Samsara
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Joined: 11/13/2006
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Hey, Superman 64 is being TASed, why not do the other disgustingly terrible Superman game that Titus made? Route/Test WIP (Goes through Stage 6): User movie #14639344134878627 Definitely won't be submission quality when finished: I didn't bother putting any effort into making the autoscrollers entertaining and I'm not really optimizing anything until the real run. Have some notes: *I'll mention straight away that this game has desynced on me about 10-15 times so far, though that's most likely due to my abuse of Bizhawk's rewind feature... But then again, it's still far more desyncs than the other things I've done in Bizhawk, so maybe it's the game, too. *This game is based on finding keys, in the same way that Superman 64 is about flying through rings and walls. You need to find a certain number of keys in each level. There are more keys than you need in each level, which is surprisingly lenient, and their locations are not random, which is even more surprisingly lenient, so it's just about finding the fastest keys to get. *I'd love to find out exactly where the hitboxes are, because they actually make me physically ill. They just don't make sense in any way and trying to figure out when I need to punch to hit an enemy (hint: it's always earlier than you expect) gives me a headache sometimes. *The fastest form of movement is... whatever the hell Superman does on the ground. It's a lightning quick 10 frame slide (with a couple frames of "cooldown") that's done by just pressing Up + B while standing. This can be done off of a ledge, which will send Superman literally flying... *...except this game has awful """"physics"""", so in most cases sending Supes flying off a ledge won't go over as well as you might think. Much like Superman 64, Supes handles like a car, even when flying up and down. He has to accelerate, and then he has momentum after accelerating which keeps him moving up for a bit after you release A. Basically, sending him off a ledge gives him maximum downward acceleration, and as far as I can tell you need well over a vertical screen length to even get him to slow down, let alone start moving upward again. *On top of that, getting hit while flying stops your upward acceleration. Either that or it just adds downward acceleration for a moment. I don't know. Attacking while flying has the same sort of effect, though much more briefly, so if you see me attacking for no good reason, it's usually to control my vertical momentum. *This is more lag than game. In normal stages, the game lags for a frame about once every 4-5 frames. In the underwater stages, it lags every other frame for the most part. The funny thing is, there's no lag during the ground slide, which not only makes it the fastest form of travel, but the most effective form of reducing lag. It's basically the best thing this game has to offer. It's why I decided to try TASing the game and it's one of the only things I find entertaining about it. *The other is a glitch I found in the Lexcorp stages, which I'm sure other people have found too because it is hilariously easy to stumble across. The electric beams only hurt you when you're flying. The point of Stage 3 is supposed to be needing to turn off some beams that always stay on, but I don't bother with that because conveniently there's just enough space to land on the tiny beam platform. And even more conveniently, if you're touching that bottom platform, you can just walk straight through: Wait, there's more. You can pass through one of these beams without needing to land on the platform if you have enough speed going in. The ground dash, when done off a ledge, gives you enough speed to pass straight through the beams, but you won't be doing that much. In this case, rebounding between the beams actually gives me enough speed to push myself into the second beam, which rebounds me inside it rapidly, slowly pushing me to the right until I escape. As nice as the glitch is here, this is most likely suboptimal. Passing through the first beam could've been faster and I need to do some testing to see if I can pass through the second beam without having to slowly push myself through. I could ground dash, but given the momentum issue I'd be sent to the ground when I need to fly up to the next floor. And yeah, the second beam I walk through is much smoother because of the tighter landing. *Speaking of hitboxes, you can stand in an injured enemy all you want and as long as you hit it just as it comes out of its invincibility time you'll never get hurt. The boss is nothing more than punching it to the left so I can end the stage quicker. *There are 10 stages in this game, and three of them are autoscrollers. Two of them are nearly identical autoscrollers. Exciting! I'm tired as hell, I'll write more when I finish up the test run in a couple days or so.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Post subject: Re: Superman
Editor, Experienced player (608)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4012
It's really nice to see you taking up this game, and I'm glad you found some cool and useful tricks already! I'm looking forward to your progress.
Samsara wrote:
I'd love to find out exactly where the hitboxes are
There's a lot of good suggestions for finding hitbox positions and even displaying them on screen in this thread.
Post subject: Re: Superman
Samsara
She/They
Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player (2122)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2794
Location: Northern California
CoolKirby wrote:
There's a lot of good suggestions for finding hitbox positions and even displaying them on screen in this thread.
Awesome, thanks for the info. Test run completed in a little over 6 minutes. Also, a couple more notes: *As far as I've looked, there's only two keys in Stage 7 that don't require you to kill any enemies. These guys take something like 6 seconds to kill because of how ridiculously long enemy invincibility is, and that kinda sucks. *Partway through stage 8 I discovered that if you dash on the same frame that a bomb explodes, you'll take damage but not get knocked back. This also works if you're flying into it, but the dash method is some frames faster every time. *The only way to heal between levels is to have literally nothing on your lifebar at the end of the stage. It's faster to take damage for the most part since this game inconveniences you at almost every opportunity, but a dedicated damage route needs to be used so that you take the proper amount of damage to get you down to nothing and not just a tiny sliver. This will be optimized, of course. *Not moving much during the swimming autoscroller reduces quite a bit of lag. It has something to do with enemies being on screen or the screen scrolling or this game being bad, I don't know. Either way, backward swimming Supes saves time. *Stage 10 is actually the best looking stage of the run, in my opinion. There are no bombs on the ground and there's a lot of space for dashing. I discovered (and used) a trick here to sort of reverse the knockback you get from an enemy, which could save time in other places. But dashing is probably faster. I'll start on the proper run soon. Apart from awful physics and desyncs, the game's not all that hard to TAS, so it shouldn't be too long before I have the run polished and submitted.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Editor, Experienced player (608)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4012
Wow, that ground slide really is fast! The rest of the testrun looks really good too, and I laughed at how easily you fooled the beams. Good luck on the polished run!
NitroGenesis
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Editor, Experienced player (551)
Joined: 12/24/2009
Posts: 1873
Sweet shit this game is terrible. I can't believe it came out in 1997. Your TAS was nice. There were a few spots that looked iffy, but I can't really judge. I look forward to the polished version.
YoungJ1997lol wrote:
Normally i would say Yes, but thennI thought "its not the same hack" so ill stick with meh.
Samsara
She/They
Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player (2122)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2794
Location: Northern California
NitroGenesis wrote:
Sweet shit this game is terrible. I can't believe it came out in 1997. Your TAS was nice. There were a few spots that looked iffy, but I can't really judge. I look forward to the polished version.
The iffy spots will hopefully be ironed out in the real run. Superman handles pretty dreadfully, though, so there might be some unavoidable iffy spots that are actually optimal given the """""physics""""" """""""""engine""""""""" in the game. Something as simple as flying up to a ledge, for example, could take a few hundred tries because there's usually only a one frame difference between coming up a hair short or overshooting the edge by a mile. Here's a few more things, because I fucking LOVE notes: *Holding a direction while the READY screen is showing will set Superman farther in that direction. The only stages in which this isn't done are the autoscrollers. This will be toyed with in the polished run to give better setups for dashing into or through things on the ground. *Speaking of autoscrollers, they don't actually start scrolling until you press A to get off the ground. *There's a glitch I use for entertainment in stage 8 that locks Superman's sprite while he's forced into a crawl. If he's in any sprite that isn't the crawling sprite while he's in one of those small spaces, punching will actually put him into the floor. It's entirely useless, of course. There's no zipping or any way to move while trapped in the floor. All you can do is press A to get out. *Rapid-firing A while crawling and then changing directions will occasionally cause Superman to change direction every frame for as long as you keep moving in the same direction. Holding A and tapping B with the normal crawling animation will freeze Superman on any frame of that animation. Both completely useless apart from entertainment, which can also be accomplished by rapid-firing B. *Here's a fun fact about Stage 8: Sometimes, if one of the enemies happens to cross paths with one of the electric beams, you die instantly! That wasn't a typo. YOU die instantly. It's great when it happens, because the death animation takes about ten years. *Superman can hit bullets back at enemies, which is done a couple times in the test run, though my favorite is in Stage 7, just before attacking the enemy with the key. Superman, moving right, punches a bullet moving down and to the right, and the bullet reverses trajectory entirely and goes up and to the left. Ah, this game. I'll start working on the polished run either tonight or tomorrow.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2794
Location: Northern California
User movie #14727909881144784 Knocked out the first 4 stages over the past couple hours what with the submission of the Superman 64 TAS. Currently 153 frames faster than my test run, I believe? Encode included in the userfile for those of you who are just itchin' for some more bad Superman action but don't want to waste valuable hard drive space with an abomination of a ROM. An aROMination, if you will. My usual notes: *Stage 1 is standard, nothing here but a little bit of lag reduction, some slight optimization on the ground, and using the fast-fall trick (rapid-firing B since punches add to your downward momentum for some hilariously misguided reason). *Stage 2, being an autoscroller, has a few frames of improvement in it too. Mostly lag reduction but the end is a little bit different as well. Fascinating. It is insanely hard to make the autoscrollers look entertaining, so I just figured I'd go for max kills and dodgy hitboxes here. Wait 'til you see the next two autoscrollers! They'll be even MORE boring, despite my best efforts!!! *Stage 3 was surprisingly painless, I got the beam clips without too much hassle and without needing to slow down. I tried clipping past the second beam in the same way as the first and the third but there's not enough space to set it up quickly. It's possible to get past with a ground dash but it's around a half second slower since you get sent to the ground fast. I hit the Lexoskel to the left by punching it from a few feet away while facing the opposite direction, because that makes sense, and I grab the key near the exit pad instead of the one over where Lexoskel is so there's no delay between hits. I play around a bit here, but there's not much I can do because of the atrociously high amount of lag frames. *Speaking of lag frames, I suppose constant ground-dashing would remove those frames at the cost of probably making this section of the run impossible to watch without feeling sick, so I'm making the decision here to not bother in the slightest out of respect for anyone who watches... Though I'll go back and redo that section tomorrow if people don't mind Superman blazing back and forth 5-6 times a second to save a few lag frames here and there. *Stage 4 has a lot of lag reduction due to just not scrolling the screen that much, and also I hate the swimming stages because I'm pretty sure there's more lag than gameplay in them. There are times where you get 2 frames of lag for 1 frame of actual movement, which is incredible as you can tell. There is a way to swim a lot faster, by being hit by an enemy while on the ground in the direction you want to go, but there's nowhere in the level that really permits being hit in the direction you want to go, and I'm pretty sure with the dodgy physics you'd end up running straight into a wall and negating all the frames you would've saved anyway.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Editor, Experienced player (608)
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Posts: 4012
Looks optimized so far, good work.
Samsara wrote:
Speaking of lag frames, I suppose constant ground-dashing would remove those frames at the cost of probably making this section of the run impossible to watch without feeling sick, so I'm making the decision here to not bother in the slightest out of respect for anyone who watches... Though I'll go back and redo that section tomorrow if people don't mind Superman blazing back and forth 5-6 times a second to save a few lag frames here and there.
I think I'd have to see what this looks like before making that call.
Samsara
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Posts: 2794
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CoolKirby wrote:
I think I'd have to see what this looks like before making that call.
User movie #14730717038713130 I'm not sure if hidden userfiles can be viewed by other people so if it's not viewable I'll make it public. Took an old backup and quickly recorded what it would look like. I'd probably dash 2-3 less times than that per hit since I need to be in position to hit Lexoskel and I need some frames to actually attack. The game lags so frequently and randomly that it's impossible for me to actually say how long enemy invincibility times are given my current knowledge, but they seem to be between 90-100 frames including lag, so best-case I would say they're 80-90 frames without lag, so let's say 5-10 frames saved per hit (which would be 72-84 frames of dashing back and forth each). For a quick frame of reference: This would be done in both Lexoskel fights (10 hits each) and in Stage 6 when collecting the keys from enemies (3 extra hits, so 23 total), so from my estimates, the best case scenario would be that this would save 230 frames (or a little under 4 seconds) for 1656 frames of dashing (around 27.5 seconds), and worst case scenario it would save 115 frames (or a little under 2 seconds) for 1932 frames of dashing (or a little over 32 seconds). I'll admit I'm torn on it, because it's a short movie and even a couple seconds feels like too long to call it a speed/entertainment tradeoff if I don't use it, but at the same time it makes me a little nauseous to watch not even 2 seconds of it, let alone 27-32 over the course of the run.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Editor, Experienced player (608)
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I got a little dizzy watching that. I think that movement is just bad enough to go without, even if that would likely be a little slower. 27-32 seconds is a lot, but we don't want viewers to get headaches or nausea.
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There's a vault tier, so might as well try and save as much time as possible. It's not like this game can be made more entertaining given how bad it is.
Samsara
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Fair point, but I think the game's entertaining enough for Moons, and 30 seconds of nauseating back-and-forth dashing would be a pain for anyone to watch, especially since it'll only save 2-3 seconds overall. Even if I'm running a game that I know is going to be Vaulted, like Wayne's Why-the-fuck-am-I-mentioning-that-piece-of-garbage, I'd still much rather aim for something watchable over something that will make the audience dizzy.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2794
Location: Northern California
Welp, I'm starting over from Stage 2 because I found out in Stage 5 that taking damage reduces lag frames in certain circumstances. A quick retread of Stage 2 of just blindly flying into enemies and health pickups at 25% speed saved about 51 frames. Some further testing in Stage 4 (or rather, just watching my own WIP and watching the lag counter with extreme focus) revealed that there are instances there where taking damage can save lag frames as well, though the swimming stages lag so much that it wouldn't save as much time. So now I need to take a lot of damage in Stages 2 and 5 to save some lag frames. Joy. On top of that, I need a full health bar for Stage 5 so I can save the max amount of time there (there are barely any health pickups), so I need to end Stage 4 with no health. I have to take damage two times in Stage 3, one to get past the second laser beam and one to get a horizontal movement boost off of the third laser beam, and I'm not sure if there are actually that many places in Stage 4 where I can take damage and actually save time, due to the fact that Superman drops like a brick whenever damage is taken. Since I'm basically restarting the run from scratch, I might as well take the opportunity to get some RAM addresses while I'm at it. I'll do that sometime over the next week. I'd love to find X/Y positions and velocity or acceleration or whatever the hell ass-backward method this game uses to determine how Superman flops about the screen. I did find Superman's health value really easily, though: 012D contains Superman's health, with the maximum being 40. Superman does not die at 0 HP, and only dies when his HP is pushed below 0. His HP being 0 triggers the full-heal, probably because the game reads his HP as 0, thinks he's dead and restarting the stage, and gives him 40 HP. I don't know, it's pretty awful. Everything in the game damages for 5 HP, except for the laser beams I clip through in the Lexcorp stages, which damage for 6 HP. Health pickups will heal 4 HP, because that makes sense. Brainstorming a potential damage-taking route here: Stage 1: Start with 40 HP. Take damage once (-5 HP). Stage 2: Start with 35 HP. Take damage 6 times (-30 HP), pick up 3 health diamonds (+12 HP) Stage 3: Start with 17 HP. Take laser beam damage 2 times (-12 HP). Stage 4: Start with 5 HP. Take damage once (-5 HP). End with 0 HP. Stage 5: Start with 40 HP. Take damage 8 times (-40 HP). End with 0 HP. Stage 6: Start with 40 HP. Take damage 3 times (-15 HP). Stage 7: Start with 25 HP. Take damage 4 times (-20 HP). Stage 8: Start with 5 HP. Take damage once (-5 HP). End with 0 HP. Stage 9: Start with 40 HP. Take damage 8 times (-40 HP). End with 0 HP. Stage 10: Start with 40 HP. Take damage up to 8 times. This is highly subject to change, and is based only off of watching my testrun and finding different places to either take or avoid damage. Apologies if any of this sounds disjointed or rushed or confusing, I'll clear things up if necessary.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Active player (471)
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Posts: 928
012D 	WRAM	HP                  1ByteUnsigned
0119 	WRAM	Level X           2ByteU
0117 	WRAM	Level Y           2ByteU
011E 	WRAM	Speed?           2ByteSigned
Values I believe may help.
while true do
	PosX=memory.read_s8(0x0000);
	PosY=memory.read_s8(0x0001);
	PosX1=memory.read_s8(0x0004);
	PosY1=memory.read_s8(0x0005);
	PosX2=memory.read_s8(0x0008);
	PosY2=memory.read_s8(0x0009);
	PosX3=memory.read_s8(0x000C);
	PosY3=memory.read_s8(0x000D);
	PosX4=memory.read_s8(0x0010);
	PosY4=memory.read_s8(0x0011);
	PosX5=memory.read_s8(0x0014);
	PosY5=memory.read_s8(0x0015);
	PosX6=memory.read_s8(0x0018);
	PosY6=memory.read_s8(0x0019);
	PosX7=memory.read_s8(0x001C);
	PosY7=memory.read_s8(0x001D);
	PosX8=memory.read_s8(0x0020);
	PosY8=memory.read_s8(0x0021);
	PosX9=memory.read_s8(0x0024);
	PosY9=memory.read_s8(0x0025);
	PosX10=memory.read_s8(0x0028);
	PosY10=memory.read_s8(0x0029);
	PosX11=memory.read_s8(0x002C);
	PosY11=memory.read_s8(0x002D);

	gui.drawPixel(PosY, PosX, "White");
	gui.drawPixel(PosY1, PosX1, "White");
	gui.drawPixel(PosY2, PosX2, "White");
	gui.drawPixel(PosY3, PosX3, "White");
	gui.drawPixel(PosY4, PosX4, "White");
	gui.drawPixel(PosY5, PosX5, "White");
	gui.drawPixel(PosY6, PosX6, "White");
	gui.drawPixel(PosY7, PosX7, "White");
	gui.drawPixel(PosY8, PosX8, "White");
	gui.drawPixel(PosY9, PosX9, "White");
	gui.drawPixel(PosY10, PosX10, "White");
	gui.drawPixel(PosY11, PosX11, "White");

	emu.frameadvance();
end
This is a script I tried to see where all these positions do. they are almost superman. they dont make a hitbox around his head at all and are messy when he's flying but he seems to have a pretty big square hitbox.
Active player (434)
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i'd rather see no tradeoffs for vault,i will vote No if it comes down to this only.
TAS i'm interested: megaman series: mmbn1 all chips, mmx3 any% psx glitched fighting games with speed goals in general
Samsara
She/They
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Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2794
Location: Northern California
grassini wrote:
i'd rather see no tradeoffs for vault,i will vote No if it comes down to this only.
I don't quite understand what you're saying here. Are you saying I should just skip all the lag reduction bullshit and try to make an entertaining run or are you saying the opposite? Honestly, I'm hoping it's the former. It kinda just hit me that if I try to reduce lag in the autoscrollers, then there's no reason why I shouldn't reduce lag as much as I can over the course of the entire game (which means dashing back and forth while waiting for enemy invincibility to run out). It seems like an all or nothing thing. I don't know. The tier system stresses me out so much sometimes.
solarplex wrote:
(values and Good Things)
Ah, lovely, these will help me immensely! Yeah, Superman's hitbox when flying is pretty awful. Actually, his hitbox in general is pretty awful. Actually, all hitboxes are pretty awful. Actually, this game is pretty awful. Admittedly, I haven't been in much of a Supermood to deal with this game for extended periods of time (see above, also I've been shifting my speedrunning focus to RTAs recently), so I'm not sure when I'll have a new WIP up. Possibly soon. Who knows.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Samsara
She/They
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Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2794
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There's a high chance I won't get around to picking this game back up until TAStudio is up and running, since 99% of TASing this game is making subtle changes and manipulating the physics and figuring out that you have to go a frame or two back before your last savestate because you forgot to make backup savestates and then all that's kinda wasted because it desyncs anyway. So yeah. I've had the run on hold for a while just because it's a complete pain in the ass to optimize, far more so than anything else I'm working on or have worked on before. If anyone else wants to take a shot, good luck.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Joined: 2/26/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: Minnesota
Just don't make me dizzy!
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
Samsara
She/They
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Joined: 11/13/2006
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Link to video This is simultaneously more and less painful than I remember. It's around 6-7 seconds faster than my last WIP. The bulk of that comes from finding a way to constantly reduce lag in Stage 2 by constantly punching the air, but there are some solid optimizations in the other stages as well. End of Stage 2 is about 10 frames slower since the platforms... I guess they're emulated more accurately, since they act far differently than they did on BizHawk 1.6.1, so that's a small loss there. To make up for it, the end of Stage 3 is vastly improved for the same reason, where I end up getting zipped up onto the goal platform instead of having to fly around onto it.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Active player (434)
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hi samsara,i just meant that if the game's boring it's best to do all possible to speedup the gameplay,like using lag reduction techniques, but acceptance is not up to me,i just think if the game is boring it should be reduced as less as possible even if you have to play with the dying beep sounds of pokemon or something like that
TAS i'm interested: megaman series: mmbn1 all chips, mmx3 any% psx glitched fighting games with speed goals in general
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Posts: 1199
grassini wrote:
hi samsara,i just meant that if the game's boring it's best to do all possible to speedup the gameplay,like using lag reduction techniques, but acceptance is not up to me,i just think if the game is boring it should be reduced as less as possible even if you have to play with the dying beep sounds of pokemon or something like that
???????? Looking good so far Samsara. The game's not nearly as terrible as I remember it.
effort on the first draft means less effort on any draft thereafter - some loser
Editor, Experienced player (608)
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Good work Samsara. I thought Stage 2 was pretty entertaining this time around (being quite a bit faster). It looked like some back-and-forth dashing was used; if so, it didn't bother me as much this time.
arandomgameTASer wrote:
grassini wrote:
hi samsara,i just meant that if the game's boring it's best to do all possible to speedup the gameplay,like using lag reduction techniques, but acceptance is not up to me,i just think if the game is boring it should be reduced as less as possible even if you have to play with the dying beep sounds of pokemon or something like that
????????
I believe grassini is suggesting that you reduce the final time by any means necessary with no tradeoffs. Whether it's the Stage 2 punching lag reduction or the dizzying back-and-forth dashing, he says use it all so the time spent watching a "boring" game will be "reduced as [much] as possible".