Uff... at about the same time Kiske was sending me another strategy to improve LBZ1, I discovered that the spindash camera lock works differently in this hack than it does in every other hack, S2 or S3; specifically, it actually locks the camera in place for the duration of the timer. It also seems to expire automatically when you level wrap, but I am not sure why; finally, multiple spindashes while the timer is running do not reset it, it just continues from the current value.
In any case, I had to go over the run and see where it would be useful. The first place was MZ3, which was improved by 12 frames. The second was Kiske's improved LZ1 -- his 18-frame improvement became a whooping 36-frame improvement by using the camera lock a second time for the level wrap (along with some precision improvements along the way, I guess -- he only sent me a YouTube video).
Completely unrelated to the camera lock, something was irking me when I was fast-forwarding through SLZ3, and I tried a new route at the start; it worked, which caused me to have to redo it entirely -- but saving a further 68 frames in the process, including a much better boss fight.
When I had finished all this, including animal manipulation, I went to play the movie... and it desynched in SYZ1. I went to see why, and its input was starting in the middle of level loading; somehow, the animal manipulation in MZ3 got borked up -- I have no idea what happened. So I redid it; this caused chain desynchs and forced me to remanipulate the animals. LZ2 and LZ3 additionally desynched due to lag differences; I resynched it manually because I hadn't saved the improved SLZ3 anywhere but in the movie file. When I finished resynching LZ3, I somehow was 2 frames ahead; I have no idea where these came from.
Anyway, this is the story behind this
118-frame improvement. Damn, my TASing skills are rusty...
feos, you can set it back to judging underway; I already edited the submission text. This is the (hopefully) final version, as I can see nothing further to improve; but now that I jinxed it, lets see what happens...
Edit: I HAD to jinx it, right? Now it was Tee-N-Tee that proposed an improvement: going through walls in MZ1. It is sadly not possible to go through both walls, and I could not extend the zip onto the other side; but this is still a 123-frame improvement in MZ1. Since I did a new skip in LZ2 for the Knuckles run, I tried it in this run too; as a result, LZ2 is now 225 frames shorter. And I noticed I missed an opportunity to use the screen locking in LZ3, which led to 6 frames of improvement (most of the others were lost due to the tight space restrictions which would have prevented me from getting inside the wall). The new version is
here. In total, 354 frames of improvement. I already edited the submission.
Edit 2: Tee-N-Tee suggested a new route for MZ1 which was 42 frames faster; I improved by a further 13 frames, for 55 more frames of improvement.
Here is the new version with remanipulated animals.
Frame 34218
