Welcome (back) to Jurassic Park (for the Sega CD)! This time, we're gonna need a bigger boat. Wait, not that. This time, we're gonna collect eggs slightly faster (and safer!), improving upon Induviel's
previous TAS to save 16.7 seconds.
Objectives
- Emulator used: Bizhawk 2.11
- BIOS used: Sega CD Model 1 US (v1.01)
- Beats the game as fast as possible (any%)
Route improvements
This new route is merely a reordering of actions from the previous. Since travelling between scenes takes a significant amount of time (at least 6 seconds; occasionally more than 10 seconds), this was the most obvious target for improvement. Cutting out just 2 transitions accounts for most of the time saved, although the route differences are a bit more intricate than that.
As the previous TAS was based mainly on RetroBrando's
realtime WR run, this reroute is presented as a potential improvement. There's nothing in particular that would dissuade a realtime runner from picking up this route. Also, by my estimations, this is a much safer egg route (for both galli & dilo eggs, specifically).
Frames saved & lost
Due to core timing changes moving from Bizhawk 2.9.1 to 2.11, most of the inputs were redone from scratch. A standard resync would have been a bit too laborious, given the circumstances, so the previous TAS was used mainly as a benchmark. This was taken as an opportunity to further optimize inputs and explore alternative approaches.
Note, the core timing changes incidentally increased load times & lag frames. While it would be quite tedious to account for all the frames lost (since transitions tend to vary), my rough estimate is around 400 frames lost in total (+6.6 seconds). This is accepted as a business expense, given that the overall gains more than make up for it.
Aside from those core-related losses and the gains accrued by eliminating a couple transitions, other saves/losses (approximated) include:
- -10 frames from a more optimal locker code. Note: RNG manip was not needed. The code here is one the fastest (of 4) and unlikely to be improved unless another (undocumented?) locker code is found to be significantly faster.
- +8 at triceratops nest. This loss is due to using the stunner instead of the tranquilizer (which is acquired later in this route).
- -20 frames in the 1st boat fuelling scene. Turns out it's faster going left due to less scroll.
- -9 frames in the raptor well, presumably from RNP manip, which was not required here.
- -5 frames on T-Rex gate optimizations (nothing specific, probably less lag).
- -95 frames on the T-Rex sewer guard. This skip is executed by shooting the dilo on the 1st frame it appears, causing its death animation to not load correctly. This may be a little finicky in some cases due to frame jitter, but should always be possible by altering the approach.
- -5 frames on control room computer from optimizing inputs. Not sure if this was for RNG manip or just slack.
- +43 frames from gallies blocking the path to the chopper. They are repositioned there after I stole their eggs (due to the reroute) and thus need to be taken down.
- -108 frames in the optimized chopper shootout. There is a minimal amount of RNG manip done leading up to this to set the enemy patterns, which really only amounts to a couple frames of delay.
- Omitted some marginal RNG manip delays, since there's no significant net frame difference from the previous TAS.
(Subtotal: -200 frames)
So, by these estimates:
- Core losses: +400 frames
- Optimizations/adjustments: -200 frames
- Routing: -1200 frames
which adds up to -1000, the approximate number of frames saved in total (actual count: -1003).
Acknowledgements / Prior work
Even though much of the TAS had to be redrawn due to the aforementioned core differences, credit to Induviel for setting the baseline. The inputs for a few scenes were lifted directly from the previous TAS in order to maintain the previous optimizations.
Also, as runner of the original route, RetroBrando deserves a shoutout. This is ultimately only a slight reworking of an already tight route.
Memory: Been a hot minute since I've done this but claiming for judging.
Memory: As far as I can tell, everything looks clean and it synced.
The music for this game is absolutely all over the place it's a bizarre experience.
