Hey guys, Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones is one of my favorite games so I always wanted to make a TAS of this game, this TAS avoids the use of any major glitches and aims to finish the game as fast as possible.
This is approximately 4 minutes and 35 seconds faster, out of which around 1 minute of timesave comes from newly discovered skips and rest of the improvement was done by better fighting strategies (including bosses), many small skips I was able to find during this TAS.
The current RTA WR is 1:43:02
RTA timing of this TAS is 1:26:56
Stage by Stage comments ( basically my commentary on this TAS) :
So by doing some frame perfect menuing and watching some unskippable cutscenes we gain control of our Prince after around 16000 frames, right at the starting we need to get on the higher ground so we use wallrun function which avoids the animation of climbing and saves few frames then we do the expected long known "Ramparts Skip" which is TAS only, after doing some normal route we reach the pole climbing part where its possible to directly jump on the pole (console only skip) which saves few frames again there then I changed the method of climbing further which saved 30+ frames again.
The Ramparts: here we skip our first weapon pickup cutscence (even RTA runs do it), the main thing is now there is a new faster method (route change ) of performimg this skip so we use it unlike the current TAS and save approximately 3 sec, then at the next area you see me doing a jump instead of a safety fall to get on the ledge (indeed jumping has slower animation than safety fall but I do jump here because in Prince of Persia if you jump at the end of the wall then you get diagonal jump and that's why it completly avoids the slower ledge movement later (1 sec faster ) then from here we climb up and hit the cutscene, another new thing added after this cutscene is a direct jump on a piece of collision where you survive fall damage (because this is obviously faster so I didn't compare it with older route, saves time in frames only), after that we reach "The Harbor District" while trying to save time by TAS optimization simply.
The Harbor District: here a new skip (at 7:06 ) was used, this skip was found after the current TAS was made,...the part where we get between walls and slide down to the bottom is a bit longer route, the new skip avoids it (saves 74 frames ), besides this skip there was nothing new in the further areas of "The Harbor District" so we were doing some frame perfect rolls only, btw I would like to highlight that there is a simple concept we need to keep it in mind when rolling,...rolling straight covers max distance whereas rolling in a zig-zag manner looses time (obviously) so giving proper direction to your rolls is really important especially when there are some turning points on your way.
The Palace Balcony: here in the begining I did wallrun+Jump instead of a wallrun+safety fall, if you do wallrun+ safety fall then you have to climb the fence later but I did wallrun then pressed jump at a specific frame ( jumping gives you more height in comparision to safety fall ) and because of this Prince jumped over the fence avoiding the climbing animation ( saves 50 frames overall in the end ). After playing the same route for next few seconds I found a new skip (at 9:41 ) and its RTA viable too, it skips the fence climbing and droping down input presses and waiting time, now because this was visibly faster so I didn't compare with previous route (it should save 3 seconds atleast). Few seconds later I did a cool vase wallrun (at 10:07 ) it saves 16-20 frames iirc, this is one of my favorite moments from Dagger Segment and I'm mentioning it here because I think only few people would notice it.
The Recall: right after I get the Dagger I did a cutscene skip not by any gameplay means this cutscene was just skippable (by pressing A ), the current TAS just forgot the fact that its skippable because of TASing the GC version, it reduced the TAS timing by 4 seconds but obviously this doesn't count as an improvement so I excluded it from RTA timing, talking about the movement I found wallruns to be faster than rolling so I used it wherever it was possible, another fun thing I would like to mention is the Dagger attack while wallrunning at 14:24 it actually helps in landing on the ground 2 frames faster and from here I started to apply it wherever possible and at some point I found that doing dagger/sword attack while wallruning decreases your horizontal position on the wall atleast in many cases (if not all).
The Ruined Palace: at 15:45 I managed to find a better varient of the ruined palace skip, this varient is 10 frames faster.
The Sewers: here I made the sewers cycle too early by jumping on the lowermost pole and because of that I was supposed to wait but luckily I found another way to escape that area (this is again one of my most memorable moment of this TAS ), at 18:59 I was able to find a simple small skip that saved 20 frames.
The Tunnels: here I found that wallrunning to the ladder is faster by 24 frames ( at best ) so I used it instead of direct jump and saved 24 frames, this is faster because wallrun has faster animation and you catch the ladder at more height due to wallrun.
The Fortress: there are too many archers here on the fortress if they shoot arrows then you are stunned for like a full second, I managed to do some manipulation without loosing any frame, at the end (close to the chariot ) I did 4 sword attacks right before entering the cutscene and because that our prince kept moving forward even during the cutscene playback which saved a lot of frames.
The Lower City: here a new skip (at 25:46 ) that saves close to 16 seconds was found back in 2019 during the making of the current TAS by Vynneve but it was too late to go back and fix, right after doing this skip there is another small skip in which we directly jump to the bottom while avoiding swinging on pole which should save 3 seconds atleast.
The Arena: we reach the first boss at 28:54 , a new skip that skips little bit of movement in the boss room was found after the current TAS was made, it saves 8 seconds, while climbing our first platform in boss room I managed to find a small skip that reduced a walljump which saved 30 frames, while climbing the uppermost platform for performing the first speedkill I managed to reduce the bonking on the platform that again saved time in frames only.
The Balconies: this is my favorite section here is did a lot of new things, so the first dagger panel in this area is low enough that we can cancel the animation of stabbing the dagger (by leaving wallrun button and then pressing B), it saves 26 frames then at the bottom a new diagonal wallrun was used, in this we do a wallrun on the corner between two adjacent walls and then jump to skip vaulting over the fence (it saves few frames and plus its much cooler than doing the normal route), now here we jumped into few enemies so its fighting time and I have changed strategy of fight here and managed to do a double kill while covering the shortest distance to approach the enemies (it saves 2-2.5 seconds).
The Dark Alley: here unknowingly i got an uncommon thing called "early control" so as soon as the cutscene ends you can gain control of prince 70 frames earlier than usual it happenes sometimes in real time runs too no known reason why this happens but luckily i got it anyway, so here 70 frames gained from this "early control" only. Also I would like to mention that the "easier temple rooftops puzzle skip" is not easy to do on GC version, In PC version one can do it RTA even with closed eyes but here it just sucks because of not getting any collision when walljumping to other piece of wall.
The Marketplace: very first skip here is the TAS only marketplace skip, one of my favorite moments again in this I saved full one second just in the execution this skip itself, got the wallrun buffer as soon as I landed on that fence instead of hovering on the fence then later at the ground level right after stepping on that switch I manged to do a roll and covered some distance during cutscenec playback it saves 44-50 frames iirc, after few seconds of same route I started to walljump from left hand side wall (not RTA viable) because it reduces one walljump and saves 1 second.
The Bowery: here a new skip was found ( https://youtu.be/rANvKaBpAiI ) which could save time in theory but the problem is you can't get it because of the archer present there, killing the archer and then doing it won't save time. Next big skip is the TAS only bowery skip this skip was long known but wasn't done in the current TAS because the author found no way to get it to work but luckily I was able to reproduce it on GC version it saves 10 seconds, after that rest of the full area was done without any sand because we are Dark Prince here and the health of Dark Prince contineously fades away until death so we need to grab sands from time to time but because of this 10 seconds of time save I was able to make it to the water without any sand just 6 frames before dying is my favorite part of this TAS.
Mahasti (2nd boss) : this is around 1 minute of boss fight I improved it by full 3 seconds, I also managed to do a double damage here which saved one block roll worth of time (a full second I guess) also reduced the use of slowmo here, dealt max damage as the Dark Prince too.
Use of slowmo in the later walljumping section made the collision system a bit more responsive I guess (whatever) it reduced the walljumps (saved 12 seconds ) then later at another location where we skip box movement by walljumping between walls, here the distance between walls is too much so on GC version you mostly go downwards when walljumping but after messing around for some time I found that if you start walljumping from a precise position you actually go upwards when walljumping (walljumping from the other side was the only wall I could get it to work so yeah it saved atleast 5 seconds).
The City Gardens: here I did a 360 beam to save 14 frames then later use of a long known skip saved 25 seconds normally this skip is not possible to do on GC version because of less detected collision system of it I was able to get it to work with the use of slowmo power.
The Canal: here I did a fence wallrun to reduce number of walljumps (1.5s saved ).
The Promenade: Current TAS also does the promenade skip here but not optimally, in this skip you first break a furniture item to grab a sand for Dark Prince then you wait for the sand and at the same time you have to do the skip also, so its a bit tricky here because sometimes you get the skip but not sand lol because you escaped too early by doing the skip and that's why its one of my favorite part of this TAS because here you get the sand just one frame before leaving the area.
The Royal Workshop: here new skips to speed up the puzzle section were found (thanks to GMP), here I found better version of those skips with the help of TAS tools, also I did my favorite two no stagger jumps all these saved 12 seconds in this puzzle section.
2nd Chariot Race : here I saved 5-6 seconds by going so straight and smooth but lost a second later because of greater loadtime for boss room in the Dolphin version 5.0-17995
3rd Boss (The Twins ) : My favorite boss fight in this entire game, here improvement was done only in frames but I didn't compare for this fight iirc.
The Palace Entrance: Changed the strategy of fight and saved 3 seconds in the end part of the fight, the ending part of this fight is special because here not only you try to kill last four enemies as fast as possible but also try to keep yourself positioned near the gate so that you enter the gate as soon as it opens after all enemies are killed. Later just before elevator skip I found a really cool timesaving trick (RTA viable)...the part where you slide up between walls you can leave analog-up and then jump full 1 second sooner and still grab the fence and survive.
The Well Of Ancestors: found 2 new skips here and a better version the existing skip all these saved close to 20 seconds I assume, I didn't caompare with older route because those new skips were obviously faster.
A new skip was also discovered here by PoP speedrunning community it wasn't RTA viable so I was excited to try it out in TAS but sadly it doesn't save time even in PC version so no way its gonna save any time in GC version, actually by performing this skip you become 8.3 seconds ahead initially but then later you have to hit the checpoint then die and restart to load the map to progress ahead so that's where timeloss happens, so I didn't use this skip because its not any faster but slower.
The middle tower skip is my favorite part again here I saved 10 seconds just in the execution of this skip, basically in this skip you have to use an enemy to jump higher so you need to get an enemy to a particular/desired spot as fast as possible that's why I used the already available big guys there and barely waited for any frames there, I also did some manipulation so that's why those enemies ran after me so could get them to the specific spot in the fastest possible time.
Later two newly discovered skips (thanks to GMP) were used in the upper tower to save 10 seconds.
Final Boss: In the last movement phase of the fight I found that rotating on the pole is 68 frames faster than jumping off and jumping back to the pole so I used it.
The Mental realm: The fastest way I found to disappear Dark Prince is just 4 normal attacks + 3 jump kicks or 3 normal attacks + 4 jump kicks, both are same speed so one can use any on them with this I saved 1 second here too. Besides all these I did many other small optimizations throughout the entire game but mentioning all of them is a lot of work so I am avoiding it.
Another really cool thing I learned is the ladder climbing, when climbing the ladder you always slide to the side on top of it but I noticed that you can only do it when your "climbing 1 step" animation is finished (not RTA viable but you can loose upto 30 frames if you are not aware of this) so that's why you always adjust your height when grabing the ladder in such way that your "climbing 1 step" animation is almost finished so that you can slide to the side in blink of an eye, this is the reason why grabbing the ladder as high as prince can is not faster in many cases.
Once again thanks to GMP (https://tasvideos.org/Users/Profile/GMP ) for encoding this TAS, letting me know about lever cutscene skip in Dagger Segment and organizing a watch party for this TAS in PoP community.
feos: Claiming for judging.
feos: Amazing work, you've improved every section! Accepting over [4183] GC Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones "glitchless" by Vynneve in 1:43:46.77.
EZGames69: Aw Crap, here we go again.