Lady Sia was an awesome platformer released early in the GBAs' life. I wanted to TAS it since I thought it would be a fun game to watch. This is my second completed TAS. This is not a 100% run, so bonus levels were not accessed.
I used VBA-rerecording 19.3 to record this run.
- Record from Power on
- Game Boy Advance
- Emulator's BIOS
- Aims for fastest possible time
- Takes Damage to save Time
- Abuses Programming errors
There are a few errors I abuse.
- When you hang on a ledge you press up and there will be a long climbing animation. You can skip this if you swing your sword at just the right time. It will skip the climbing animation, and just have you sort of jump up with the sword slash. This is a lot faster than watching the climbing sequence. However, this trick triggers a few extra glitches. It's really quite remarkable how one little thing causes so much damage. All of these glitches are fixed when you either take damage, climb a ledge without the Sword Climb trick, or leave a room.
- After using the "Sword Climb" trick, there are certain platforms you cannot stand on. They are usually hovering platforms. There are a few times where I need to climb a ledge to fix the glitch before I can go further. However, it seems that you only fall through platforms that move, or have an animation sequence.
- Another glitch that happens is after the Sword Climb, when you get on the bird, the screen will not scroll where you go. It is locked on one area, even though there is more space below.
- And the most significant side effect is the ability to fall through floors. When you get hurt after performing the Sword Climb, you fall through the floor if you are standing on the ground. This created two major shortcuts in the run.
Another thing I should say is that some moving platforms always appear at the same place no matter when you get to them. This results in having to wait for a few platforms to come back. There were also some random looking sword swipes in the run, but they were all needed.
Sometimes when viewing the vbm file, it desyncs in the first level. Simply restart it and it will fix itself. Also, there are three levels that have a big line at the bottom of the screen. It is not so visible in the second level it is in though. The action in those levels takes place farther up though, so a lot of the time the line is not there.
I have decided to cancel this run. I started working on an improvement run, and I've totally trounced this movie so far. just by the end of the first level, I saved 195 frames! Due to a big discovery in level 2, I didn't have to wait for the platform in the water to come back, saving (hold on to your hats) 666 frames! At this point in the run, I had shaved 14 full seconds off my first run. I made some big improvements in level 3 so far too, and made the level less boring by killing all the bad guys without wasting time. At the point where I am right now, I have saved 971 frames. This is why I'm canceling this run, and waiting to finish my new version.
