Objective: Defeat Master Hand the Creator as fast as possible to prove that we are ballin'.
Unlike Ball Revamped 2, this game has ONE instance of actual tech, a wrong warp on Level 34 courtesy of xXBlueSheepXx in the linked YouTube comment. Besides that however, there are actually less tricky shortcuts than in Ball Revamped 2, primarily because the hitboxes are a lot tighter and the levels more cleanly designed, and the movement in general is slower partly due to this game running at 40FPS compared to Ball Revamped 2 running at 49FPS. Additionally, the time advantage here is lower than in Ball Revamped 2 due to 4 being a game that people actually speedrun (combined with the aforementioned comparative lack of TAS tricks), with this time being only 84 seconds better than the human WR compared to 100+ seconds better for Ball Revamped 2.
Recording Info: I'm using the swf file from Flashpoint Archive (SHA256: 386AF3B8210D68ADA84E3B0FAC9ED3EE6122EA4A366A87C0E0CB40293EF8715A), and I actually remembered to enable --no-gui this time. Other than that, nothing to note.
Awesome game! Though I was only able to reach level 35 in real time, it has great TAS potential due to 4-way acceleration and lots of maneuvering.
So I tested it myself and on the first 3k frames I saved 433 frames, which cost me about 2 hours. I didn't try tweaking the prior movement after reaching level end for the first time, so those should be improvable further.
The main advice is, you need to be more deliberate with your inputs. Since holding a direction increases your speed, you want to hold directions as long as possible before you need to change them.
Another thing is similar to how racing cars use to move in real life. If you need to move around a corner, you could reach it ASAP and only slow down to avoid hitting a wall after it, but instead you can slow down sooner and start accelerating sooner on a straighter travel line.
I made a comparison video too:
Link to video
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Fair enough; I was still learning libTAS when I made this and Ball 2, so I was kind of sloppy just in general. I'll definitely go back and improve this and the Ball 2 recording, so feel free to set this to Delayed.
Since it looks like redoing the whole run, rather than patching a few places, it would be better to cancel and submit the new version when it's done.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
