(Link to video)
Submission Text Full Submission Page
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Heavy Glitch Abuse
  • Genre: Platform
  • Genre: Adventure
First of all, about not actually finishing the game... There's nothing we can do about it, we really would like to, but a stupid glitch in the final boss battle that takes you back to the beginning of the game stops us from doing so. This thread discusses the problem: Forum/Topics/12816 Either way, it's horribly disheartening to encounter this so very late into this TAS, and we decided considering we have completed the large portion of the game, it would be a shame to not submit it, even if it may be more of a shame to have that feeling that we never actually properly finished it. In the end we decided on categorising it as 'Entering the Sorceress' Lair with 100 eggs'. It's not succinct, but it has clarity.

Glitches and Tricks

  • The infamous Swimming in Air glitch, which can be activated either via the zombie glitch or managing to start the swimming animation without entering the water.
  • The Zombie glitch is where you exit the level (by pausing) just as you lose your last hitpoint. This disables all water boundaries, which comes in handy.
  • Spinning while jumping gives you a little extra height- used in Midday Gardens homeworld and Icy Peak.
  • Gliding against a wall gives you extra height (though not to the extent that it does in Spyro 1)

Level Notes

Sunrise Spring

Sunny Villa - The jumps from the sloping path may seem slow when stuck on the edge, but it's much faster than turning later and landing on higher ledge more cleanly.
Sheila's Alp - For the swimming in air glitch before the level, you may think it may be quicker to just charge straight towards the end of the waterfall, and it probably is (if it is possible). But just taking this slightly longer route to get a better angle still took Crash 30minutes of work every day for 2 weeks to finally pull off, that's how hard this quicker version of the glitch is. As Sheila, turning via adjusting the camera is very helpful.
Cloud Spires - We skip Moneybags, and get hit by a flame. Not much else to say.
Magma Crater - More damage is taken progressively throughout the level (while losing the least time possible) to set up for the zombie glitch later on, while collecting those last few gems to make our only payment to Moneybags.
Seashell Shore - A significant amount of time is saved using the swim-in-air glitch. Some time is lost in the speed swimming miniworld due to misunderstanding it's mechanics, and unfortunately we only realised this when doing the similar miniworld in Dino Mines when the TAS was almost done. Not too much time is lost, so we hope Spyro unusual swimming techniques make up for this mistake in an entertaining way.
Buzz's Dungeon - Standing right next to him means that he can't roll into the edge, and so cancels the animation, thus saving time. Thanks to Lapogne for the tip of adjusting the camera away from him so his fire wall doesn't pop up after getting hit.

Midday Gardens

Icy Peak - Whole-level skips, strange enemy positions, superhuman stair climbing, spinjumping onto massive ice crystals... This level has it all.
Spooky Swamp - We used a trick to skip the entire level, which makes the Sleepy Head egg a good choice.
Sgt.Byrd's Base - We hope this level is made a bit more interesting by flying everywhere sideways (which is a little bit quicker).
Bamboo Terrace - We make use of a skip only found two years ago that skips having to chase the thief.
Enchanted Towers - Spyro likes to live life on the edge.
Spike's Arena - Nothing much to say, magma balls/crystals fall at a constant rate.

Evening Lake

Fireworks Factory - May seem weird to do this level first, but we need to unlock Bentley first, plus we don't have enough eggs to enter Charmed Ridge get. A trick to get hit by the bomb in the miniworld to get up to the egg ledge found by Crash (on a PAL iso) proved to be impossible after several hours of attempts between us.
Lost Fleet - Even though we wait for a while, before getting the end of level egg, it's quicker to wait. The alternative to go over to the last egg first before returning to the ship is slower, we checked.
Bentley's Outpost - We follow the intended route for the level!
Frozen Altars - We were so very, very surprised when the proxy jump worked just like that on the very first attempt (you can't get the height required in less 'jumps' and falls than we did). Also, Bentley juuust about has the upper hand in his boxing match.
Charmed Ridge - Flying close to a wall also maintains height in this game, and we use it to our advantage (that particular glide is not possible from that position otherwise).
Scorch's Pit - It proved nigh on impossible to luck manipulate the first weapon to be red while also killing the crabs in the quickest amount of time. Sorry for perhaps not making it as entertaining as it seemed while we were making it. N.B. One of the hits was made ~5 frames late, as changing the frame we hit him, frame by frame, changed the amount of eggs that he spewed out.

Midnight Mountain

Crystal Islands - That thief must be blind..
Desert Ruins - We get the end level egg first, so as to avoid Moneybags, then do some acrobatics on the side of level to save some time.
Haunted Tomb - Tank trouble ahead.
Dino Mines - We follow the normal route, how boring!
We ended the movie on the first frame possible which meant that the screen going black when entering the Sorceress' Lair happened on the exact same frame as it would when continually charging.

Possible Improvements

-Egg route We are very happy with our route, and doubt that some eggs could be done faster than the ones we chose, but it is possible.
-Better gem collection before Molten Crater miniworld. Not much room for manoeuvre, but a few gems here rather than there will save a few frames.
-Manipulating the in-game character to shoot the ice wall at the start of Icy Peak. We discovered this by accident, and tried for a few hours to get him to shoot it while being right next to it simultaneously, but eventually gave up. Spyro going straight to the cannon and shooting it himself is only a little bit slower.
-Use of analog-stick for greater accuracy, especially in the non-Spyro levels.
Thanks to anyone and everyone who has contributed to Spyro speedrunning or glitchfinding, as without them this run would be quite uneventful!

Noxxa: Judging.
Noxxa: I'll have to reject this. Because of the emulation glitch, the TAS fails to complete the game, which breaks two of the rules: the movie must be complete, and play games that are emulated well. This is extremely unfortunate for the authors, but I cannot accept this TAS.
As a separate category (stopping right before the final boss), I cannot accept this either. This category would otherwise be way too arbitrary, and I cannot make an exception for this case, as it would set a very bad precedent.
This is a very unfortunate case, because other than this emulation issue, the run makes for a very nice TAS and it is clear that the authors have put a lot of effort into producing this TAS. I liked this TAS very much, personally. My compliments go towards the authors of the TAS. I hope a workaround or fix to the emulation glitch can be found, so the TAS can be finished properly.

TASVideoAgent
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WIPs looked great, I can see the effort put into this run, so yes from me :)
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Spikestuff
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I'll quickly get encoding on this (shoot some reason I have issues I'll quickly fix that) I should mention voting YES I saw this whole run including to where it busted this was before it was fixed up to become 100 eggs only EDIT: SWEET ok thanks to Crash41596 I was given a new PSXJIN due to some issue with my one ._. now I can encode it I picked up aswell Crash is doing an encode (SD encode/temp. encode) I'll be encoding it as a HD
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Dwedit
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I once read a lengthy article from the developers of the game about the copy protection mechanisms they used. Lots of checksumming and crazy stuff happening if the piracy check fails. But I've never actually seen the game in action before, so I'm interested to see the encode once it's ready. I wonder if it's possible to corrupt the RAM through TASing, and make the game think its a pirate copy.
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voted meh.i don't really know what to say,i mean,shouldn't you wait for an emulator fix for that copy protection problems?
TAS i'm interested: megaman series: mmbn1 all chips, mmx3 any% psx glitched fighting games with speed goals in general
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grassini wrote:
voted meh.i don't really know what to say,i mean,shouldn't you wait for an emulator fix for that copy protection problems?
The main problem is the emulation, if the emulation was as good as epsxe, then it would run fine. It's a shame that the emulation for this emulator is not being worked on.
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watched, YES vote for me
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Does the site still have that concept demos section? Because this seems to be the perfect example to 'Yes' for that category. If not, I will give a weak yes anyway. Due to the fact that what is there is a good watch, and I am one who hopes every game will have a TAS one day. If this is the best we can have so be it. But any other run (100%/any%/low%/whatever) that reaches the ending should obsolete it. To the runners; my condolences... this situation is just ugh.
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Paused wrote:
To the runners; my condolences... this situation is just ugh.
Thanks for putting yourself in our shoes, it means a lot. This situation is awkward and frustrating, but we make the best of it :P I must be honest, even if it doesn't get published on TASvideos, personally I'm very proud to have made a run/movie with Crash that others can enjoy, and that I can look back on in the future and relive the time I spent into making it :) /soppy speech
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THIS IS Crash41596 (aka. Leblancanator9000) & Hutch's Copy of the Game I know cause I was given their rom. As you can see there is no Zoe no Zoe = Non Pirate copy This is the emulator's fault to some degree.
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Have you guys tried other isos?
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Kyman wrote:
Have you guys tried other isos?
Yes we have. The normal Ntsc version has the same glitch, the pal version crashes upon entering certain levels, and the only reason why this could happen is just the emulator not having great emulation.
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Guga
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Have you tried running the game in PCSX-rr?
Spikestuff
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ThatGugaWhoPlay wrote:
Have you tried running the game in PCSX-rr?
it's mention in the other forum it's in the newbie corner. Both tas emulators don't work 100% for Spyro 3 should mention you need the Greatest hit version to make it work I tried with the non-GH version I just desynced once it started
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ThatGugaWhoPlay wrote:
Have you tried running the game in PCSX-rr?
It happened on there as well :/
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Guga
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That sucks =/
Spikestuff
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I'd say 122000 frames on-wards for screenshots it is the land of glitches @ 164000 swimming in long thin air
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
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Here's a link to the tas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGfVRriFz2Y . Spikestuff should have a better quality one later.
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Spikestuff
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51.4 GB remain WHAT *checks the tas* 172GB..... ok that makes sense then I should really get a computer with 1tb instead of using a laptop of 569gb Well i think I deserve that as it was in Nice and 640x480 and encoded in Full Frames
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Guga
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Spikestuff wrote:
51.4 GB remain WHAT *checks the tas* 172GB..... ok that makes sense then I should really get a computer with 1tb instead of using a laptop of 569gb Well i think I deserve that as it was in Nice and 640x480 and encoded in Full Frames
Full Frames? Why? It is better using Lagarith Lossless. You can save a lot of space.
Spikestuff
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ThatGugaWhoPlay wrote:
Spikestuff wrote:
51.4 GB remain WHAT *checks the tas* 172GB..... ok that makes sense then I should really get a computer with 1tb instead of using a laptop of 569gb Well i think I deserve that as it was in Nice and 640x480 and encoded in Full Frames
Full Frames? Why? It is better using Lagarith Lossless. You can save a lot of space.
I don't have Lagarith :P better download it now Ok im re-encoding it so I can have space to actually edit it to merge together
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Looks amazing. This game made my childhood, and also frustrated me to no end. Now seeing it done in under an hour, wow. Although it doesn't actually finish the game, thats not your fault. You got so far through this, and I couldn't let this be declined just because of an emulator error. Voting yes, great work.
IronSlayer wrote:
Your counterargument would be like me saying that the Earth is round and then you telling me that I need to show it's flat so I can "prove us all wrong".
Seems legit.
Spikestuff
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Ok perfect I can encode now :D Encoding HD now as we sit you can still watch the SD version (hope this encode can be the official version when published) EDIT: this is why I hate laptops might use my old one to encode it in HD
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I love seeing Spyro TASes, and this run was great. Overall it was very fast paced, showed good route planning and abused a number of clever and interesting glitches. Kept my interest throught the entire run. I will vote yes, with the mind set that this should be published until there is a way to actually defeat the last boss without the game getting mad or alternative ISOs freezing.
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Neat glitches and a thoroughly interesting run throughout. Having played this in the past, it's refreshing to see new paths to various eggs. Yes vote, and if it can't be published normally, this should go into Concept Demos at absolute worst.