Just saying in advance, your movie is not as optimized as ought to be for TASvideos. The beginning has some parts that can be done faster... I'll try making a test movie of my own for comparison, ok?
According to the game's memory, it is equally fast to jump or walk. But each time you land you lose subpixels, so it is in fact recommended to jump as little as possible!
Apparently the character does not accelerate at all when starting walking - his speed is instantly the max speed. I always thought otherwise, but I guess it was the delayed camera that gave the wrong impression.
EDIT:
The memory addresses of this game seem to be pretty dynamic. For example, the character's location address changes whenever you switch area. Inconvenient.
Damage abuse grants you faster than normal walking speed as long as you fly through the air, but when landing there is one frame of no movement at all. It's still worth it, though.
Here's a
test run I made, goes up to the fade-out at the end of the first training section.
It's 542 frames faster at that point.
Some comments follow:
- any cinematics should be skipped at the first possible frame.
- boss should be damaged as quickly as possible. I take advantage of the flying kick that allows me to move while attacking and the fact that as the boss changes mode at 4 damage he has one shorter invulnerability period.
- more precise jumps. Also, water slows you down, so you definitely shouldn't land in there more times than what is absolutely necessary.
- more damage abuse, it is always worth it in this level.
EDIT 2:
Okay, I guess landing in water isn't that bad if you jump out the first possible frame. It actually costs you less sub-pixels to land in water this way than landing on ground.
If you don't jump out of water the first possible frame, your speed will come to a halt and you slowly accelerate back to the max speed.
I'm gonna continue the test TAS a little bit further, to play around with the tobogganing mechanics.
EDIT 3:
Sliding on ground while in Toboggan mode can make your speed decelerate. This can be avoided by jumping, for example.
Here's the
test run up to the end of Tobogganing course.
It's 816 frames faster now.
Some comments follow:
- going to the next course, it's faster to drop through the floor than walk around it.
- I minimize jumps using the strange technique above water.
- I avoid losing speed by using turbo T. mode up the ice hill. Jumping is almost as fast, though, just some sub-pixels slower.
- I preserve momentum through the tunnel by being in the transition animation. Jumping also prevents you from losing any speed.
- note how I switch back from T. mode without losing any speed.
- there's a technique to fall down quicker by repeatedly going in T. mode and out of it. At least in this instance it saves time.
- at the T. course, I slide down the hill to gain max. speed as soon as possible (seems to be 1159). Then I just avoid sliding uphill or doing anything else that would lower the speed.
An encode of the test TAS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJFwaou9_bg