Two and a half months go by and nobody has posted but me. But with a good reason, I guess: the run was done and there wasn't much less to talk about. However, in this period I have been working on and off optimizing the route and gameplay and will once again be presenting regular, level-by-level WIPS starting with
Clowney Island.
I put quite a bit of detail into the
Youtube video's description, so I'll paste it here:
A few notes detailing the changes thus far.
-3 frames were saved in the beginning of the game due to the fact that pressing A on the first possible frame when loading will cause you to jump in midair. This allows me to move closer to the ticket. Jumping for one frame from a stop also saves a frame or more on certain occasions (for example, moving in the opposite direction that you are facing.) This is used quite often.
-A box jump is used to reach the top of the midway, which is quite a bit faster than taking the normal handles route.
-The Chick-Tac-Toe segment was the first bit of serious luck manipulation, which was made exponentially harder by making three things happening at once necessary while getting the fastest throws from the chicken. At once, I needed to 1) have the chicken make a move, 2) hit the chicken with a ball) and 3) make my move with a separate ball. With a one-frame window to complete all three of these actions, this small segment received a large amount of attention, and as a result, a large amount of rerecords. The resulting pattern also resembles the ":|" face, which my friend uses quite often and I originally wanted to manipulate the pattern as a shoutout to him. I found that this pattern was actually the fastest after the fact, so I guess it was for the best after all.
-Screws 2 and 3 were handled simultaneously instead of separately and I took a slightly different route to insert screw 4 that saved about 100 frames.
-Using the garbage can, I was able to gain the slight boost I needed to obtain the second coaster ticket during the cutscene. This ticket was also made slightly faster due to an oddity during coaster construction causing it to build at 4 times normal speed. Unfortunately, even with frame advance I overshot one of the targets, so I had to cut the speed off halfway through. Also, I used one less high track in favor of a much faster low track compared to the testrun, a rather embarrassing oversight.
-I take an extra frame getting the floating box ticket in order to set up a save/quit. Rather than collecting the health upgrade now, I forgo it until the rings challenge, allowing me to skip the text and celebration cutscene, saving about 100 frames. Using this technique, it is faster to collect the two gold tokens during the race.
-A save/quit brings me to Slam, where I use a camera angle change at Tinker. Jumping doesn't save or lose time, so I opted not to do it this time.
-I did a lot of testing at the beginning of the rings challenge to see whether minimal or maximum turning would be fastest. They turned out to take the same time because of the awkward angle minimal turning gave, so I kept maximum turning as it, to me, looked cooler.
-Collecting the health upgrade with the Dune Dog looks slow, but it is indeed faster. Any more acceleration would put me too far out to grab the health upgrade, so I had to slow down for the turn.
-I usually try to stay objective as much as possible in these comments, but the improved launch up to the boardwalk to start the race is 14 different kinds of awesome, in my opinion of course.
-I take a small shortcut during the race through the original hiding place of the Dune Dog. the handling here is awkward as the small hills can horribly disrupt your turning and I need to take care not to stray too far away, canceling the race.
-At the last garbage can before the machine, I can get a larger boost from the slam, but the angle required is so bad that this smaller boost works out a bit better.
-The dinosaur is the first major platforming area of the run, but it doesn't really matter how fast I am at all until the very top at the barrels. The elevator platform and moving handles can not be done faster than my original run, aside from the slightly different strategy that I employed on the handles, so I do a bit of freerunning. At the top, my barrel setup is better because despite the backwards boost, I get less unnecessary height and am able to return to the platform much faster. A few hops, a slide, and a save/quit are all it takes to wrap up the much-improved Clowney Island.
-I forgo the floating platform tokens in the overworld area, opting to take them during the next trip. This is one of several overworld route changes I will take between the first three stages that I expect to save, in total, 10-15 seconds.