (!) HP before this timer expires. Though it seems impossible, somehow circumventing this would cut out the entire second attack cycle from the run and save over 30 seconds.
  • A more likely timesave here would see Luigi clip out of bounds onto Floor 1.5, before the Chauncey boss fight is even started. There are no currently known ways to do this with the objects and actors available in the room before the fight (aka, without the chest), but nevertheless this seems more likely to be possible than one-cycle in my opinion and would save close to 2 minutes.
• It may be possible to improve the out of bounds movement slightly. Though it appears to be negligible, I did not test how walking while skewed at certain angles effects Luigi’s speed.