So Wii Shop's shutting down soon, which means a few great WiiWare games will never be seen again unless they get remasters or there's some fan-made shop. This is one such game, a great futuristic racer with a phase-shifting mechanic powered by a boost meter, which gives it some micromanagement. There's also a generous airtime system that lets you skip a lot of track, and a checkpoint/flagging/position system that can be manipulated for even more skippity skips.
I've started TASing it, with the current WR holder, DivisionX, helping with orb routes/boost routes and strats. Unfortunately, some of the strats (including the three biggest skips) aren't possible with what you're given when starting a new file, so I've made a verification file that unlocks the fastest vehicle, Kan Y, and the fastest engine class, Ion. Hope that works out, I understand dirty SRAM can be a bit messy.
Cove Harbour: 1:08.41
This first track took a long time due to new things being found halfway in and various retries to make a turn smoother but still fast. As a major-skipless track, it's one of the longer ones in the run.
Finished TASes: Bonsai Barber
Currently working on Super Mario Galaxy 2 Green Stars (not likely to be on TASVideos due to savestate anchor and no verification movie).
Cancelled but might return: FAST Racing League
Flood Area: 42.28
Second track done, and it's the first of many with a major skip.
EDIT: That run uses a new orb route. With a couple of strats to get two extra orbs (one before jumppads and another before corner skip), there's a 4th boost possible at the long semicircle chicane (when also getting a third in the group at the start, and two with the corner skip).
The old route used a jumppad skip. With that old route, this skip would have only been slower than the intended way by ~0.3s, which was a small enough loss to make it an entertainment trade-off, to prove yet again that sometimes you don't need jumppads.
However, the new route opened up an extra boost to save more time, and the jumppad skip would be even slower if I tried getting that 4th boost in - I'd have to boost at the start to avoid wasting 2 orbs by picking them up when the meter is full, I'd use a boost to be able to do the skip, but then I wouldn't have any boost to regain speed after the skip (the skip requires you to brake hard so you can land on the track). This would've made it ~0.3s slower than the 3-boost route, so ~0.6s slower than going without it.
Alternatively, I could have picked up a couple of orbs at the end, but because of how the end works - waiting in the air for 3 seconds to be respawned - it would have only saved a few frames if any.
If you want to see the jumppad skip, you can watch the old TAS here
Finished TASes: Bonsai Barber
Currently working on Super Mario Galaxy 2 Green Stars (not likely to be on TASVideos due to savestate anchor and no verification movie).
Cancelled but might return: FAST Racing League
Turbine Canyon: 41.90
Optimising the skips was interesting, as small changes in flight and landing could make almost half a second of difference, landing especially because you have to be going the "wrong way" across an invisible checkpoint before the line in order to count the lap.
Now it's onto The Rig, the last track of the Shima League.
Finished TASes: Bonsai Barber
Currently working on Super Mario Galaxy 2 Green Stars (not likely to be on TASVideos due to savestate anchor and no verification movie).
Cancelled but might return: FAST Racing League
If it wasn't obvious by the lack of activity in 2 years, this project's dead. But I'm briefly resurrecting the topic because a) I never posted The Rig and b) I've encoded the entire Shima League into one video as work-no-longer-in-progress:
Link to video
The reasoning for properly cancelling is:
1) This TAS isn't as optimised as it could be. And it looks stiff at times without a good flow of movement.
On top of that, there's a ridiculously precise trick I stumbled upon in Turbine Canyon that gets a shorter jump from the jumppad, saving nearly 0.6s per lap. I couldn't replicate it despite a lot of effort (and attempting to use RAM watch), so I moved on without it: https://youtu.be/YqC5Act2vK4
Plus, this run uses Classic Controller, as I wasn't sure how reliable Wiimote was for TASing when starting out. Classic Controller's analog only has 64 values for each axis, whereas even the Nunchuk has 256; much more possibility for fine tuning.
2) DivisionX and FighBat had said a while ago that they had messed around in the vehicle & colour select menus and somehow the tournaments only lasted 2 or 3 races instead of the intended 4. So, if this is a reliable manipulation, this "All Leagues, Ion class" TAS would be obsolete, and even more unoptimised. Would be nice to have All Leagues use that manipulation and then have an All Tracks using Time Trials.
So if anyone would want to try it in the future (I might come back at some point?), it'd be better to start over again, on a more recent revision (5.0-2428 for this one). I have some useful notes but I don't know if text files belong in userfiles so I've put them in a pastebin instead: https://pastebin.com/ye7D9cb3
And also a playlist of clips and stuff that might be useful, including sick glitchy physics that can make for a shortcut in Storm Creek that may not be faster but is definitely entertaining: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNOUOE9YHiMQlBpEkCp2Z0li0CAS4hxWz
Finished TASes: Bonsai Barber
Currently working on Super Mario Galaxy 2 Green Stars (not likely to be on TASVideos due to savestate anchor and no verification movie).
Cancelled but might return: FAST Racing League
If it wasn't obvious by the lack of activity in 2 years, this project's dead.
Well, that's a shame, but I kind of assumed so after all this time, like you said. Would you mind uploading the .dtm to userfiles? This could help someone else learn the inputs and redo it.
PurpleSunDeryl wrote:
it'd be better to start over again, on a more recent revision (5.0-2428 for this one).
While that one is over 3 years old already, I think anything in the 5.0 line is still acceptable. There's a Paper Mario TTYD TAS improvement currently being done on a modified version of Dolphin 5.0 (the very first 5.0).
Well, that's a shame, but I kind of assumed so after all this time, like you said. Would you mind uploading the .dtm to userfiles? This could help someone else learn the inputs and redo it.
Finished TASes: Bonsai Barber
Currently working on Super Mario Galaxy 2 Green Stars (not likely to be on TASVideos due to savestate anchor and no verification movie).
Cancelled but might return: FAST Racing League
It's been a while. Mulling over whether to pick this up again, but in the meantime some more helpful things if anyone else wanted to try.
Firstly a TAS of Breeze City, one of the shortest tracks due to a simple ultra shortcut:
Link to video
This was done from a savestate on Dolphin 5.0 stable, with Wiimote & Nunchuk. I uploaded to a filesharing site instead of straight here because it's got a few savestates of a decent size: https://mega.nz/file/IXJDEJZY#fim68gNrafyw0HjxjEIkz0aMJMQ_p3Ss1wMGm8Enz7o
The savestates include: a starting one (but not dtm.sav so need to load another and then playback from this), the ending one, and a savestate of a really low jumppad jump for research.
This TAS gained a bit of understanding of what happens with the Turbine Canyon short jump, but not enough to really easily replicate it. It has something to do with bonking against the wall, and the angle against the wall when jumping (which did slightly change height when making slight adjustments).
Also, a trick in Rookie Beach to save at least 1 second per lap if you have enough energy for a boost each time:
Link to video
I will also edit this post with my original orb route for each track if I can find it, although I didn't think enough about trading off some speed using drifts to grab more orbs.
Finished TASes: Bonsai Barber
Currently working on Super Mario Galaxy 2 Green Stars (not likely to be on TASVideos due to savestate anchor and no verification movie).
Cancelled but might return: FAST Racing League
Not every track has a shortcut like that, but there has just been a new discovery that gives three more tracks a more interesting ultra shortcut.
Link to video
FighBat found it's possible to clip inside a wall after going up a little step if you have boost speed and a good angle, so you can fall off the edge. A very good angle can bonk and get some extra height off the wall. A very very precise angle (and a couple frames of drifting when going off the edge) is enough to get bonked high enough to be able to fly back over the finish line's checkpoint and get a lap skip.
This is also possible in Rookie Beach, and likely possible in The Chillout, which is a bit of a shame because that already had one of the coolest shortcuts. But there might be a limit to this strat as it's been hard to get the clip without first doing a full lap - maybe jumppads and upside-down boostpads add some kind of tilt.
Speaking of theoretical tilt, there was this potential idea for Flood Area back when I had started, but for some reason doing this trick leads to downwards tilt when falling off an edge so you end up with less air time, whereas going through a full lap ends up getting upwards tilt off the edge to be able to lap skip.
Link to video
Finished TASes: Bonsai Barber
Currently working on Super Mario Galaxy 2 Green Stars (not likely to be on TASVideos due to savestate anchor and no verification movie).
Cancelled but might return: FAST Racing League
