(Link to video)

Attributes

  • Forgoes major game breaking glitches
  • Forgoes out of bounds
  • Aims for lowest real time / frame count
  • Abuses minor glitches and exploits
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Manipulates luck
  • Speed-Entertainment tradeoffs

Terminology

  • Energy Tank = E-Tank
  • Reserve Tank = R-Tank
  • Power Bomb = PB
  • Gravity Suit = Grav
  • Speed Booster = Speed
  • Charge Beam = Charge
  • Ice Beam = Ice
  • Wave Beam = Wave
  • Hi-Jump Boots = HJB
  • Mother Brain = MB
  • Corner Boost = C-Boost
  • Damage Boost = D-Boost
  • Shinespark = Spark
  • Crystal Flash = CF
  • RNG = Random Number Generation

Tools Used


Overview

This is a new classic Any% TAS of Super Metroid. It beats both the real time and game time of the previous Any% records by Taco & Kriole (2009) and Saturn (2011). The real time improvement is 3522 frames (58.7 seconds) whereas the game time improvement is 2 seconds, resulting in a real time of 37:39.1 and a game time of 22:36.
Many fresh optimizations were found during this run, and the run is the first to include exploits found last year such as Draygon underflow to obtain over 65k Missiles / Supers, and "bowling skip" to skip the cutscene involving the Chozo statue in Wrecked Ship before Grav.
As was the case with 13%, this was created on Lsnes, a more accurate emulator compared to snes9x v1.43 which the previous runs were created on. As a result, I lose 2-3 frames per door transition and have more lag to deal with in comparison.

Route Outline

For the purpose of performing Draygon underflow, the best boss order ended up being Phantoon -> Draygon -> Ridley -> Kraid, an order not seen before in runs. A handful of major items were able to be skipped as a result, including ones previously-thought-mandatory such as Wave and even Charge.
Similar to 13%, I grab the Brinstar R-Tank as it is required for performing bowling skip, and it serves as a replacement to one E-Tank for surviving MB's rainbow beam. The ammo choices before Wrecked Ship are the standard and obvious ones. I need two packs of each ammo type in order to perform underflow later.

Details & Improvements Per Area

Ceres -> Blue Brinstar

The same improvements that were recently made to the Any% ACE run exist here - the 1 frame improvement to the tile room of Ceres escape and the 4 frame improvement to the Construction Zone revisit.
Although not an improvement, I found a way to fall down the right side of Parlor that matches the speed of the standard left side descent.

Awakened Crateria

By having one of the rocks produced by a Skree strike Samus, thus causing Samus to blink, 1 frame of lag was removed in the door to Flyway. In this case, even though the Skree produces rocks both when it perishes and when it burrows, I had to slay it on a specific frame before it burrowed in order for one of its rocks to strike Samus in a location where c-boosts would not be missed.
Upon returning to Parlor after Bomb Torizo, the "ball pump" technique was applied to the Alcatraz tunnel and saved 2 frames, and I was able to open the door to Terminator a frame earlier.
The last pirate in Green Pirate Shaft was disposed of in order to save 20 energy.
Two Kago bugs were farmed right before the Brinstar elevator. It's surprising that this option went unnoticed for all these years, considering it only cost 12 frames to perform.

Green & Pink Brinstar

Applied a new method for collecting the R-Tank by farming enough ammo in the Main Shaft to open both red doors in succession.
A few enemies were farmed along the way to Red Brinstar to afford performing the bowling skip later.

Red Brinstar

The first d-boost in Hellway was optimized just enough to gain previously-thought-impossible subpixels, and barely reach the right door a frame earlier.
A frame was saved by perfectly centering the door leading to the first PB pack, and two more were saved by reaching it 2 frames earlier.
More impossible subpixels were obtained by optimizing the jump and d-boost right after collecting the first PB pack, thus saving a frame.

Wrecked Ship

Phantoon was dispatched 1-2 frames faster than the published Any% runs, all the while collecting more drops during the fight.
Phantoon's drops were in much more favorable locations than in previous runs, saving a whopping ~70 frames.
In the Attic, some lag was reduced during the PB explosion, and 1-2 frames were saved by performing a lower jump while double-striking the Kihunter and Atomic from below.
Slopekiller was performed above the West Ocean, but the result was equal in speed. Ball pumping in those tunnels saved 2 frames, its usual amount.
Despite all the farming and pausing involved to perform it, bowling skip saved 8-10 real time seconds. The third pause was performed to return brightness to the screen so that the audience could witness it in action (since otherwise, brightness would not have returned until obtaining Grav), which is the primary speed-entertainment trade-off of this run, costing 2-3 seconds.

Norfair

The Ice path was approached more efficiently by falling off of the elevator's edge, shooting the door open earlier, and centering the door.
A few frames were saved in the Ice section compared to Saturn's 14% Ice run.

Maridia

Better room optimizations than previous runs led to a handful of frames being saved.

Norfair

Clever strategies such as c-boosting / walljumping off of frozen enemies were implemented to save frames.

Lower Norfair

Even more spark strategies than before were used here - a spark was performed in every room from Pillars to Kihunter staircase, and a spark was performed after the steel pirates encounter to fly all the way to Ridley's Gadora instead of dealing with the enemies and acid.

Norfair Escape

The spark through the exit pillars and knockback from the Multiviola to reach the ledge barely worked without HJB.

Kraid's Lair

It turns out that it's faster to use a regular bomb instead of a PB in the first room by 2-3 frames, an improvement over Taco's Any% WIP in that regard.
Kraid's lag was reduced majorly by firing Missiles at the rocks from point-blank range, resulting in a fight that is 20-30 frames faster than the one in my 13% run.

To Tourian

The spark suit gained at Kraid was used to reach the platform below the door, high above Mt. Everest.

Tourian

All (or almost all?) of the rooms were improved compared to previous runs.
Skipping the Super Metroid with a spark was barely able to work in these conditions (Speed, no HJB, no Wave). Unfortunately, this skip was still 13 frames slower than 13%'s method (coincidental numbers), but was the only option given the conditions.

Escape

2 frames were saved compared to my 13% run.

Additional

As you would expect, the never-ending ammo obtained through Draygon underflow saved time throughout the remainder of the run.

New Techniques

Bowling Skip

By allowing the R-Tank to trigger automatically while in the Chozo statue's grasp, Samus will be freed and allowed to move freely during the cutscene (after being teleported backwards a few times).

Maridia Green Gate Mock Clip

This gate is possible to open by mockballing into a frozen enemy at low height by using the peak momentum value (3.49152) - which is present for only 1 frame - combined with a dash value of at least 1.20480. Not only is this route faster, but also conserves a Super Missile, since that is what green gates normally require.

Botwoon Skip

What happens if the game has to decide whether Samus should collide with a wall or a frozen enemy? Surprise! The frozen enemy has priority, making it possible to clip inside solid objects. Properly positioning the Zoas for performing this skip is much more difficult with only Ice.

Draygon Underflow

The game uses the same memory address for reducing ammo via CF as it does for releasing Samus from Draygon's grasp via the directional pad. Therefore, through proper spamming of directional pad inputs upon initiating a CF while in Draygon's grasp, ammunition amounts underflow, and a spark suit is gained.

Boomerang C-Boost

Same as boomerang ledgegrab, except performed while c-boosting. Not sure if this saved frames anywhere.

Boomerang D-Boost

Same as boomerang ledgegrab, except performed right before making contact with a damage source. This causes the d-boost's momentum to begin from 1.57344 (or 1.61440 if Samus had a dash value of 0.04096 prior to the d-boost) instead of the usual 1.16384 (non-spinjump) or 1.24576 (spinjump). This technique saved a frame when Samus was struck by the Rinka in the last Metroid room in Tourian.

Missing Echoes

It sometimes reduces lag to prevent Samus from gaining speed echoes. (see Speed Booster Hall and Tourian Escape Room 3)

Known & Potential Improvements

When the run was ~80% complete, Reeve and I figured out that, despite the utilization of bowling skip, Draygon underflow, et cetera, a KRDP route would still be faster than this route, although the approximate amount by which it would be faster is currently unknown.
That being said, the route showcased in this run has very little potential improvement, but I'll try to list a few:
  • Somehow manipulating Kihunters in Lower Norfair into better positions so that rolling underneath them is not necessary?
  • MB2's rainbow had a delay of 45 frames, which I'm satisfied with since I think it's lower than the delay in all currently-published runs, but it could be lower.
  • It might be possible to improve steam RNG during Tourian escape by 5-10 frames if a brute force search was performed for some time (potentially weeks).

Special Thanks

Thanks to EternisedDragon, Overfiend, Reeve, Taco, Total, previous TASers, and the speedrunning community.

feos: As I promised 3 years ago, the option to obsolete the "in-game time" run is now available. That has already happened when [1368] SNES Super Metroid by Taco, Kriole in 38:41.52 obsoleted [1075] SNES Super Metroid "ingame time" by Cpadolf in 41:02.40 by simply beating it by the IGT, and that's the case now again. The community generally approves of that scenario as well, so there's no issue with this.
Some people feel uneasy about the new glitch this run uses though: the underflow glitch that grants you a ridiculous amount of ammo. The previous runs had to manage that resource heavily, that being a part of the challenge, and now it's taken away after the point when the glitch is performed. So some expressed the wish to have "underflow glitch" and "no underflow glitch" as separate branches instead of "real time" and "in-game time". But that doesn't seem to be justified at all, firstly, because it's not that common an impression, secondly, due to lack of real arguments advocating such decision.
When two runs are published alongside each other, they should have significant difference that can be easily seen and clearly defined/explained, and the percentage of content overlap between them should be minimal. None of that has been proven to be true for "underflowed" and "underflowless" branches, as the only serious con is that the former feels less entertaining in that exact aspect of ammo management, and it's still very entertaining on its own. All the other content is conceptually the same: one has to beat the game ASAP without game breaking glitches, no other restrictions set. Moreover, as pointed out by the author: "Majority of the time saved comes from significantly better optimization and especially realtime optimization. Underflow was just berry on top of the cake." It sums up the lack of conceptual difference between these 2 suggested branches, since the greatest difference right now is in time saved due to things unrelated to "underflow".
So while this run has so much content overlap with the IGT one, it has just as much content overlap with the previous "no major glitches" branch. And in a situation when there are permanently so many branches of Super Metroid published alongside each other (which by itself isn't bad, as I said already in the thread), it becomes harder and harder to clearly differentiate between branches, so cross-branch obsoletion becomes unavoidable.
Another point that was brought up, aside from "feeling less challenging", was "feeling like a GT code". It sounds silly when you look at the technical details, but I'll explain our official take. It doesn't matter how many "cheap" resources a certain glitch can grant you. It only matters which way you access them. If you access them by entering a cheat code, you get rejected. If you access them by performing some actions that were proven to be a debug mode combination, you get rejected. If you glitch the game and enter the debug mode by corrupting memory, it's legit. This run doesn't even enter the debug mode of any kind, it just glitches a certain counter, that's all. Comparison to GT code is also invalid.
Finally, there's an argument that if "underflow" is allowed here now, all other branches will automatically demand it too, as well as the applicable Super Metroid hacks. While this seems to be true, as separating the "underflow" category doesn't look justified, I won't be setting any policies here, because the final decision can only be made when such a run is submitted and reviewed by the users and the judge.
Spikestuff: Publishi- ...dual obsoletion... Mother Brain.

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Feos: Majority of the time saved comes from significantly better optimization and especially realtime optimization. Underflow was just berry on top of the cake. In-Game-Time (IGT) is possible to abuse in numerous different ways, which makes me think IGT oriented TASes don't make sense anymore for this game -Constantly pausing while having 00 health stops IGT from running -Constantly pausing while walljumping makes it possible to do better walljumps -Pausing to perform mockball after falling off ledge -Pausing after CWJ to allow releasing jump but keeping spinjump pose + speed (spinjump is slightly faster than unspinned samus) -Pausing to turn off items in purpose to save time much more often than Saturn did is possible -Pausing or delaying doors with sounds to get favorable RNG. This makes TASing this game much easier, since you can wait million years until perfect RNG happens. -IGT runs don't have to care about lag, which is a cheap way to go for lazy TASer. Best example is Namespoofer's 14% Tourian vs my 13% Tourian. Mostly due to lag reduction effort difference, 13% is ~15 seconds faster even while using laggier lsnes emulator rather than snes9x 1.43.
Joined: 5/23/2014
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I'm aware my opinion is likely to be drowned out in this thread, but I fail to see the issue with allowing underflow in anything EXCEPT low% (will get to low% in a moment). Aren't we supposed to be using any glitch we can to go faster? What's with this "oh, let's not do X just because it makes the game trivial". If we followed that mantra, we'd never get anywhere new with glitches. And that irks me. Side note: I'm aware that there's different categories and each bans certain things; when I refer to "any glitch" I really should be saying "any glitch not banned by the category rules". One can argue that skipping Botwoon by clipping into a door is also against the spirit of SM running (and thus, by extension, TASing) since it clips. However, FWIR, it doesn't go OOB, merely clips into the wall and then into a transition (as far as if this is OOB, not my argument to make or get involved in, simply mentioning it). But yet, despite the fact that this is actually more controversial of a decision (considering one of the rules of SM's basic Any% is *no OOB*, because allowing OOB completely changes the run), basically NOBODY has argued this point. Wow guys. So ultimately, if the TASer feels that using underflow will make a non-Low% TAS faster, then I think they should be allowed to. I fail to see why we should split SM non-Low% categories by underflow and non-underflow, and none of the arguments against it in this thread are even remotely close to convincing me otherwise, because, frankly, they're dumb arguments (we shouldn't do underflow because the previous TAS didn't. Really? REALLY?. Now to Low%, even though this is not the category this TAS exists in. I would be much more willing to consider a no-underflow branch for Low% (alongside an underflow branch), as one of the rules of Low% is least items possible, and breaking ammo restrictions is slightly less... desirable... for the category's philosophy. However, it would strongly depend on both TASes and I would not be able to say definitively until I would watch both an underflow TAS and a non-underflow TAS. I'm not an SM expert but I figure that this can be another opinion the judges can take into account. For the record, I voted Yes on this TAS.
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This run certainly can't be compared to ACE, but it is similar to the GT-Code in its approach. The only difference is that the setup takes more time to execute, and the item gain is not as significant. Ingame time has its benefits, especially for TASes where limits can be reached and emulators can differ: * more precise overall movement * greater mobility, more variety, faster boss fights (in legit conditions for any%) * universal timing independent of emulator choice (in 10 years there might be an even more accurate emulator developed, after which all actual realtime-runs could be off again) Stopping the timer with the well known pause-abuse trick (or other nonsense resulting from it) was never the point of an ingame-oriented run. It is to provide maximal pace by focusing on gameplay quality in normal conditions rather than some weird moves to lower emulator-dependent lag, using an as accurate and reliable timer as possible. Obviously lowering realtime is still a secondary goal to avoid pace interruptions, as is in most TASes.
See my perfect 100% movie-walkthroughs of the best RPG games on http://www.freewebs.com/saturnsmovies/index.htm Current TAS project (with new videos): Super Metroid Redesign, any% speedrun
creaothceann
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Saturn wrote:
(in 10 years there might be an even more accurate emulator developed, after which all actual realtime-runs could be off again)
bsnes is quite close to the hardware. About the only thing that could be missing afaik is the behavior when a game tries to read uninitialized memory, or using the multiply/divide registers in very unusual ways (here and the following posts).
Aran_Jaeger
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Well, in this case, the difference between emulators is just that Lsnes is simply superior in accuracy than snes9x1.43, considering it even allows for console verification of some games. And if there would later be an even better emulator, then it wouldn't be so complicatd to port an Lsnes TAS onto it because of the input editor feature that Lsnes provides. It wouldn't change much anymore.
collect, analyse, categorise. "Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;) Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on. 1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans. 2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai. (last updated: 18.03.2018)
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Saturn wrote:
Ingame time has its benefits, especially for TASes where limits can be reached and emulators can differ: * more precise overall movement * greater mobility, more variety, faster boss fights (in legit conditions for any%) * universal timing independent of emulator choice (in 10 years there might be an even more accurate emulator developed, after which all actual realtime-runs could be off again) Stopping the timer with the well known pause-abuse trick (or other nonsense resulting from it) was never the point of an ingame-oriented run. It is to provide maximal pace by focusing on gameplay quality in normal conditions rather than some weird moves to lower emulator-dependent lag, using an as accurate and reliable timer as possible. Obviously lowering realtime is still a secondary goal to avoid pace interruptions, as is in most TASes.
Faster bossfights? How? RT TASes are just as fast except they are faster because more lag reduced. Emulator: lsnes / bizhawk run at correct 60.098... fps and is almost cycle accurate compared to real console. Snes9x runs at incorrect 59.94 fps and is overall very poor emulator. Ingame-oriented run's point isn't to save IGT? What? All currently published tases couldve used pausing much more, whether it wasnt even the 00 energy abuse, but for other things. If you're going for IGT then whats the point of not optimizing it fully? IGT is already irrelevant in the speedrunning community, as 99% of the people who speedrun this game care only about RT.
Joined: 6/28/2007
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Sniq wrote:
Ingame-oriented run's point isn't to save IGT? What? All currently published tases couldve used pausing much more, whether it wasnt even the 00 energy abuse, but for other things. If you're going for IGT then whats the point of not optimizing it fully?
Saturn often makes the case that aiming for IGT has entertainment benefits. Whether you agree or disagree, it makes sense in that case to forego the exception to the rule that has severe entertainment drawbacks. Sure, it might sound arbitrary to say something like "IGT without pause abuse", but I don't think it's that big of a deal.
Saturn wrote:
* greater mobility, more variety
I assume that you are referring to item collection differences here, so things like HJ or SJ that usually only an IGT run would consider. It's worth noting that the route used by this run is known to be improvable. The KRDP route, to the best of my knowledge, would have the exact same major item collection and boss order for an IGT or RT category, or underflow/no underflow (except that underflow would skip plasma in both cases). It's that good. So while what you said is correct in general, it will no longer apply to vanilla any% if that run is ever made, as it completely destroys every other possible route regardless of goal choice.
Aran_Jaeger
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Saturn can you go into more details and elaborate your understanding of ''more precise movement'' and ''greater mobility, more variety, faster boss fights (in legit conditions for any%) '' ? I would assume by greater mobility and variety, you mean for given rooms, the set of IGT-optimal inputs through such room is much larger and thus easier to obtain and less unique, because so many nuances don't count towards IGT and can be neglected. This larger set of input-strings through a room at the same IGT limit would allow for slightly more freedom in regards entertainment, I give you that. I mean obviously the movement a TASer has to find is more precise and narrowed down further if one goes for real-time as opposed to IGT in SM, which is the opposite of what I think you wanted to express. And the timing method has no influence on the game's mechanics, as they will not change if you change the way you measure time, so inputs for some trick have a leniency or precision independent of this. Regarding ''faster boss fights'', what senseful timing method(s) would result in an IGT optimized boss fight being (non real-time) faster than a real-time optimized boss fight? Lag isn't something completely solely emulator dependent. If you go through a game, then there will happen hundreds of instructions that are executed in the code, and if there is too many to put them all into 1 frame, then lag starts happening, with remaining instructions being processed later. And there is some core of instructions that can cause lag which corresponds to the game's code, which reduces the seemingly perceived arbitraryness of optimizing lag with respect to a given emulator. There will be instructions that are shared among them all, given sufficient accuracy. And the more accurate, the larger the relative amount of ''natural'' lag that isn't induced by the emulator used. Correct me if I'm wrong on this.
collect, analyse, categorise. "Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;) Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on. 1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans. 2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai. (last updated: 18.03.2018)
Joined: 6/28/2007
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Aran Jaeger wrote:
Saturn can you go into more details and elaborate your understanding of ''more precise movement''
I think this comes from the idea that different movement to avoid lag or door transition scrolling might look sloppy to someone who doesn't understand why it was done. For example, jumping through the door two rooms before speedbooster has raised questions a few times before. Laying powerbombs in rising lava rooms also looks a bit odd. Just my best guess at the kind of thing he's talking about.
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Yeah, probably related to not ledge grabbing in some places and jumping through doors to align them. For a long time I was a defender of in-game time, but now I see there's no point anymore, mainly due to the route Taco mentioned. It's faster for both in-game time and realtime. Only thing I suggest is to give priority to in-game time if the final realtime is the same, like if you have to delay a few in-game frames to get a drop you can induce loading time through the door, cause the viewer will probably notice a delay during gameplay (in-game) but will probably not notice if it's just part of a door transition. Of course, as I said, if such choice has no influence in the final frame counter. This way you can achieve the lowest realtime and also the lowest in-game time for that route.
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Sniq wrote:
Emulator: lsnes / bizhawk run at correct 60.098... fps and is almost cycle accurate compared to real console. Snes9x runs at incorrect 59.94 fps and is overall very poor emulator.
"Almost" is still not 100% accurate, as is the case with ingame time.
Sniq wrote:
Ingame-oriented run's point isn't to save IGT? What? All currently published tases couldve used pausing much more, whether it wasnt even the 00 energy abuse, but for other things. If you're going for IGT then whats the point of not optimizing it fully?
You do optimize it fully, just without excessive pause-abuse, as that goes against the nature of a speedrun and makes it unwatchable. It's about entertainment as well, and tradeoffs happen all the time for it in almost any TAS. Regarding faster boss fights, I was referring to the current any% TASes. You don't get Plasma in the realtime one, but it makes the MotherBrain fight considerably faster. As for the rest, Taco summed it up well.
Taco wrote:
It's worth noting that the route used by this run is known to be improvable. The KRDP route, to the best of my knowledge, would have the exact same major item collection and boss order for an IGT or RT category, or underflow/no underflow (except that underflow would skip plasma in both cases). It's that good. So while what you said is correct in general, it will no longer apply to vanilla any% if that run is ever made, as it completely destroys every other possible route regardless of goal choice.
That needs to be proven first. If it's true, cool, otherwise it's just an assumption.
See my perfect 100% movie-walkthroughs of the best RPG games on http://www.freewebs.com/saturnsmovies/index.htm Current TAS project (with new videos): Super Metroid Redesign, any% speedrun
Aran_Jaeger
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"Almost" is still not 100% accurate, as is the case with ingame time.
You mean ''as it is the case with Snes9x'', not with IGT which is unrelated to the emulation accuracy of the emulator. But this higher accuracy also means the form or shape of the abstract optimization problem given to a TASer on Lsnes is much closer to what the optimization problem would be if one had a perfect accurate emulator environment. And thus, approaching a solution of such far more similar optimization problem allows for results that would aswell be closer to the results one would obtain under perfect accuracy circumstances.
That needs to be proven first. If it's true, cool, otherwise it's just an assumption.
It is true.
collect, analyse, categorise. "Mathematics - When tool-assisted skills are just not enough" ;) Don't want to be taking up so much space adding to posts, but might be worth mentioning and letting others know for what games 1) already some TAS work has been done (ordered in decreasing amount, relative to a game completion) by me and 2) I am (in decreasing order) planning/considering to TAS them. Those would majorly be SNES games (if not, it will be indicated in the list) I'm focusing on. 1) Spanky's Quest; On the Ball/Cameltry; Musya; Super R-Type; Plok; Sutte Hakkun; The Wizard of Oz; Battletoads Doubledragon; Super Ghouls'n Ghosts; Firepower 2000; Brain Lord; Warios Woods; Super Turrican; The Humans. 2) Secret Command (SEGA); Star Force (NES); Hyperzone; Aladdin; R-Type 3; Power Blade 2 (NES); Super Turrican 2; First Samurai. (last updated: 18.03.2018)
InsaneFirebat
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My opinion is that real time is far superior for Super Metroid timing. It requires much more knowledge and experience to optimize, and provides a faster time overall. Entertainment value is subjective to the viewer, so I don't see how that supports game time optimization. I'd rather not see lag and downtime from item pickups when it's more efficient to skip them, but that's just me. Underflow (that's what I call it) seems to be most of the conflict here, but I think it's a big part of the entertainment value. I don't think it's any worse than pausing at zero energy to skip bowling or storing a shinespark to use later. I'd sooner be looking into that grey door skip. Saying underflow is like GT Code seems silly to me. The two tricks are nothing alike in execution or usage. Thanks for creating this amazing TAS, Sniq. I really appreciate all the different techniques you've put into optimizing your runs. I hope there's still enough room for improvement to keep you interested! Add one YES vote from me. I've never been given an option to vote on this site.
amh
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Great TAS again, Sniq. I particularly enjoyed Bubble Mountain after speed booster and Lower Norfair sparks. I can understand people new to SM being puzzled by some door transitions and lag fixes, but I find their optimization another point of SM TASes to be appreciated, like the morph exiting Construction Zone emerging as a new strat early game. I must say though, comparing old emulators with current ones in terms of accuracy seems far fetched. There probably will be improvements in 10 years, but the gap will be minute if compared to what has been accomplished in that front. Also, for sure real time TASes will be improvable in the future, as even in game TASes have been (or can be) improved again and again, independent of emulators. I'd also like to voice that Underflow surprised me as it played a smaller role than I thought it would on this run, its acquisition serving as fun substitute for the lack of super missiles management later on. I'm not sure if that would be true for other categories, specially low%. I hope to see more SM this year.
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Saturn wrote:
Stopping the timer with the well known pause-abuse trick (or other nonsense resulting from it) was never the point of an ingame-oriented run.
Well, if the stated goal is to minimize in-game time, and the run does not minimize it, by deliberately bypassing techniques that would, then it fails at that goal and ought to be rejected. You could argue that it "uses speed/entertainment tradeoffs", but then it's not an IGT category anymore, because the actual IGT becomes inconsequential. You can't say reasonably that it's trying to minimize IGT, if it isn't, if it's trading time for entertainment. IGT with tradeoffs seems like a rather nonsensical category. I don't think it can be argued to be reasonable. Either it's a "playaround (with speed/entertainment tradeoffs)" or it's "aims for fastest IGT", but not a strange and arbitrary mix of both. A run that truly aims for minimal IGT would probably be rejected if a significant portion of it is nothing more than spamming the pause screen, and its wallclock running time would be excessive because of that. I think IGT "category" could be reasonably dropped.
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By that logic, couldn't you say that a realtime run that contains speed/entertainment tradeoffs fails to minimize the run's realtime frame count and should be rejected for failing to meet that goal? For example, this run loses some time to make the gravity statue skip visible, and if I remember correctly, 13% did the same thing for a Maridia shinespark. It seems to me that you're presenting a general argument against speed/entertainment tradeoffs but only applying it to one category.
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But there is a difference in the gravity of influence on the aspect of entertainment between messing with frames in every room or turning the screen back to being visible. So his argument holds that far. As in the IGT run would be by far more not an IGT run anymore than the RTA run wouldn't be an RTA run anymore.
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Aran Jaeger wrote:
As in the IGT run would be by far more not an IGT run anymore than the RTA run wouldn't be an RTA run anymore.
I guess you're right, yeah. For those who don't understand, an IGT as low as 2-4 minutes or so (I forget) can be obtained with pause abuse, so it's a far bigger tradeoff than usual.
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Taco wrote:
Aran Jaeger wrote:
As in the IGT run would be by far more not an IGT run anymore than the RTA run wouldn't be an RTA run anymore.
I guess you're right, yeah. For those who don't understand, an IGT as low as 2-4 minutes or so (I forget) can be obtained with pause abuse, so it's a far bigger tradeoff than usual.
If anyone actually has that recorded, April 1 is coming up... :-)
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Other good choices for April 1st: low% with underflow, moonwalk%, OoB but no ACE, 99%, Spore Spawn RTA
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The actual gains from excessive pausing are very small, probably not more than ~5 IG seconds over an entire run, but on cost of several RT minutes or possibly hours, easily making it a reasonable entertainment tradeoff. The 0 HP timer stopping glitch shouldn't be taken into account IMO, as it's simply a form of cheating that has nothing to do with optimization, since one could delay the run infinitely in most places without affecting the timer. It doesn't make sense nor is it helpful to accurately measure how fast the game can be beaten with perfect play and no move-slowdowns for arbitrary lag reduction.
Warp wrote:
IGT with tradeoffs seems like a rather nonsensical category.
There is only one tradeoff, that being pause abuse. It's as sensical as in any other category from the objective point of view.
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Saturn wrote:
The 0 HP timer stopping glitch shouldn't be taken into account IMO, as it's simply a form of cheating that has nothing to do with optimization, since one could delay the run infinitely in most places without affecting the timer.
If you disallow this for IGT TAS, you also disallow gravity statue skip and 13% maridian mountain reserve spark strat.
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Sniq wrote:
Saturn wrote:
The 0 HP timer stopping glitch shouldn't be taken into account IMO, as it's simply a form of cheating that has nothing to do with optimization, since one could delay the run infinitely in most places without affecting the timer.
If you disallow this for IGT TAS, you also disallow gravity statue skip and 13% maridian mountain reserve spark strat.
Does a major glitch for one category have to be considered a major glitch for all categories? Pause abuse is extremely destructive for an IGT run but totally irrelevant for realtime. I don't think it should be treated the same. The real problem with Saturn's argument, the more I think about it, is that he's unable to justify IGT by itself as an interesting goal choice. By resorting to "it has a different route" or "it uses different strats" -- things that are true just by coincidence -- you're basically saying the point isn't IGT; the category would be more aptly named "Any% but different." Any% but different is probably not a publishable category. That doesn't really bother me, but if the point of a category is something totally unrelated to its stated goal, you run into a problem when those things that are true by coincidence are no longer true, which is where we're at now. There's not enough to differentiate the categories anymore. So, you can either acknowledge the potential future problem and refuse to publish the category on that basis, or publish and replace it when it no longer fulfills its hidden purpose. EDIT: Actually, I should acknowledge that this run and the published IGT run are certainly still very different from one another, but the optimal any% route that will be used in the future will take the place of both runs either way. The reason for the difference now isn't IGT vs RT, but just because the runs are out of date.
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Saturn wrote:
Stopping the timer with the well known pause-abuse trick (or other nonsense resulting from it) was never the point of an ingame-oriented run. It is to provide maximal pace by focusing on gameplay quality in normal conditions rather than some weird moves to lower emulator-dependent lag, using an as accurate and reliable timer as possible.
Just to clarify, the time it takes for door to center from offcenter isnt lag. Neither are sounds which prevent door from loading. Using powerbomb to clear soundqueue would have exactly same effect on all emulators (old tasers have intepreted sound delay as lag as a mistake.)
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Sniq wrote:
If you disallow this for IGT TAS, you also disallow gravity statue skip and 13% maridian mountain reserve spark strat.
I meant only for the case of purposefully abusing it with continuous pausing. If a trick like those just happens to have it involved briefly, that should be fine in an ingame run as well. And as Taco said, for a realtime run it doesn't matter anyway due to it using a different timer.
Taco wrote:
The real problem with Saturn's argument, the more I think about it, is that he's unable to justify IGT by itself as an interesting goal choice. By resorting to "it has a different route" or "it uses different strats" -- things that are true just by coincidence
Yes, the latter may be true if the new route proves to be superior to what we currently have. Though the benefits of a more accurate and independent timer and higher move precision are still there and apply to any run regardless of route and item choice.
Sniq wrote:
Just to clarify, the time it takes for door to center from offcenter isnt lag.
Agreed, but screen changes themself are, as well as cases that have a lot of action within rooms. And those can vary between emulators or eventually their future updates.
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