Introduction
Knuckles is back, this time he gets through Angel Island up to Sky Sanctuary in under 21 minutes.
I wanted to improve this because my last run missed out multiple faster routes.
Game Objectives
- Aims for fastest in-game time
- Takes damage to save time
- Abuses programming errors and glitches
- Abuses deaths to save time
- Manipulates luck and enemy positions
- Uses soft resets to skip the long Act 2 cutscenes
- Doesn't use the Sonic & Knuckles game skip (like in the new Sonic branch run that saved 6 minutes)
Bizhawk and Soft Resets
The Gens emulator does not have the soft reset feature meaning that I have to complete every zone including the cutscenes, even the long ones. Converting to Bizhawk fixed this issue and saved around 20 seconds of my final Gens run with Knuckles. The run lasted for 20:36.65 and it was cut down to 20:17.57 thanks to the 3 soft resets that were used at the end of Launch Base, Mushroom Hill and Flying Battery. These soft resets are used to skip the long cutscenes which were at least 7+ seconds long. They are implemented at the frames where the time bonus hits 0 so that the run counts the frames with the time bonus counting down.
| Act | New Time | Old Time | Frames Saved |
|---|
| Angel Island 1 | 0:39.55 | 0:40.41 | 46 |
| Hydrocity 1 | 0:25.53 | 0:25.13 | -40 |
| HCZ2 Death | 0:05.21 | 0:07.12 | 111 |
| Hydrocity 2 | 0:31.07 | 0:31.40 | 33 |
| Marble Garden 1 | 0:34.48 | 0:35.18 | 30 |
| Carnival Night 1 | 0:29.13 | 0:29.50 | 37 |
| Ice Cap | 0:38.52 | 0:39.03 | 11 |
| Launch Base 2 | 1:22.06 | 1:27.47 | 341 |
| Mushroom Hill 1 | 0:29.56 | 0:30.12 | 16 |
| Mushroom Hill 2 | 0:35.23 | 0:35.53 | 30 |
| Flying Battery 1 | 0:36.48 | 0:37.53 | 65 |
| Flying Battery 2 | 1:05.49 | 1:06.26 | 37 |
| Sandopolis 2 | 0:48.29 | 0:58.42 | 613 |
| Lava Reef 1 | 0:42.55 | 0:42.51 | -4 |
| Total | 13:06.59 | 13:29.05 | 1326 |
Angel Island
It turns out Knuckles can do the second loop zip and jump higher without hitting the wall in Act 1. Managed to get a sub-40 in the end. Act 2 remains the same.
Hydrocity 1
71 frames saved. 40 were lost from preparing the death in Act 2 by deactivating the walk on water object and this gained 111 frames.
Hydrocity 2
32 frames were saved from a new route I took in the loopback section of Act 2. After climbing the wall I glided to the tube and spindashed my way up before the camera stopped at the horizontal point of the boss. I managed to get the first hit whilst gliding towards the boss and then landed all 7 frame perfect hits.
Marble Garden 1+2
30 frames were saved from getting to the slope quicker. It's still slower than Sonic's run by 1 frame.
Carnival Night 1
Faster route before the level wrap by jumping next to the spikes and spindashing and jumping into them sending Knuckles through the ground.
Ice Cap
Sub-39. I still was not able to get to the end boundary on time.
Launch Base
Still no improvement in Act 1.
Act 2 was the biggest improvement in the Sonic 3 half due to a few strats such as clipping through the slope to get to the tube faster (found by Kaan). On top of that, the boss was improved by a lot as I managed to deliver the first 8 hits and let the Beam Rocket boss go off screen and appear on the left side and delivered the last hit.
Mushroom Hill 1
16 frames saved from an improved level wrap and a faster boss. Also managed to get a sub-30:xx time as well.
Mushroom Hill 2
Improved zip to the giant ring room.
Flying Battery 1
If you compare this to the 2017 run, I basically saved 44 frames from the new boss method and another 23 frames for the new level wrap route found by Kaan55. How this works is that Knuckles has to be sent at least at a speed faster than 16 pixels (4096 subpixels) to the left for the level wrap to work and the horizontal position in the last frame before the wrap must be 16(pixel):1(subpixel) or further to the right. In this run, the last position before the wrap was 16(p):13(sp) while the speed was 4144 subpixels/frame which allowed the level wrap to happen. I tried the same thing with Sonic and Tails but no luck for them although to be fair each character now has their own way to level wrap to the end due to new strats that have been found.
Flying Battery 2
Managed to improve the vertical zip to the top of the boundary but still slower than Sonic by 6 frames.
Sandopolis 2
Kaan55 completed this level saving 599 frames from my improved time of 0:58.28. This time save came from several new routes such as gliding through the barrel leading into a zip at the start, clipping through slopes and a boss route similar to the Sonic any% run except a bit slower.
Lava Reef
I had to redo this zone multiple times because the level kept desyncing at the end of the Act 1 boss. 4 frames were lost because I positioned the boss at the same place as the fire monitor's position.
Conclusion
- In-game time: 13:06.59 (1327 frames saved)
- Old in-game time: 13:29.05
Special thanks goes to:
- Evil_3D: For his Knuckles any% and 100% runs
- Kaan55: He found multiple improvements in some of the levels, the only level he actually completed in this run was Sandopolis 2
- BenInSweden: Saved a further 19 seconds on this run from converting to BizHawk and adding soft resets to skip the cutscenes
- Everyone else for their contributions and support
ViGadeomes: Setting to delayed by resquest from the author while a few levels are in the work.
