(Link to video)
Submission Text Full Submission Page Publication Page
  • Small miscalculation of time in the youtube video, I counted that 1 second was exactly 60 frames.

Details

  • Emulator used: BizHawk 1.4.1
  • 100% item collection
  • Aims for lowest ingame time
  • Manipulates luck
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Abuses programming errors
This is a new 100% run for Super Metroid that aims for ingame time, in that regard it beats the old one by 4425 frames, and finishes with a new final time of 00:34 as opposed to the last ones 00:36. In realtime it is 697 frames slower, partly due to aiming for ingame time but also in large part because of the more accurate emulation. It should be noted that this run would have beat the old one in realtime as well if made on the obsoleted emulator that was used for the last run. The run has been in the works in planning stages for years, with new tricks and strategies being constantly researched, in particular from about 1.5 years ago and forward. The run itself was started a little more than 3 months ago and has been worked on very intensively throughout that time. The improvements come from tons of minor optimizations, new strategies, a slightly altered route as well as aiming for ingame time.
I chose to aim for ingame time because in my opinion it is a more entertaining goal to watch. In particular optimizing door transitions for realtime often looks very ugly and can break the pace of the run. Seeing as this is a 100% run and therefore mainly exists to be entertaining as opposed to beat the game in the fastest imaginable time, I thought this was a reasonable tradeoff. An effort is still made to optimize realtime by minimizing lag and such wherever it doesn't affect ingame time.
This run employs a slightly altered route compared to the last one, which was originally chosen for being faster ingame but ended up saving enough time that it might be faster in realtime as well despite adding a few door transitions. Chargebeam and Wavebeam are picked up much earlier in the run, which makes possible several time saving tricks throughout the run, as well as enabling a bunch of minor improvements. It also allows many more drops to be collected without delay which is crucial for the Lower Norfair part of the run.
As a small aside/interesting note, this run uses every single item and hidden technique at some point for timesaving purposes, unless you count the individual PB combos, which I think is the first run to do so.

Suggested Screenshots

I tried to choose screenshots that contained situations unique to this particular run. The frame numbers of the screenshots are in order of appearance: 53663, 95700, 95818, 129201, 145618, 148705, 184017, 184240.

Thanks to

Huge thanks to Eye of the Beholder and Hero of the Day for helping me throughout the making of the run with feedback, suggestions and support, as well as discovering countless strategies in the planning stages.
Saturn's RBO, his ingame run and his GT Code run all helped me greatly when making my run, setting a standard of optimizations that I was rarely able to exceed. In particular I should thank him for the wave pattern on Draygon in his ingame run and his manipulation on MB while the baby metroid is attacking her in his RBO, which I ended up basically copying as particularly the latter one didn't have logical way to approach optimization of that I could, and his result appeared pretty much perfect and saved me countless hours of blind testing.
Taco and Kriole originally intended to work on the run with me but backed out for a number of reasons, still they did provide some help during the hell run in norfair, and their runs have also contributed many tricks and discoveries that were useful in the making of this run.
4N6 should also be mentioned as he provided a handful of suggestions for strategies that could be used in the run, and the rest of the Super Metroid community should of course also be thanked.
Noxxa: Judging.
Noxxa: Great improvement. Accepting as an improvement to the currently published movie.
feos: Grabbing...

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Posted: 7/30/2013 7:52 AM
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TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #4030: Cpadolf's SNES Super Metroid "100%" in 1:08:15.74
Posted: 7/30/2013 7:57 AM
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Spikestuff
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Last One You mention ingame time is faster but frame time is slower... this is the part I am lost at. I understand about different emulators.
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Posted: 7/30/2013 8:31 AM
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BigBoct
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I am hyped as hell for this, but don't have time right now; I will in about 7 hours, after my shift ends. @Spikestuff: We already know that SNES9X v1.43+ is not the most accurate emulator. What I took away from the submission text is that for Super Metroid, that translated to signiificantly less lag.
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Posted: 7/30/2013 10:45 AM
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Patashu
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Spikestuff wrote:
You mention ingame time is faster but frame time is slower... this is the part I am lost at. I understand about different emulators.
From the description, "It should be noted that this run would have beat the old one in realtime as well if made on the obsoleted emulator that was used for the last run." In-game time I believe is not affected by lag as well.
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Posted: 7/30/2013 12:30 PM
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Dessyreqt
Joined: 11/16/2009
Posts: 68
Just watched the run, streamed it on Twitch a couple of times. The level of optimization is high, and of course Cpadolf lends his wonderful style to many parts of the run, keeping what would be otherwise dull parts entertaining. Just waiting for the console verification!
Posted: 7/30/2013 1:17 PM
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Patashu
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At 27:10 into the youtube encode - what is this high jump trick you use to get the missile after leaving the pirate ship, how does it work?
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
Posted: 7/30/2013 1:50 PM
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Cpadolf
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It's actually not a trick at all, I just jump with the running speed that gives me the best jumping speed and that's enough to reach the missile.
Dessyreqt wrote:
Just waiting for the console verification!
IIRC BizHawk still goes a few frames off synch to the console over a longer period of time so that probably won't work.
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Posted: 7/30/2013 1:54 PM
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adelikat
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In the case of SNES9x 1.43, pretty much every game is missing lag that should be there. Therefore any run done on 1.51 or later, or bsnes-based emulators will be longer in realtime. (At least with Super Metroid, aiming for in-game time makes these emulator differences inconsequential)
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Posted: 7/30/2013 2:27 PM
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feos
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Making all encodes.
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Posted: 7/30/2013 2:57 PM
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scrimpeh
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Posted: 7/30/2013 3:16 PM
Post subject: Re: #4030: cpadolf's SNES Super Metroid "100%" in 1:08:15.74
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creaothceann
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Voting yes and 53663 or 148705.
Posted: 7/30/2013 4:06 PM
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Atma
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Great run, I especially liked what you did in the wrecked ship before getting the gravity suit. However, for a 100% run, not saving the animals seems a bit off. Yes vote either way though.
Posted: 7/30/2013 4:08 PM
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feos
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I agree with saving the animals suddenly. Why no one thought about this tradeoff?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Posted: 7/30/2013 4:31 PM
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Noxxa
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feos wrote:
I agree with saving the animals suddenly. Why no one thought about this tradeoff?
Because it doesn't count for completion percentage. I personally disagree with doing it for a 100% speedrun, for that reason.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Posted: 7/30/2013 4:48 PM
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scrimpeh
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Posted: 7/30/2013 5:02 PM
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AngerFist
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During a whole year, you get to see someone submitting breath-taking runs such as Ocarina of Time runs by our dearest MrGrunz, HappyLee with his obsession with Mario games, Aglar's remarkable runs and now.. this! :) Thank you cpadolf for making this run. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Stellar performance. Clear yes vote and a star. I humbly request a high quality encode of this run and a high quality encode without door transitions and "you get item x" messages though I would love to see the animation of obtaining all the suits. Pjboy has in the past posted the script to remove these transitions and whatnot. If someone could be so kind and post them here, I would be delighted.
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I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
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Posted: 7/30/2013 5:06 PM
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feos
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I think BH now has the feature to pause avi capture from lua, so if I am given the address to rely on, I can make a door-transitionless encode. But only after traditional ones I think.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Posted: 7/30/2013 5:39 PM
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BigBoct
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Here's the Lua script for skipping door transitions and item fanfares, hope this helps. Not sure what you would need to do to make the script work in Bizhawk, if you needed to. (This version fast fowards through them, and also through Ceres Station; changing speedmode to "maximum" instead of "turbo" will skip them entirely.) Download SkipDoors.lua
Language: lua
while true do

   istop = memory.readbyte(0x7E0009)
   dstop = memory.readbyte(0x7E05F5)
   estop = memory.readbyte(0x7E0E18)

-- Items, Doors, Elevators

   if istop+dstop+estop > 0 then
   snes9x.speedmode("turbo")
else
   if istop+dstop+estop < 1 then
   snes9x.speedmode("normal")
end
end
   snes9x.frameadvance()
end
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Posted: 7/30/2013 5:45 PM
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Cpadolf
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Here's an alternate version that saves the animals and finishes with a time of 34:59:49 (close!). Tried to upload it to my userfiles but for whatever reason it didn't work.
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Posted: 7/30/2013 6:51 PM
(Edited: 7/30/2013 7:57 PM)
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Torn338
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Great job. Loved it :D For the screenshot, for those listed at least, my money is definitely on 53663 or 95700. All of the other screenshots, as a long time Super Metroid player (although I haven't in quite a while), don't quite stand out to me, mainly because they're something that looks like it can be done easily enough in real time compared to the first screenshot, or as unappealing as the second one. At first, I was leaning more towards the second, but the more and more I look at the first one, the more awesome it becomes lol.
Posted: 7/30/2013 7:35 PM
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Cpadolf
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Torn338 wrote:
For the screenshot, for those listed at least, my money is definitely on 53663 or 95700. All of the other screenshots, as a long time Super Metroid player (although I haven't in quite a while), don't quite stand out to me, mainly because they're something that looks like it can be done easily enough in real time compared to the first screenshot, or as unappealing as the second one. At first, I was leaning more towards the second, but the more and more I look at the first one, the more awesome it becomes lol.
Well Screenshot 4 and 8 showcases tricks that have never been done in any other run (and can't really be done on console), though they may not say much unless you know the context. The Draygon one is partly due to being unusual among TASes in how it kills Draygon (which is significant as it saves a lot of time), and also because I like how it looks like Draygon, due to his backwards pointing bloodshot eye is freaking out and trying to escape from being run over by the oncoming shinespark train. The 5th just looks funny to me and 3 and 7 where mostly chosen for aesthetics (as well as being unique to this run), but are perhaps the least interesting. I'd probably go with 1, 2, or 6 myself.
Agare Bagare Kopparslagare
Posted: 7/30/2013 8:06 PM
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Derakon
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For what it's worth, #1 is my vote. You have some great symmetry going on there, so aesthetically it's very nice. And it prompts the user to wonder what the hell you're doing actually using the bomb spread. :)
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Posted: 7/30/2013 8:06 PM
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Torn338
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Cpadolf wrote:
Torn338 wrote:
For the screenshot, for those listed at least, my money is definitely on 53663 or 95700. All of the other screenshots, as a long time Super Metroid player (although I haven't in quite a while), don't quite stand out to me, mainly because they're something that looks like it can be done easily enough in real time compared to the first screenshot, or as unappealing as the second one. At first, I was leaning more towards the second, but the more and more I look at the first one, the more awesome it becomes lol.
Well Screenshot 4 and 8 showcases tricks that have never been done in any other run (and can't really be done on console), though they may not say much unless you know the context. The Draygon one is partly due to being unusual among TASes in how it kills Draygon (which is significant as it saves a lot of time), and also because I like how it looks like Draygon, due to his backwards pointing bloodshot eye is freaking out and trying to escape from being run over by the oncoming shinespark train. The 5th just looks funny to me and 3 and 7 where mostly chosen for aesthetics (as well as being unique to this run), but are perhaps the least interesting. I'd probably go with 1, 2, or 6 myself.
Needless to say, when I posted that comment, since I had not watched the run fully yet, I just thought it was a regular crystal flash, and didn't expect it to clip like that. It was quite interesting to see, but at the same time, others who haven't watched the run yet might think the same as I did (and probably will), which is my reasoning as to why I'd not use that. 1, looks like a rocket ship to me, perhaps a thing showing how fast the movie is? :p 2, just looks interesting. 6, I'd not noticed that until you said it. Though not very noticeable from a first glance, though I guess I'm just being sort of picky :p. Definitely funny though.
Posted: 7/31/2013 1:20 AM
Post subject: Re: #4030: cpadolf's SNES Super Metroid "100%" in 1:08:15.74
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Twelvepack
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TASVideoAgent wrote:
As a small aside/interesting note, this run uses every single item and hidden technique at some point for timesaving purposes, unless you count the individual PB combos, which I think is the first run to do so.
Where did it use the X-ray? I don't remember seeing that used
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Posted: 7/31/2013 1:38 AM
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Reeve
Joined: 5/12/2009
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X-Ray is used to save time on the space pirates right before Ridley. A charged plasma shot is released on the second pirate from right to left and X-Ray is used to make the shot register two hits and kill the pirate. If you're talking about X-Ray glitching (OoB), then yeah, this run doesn't use major glitches.
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