I don't think you really have to optimize it to such a degree. It doesn't need to be perfect. It's not like it's unwatchable if you make a mistake that you later realize can be done faster. It's OK if you don't want to redo parts. The important thing is that you enjoy doing it.
Joined: 4/21/2004
Posts: 3517
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Speaking of this game, congratulations to Gymnast for breaking the 5 hour mark of Skyward Sword. I hope this means you will resume tasing your Twilight Princess run :)
Apparently I never posted the WIP from January in here so those of you who only follow this forum get 2 WIPs today! This first WIP was made before the discovery of brakesliding, though not much would've changed had it been utilized in this segment.
Link to video
This next segment utilizes brakesliding around half way in as that's when it was discovered. Unlike RTA, warping out of the basement is barely faster for TAS since we can push the graveyard bug near the well, quickly obtain the graveyard tear, and well clip into the loading zone instantly after.
Link to video
For both segments keese LJAs are much faster than dashing and jumping is faster than dashing up a slope which is why it's used a lot on upward slopes that have a ledge.
That brakesliding technique looks really insane. I remember hearing about it when it was first found, but I don't know much about it. How do you do that, and what does it do? I noticed you used it while going up slopes, so is it like Z-sliding in Ocarina of Time?
Brakesliding is done by holding L and Up, followed by L and ESS down on the next frame and then holding just ESS down. This changes Link's facing direction by 180 degrees and makes the speed negative as now he's travelling backwards. This helps going up slopes as normally slopes will slow Link down quite a bit, but since he's facing down the slope while brakesliding his speed becomes higher. The speed will decrease very slowly over time, but it would take a solid 30 or so seconds of brakesliding for it to become slower than dashing up a hill normally.
Link to video
This segment finished up the Lanayru Twilight Section which means no more dumb bugs from here on out. It's the longest twilight section, taking more than 10 minutes to complete, and it makes heavy use of brakesliding as did the last section. The reason we transform into human Link and exit underwater through the top of Zora's Domain each time is to avoid a cutscene that normally happens with Rutella. Castle Town makes heavy use of dash cancelling since the base running speed in castle town is really slow as wolf. As for rupees, anything above 80 is technically unnecessary but we gotta go for those swag points. The extra grass rupees waste no time as we have to wait for tears to form before they can be collected.
Link to video
New WIP up until entering Snowpeak. As usual there is extensive use of brakesliding to save time going up any slopes as wolf Link. This section gets two bomb bags since the first one we get will disappear after we do our next savewarp and we need water bombs later for Morpheel and Zant. As for snowboarding the goal is to stay in the air for as long as possible since Link obtains his highest speed while in the air.
Link to video
New WIP from Snowpeak until the end of Lakebed. We're continuing to drop bombs from the real bomb bag so that we can fill it with water bombs later. Once the Ball and Chain is obtained we can leave Snowpeak since we don't need to beat the dungeon to complete the game (thanks to only needing the CitS mirror shard to get into the Palace of Twilight). We get two orange rupees to significantly fill up our wallet to nearly the 300 rupees we need for the CitS Canon.
Right before the water bomb chest, I through a bomb into an offscreen waterfall which made the bomb despawn. This was necessary as it allowed me to take out the last bomb much faster since this game limits you to having no more than 3 explosives out at one time. (If I hadn't thrown the bomb into the waterfall, I would've had to wait for the 4th to last bomb to explode before pulling out the last one.)
Lakebed is the one temple where a boss key skip is possible since the loading zone to the boss is always active unlike other dungeons (Which is great because the boss key takes a rather long time to get in Lakebed compared to other dungeons).
Morpheel can be done without Zora armor by using water bombs to refill our air while swimming around. (This will be used again when the TAS reaches Zant's Morpheel phase.)
Unfortunately there was no brakesliding in this WIP, but the next one should have a fair amount of it.
Link to video
New WIP with a lot of brakesliding and wolf dashing. The reason we get the Final Blow is because it's required for dealing the final attack to Ganondorf. We run past the golden wolf early on since learning the skill spawns us back in Faron Woods which is inconvenient during Midna's Desperate Hour.
From this point on the run is basically a dungeon rush with Arbiter's Grounds, City in the Sky, Palace of Twilight, and Hyrule Castle, and very little overworld travel. If I can keep up the current pace of work, I'm hoping it'll be finished by next spring.
New skip that saves 2 and a half minutes:
Link to video
This saves a lot of time due to the massive amount of cutscenes this fight has between its phases. It also means that Clawshot Actor Displacement finally has a use! A new WIP of Arbiter's Grounds should be coming soon once I optimize the skip.
Newest WIP to display Arbiter's Grounds in all it's glory:
Link to video
The first room can be crossed with brakesliding since sand only reduces Link's speed when it's positive, it doesn't hinder negative speed thankfully. I can also get in a roll after pulling the chain to open the first gate which nicely lands right at the edge of the floor before the sand.
The gate that normally requires lighting the 4 poe torches actually only checks for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th poe torches to be lit (as the devs probably assumed you couldn't get the rest without collecting the first one and obtaining its scent). So instead of using the first poe, we can go get the 4th one early (thanks to a conveniently placed pillar) and use the scent from that poe to go and get poes 2 and 3. We also collected a red rupee from the redead before Poe 3 to get the 300 rupees necessary for fixing the City in the Sky Canon.
Once we're past the poe collection, we can immediately go and get the boss key (which is really badly protected, even the bug limit RTA category can get it early) ad then proceed to go through the dungeon backwards to the Spinner room. Thanks to brakesliding we can cut out a wolf transformation that's normally used to cross the giant sand gap in the room right before the Deathsword miniboss.
Thanks to Midna's supercharge attack, we can lock onto Deathsword and then use his height to get past the gate that normally blocks the spinner chest and skip Deathsword, which saves ~20 seconds.
I improved the Stallord Skip so that now it only requires 1 bomb to clip past the gate. This is good as 2 bombs would have forced me to get a heart somewhere in City in the Sky since there's one room where I will take 2 hearts of damage from a fall.
Overall, I'm very happy with Arbiter's Grounds, and I"m hoping to continue the progress faster over the remainder of my winter break.
Joined: 8/15/2005
Posts: 1941
Location: Mullsjö, Sweden
Just want to chip in that I'm very excited about this run, but I have skipped watching WIPs recently, I want the full unspoiled (mostly) experience once it is finished!
Keep up the greatness,, Gym!
Another new skip! This time for the 1 small key we get in City in the Sky:
Link to video
I'm not sure exactly how much time this saves but it should be more than 30 seconds once the skip is properly optimized (which might take awhile considering how convoluted this skip is). This skips having to go to the west side of the dungeon and form a bridge with the spinner (as well as getting the small key on the other side).