On a side note, is there an official timing method for individual level stars? For a TAS I've thought of using
(first frame of star celebration)-(first non-white frame after cutscene of flying in)/60
unless there is already an existing method.
Well, when ILs of this game were popular at the SDA forum, the rule was:
"Timing begins from the moment Mario or Luigi gains control and ends upon collecting the Power Star."
But that rule's start and end points are both a bit vague. Back then, I personally timed it from the first frame that I could notice Mario/Luigi's starting-to-run animation (still ambiguous), from the first frame of the star celebration cutscene.
One complication is that in an actual any% run, most stars (except Hidden stars) will require you to watch the beginning cutscenes because it'll be your first visit to that star. When you have to watch those cutscenes, Mario/Luigi goes through a long landing animation. But for ILs from a completed file, you can skip those cutscenes, and skipping the second cutscene means that you don't have to do the landing animation. Sometimes you'll even start at a slightly different spot if you skip the cutscene (see Dusty Dune 3 for an example)!
It's probably too hard to be completely fair between cutscene skips vs. no cutscene skips, so I'd recommend just doing whatever SMG2's in-game level timer does. This timer is not shown onscreen during the level, but you can see it (as a frame count) with RAM watch in Dolphin. I don't remember exactly, but I think SMG2's timer does roughly what you described, bihan.
What if you start timing it in the first frame you can read "Welcome to the galaxy!" or something like that? I think it would be more precise, but I'm not sure...
I feel the timing for stars should be from the moment you gain control at "Welcome to the Galaxy" to when you touch the star (when the screen freezes before the star animation)
Joined: 9/21/2009
Posts: 1047
Location: California
We want to include the opening cutscene as part of the timing so moving elements can't be different in IL's, etc. as it's not useful to an any%. SMG2 can be a different entity with its own timer IMO.
Joined: 9/21/2009
Posts: 1047
Location: California
USTA and I have decided to time SMG1 IL's differently than the built in SMG2 timer. We are using the first visually off-white frame after star select until the star celebration visually begins. We feel it is the most consistent method taking into account what was mentioned above.
Also, here's a video of Flipswitch Galaxy - Painting the Planet Yellow. Thanks yoshifan for your video :)
Link to video
was there really no way to not lose all your speed landing that one LJ at 0:15 ?
Completed:
2010-Current | Sonic Adventure 2: Battle - Individual Level TASes
2014 | Spongebob: Battle For Bikini Bottom - Any% in 1:05:03.23
2014 | Sonic Adventure 2: Battle - Hero Story (w/ THC98) in 25:11.87
2016 | Metroid Prime - Any% in 00:37 (In-Game Time)
2018 | Spongebob: Battle For Bikini Bottom - Cheat% in 1:42.350
2020 | Spongebob: Battle For Bikini Bottom - Any% in 0:39:20.10
2022 | Spongebob: Battle For Bikini Bottom - Cheat% in 1:25.567
Currently working on:
SA2:B DARK STORY
was there really no way to not lose all your speed landing that one LJ at 0:15 ?
Yes, unfortunately. The closer towards the edge I get and long jump from, the shorter the distance from the long jump. I would have to spin if I LJ'd from the edge, so this saves some time
Hello hello everyone! I'm working on an Any% TAS which is faster than the Japanese one above. I'm a speedrunner of this game and with the help of the SMG community I'm making sure to have the absolute optimal strats.
I've only finished 2 stars so far and here they are:
Link to videoLink to video
Ouu this is exciting. Good luck making smooth progress throughout the rest of the game. I'm looking forward to seeing more!
Completed:
2010-Current | Sonic Adventure 2: Battle - Individual Level TASes
2014 | Spongebob: Battle For Bikini Bottom - Any% in 1:05:03.23
2014 | Sonic Adventure 2: Battle - Hero Story (w/ THC98) in 25:11.87
2016 | Metroid Prime - Any% in 00:37 (In-Game Time)
2018 | Spongebob: Battle For Bikini Bottom - Cheat% in 1:42.350
2020 | Spongebob: Battle For Bikini Bottom - Any% in 0:39:20.10
2022 | Spongebob: Battle For Bikini Bottom - Cheat% in 1:25.567
Currently working on:
SA2:B DARK STORY
Ouu this is exciting. Good luck making smooth progress throughout the rest of the game. I'm looking forward to seeing more!
Thank you, I'm super excited too!
After reading through this thread there's a couple things I should say:
I originally planned to do a 120 star TAS except I just didnt want to have to deal with estimating starbit collection. There are 2 points in an rta run where you have to stop and grind to 999 starbits except it is possible that in a TAS you might not have to. That's only a maybe and if I ran the risk of not grinding and i get to the end and it turns out I did need to grind, I would have to redo most of the TAS.
As for the route I'm still uncertian and it's hard to judge whats the fastest, but most paths split off from eachother about 9 stars in so there's still some time to decide and I'll be discussing this with the SMG community.
Just for reference to do a 2p mid air jump optimally, shake P1's controller for 3 frames, press Z on the 4th, then on the 5th frame press A with P2 while pointing at mario. You do not need to press A with both P1 and P2 at the same time to get the jump, only P2. How long you have to shake the controller seems slightly inconsistent but generally its for 3 frames sometimes its 4. I believe there's a 6 frame window to press Z to still get the mid air jump.
For a grounded 2p jump P1 needs to press A then P2 needs to press A the frame after, not actually at the same time.
And for IL timing I use the rta timing which starts on the A press to select the star and ends the frame you no longer see movement/have touched the star.
I originally planned to do a 120 star TAS except I just didnt want to have to deal with estimating starbit collection. There are 2 points in an rta run where you have to stop and grind to 999 starbits except it is possible that in a TAS you might not have to. That's only a maybe and if I ran the risk of not grinding and i get to the end and it turns out I did need to grind, I would have to redo most of the TAS.
There's an easy way to determine if it's needed. Go through an RTA run and count the number of star bits available for pickup (or easily obtainable) outside of the normal grinding segments.
This will take only a few hours, and as mentioned it will save you a hell of a lot of time.
With any luck, there will be a clear surplus, and you don't have to worry about routing star bits too much. There are clearly a massive number of star bits available, and this is the most likely option (you collected over 100 without stopping on the first star.) But this way you can confirm it.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
Very nicely done! The skips in Good Egg 1 were particularly cool. Looking forward to more of your work!
Thank you! I have good egg 2 out now, except it seems improvable so I'm going back to make it even faster ;)
Here's a link to the playlist im uploading these to:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX-UHl4lUQzuLyU9SC6AolZW4odODr5Wf
I'll probably only post here when I hit landmarks like maybe 5 or 10 stars so I don't spam.
OmnipotentEntity wrote:
There's an easy way to determine if it's needed. Go through an RTA run and count the number of star bits available for pickup (or easily obtainable) outside of the normal grinding segments.
This will take only a few hours, and as mentioned it will save you a hell of a lot of time.
With any luck, there will be a clear surplus, and you don't have to worry about routing star bits too much. There are clearly a massive number of star bits available, and this is the most likely option (you collected over 100 without stopping on the first star.) But this way you can confirm it.
Easier said then done, the world record for 120 is just over 6 hours. The situation on starbits is a bit complicated to explain but regardless I won't be doing 120. I might to something like that for this any% though to find out which stars it's worth getting starbits in because the notification at the end of the level will cost frames if you have more than 18 starbits (credits to yoshifan for this information)
I feel if we want a 120 star for this game it has to actually be a 242 star, since that's true 100%. Also, for any%, it should be done with Mario, since that's the result of a true game start.
That's just my personal opinion. It probably won't sway the opinions of the rest of the site, though.
Hey! It's been a while since my last post so I figured it was about time for an update!
I recently finished Surfing 101 with a brand new ridiculous skip which you can find right here:
Link to video
I originally hoped to be out of the terrace by the end of my summer break but that didn't happen because I put time into some explanation videos for Loopdeeloop (which i recommend checking out in the description of that video). The new goal is be out of the terrace by the end of the year which should be feasible (I work super slowly if you couldn't tell).
Since loop is done that means I have all the levels leading up to it completed as well which includes Honeyhive 1, 2, and 3 which you can find in the playlist I linked to in a previous post. I also uploaded my current WIP DTM to the userfiles if anyone is curious:
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/49310736434472168
Also, if you want to know the route I will be using, you can get the splits for it here:
https://www.speedrun.com/smgalaxy/resources
It's labelled Any% No Toy Time Route by me (Xander).
It's a bit complicated and I plan to do a writeup as to why this is the fastest route but I dont have that right now so just trust me.
I looked at the playlist, and I just want to say I'm really impressed with how you handled the Star Bunnies on Gateway.
Also, the whole thing looks great. I'm sure it's going to make a splash when it's finally complete.
