I decided to do a v3 of this category to incorporate the strategies NrgZam discovered in his recently published any% run. I didn't expect to shave this much time off(4-5 seconds was my initial prediction), but the majority of the time save came from better lag reduction(particularly on boss explosions), followed by reverse wallkicks, followed by other minor discoveries. The only time-saving glitch forgone is the blackout glitch after each boss, which would save a total of ~3.7s at the cost of having soft music for the majority of the run.
Tricks used
Phantom grab - Collecting an item with a boomerang on the same frame that a miscellaneous object (life energy, weapon energy, extra lives, hearts, e-tanks, floating platforms, boss doors) spawns will cause the object to replace the collected item inside the boomerang. This was utilized in this run a total of 11 times to change the route, skip a boss, achieve flight, and expedite the collection of the majority of items required for obtaining the hadouken.
Ice sled zip - Positioning X to be inside of an ice sled will zip X out of the way when the sled manifests. This can be used to bypass camera scroll triggers as well as zip through walls.
Reverse wallkick - Pressing left+right the frame before walljumping off a wall on X's right side will turn X around and jump off an invisible wall to the left. This is particularly useful in getting over small walls that require only 1 wall jump, but also facilitates faster wall climbing on single walls and a variety of other situations. Here's a table of the average speed for each walljump interval. Alternating between going down to 915sub-ppf(reverse wallkick) and 403sub-ppf(normal wallkick) yields a slightly higher average vertical speed than consistently going down to 531sub-ppf on each jump, which was previously the fastest method of climbing a single wall.
Luck manipulation - Unlike in X2 and X3, X's RNG manipulation techniques are very limited in this game. Killing an enemy or creating a dust sprite via a wall slide increments RNG by 1 value, and breaking an ice sled increments it by 12(which can only be used during vertical movement, since it despawns offscreen before it shatters during horizontal movement). RNG also increments 1 value every frame, so waiting around for 1 or more frames can be used as a last resort.
Stage Info
Table of time saved per stage
Stage by stage info
Intro Stage(0 frames saved)
This stage was unchanged. A few lag frames can be saved on the bee crashes but then you just lose it to load times at the end of the stage.
Chill Penguin(12 frames saved)
Better lag reduction, reverse wallkicks
Boomer Kuwanger(44 frames saved)
Better lag reduction, reverse wallkicks
Boss explosion lag seems to be based largely on the global timer. Often, delaying a boss kill by as little as 1 frame cause save upwards of 20 frames worth of lag during the explosion.
Sting Chameleon(80 frames saved)
With the addition of a reverse wallkick in this phantom grab, I was able to fire the boomerang much earlier and arc it upwards initially to get it down into the pit more quickly.
The miniboss decided to jump a lot this time around. I only lost 1 frame during the fight as a result, which is at least the same amount of time I would have spent manipulating a different pattern.
Weapon swapping to reduce lag was particularly effective on this stage. I'm not sure why, but it didn't really work as well any other stages.
Storm Eagle(8 frames saved)
Lag reduction
Flame Mammoth(5 frames saved)
Reverse wallkick, less dashes/dash jumps during the pipe section
Penguin Revisit(17 frames saved)
The phantom grab might not look nearly as spectacular anymore without all of the juggling, but it's now theoretically perfect since I didn't get any lag frames nor have to slow down my movement. I'm not why I didn't use this this enemy's drop in v2, but I'm going to just assume the RNG wasn't in my favor.
Mandrill(36 frames saved)
A lot of lag was reduced during the Thunder Slimer fight by killing two of the bubbles.
The reverse wallkick during the heart phantom grab allowed me to save 9 frames over v2 by firing a boomerang to the left while climbing the right wall.
I got massively boned by RNG on the Mandrill fight. Him not dashing at the start of the fight loses 4 frames, which is the same amount of time getting an extra life for the e-tank phantom grab in the next stage saves. Even if there was a dash pattern I could have reached by breaking an additional ice sled during the stage(which there wasn't), it would have pushed the RNG too far for me to get an extra life in Armadillo. For reference, extra lives have a 1/128 chance of dropping from enemies with standard drop tables. I could have also potentially chanced the e-tank grab during the revisit, but since you can't create dust sprites underwater during the Octopus fight before it, that wasn't a risk I was willing to take.
Armadillo(109 frames saved)
The vast majority of this time save is from lag reduction, particularly from the c-sting/tornado usage before the second cart ride. Reverse wallkicks also saved a bit of time.
The phantom grab was done more optimally, and I was able to get an extra life for it which didn't happen in v2.
The reverse wallkicks during the bossfight allowed me to get a better doppler effect on my mid-fight charged E-spark.
Octopus(10 frames saved)
Better lag reduction, namely from killing the searchlights during the submarine fights and taking damage from the torpedo to gain i-frames.
Sigma 1(18 frames saved)
The majority of the time save here is from lag reduction during the first phantom grab. Since I wasn't able to take damage during the last Armadillo visit, the majority of the manipulation for this extra life had to be done during the second to last visit. RNG manipulation like this that spans over several stages would have been practically impossible without the power of the Tudio.
One thing I didn't notice until this TAS is that if your sub-pixels are far enough to the left during the Vile skip, you trigger the second door a frame later but further to the right, and subsequently prevent the black text box from appearing during the Vile fight by being in the room for 1 less frame. This reduces around 10 lag frames when Zero is breaking out of the prison.
Sick ice sled jump
The nearest straight down Bospider drop was far enough away that reaching it resulted in a net 16 frame loss over what ended up in the run. This particular double crossover pattern is actually the 3rd fastest pattern in 100%, and not much slower than a straight drop since Bospider accelerates dramatically after the first time she crosses over(the second fastest pattern is a double crossover with the first one being at the top position). Single crossovers are slower since Bospider ends up in the middle of the room, giving you a 9 frame walk to the center of the room after the fight.
Sigma 2(35 frames saved)
Most of this came from lag reduction during the Penguin explosion
This is the same Rangda pattern as in v2. It's only a few frames slower than starting with a left blue eye, but I wasn't even close to one of those.
Sigma 3(0 frames saved)
0 frames saved on this stage thanks to Mandrill, once again, boning me with his RNG. This Chameleon pattern is extremely rare, so I had to delay 4 frames after Chameleon to get Mandrill to dash.
Incredibly, top route is actually faster at the end of the stage if you get up there with a reverse wallkick. The movement itself is of course slower, but the majority of the lag in that room is caused by leaving the flying enemies alive. With this route, I was able to save the 4 frames that I lost to Mandrill manipulation.
Sigma 4(17 frames saved)
Most of this time save is from the Jedi Sigma explosion. The reason I didn't buffer the hadouken on that fight was, in fact, to get better lag reduction on the explosion.
Since this is my 3rd 100% run of this game, I of course had to do 3 hadoukens on the Velguarder Sigma fight.
Closing
Possible Improvements
Apparently there is some way to zip into the body armor capsule from the right as it's coming out of the ground, but I couldn't figure out how to do it and the only video of it is lost somewhere in cyberspace. This would save a few frames by being closer to the center of the capsule when you dash into it.
It might be faster to get underneath the ship as it pushes you down into the heart area in Octopus' stage, but it would definitely cause a substantial amount of extra lag. I didn't consider this as a possibility until it was brought to my attention while I was well into the fortress stages.
Acknowledgements
NrgZam: for his work on his recently published any% run, where he discovered reverse wallkicks and a number of other time savers that were applicable to 100% as well, and for providing the encode.
Fractalfusion: for his LUA script which I used to make this run, and for disassembling the game's RNG. Manipulating Bospider and the extra lives for the phantom grabs would have otherwise been impossible.
GoddessMaria: This submission came as quite a surprise, Hetfield90! Having examined both movies closely and as expected, this movie turned out to be even more entertaining and more optimized than the published one. Audience reception was very accepting and therefore...
...I accept this movie to obsolete the previous movie!
Loved the run, as always.
A question: when you're entering Sigma's room, you take the door on the right - is there a particular reason for this? It would seem that taking the door on the left would mean less walking.
A joke criticism: You are terrible at minecarts. Do you even know how minecarts work? The spikes are on the sides so that you don't stand there, and yet, ... ugh. And those jumps. Right into a bird in one case, short-hopping it in another... This is why we have tools, friend.
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
A question: when you're entering Sigma's room, you take the door on the right - is there a particular reason for this? It would seem that taking the door on the left would mean less walking.
The cutscene actually starts when you enter the door, so there's no time loss regardless of where you enter it from. The same thing also applies for the cutscenes before the Jedi and Velguarder Sigma fights, so it doesn't matter what position you end the preceding fights from.
The cutscene actually starts when you enter the door,
Oh, neat. I apologize in advance for when I ask the same question in the next submission.
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
Joined: 11/26/2010
Posts: 444
Location: New York, US
Nice job once again Hetfield90, easy yes vote!!!
I like screenshot 1 as well as the slight optimization for that section because using the Ice Platform there was a really cool.
Yes vote from me, of course. Also, before I forget, there's actually a useless glitch during the cutscene where you speak with Zero after all 8 bosses are defeated.
After all the dialogue around the time you would gain control of X (if you had control), you can actually swap weapons for like a frame or 2, and it bugs out the graphics for the weapon energy bar. Just a showoff sort of thing really.
Hello everybody, I have some questions.
Nobody try to skip Storm Eagles 2, with fantom-grab before the fight.
Why when entry sigma fight you don't jump left, because megaman walk when you jump right.
Sorry for my very bad English i'll hope you understand x)
Nobody try to skip Storm Eagles 2, with fantom-grab before the fight.
Platforms that spawn with enemies on them are categorized enemies themselves, therefor cannot be phantom grabbed the way normal miscellaneous platforms can. Even if there were miscellaneous platforms nearby, I doubt it would make an Eagle refight skip possible since bosses spawn based on camera position, and there is a vertical camera lock once you get to the top of that climb. You can't do anything with sled zipping there either as far as I know, because if you try to dodge the vertical camera lock with one, you get stuck since the horizontal lock is never lifted.
kevlegoth wrote:
Why when entry sigma fight you don't jump left, because megaman walk when you jump right.
Hetfield90 wrote:
The cutscene actually starts when you enter the door
Here's a version with the graphical glitch Raijin mentioned if anyone's able to replace it. It didn't have any effect on the rest of the run.
Here's a version with the graphical glitch Raijin mentioned if anyone's able to replace it. It didn't have any effect on the rest of the run.
Oh you included it. Ha, that's cool. Sorry if it seemed like I was just posting nonsense. Honestly, I was kind of hoping it might have some effect on RNG, so maybe it can be used to alter Bospider or something, but I guess it's either not enough or doesn't alter RNG at all.
Joined: 4/15/2013
Posts: 331
Location: In the attic
Damn, Hertfield! Back at it again with another MMX improvement!
No, I'm not sorry.
In case that didn't make it obvious, I'm giving this an easy Yes vote.
Stage by stage info
Intro Stage(0 frames saved)
This stage was unchanged. A few lag frames can be saved on the bee crashes but then you just lose it to load times at the end of the stage.
So instead of intermittent lag during gameplay you'd have a longer load screen at the end of the gameplay for that level? Why would you NOT want this!? Why would you want to have laggy gameplay? If the change would also affect the RNG than fair enough.
The fastest stage that could be attained with further lag reduction on the bee crashes was a net time loss of 1 frame. Even if it was a net 0 like you seem to be assuming(and perhaps my wording in the submission text may have suggested), I fail to see how displacing 1 or 2 lag frames during heavy screen shaking while waiting for a camera lock to expire to a load time could be in any way perceptible to the viewer or worth anyone's time or effort to pursue.
The fastest stage that could be attained with further lag reduction on the bee crashes was a net time loss of 1 frame. Even if it was a net 0 like you seem to be assuming(and perhaps my wording in the submission text may have suggested), I fail to see how displacing 1 or 2 lag frames during heavy screen shaking while waiting for a camera lock to expire to a load time could be in any way perceptible to the viewer or worth anyone's time or effort to pursue.
My previous post sounded uh, mean spirited, I was just curious is all so... yeah.
As a TAS approaches perfection the ability to perceive/notice subtle changes in performance increases, which is why I was bringing up the topic.
