Introduction

One day I thought about how different a Sonic any% run would be without Tails’ help. Long story short I decided it would be worth making this tas. I made the whole thing from scratch and made absolute sure I saved every single frame I can. Overall I had fun making this run despite the pain and suffering it made me endure and am really pleased with how it came out.

Emulator and Tools used

  • Gens Re-Recording 11b + Camera hack + Solidity and Terrain dysplay
  • Sonic TAS tools

Movie objectives

  • Aims for fastest in-game time
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Abuses deaths to save time
  • Abuses programming errors and glitches
  • Manipulates luck and enemy positions

Timetable

ActIn-game Time
Angel Island 10:40:55
Angel Island 21:14:51
Hydrocity 10:39:16
Hydrocity 20:22:20
Marble Garden 10:34:37
Marble Garden 20:03:24
Carnival Night 10:29:19
Carnival Night 20:39:17
Icecap 10:56:45
Icecap 20:00:00
Launch Base 10:33:46
Launch Base 20:26:37
Mushroom Hill 10:33:37
Mushroom Hill 20:40:34
Flying Battery 10:45:26
Flying Battery 21:05:43
Sandopolis 11:04:51
Sandopolis 20:48:47
Lava Reef 10:47:43
Lava Reef 20:20:52
Hidden Palace0:26:40
Sky Sanctuary0:52:17
Death Egg 10:58:56
Death Egg 21:36:23
Total16:52:46

Time lost to deaths

ActIn-game Time
Hydrocity 20:05:21
Launch Base 20:00:00
Death Egg 20:04:29
For those of you not familiar with the formatting of the in game timer it goes Minutes:Seconds:Frames with 60 frames being the equivalent of 1 second. I did add the time lost to deaths to the total time.

Level comments

Jumping from a roll

Before I get into the level comments there’s a couple bugs I want to point with how the game handles jumping from a roll. The first one being the game uses Sonic’s taller standing hitbox instead of his rolling hitbox. The other one is you have no aerial control. While these aren’t exclusive to Sonic it does make up an important part of his movement.
It’s possible to regain air control by doing any double jump action, even if it does nothing in the case of regular invincibility and super sonic. This is why you’ll see me using insta-shield a lot without actually hitting anything.

Angel Island 1

This level was actually done by Aglar who saved 13 frames over my initial attempt and made it like a good first level for the run.
0:11 : Saved a few seconds by using this loop zip strat WST found.
0:31 : To give you an idea of how serious I was about the optimization of this tas. I used a kind of movement tech usually only seen in Sonic 1 tases where I do a 1 pixel zip off the wall by rolling over my horizontal subpixels. I did this to get a small speed boost off the wall before jumping on the rock.

Angel Island 2

0:18 : By taking advantage of a few mechanics I was able to do a diagonal clip through the flipping bridge.
0:23 : With careful movement I was able to save 5 frames with this loop zip.
0:27 : Hitting a badnik while going up (or the bottom half of their hitbox if falling) eliminates some of your vertical speed, so I aimed for the Rhinobot to get a faster landing.
0:30 : Unfortunately because there’s a small bump right at the entrance of the tunnel Sonic can’t maintain spindash speed here like can with the other 2 tunnels. Only with the lightning shield he can do it but I wasn’t able to get a tunnel jump out it.
I had to sacrifice 7 frames in order to do the bridge cutscene skip. If it weren't for this the time for the level would've been 1:14'44 instead I could say this was a speed/entertainment trade off because of the ingame time goal but to tell you the truth it would’ve felt wrong not to do this glitch in a tas.

Hydrocity 1

Without Tails Sonic is unable to do a level wrap. Oh well, that just means Sonic will have to go fast instead. A better optimized (and obviously altered to not include big rings) version of the route used in the Sonic 100% run was the way to go here.
0:18 : So here’s something bizarre you probably didn’t know about the speed cap. It’s only a horizontal cap of 16 pixels per frame (the exact speed a red spring gives you) and it doesn’t keep you from building up more speed past this. This is what allowed me to jump so high off the wall.
0:24 : I was able to greatly improve this ramp clip by getting sonic to land instantly at the zipping height.
0:29 : For some reason jumping the frame Sonic rolls into a badnik boosts his jump. This allowed me to make it onto the ledge right behind it a few frames sooner.
0:31 : This seemingly pointless braking was actually done to trigger the quick death during the act transition. This wasted 11 frames which was no big deal considering this death saves in game time unlike the Angel Island 2 bridge skip.
0:33 : Since you don’t need exactly 0 speed to spindash on normal tiles in S3K I’m able to spindash on steep slopes.

Hydrocity 2

Since Tails isn’t here Sonic has to do the offscreen boss kill himself. I used the same technique from the act 1 boss to get a fast kill.

Marble Garden 1

The level wrap was already a huge improvement for this level. Thanks to the first clip right after the level wrap I was able to get the boss to spawn at the first possible frame. Then I saved a few more seconds by hitting robotnik the frame he disappeared after “breaking” the ground like in the ring attack.

Marble Garden 2

No >:C

Carnival Night 1

By replacing both carry clips with spindash clips not only am I able to actually do the level wrap from Knuckles’ area, but also save several seconds. Also found a faster 1P strat for the boss.

Carnival Night 2

Was able to take Knuckles' any% tas route by substituting his glide with a bubble shield.
Because Sonic can’t move the signpost while embedded in the ground I had to choose between getting the signpost bubble shield monitor or using the zip while getting a bubble shield from the tunnel up ahead instead. Getting the signpost bubble shield turned out to be faster in both ingame and real time.
0:08, 0:16, 0:19, and 0:28: You’ve probably seen this in other Sonic tases but you can do stair clips with the bubble shield.
0:14 : So these moving barrels are on proximity based cycles, meaning they start moving from a set position as soon as they load. This particular barrel spawned at exactly 0:10:13 ingame time. I had to delay getting in the vertical tube by a few frames so that I could make it onto the barrel. Vertical subpixels were manipulated before the start of the level so that I could go over the barrel a frame sooner without losing time anywhere else.
0:21-0:26 : I can’t believe that after all these years the barrel of doom gave me trouble yet again. To make the clip work you have to use up the bubble shield bounce before being able to land in the wall. The problem is this greatly limited the positions you could start falling from to 16 pixel increments. After quite a bit of experimenting I found out that there was literally only one position that yielded favorable results.

Icecap 1

Found a way to do the boss clip without having to roll during the act 1 portion of the stage. This did make it a bit harder but I still managed to trigger the transition snow block the frame it loaded.

Icecap 2

Existence is but an illusion.

Launch Base 1

With the help of ram watch I saved a frame by getting the crusher to load a frame sooner (the first jump is what delayed it). Having the crusher clip me in the ground to the left instead of the right allowed me level wrap right away saving 9 frames.

Launch Base 2

Saved 1 frame with better camera manipulation before level wrap. Then proceeded to annihilate both bosses.

Mushroom Hill 1

So I accidentally discovered something kinda bizarre about the boss. Rather than having set spawn coordinates it spawns based on the camera position. This meant that it's possible to get it spawn lower than intended to get a faster kill. Another strange thing about this boss is that it checks for player position for the vertical lock, meaning I have to bring the lower the camera before doing the level wrap. Afterwards I have to avoid scrolling the camera down or else it’ll correct its height (yes this is why there’s no playaround here).
Conveniently this also allows me to use the trick where I get the first hill from act 2 to load on top of Sonic.

Mushroom Hill 2

So I’m not sure exactly who came up with the concept for this route, but I was the one to make it work. Basically you have to hit a pathswapper along the way otherwise the exit to the big ring room will be solid. My solution to this was to hit the pathswapper at the end of Knuckles’ area (shown in the screenshot below) and then clip into the walls again by doing a ramp clip like the one in Hydrocity 1. I was able to do this without slowing down the camera. Afterwards I had to wait a few seconds in the big ring room for the camera to catch up because I needed a red spring to load.

Flying Battery 1

Saved 1 frame by optimizing the first jump. Saved another from triggering the platform a frame sooner.

Flying Battery 2

After I jumped onto the ramp I turned around from inside the wall and did a vertical zip jump. This jump allowed me to trigger the pathswapper (which made the right half of the walls fully solid again) at the top of the rotating mesh and then land on the upside/down slope which allowed me to reach the top layer walls in the map which extends all the way to the end of the level. I’m happy that this new route also turned out to be faster than the other one.

Sandopolis 1

Originally I thought you could only clip into these slopes using a fire shield (which is still mostly true), but an rta runner named BenInSweden showed me a clip of him accidentally clipping into this slope without one. I was able to get a level wrap out of it.
In case anyone is interested here's the non level wrap version I made before it was discovered. Yes I am kinda sad this didn’t end up in the final run but at least it’s here for the public. Consider this a little bonus tas :)

Sandopolis 2

This level has been greatly improved with some new tricks and new routing saving 9 seconds in total.
0:00 : I will admit I kinda lucked out with the platform cycles. I had to start the level at a specific frame so that I could use the first moving column to stop myself by fire dashing into it which saved 4-5 frames over braking. Conveniently none of the other columns in the level got in the way either. This meant that I only had to tas the level twice (the first iteration was a testrun) to get the fastest ingame time.
0:08 : With precise horizontal and vertical positioning and speed I’m able to do a diagonal clip through this slide.
0:22 : It turns out Sonic can clip into the ground using this sand block but only if he’s in the exact center pixel.
0:30 : In order to do this loop zip while saving the most amount of frames I can I had to do the spindash that came before it within a 3 horizontal subpixel range.
0:39 : The way this loop clip works is quite simple actually. There’s a pathswapper that’s in line with the top of the loop. Once you swotch the terrain a part of the wall in the loop becomes non-solid. Normally you aren’t suppose to he able to get back down but you can basically do a stair clip by doing a low enough jump and not moving. I actually would’ve done this with the loop I did I zip off of but the pathswapper on that one is 2 way.

Lava Reef 1

Without Tails here I had to improvise, by Improvising the improvisation? In any case I was able to do the previously Tails exclusive stair clip with Sonic though precise positioning and speed along with the insta-shield to regain air control.
I also managed to clip through the collapsing platforms in the beginning of the level and the spindash elevator by abusing this lip in the terrain.
Just like in Launch Base 1 I used ram watch to make sure I got the crusher to load on the first possible frame.

Lava Reef 2

Saved 1 frame with better camera manipulation before the level wrap. I did try to save another after the second transport tube with some movement optimizations but all I ended up doing was getting a few pixels ahead.

Hidden Palace

Nothing special here. Although there is a 1 frame timesave I will mention because it was overlooked in the 2014 tas and nearly overlooked by me for this one. Apparently the vertical position you activate the teleporter from does affect how high it'll bring you up top.
0:16:14/79377 : oh no
0:17:29/79452 : oh no
0:19:01/79544 : oh no
0:20:33/79636 : oh no
0:22:05/79728 : oh no
0:23:37/79820 : oh no
0:25:09/79912 : oh no
0:26:40/80004 : oh no

Sky Sanctuary

0:23 :Just like the moving barrel in Carnival Night 2 the moving bar up ahead is on a proximity based cycle. I take advantage of this to manipulate its position as Sonic needs it to make it onto the ledge up ahead.
0:38 :I was able to considerably improve the landing on this hidden spring by doing a roll jump to bump into the ceiling. I had to initiate the roll with the minimum 268 speed (12+128+128) to spend the least amount of frames braking on the spring.

Death Egg 1

0:06 : Through a precise landing on the slope I was able to instantly zip in the wall.
0:18 : I used the spikes to clip me into the conveyor belt which in turn clipped me into the wall. I avoided getting crushed by panning the camera down to temporarily deload the spikes.
0:28-0:42 : I saved several frames here over the 2014 tas through some small optimizations.
0:46-0:50 : Freaking Redeye. The 1st phase nearly drove me insane. The final version you see in the run didn't take me that long to execute. It was trying to save more frames beyond that which made me want to use a toothbrush made out of Sonic's spines. I even asked Aglar if he could save any frames and he had no luck either.
0:54-0:58 : The 2nd phase was pretty fun though. It wasn't too hard to get a frame perfect kill here.

Death Egg 2

With a bit of experimentation I found a way Sonic can do the level wrap without having to pan the camera.
One thing I wanna point out about the Death Ball real quick. The speed of your spindash does effect how fast the spike balls fly up (down?), so I had to make sure the last one was hit at point blank range with a fully charged spindash to save the most amount of frames.
Right before transitioning to the final bosses I did a second spindash to trigger a glitch where the solidity there gets shifted to the left. I did the smallest possible shift of 32 pixels which is indeed the length of one block. This did waste 2 frames but I more than made up for that by getting a frame perfect kill on the boss.
There were some timesaves with the death egg robot as well. With the 1st phase I found a way to destroy every finger on the second pass. With the 2nd phase I used the same trick from the Tails tas (just executed a bit differently) to get a frame perfect kill.

Potential Improvements

  • Angel Island 2: As I mentioned in the level comments it is possible for Sonic to carry full spindash speed into the last tunnel with the lightning shield, but despite my best efforts I was not able to get a tunnel jump out of it.
  • Sandopolis 2: Theoretically you can save 1 frame after the second fire dash slope clip with better vertical subpixel management. Unfortunately in this run I wasn't able to get the desired results to save said frame.
  • Sky Sanctuary: This actually wouldn't have saved any time in this run because of the 4 frame rule the teleporter has but it could help for future runs. With the spindash-jump from the vertical screen wrap at 0:32 if you have low enough subpixels it's possible to extend the jump by a frame. Normally I would've done this anyways but the managing my vertical subpixels in this level was already pretty difficult.
  • Death Egg 1: There’s potential to save some frames in phase 1. The spikes made this practically impossible to achieve please, no more

Special Thanks to

  • Aglar: For his input on Angel Island 1 and his previous tases.
  • BenInSweden: For that slope clip in Sandopolis 1 that led up to the level wrap.
  • Chrezm: For the fast Sandopolis 1 boss strat. (yes it is the thing that saved the 108 frames feos mentioned with the file replacement)
  • Evil_3D: For finding the stair clips in Carnival Night 2 (originally used for our ring attack tas) and his other tases.
  • DMTM: For the first terrain clip in Marble Garden 1 used immediately after the level wrap.
  • Marzojr: For his guides on the Angel Island 2 bridge cutscene skip and quick death at the start of Hydrocity 2 and his previous tases.
  • WST: For the second loop zip strat in Angel Island 1.
  • Everyone else for their contributions and generally being awesome.

Suggested screenshots


feos: Judging...
feos: Replacing the submission with a file that saves 108 frames in Sandopolis 1. Overall time is the same though.
feos: We've researched the hell out of this movie and the situation it is in. This branch and [2741] Genesis Sonic 3 & Knuckles by Aglar & marzojr in 26:53.06 are the most similar branches of Sonic 3 & Knuckles that exist today. And this game has 8 branches already, if we don't count the S3K hacks. Due to massive similarity I was ready to reject this run, but arkiandruski suggested a brilliant solution: since this movie is faster than Sonic+Tails, in both in-game timer and actual gameplay duration, it counts as an improvement! I verified the times, and everyone agrees with this idea, so I'm finally accepting this run to obsolete [2741] Genesis Sonic 3 & Knuckles by Aglar & marzojr in 26:53.06. Stars and flags will be decided after it gets some ratings.
Stovent: Processing...

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #6655: kaan55's Genesis Sonic 3 & Knuckles "Sonic" in 28:24.76
EZGames69
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Uhhhhhh, Meow? (yes vote)
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
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I love how it’s done, obviously voting Yes to this
S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2 my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)
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Without Tails, you still managed to beat this game with less than 30 minutes. How surprising! Yes vote.
My homepage --Currently not much motived for TASing as before...-- But I'm still working.
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Congratz kaan! Not much to say about it. Best "Genesis Sonic"-TAS ever made!
feos wrote:
Only Aglar can improve this now.
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Agree! Only Aglar can improve this now.
S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2 my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)
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Aglar wrote:
Congratz kaan! Not much to say about it. Best "Genesis Sonic"-TAS ever made!
Thanks man that means a lot :D That goes everyone else too.
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Uhhh... jesus o.o So here's some things I want to bring up after watching this: 1) Hydrocity Act 2, the death at the start to change the level boundary and allow for underflow. That aspect of it I understand completely... but I've never understood how you actually trigger it, and I don't think any of the past TAS submission notes mention it? There's nothing on the Game Resources page for the Sonic games, either. 2) Oh my lord, Ice Cap Zone is just skipped. This is faster than any other published run! The current Sonic & Tails run fights Eggman and opens the capsule. Apply this strategy to a run like that and we could get close to breaking the 26-minute barrier... 3) There were several points where watching the camhack encode made me feel... sick. This is due to the game unloading and reloading the level chunks rapidly, so it was flashing the level and a solid color. Probably should have an epilepsy warning on that video and get a standard encode put up ASAP. Overall, voting yes.
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Techokami wrote:
Uhhh... jesus o.o So here's some things I want to bring up after watching this: 1) Hydrocity Act 2, the death at the start to change the level boundary and allow for underflow. That aspect of it I understand completely... but I've never understood how you actually trigger it, and I don't think any of the past TAS submission notes mention it? There's nothing on the Game Resources page for the Sonic games, either.
Marzojr is the main person who has this documented. He posted it somewhere in the S3K thread but tbh I don't remember where and don't feel like digging it up right now. But I can give you the basic gist of it. 1) You deload the 'walk on water' object. Conveniently the zip I did at 0:25 in act 1 got rid of it. 2) Then you do some object slot manipulation right before the last checkpoint. As I said in the submission text that's what the braking was for. 3) If everything was done correctly the object that's suppose to pan the camera down at the start of act 2 will load in the object slot where the 'walk on water' object was. Once Act 2 loads the game will force the 'walk on water' object to reload in it's original spot, effectively deleting the camera pan object. Since the camera can't go down the death boundary doesn't go down either.
Techokami wrote:
2) Oh my lord, Ice Cap Zone is just skipped. This is faster than any other published run! The current Sonic & Tails run fights Eggman and opens the capsule. Apply this strategy to a run like that and we could get close to breaking the 26-minute barrier...
Well I'm pretty sure there have been more than enough improvements found to get sub 26 in the next Sonic and Tails run.
Techokami wrote:
3) There were several points where watching the camhack encode made me feel... sick. This is due to the game unloading and reloading the level chunks rapidly, so it was flashing the level and a solid color. Probably should have an epilepsy warning on that video and get a standard encode put up ASAP.
Yeah that may not be the worst idea. I myself can't make the encode but I could try to find someone who can. Worst case scenario you'll have to wait until this run gets published.
Techokami wrote:
Overall, voting yes.
Thanks :D
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I like how with every new Sonic TAS that comes out, the levels make less and less sense :) I like the way the two Carnival Night acts are beat here One question I've had for a while is there a reason the Sonic 3 TASes don't reset the game to skip Launch Base 2 or the cutscene at the end of Sky Sanctuary?
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TheWinslinator wrote:
One question I've had for a while is there a reason the Sonic 3 TASes don't reset the game to skip Launch Base 2 or the cutscene at the end of Sky Sanctuary?
Ah I was wondering how long it would take for someone to ask this. The main reason for this is gens has no soft reset input. Also I don't exactly know when but this didn't even become a thing until much later on. Funny enough I still managed to beat the current rta wr in terms of ingame time despite not skipping act 2. I also wanted to include Launch base act 2 anyways as a speed/entertainment tradeoff. I do plan on revisiting this category in the future when the lack of reset issue is resolved and there have been other improvements found as well. EDIT: Thanks Ben
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TheWinslinator wrote:
I like how with every new Sonic TAS that comes out, the levels make less and less sense :) I like the way the two Carnival Night acts are beat here One question I've had for a while is there a reason the Sonic 3 TASes don't reset the game to skip Launch Base 2 or the cutscene at the end of Sky Sanctuary?
It's essentially down to using Gens for the TAS, you cannot TAS soft or hard resets on it, so a TAS needs to be continuous from power on. Switching to BizHawk would allow the TAS to take advantage of those resets, however, Gens is still used mainly because of the tools available for Sonic TASing which you can see in this thread: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8827 Most notably the camhack (allowing you to see what Sonic is doing "off screen"), and the HUD, which gives TASers a lot of information on what is going on currently, e.g. Boss or character iframes remaining, whether control lock is in effect (and for how long), etc. Even if those were ported to BizHawk, Gens still has a bit of an advantage with having the latency compensation feature where you get to instantly see what your inputs are doing rather than having to wait for 3 frames.
kaan55 wrote:
Ah I was wondering how long it would take for someone to ask this. The main reason for this is gens has no soft reset input. Also I don't exactly know when but this didn't even become a thing until much later on.
After S3K runs changed from IGT to RTA-TB (removing time bonuses), Chrezm proposed it as a timesave in 2017: Link to video
Techokami
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In my honest opinion, while using soft resets to skip cutscenes does save time, it would be very annoying to watch. Perhaps it's one of those things that'd be considered a speed/entertainment tradeoff?
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Techokami wrote:
In my honest opinion, while using soft resets to skip cutscenes does save time, it would be very annoying to watch. Perhaps it's one of those things that'd be considered a speed/entertainment tradeoff?
I think it'd be hard to justify it as a speed/entertainment tradeoff, Launch Base alone the TAS takes just over 3 minutes to complete (from the LB1 title card to the MH1 one), in RTA runs this is ~1min 50s. This is possible because the game saves that the zone is completed after the Act 2 countdown has completed, meaning we can do things like this: https://youtu.be/GccTQXjuoNo?t=1102 In Sonic 3 standalone, being able to soft reset also allows for this as well: https://youtu.be/7p8PQEgsptQ?t=646 Without a soft reset, that would be a softlock, and the LB one would be a death and time loss. With the resets at MH->FB and SS->DE included the TAS is taking upwards of 2 minutes longer than regular runs, and is for sections where zero input is necessary.
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I'm surprised that Aglar is not listed as a co-author, seeing how they did one act.
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Zeupar wrote:
I'm surprised that Aglar is not listed as a co-author, seeing how they did one act.
I did actually run this by him. We were pretty much in the same boat on this one. He did at least deserve that special thanks though.
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This run is technically quite impressive, but the problem is that it's a new branch, and we already have quite a few of them: http://tasvideos.org/Movies-127G-RatingE.html I watched most of them side-by-side level-by-level, and I can say that this branch doesn't fully look similar to any of the existing ones, only some parts look close, to some of the existing branches. Yet we can't be expanding this indefinitely. Interestingly, the lowest rated branches are the 100% ones. But while Sonic 100% is "the worst", it's 1) full completion, and also 2) still quite different from this run. From singular branches we have Knuckles and Tails. Both resemble this run in some areas, also I'd theorize that if they are redone now, they will look closer to this movie. However Tails is rated really high, so I'm not sure which we can sacrifice. I do expect any% to look a lot like this run if it's redone too, but what about singular Knuckles and Tails? Which of them will differ from this run more, if all the new tricks are applied?
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feos wrote:
This run is technically quite impressive, but the problem is that it's a new branch, and we already have quite a few of them: http://tasvideos.org/Movies-127G-RatingE.html I watched most of them side-by-side level-by-level, and I can say that this branch doesn't fully look similar to any of the existing ones, only some parts look close, to some of the existing branches. Yet we can't be expanding this indefinitely. Interestingly, the lowest rated branches are the 100% ones. But while Sonic 100% is "the worst", it's 1) full completion, and also 2) still quite different from this run. From singular branches we have Knuckles and Tails. Both resemble this run in some areas, also I'd theorize that if they are redone now, they will look closer to this movie. However Tails is rated really high, so I'm not sure which we can sacrifice. I do expect any% to look a lot like this run if it's redone too, but what about singular Knuckles and Tails? Which of them will differ from this run more, if all the new tricks are applied?
Well I do understand you guys for not wanting too many branches, but here's something to consider about this game. Along with having multiple valid goal choices (any%, NG+, 100%, and ring attacks) it also has multiple characters which are all unique in their own way. Don't get me wrong I'm definitely not saying there should be a branch for every single possible combination. I'm just saying it's reasonable for a game like this to end up with so many branches. As for each of the other any% runs (Sonic+Tails, Tails, and Knuckles). With all the recent stuff that got found I expect all of them to be even more different if they ever get updated. I should know because I actually found a lot of the recent stuff, and I'm betting tons more new stuff will get found in the making of those new runs. If you won't take my word for it I'm even willing to list out the differences. Also, the goal choice for this particular run is in my opinion a bit too, well how should I put it, simplistic to get rejected. It's an any% run Sonic. The only goal I had in mind with this run was to beat the game as fast as possible with Sonic. That's it. Nothing extra or arbitrary. Something that might be reassuring is that this'll probably be the last new run in a new category this game will get for a good while. Could even be the last one altogether. As far as I know nobody is currently planning on making any runs of new categories. The only ones we're doing or going to do for S3&K will be improvements over existing runs. With whatever you decide to do I feel like removing any existing branches should not be one of them. They all got accepted for their own reasons and it just wouldn't feel right or fair to have them removed just to keep the branch count low. I know you'll be fair in your judgement. Even if it's rejection I'll respect your final decision. Just keep in mind that I've spent way too much time on this run to not have it accepted. I think you can see that from the rerecord count which is double of the current Sonic and Tails any% run.
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feos wrote:
This run is technically quite impressive, but the problem is that it's a new branch, and we already have quite a few of them: http://tasvideos.org/Movies-127G-RatingE.html I watched most of them side-by-side level-by-level, and I can say that this branch doesn't fully look similar to any of the existing ones, only some parts look close, to some of the existing branches. Yet we can't be expanding this indefinitely. Interestingly, the lowest rated branches are the 100% ones. But while Sonic 100% is "the worst", it's 1) full completion, and also 2) still quite different from this run. From singular branches we have Knuckles and Tails. Both resemble this run in some areas, also I'd theorize that if they are redone now, they will look closer to this movie. However Tails is rated really high, so I'm not sure which we can sacrifice. I do expect any% to look a lot like this run if it's redone too, but what about singular Knuckles and Tails? Which of them will differ from this run more, if all the new tricks are applied?
One thing to note here (which may not hold any weight), is that this TAS is the closest to the main category that speedrunners use; the Sonic & Tails ones are essentially "2 Player" ones, and the other characters have very few runners, so is probably the most appropriate in terms of viewers (and runners) looking to see how the TAS does things for ideas etc. The main difference is that we can bring Tails along (but his AI can only be manipulated by 1p controls), but many choose not to. Accepted or not, this TAS (and its journey) has been a centrepiece of discussion in the RTA community.
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Is the encode made using tools that recreate what the screen content would be, rather than the actual screen content?
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This was a fun watch. I would vote for publication to its own separate branch, consistent with past precedent surrounding this particular game. While that precedent, itself, may be somewhat at odds with the way TASvideos likes to handle branches in general, I think it may be okay as S3K is one of the main entries in the entire Genesis library, partly because of the sheer amount of content that it has as one game spanning two carts. With three playable characters, four if you count Sonic and Tails together (2P mode), and even more if you consider transformations separately which doesn't seem that unreasonable considering each one has its own unique skillset, spritesheet, and physics... Character selection in S3K affects everything from controls/abilities, routing, cinematics and endings, to unlockables. Sometimes, these differences are actually quite significant. Whereas other times, they're barely noticeable. But they are always still there, technically. But in the end I think feos is a good judge and I trust his judgement either way, I just wanted to deposit my two cents. Congrats Kaan55 on another fine work!
Knuckles does, what Sonican't.
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I do think there needs to be a cap on these branches soon, big genesis game or otherwise it is a lot of branches for one game.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
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I’ll just give some of my thoughts here. It’s a bit of a strange and unfortunate situation for a game like this. One where there’s unique content that can be showcased for each character. Due to this, It makes sense why there would be multiple categories made for this game. But I believe the rule for limiting branches of games unfairly targets games like this. I fully expect some comparisons to be made between this and Super Metroid, where there was an over-saturation of branches for that game. I have to disagree with that comparison because that’s not a game that offers different play styles in the same was as SK3. For one, you only play as one character throughout the game, and branches for that game would be completely community created (besides any% and 100% obviously). Speedrunners can come up with many different branches for games like that to spice things up if any% or 100% becomes stale. Where as for Sonic 3, the branches for speedruns are not community created, with the exception being Ring Attack and NewGame+. The other branches are game modes that each have unique things to each one. They have always been there even before speedrunning became a thing. To me, the limitation of branches makes more sense for Super Metroid than Sonic 3 because Sonic 3 gives you more content to increase replay-ability, where as SM doesn’t exactly do that. I think the rule should really apply to limit the amount of community created branches for each game, not for branches offered by the game. If there’s worry about a game’s number of branches flooding the movie page, then maybe we should be changing the way movies are displayed on that page instead. But that’s a different discussion for another time. Like what others said I also believe feos will make the right decision in the end, I just don’t believe the rule for limiting branches is targeting the right games.
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
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EZGames69 wrote:
I’ll just give some of my thoughts here. It’s a bit of a strange and unfortunate situation for a game like this. One where there’s unique content that can be showcased for each character. Due to this, It makes sense why there would be multiple categories made for this game. But I believe the rule for limiting branches of games unfairly targets games like this. I fully expect some comparisons to be made between this and Super Metroid, where there was an over-saturation of branches for that game. I have to disagree with that comparison because that’s not a game that offers different play styles in the same was as SK3. For one, you only play as one character throughout the game, and branches for that game would be completely community created (besides any% and 100% obviously). Speedrunners can come up with many different branches for games like that to spice things up if any% or 100% becomes stale. Where as for Sonic 3, the branches for speedruns are not community created, with the exception being Ring Attack and NewGame+. The other branches are game modes that each have unique things to each one. They have always been there even before speedrunning became a thing. To me, the limitation of branches makes more sense for Super Metroid than Sonic 3 because Sonic 3 gives you more content to increase replay-ability, where as SM doesn’t exactly do that. I think the rule should really apply to limit the amount of community created branches for each game, not for branches offered by the game. If there’s worry about a game’s number of branches flooding the movie page, then maybe we should be changing the way movies are displayed on that page instead. But that’s a different discussion for another time.
I don't agree with this assessment. The characters are ultimately going through the same levels as each other with the same objectives (aside from the optional 100% or ring attack goals). If a game had 100 different characters with minor differences, we're not accepting 100 different branches. This is NOT a game with separate level sets like doom etc, the content isn't THAT different between characters. Ultimately each character has about 1-3 actually unique abilities to each other. There's also the issue that there's actually only 3 characters, but two of them can be used together in a single playthrough (Sonic+Tails). You can argue that the game presents them as separate options but you could make the same arguments for difficulty and even things like numbers of continues or lives in some games. I am not strictly opposed to another branch being added but the idea that we should accept every option that a game provides is ridiculous.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
EZGames69
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Memory wrote:
If a game had 100 different characters with minor differences, we're not accepting 100 different branches
Define "Minor differences."
Memory wrote:
This is NOT a game with separate level sets like doom etc,
Yes, but the thing about Doom (and Wolf 3D) is there's suggestions to do every episode in once singular movie, That would not go over so well for a game like this. (to use an example, Contra HC "100%": http://tasvideos.org/5656S.html).
Memory wrote:
the content isn't THAT different between characters. Ultimately each character has about 1-3 actually unique abilities to each other.
Small things like that can lead to significant changes in both routing and execution. The lack of tails in Solo Sonic means that Level wraps cant be done in zones like hydro city for example. This gives Solo Sonic a chance to show what the fastest movement in that stage can look like. I dont think the focus should be on what changes were made to the Character, but how those affect the run overall.
Memory wrote:
There's also the issue that there's actually only 3 characters, but two of them can be used together in a single playthrough (Sonic+Tails).
I don't see what the issue is here. Both Sonic Solo and Tails Solo go though each stage differently. Sonic of course used alot of spin dashing, Tails uses a combination of both spin dashing AND flying. Tails is also able to perform level wraps on his own, and doesn't need Sonic to do them. With Sonic + Tails, it's the best of both worlds, while it also introduces very interesting glitches such as the Knuckles intro at the beginning. It's not like Sonic+Tales features all the content you can get from Sonic Solo for example, so I dont think it's that big of an issue here.
Memory wrote:
You can argue that the game presents them as separate options but you could make the same arguments for difficulty and even things like numbers of continues or lives in some games.
I am not arguing that because not every difficulty setting in games change the game-play in significant ways.
Memory wrote:
I am not strictly opposed to another branch being added but the idea that we should accept every option that a game provides is ridiculous.
Then it would be best to look at movies of each branch that the game provides under different rules. The current rules regarding branch limiting should focus on limiting community created branches, while a different set of rules should be made that focus on game provided ones.
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing