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I made some small improvements to the run:
At around 24:20 instead of getting hit by this Tektite I get hit by the one on the next screen. It's still kind of bad but it's less bad than previously.
By far the biggest mistake in the original submission is that when I grabbed the Roosters at 30:30 and 32:16 I grabbed them as early as possible, which lead to them slowly floating back to their original position. It's obviously faster to grab them right where they're at. Thanks to Stewmath for pointing this out to me.
The dragon phase of the Onox fight is slightly improved by mixing in some normal slashes instead of only doing spin attacks.
Here's the new movie file, 111 frames faster: User movie #638418006339760469
Another small fix: At 28:53 I inexplicably dropped the bomb in order to reapply Pegasus Seeds instead of just reapplying them after I throw the Bomb.
User movie #638423637812778798
I also want to say that if it was up to me, I would create an All Dungeons branch for the old TAS since this one skips 5.5 of the dungeons.
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
I'm having troubles playing back this movie, I can only play it in TAStudio. Is this an emulator issue?
That's my bad actually. Changing the second line in the input log to
LogKey:#Input Cycle|#P1 Up|P1 Down|P1 Left|P1 Right|P1 Start|P1 Select|P1 B|P1 A|P1 Power|
should fix it. I did the beginning of the TAS in GBHawk and then copied over the inputs but must have forgotten to change that line. Somehow this never caused any problems for me, which is why I didn't catch it until now. Sorry about that.
Also I think the original cycle count was correct but that's probably just a side effect of the weirdness that was going on here.
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Link to video
Input file: User movie #43199972659729812
So, I was looking into ways to improve the current TAS. The idea of using the Whimsical Ring has been around for some time but now that we don't need the Expert's Ring anymore it is actually viable.
The Whimsical Ring gives us a 1:256 chance of doing 12 points of damage with a single sword slash, so it speeds up combat a lot. However, it takes a considerable amount of time to buy and appraise it. After a lot of testing I concluded that, all things considered, it will save time but it's probably gonna be less than 10 seconds over the course of the run.
The main way TASes have manipulated luck so far was by doing extra sword slashes during downtime. However, this only advances the RNG a couple of ticks and since the Whimsical Ring has such a low chance of activating, this method will usually not do the trick. Fortunately, Keese call the RNG every other frame, so by killing one of them we can change the RNG a lot. This requires a great deal of planning though because you will sometimes have to make a decision on whether to kill a Keese 20 minutes before you need the Whimsical Ring to trigger.
Another interesting thing to note is that when the Whimsical Ring is equipped, the RNG will advance twice for every sword slash (once to determine the sound effect that plays and once to check if the Whimsical Ring activates). This means that we can advance the RNG more quickly but changing the parity of the current tick can sometimes be difficult.
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Drenn wrote:
Since getting the pegasus seeds I've been more conscious of this, since subpixels affect all movement, you can actually overshoot the pixel you want sometimes.
Yeah, it can even happen without Pegasus Seeds, where you don't want your x-subpixel value to be as large as possible even though you have to walk diagonally to the right because afterwards you have to walk diagonally to the left. It can be really finicky.
Another thing to note is that in situations like in the intro when you walk to the guy on the very right, where you have to walk diagonally up-right and then up-left you can walk up-right until the x-subpixel value is really small.
Also, when you go over stairs, the subpixel values should allow you to move on the first frame on the stairs. So if you walk downwards the y-subpixel value should be >127.
I've been doing corner boosts by walking directly into NPC's at the corner, it moves me 1 unit in both directions without affecting subpixels. I think I got a "double" boost on one of the workers that was moving towards me. Is it better to walk diagonally into them?
You can walk diagonally into them and you will move as you normally would if you move diagonally plus one pixel in one direction. Sometimes this is not possible though depending on (again) the subpixels. Let's say you are below an NPC and your y-subpixels are >180. Then you can't walk diagonally up so you can't get the boost that way (but you can get it with the other method). So you should try to get the diagonal boost whenever you would normally walk diagonally.
On the worker you got a corner boost on the first frame and on the second frame you were moving up while he pushed you to the right.
In the beginning I wasn't quite warmed up to the idea of damage boosts, I guess. By the time I thought of doing that for the crow, I would have had to rework the RNG at the start of the dungeon to make it work :(
Hm. If you do one less swordslash beforehand and then kill the crow with the sword while also cutting one tile of grass, the RNG should (hopefully) sync again.
I wasn't really interested in killing that like-like, but it did allow me to get that dance pattern, which was worth it. It was tricky because I had to manipulate the dance right after manipulating the like-like...
Ok then. I know how hard that manipulation is.
I somehow hadn't thought of killing the shrouded stalfos with a bomb. But, they don't count as kills if they fall into the holes. It doesn't seem realistic to get all 3.
You have a lot of time to luck manipulate after the miniboss is done so I guess it can be done. Not that I'd ever tried it. And you also have to manipulate the Big Blue Rupee drop for later.
Quote:
In D1 when you push that thing that changes colours it moves faster when you are at the middle of it when you start pushing.
When a key drops from the ceiling I believe it spawns relative to the camera position so it drops faster when the camera is lower on the screen. I don't think you had enough time to do it here with the manipulation you got. Just a thing to keep in mind for the future.
After the miniboss you can kill the 3rd Stalfos with an Ember Seed while slashing the sword. That's faster and you also get a 5 rupee drop.
The boss fight is slower than in this WIP: User movie #12996165641066198
Hmm. I believe I lost a few frames because of the direction he moved in, but I noticed that you did 2 slashes and a spin attack, while I did slash spin-attack slash. I'm not sure if that matters, I didn't experiment with that.
If you walk further up you can hit him earlier with an upwards slash but then you have to wait 3 frames until you can slash again so in that case it's faster to do the spin attack last. You lost quite a bit of time on the second phase though. I also had to delay some frames on the reset to make him walk up but I'm pretty sure it's worth it in the end.
Some more things about your WIP:
I'm not sure if setting the textspeed to 4 in the beginning was a good idea. I tested it and you lost 1 frame during the intro which is how much you save by setting it to 5 later. It also caused 2 more lag frames although that might have been due to something else.
On the screen where Nayru is you press left and A for one frame before walking to the right.
The picture that shows Nayru and Link can only be cancelled by pressing A, so turboing A and B lost 1 frame.
Sometimes when you are clipped into an object, you want to "unclip" because it puts you closer to where you want to go next, for example when you open the chest that holds the key in Maku Road.
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Nice job implementing the subpixel manipulation. In some places you can also move diagonally into a wall to save time later on, like after unequipping the shovel or when you regain control when you search for the fairies. Right after that there's a part where you have to change back and forth between two screens. In that case you can make it so on every screen you move diagonally for only 3 frames and move one pixel vertically every frame.
You can get corner boosts when moving diagonally into NPCs. I don't know if you knew that, some of the boosts look a bit odd but not sure if it lost time.
As Tompa said, damage boosts are always nice especially while you're killing stuff. Not getting a damage boost off the guay the first time looks a bit ugly. He was going the wrong way for that but I guess you could have manipulated him into moving down?
35 kills is almost too many. In D2 you have to kill 3 enemies, you're pretty much guaranteed to kill 3 Stalfos with one bomb and there's a lot of Keese and Ropes along the way. So maybe you could cut out some slower kills like the Like-Like. Although I guess that helped manipulating the Goron Dancing since the pattern you got was indeed really nice.
In Maku Road you shouldn't have moved diagonally before pushing the last block.
In D1 when you push that thing that changes colours it moves faster when you are at the middle of it when you start pushing.
When a key drops from the ceiling I believe it spawns relative to the camera position so it drops faster when the camera is lower on the screen. I don't think you had enough time to do it here with the manipulation you got. Just a thing to keep in mind for the future.
After the miniboss you can kill the 3rd Stalfos with an Ember Seed while slashing the sword. That's faster and you also get a 5 rupee drop.
The boss fight is slower than in this WIP: User movie #12996165641066198
You can pick up the Essence a little faster by walking on the side and moving towards the middle when you're close to it. That way it reaches you faster in the cutscene. It is really weird that you can only pick it up every 4th frame in this emulator version. Might have something to do with the new frame timing.
After getting the Pegasus Seeds it's faster to go down rather than right.
Anyway, while we're at it, I've done some routing for the rest of the game:
In order for the Whimsical Ring to be worth it, it would have to save more than 1000 frames from D4 onwards. I'm not sure if that is possible. Here's an example for the boss fight in D6: User movie #16540268996119658
The jump before Cheval's grave can be made without a bomb boost with really good subpixels.
Visiting the Ember Seed tree before or after Rafton costs only 150 frames so it's worth it for the later warp.
In the Tokey shop getting the Power Bracelet first saves an equip which should be more than the feather saves in the meantime.
There's a different route for D3 that theonly0 came up with: After destroying the second crystal you get the key where you have to kill the two Moldorms. Then you enter the Miniboss fight from the wrong side. After that you step in the warp, get the Seed Shooter and destroy the remaining crystals. Then you deathwarp, get the Bosskey and finish the dungeon. According to my timing this was 132 frames faster than the RTA route.
In D6 the key on the right side is faster to get because you can just savewarp (or deathwarp) instead of having to backtrack.
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DecafGrub47393 wrote:
44. 3 Mystery Seeds from the Tree in Rolling Ridge
That's not necessary because the Seed Satchel that you get on Crescent Island always has Mystery Seeds in it.
Drenn wrote:
That's pretty much what my test run did, correct? Aside from the whimsical ring. It's not likely to be worth it. We'd have to bump into maple, and add a second trip to the ring shop, just so we can... 3 cycle the d2 miniboss? idk what else you'd use it for.
Edit: technically I guess we could buy it from the advance shop. It could save time with the d6 bosses, which would require a separate trip than if it were used in dungeon 2. Still not sure if it's worth it.
You can 3-cycle the D2 miniboss without using a ring by using a bomb on the last cycle. Using the Whimsical Ring you can 1-cycle him by getting two crits in a row. So if you don't lose too much time luck manipulating, you should about break even. However, it's really hard to guess how much time it would save on the later bosses because it all depends on how many crits you can get.
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This looks really good for a first attempt. However, there's some minor issues. Triggering the custcene where Impa examines the stone from below like it is done here is 6 frames faster than your method.
You can also manipulate your subpixels to save a few frames here and there. For example, when you push the stone, you can hold up for a little longer, which gives you a better subpixel state for walking up.
There's also corner-boosting where you can move into an NPC at a specific pixel and you get pushed one pixel to the side. You do this at some places but not everywhere you could.
Now this is obviously really minor stuff so it is up to you if you want to go through the tedious work to get this run super-optimised but if you want to, you can compare parts of your run with my WIP to see where you lose frames. I think the only outright mistake in it (apart from the routing) is when I walk back to the stairs after getting the Graveyard Key. I only tried falling into the right hole but taking the left one makes the camera move less so that's pretty smart.
About the enemy kills: From what I remember it is possible to get 6 kills on the Miniboss without losing any time and 9 by losing ~20 frames. You really shouldn't have to farm more than that if you concentrate on killing a lot of enemies along the way (like the crow just before D1).
About the rupees: I'd say you need two more big blue rupees after the first one. You should be able to get one while retrieving Ricky's gloves. Now if I were you, I'd skip the second one you got and instead get one at the time portal just before D3. There's no guarantee that you'll get one there but I think you should be able to juggle soft and hard resets on Crescent Island to make it work.
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About the route:
If you play in GBA mode, you can buy a Gasha Seed from the Advance Shop, which would be faster than getting the one in D1. It also means that you can plant both Seeds before entering D1 so there's a good chance you don't have to farm kills later on.
After getting the Gasha Nut at the farmer's spot you can do another Toilet warp, savewarp and hold up while respawning, which gets you to Yoll Graveyard faster.
Savewarping after rescuing Nayru is probably faster than using the harp.
There's quite a long cutscene after you defeat Veran that also counts towards the final time so it would be nice if you could call the credits directly. Although I have no idea if that's possible at all and how long it would take.
I've uploaded scripts that help determine drops to my userfiles. You should use the ones labeled "(slash)" when you use a swordslash to kill an enemy, and the other ones in any other instance. Hopefully they'll make luck manipulation a bit more enjoyable.
Another thing that is going to become important is health management since you don't need to carry a potion around anymore and deathwarps are faster than savewarps on the English version.
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Also you can get the red ring while you're at it, for a quicker final battle.
Can you get any ring you want? Because in that case the Dbl. Edged Ring would be a lot faster. (The Whimsical Ring could be even faster than that but the luck manipulation is really difficult.)
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If the majority of people wants to see a linked game TAS, it could easily be changed right now since the run needs to be redone from scratch anyway.
In a linked game TAS we wouldn't bother with the Gasha Trees and just get the rings we need from the Ring Secret.
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I edited the old WIP to fit with the new route:
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/12996165641066198
It would be about three seconds faster to get the second Gasha Seed from the Advance Shop but running the game in GBA mode caused additional lag frames on some screen transitions and cutscenes, so I decided to not make use of it.
Edit: Turns out it's faster to get the second Seed on your first trip to the past and plant that one in Yoll Graveyard; this needs to be redone.
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Memory addresses are 0000D00C for x-subpixels and 0000D00A for y-subpixels (right next to the pixel addresses). 1 pixel is 256 subpixels and Link moves at exactly 1 pixel when walking straight and 181 subpixels when walking diagonally. In grass it's 192sp straigh and 135sp diagonally and on stairs 128sp straight and 90sp diagonally. When using Pegasus Seeds, he moves at 1p 128sp straight and 1p 15sp diagonally; in grass 1p 32sp straight and 203sp diagonally; on stairs 192 sp straight and 135 diagonally.
Your route is exactly what I had in mind. However, you have to decide which Seed Satchel upgrades you want to get because both are kinda out of the way in the new route (Tingle won't give you his this time the first time you visit him because you only have 2 kinds of seeds at that point). So you could talk to the deku scrub in Fairy Forest after you get the feather and/or talk to Tingle after D3 or you skip both and trust in your luck manipulation skills :)
If you do talk to the deku scrub, visiting the screen the Mystery Seed tree is on might be a good idea for a later Gale Seed warp. If you do not do that, you would do the warp to Zora King right after the Tune of Ages, then warp back to Lynna Village after the library (in any route the purpose of this is to save a time warp; it means a small detour to the Gale Seed tree though, as well as a worse switch hook in D8). Then you would complete D2, then D8 and then return to Zora King.
If you do not talk to the deku scrub, then you might want to skip the L2-Sword, too; in that case, I'm not sure if doing D5 before D4 would be a good idea because if you do not have to go to Lynna City anyway, it is faster to go from D5 to D6 using the Text Warp from Ruined Keep.
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Thanks. I actually improved the movement after the miniboss. And I have only looked into Ages for now, not Seasons, sorry.
EDIT: I did some testing with the cutscene mode and found out that you can enter the maze before dungeon 8 from the left. You'll be stuck in the wall but you can switch hook a darknut and play the harp to end the cutscene mode. The only problem with this it that you need to have the switch hook and harp equipped, so you can't use pegasus seeds.
If you dive, you can reach a glitched area under the maze area from which you can enter a room at Symmetry Village and one at Rolling Ridge but you're stuck in a wall in both cases.
Also, it seems that the cutscene where Ralph talks about the secret doorway deletes all the other cutscenes on that screen, so the glitch can still be in the run :)
I also noticed that you can sometimes save some frames by moving diagonally into walls for one or two frames because of how the game handles subpixels.
Here is how you would normally do it:
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1216414145/1frame-slower.vbm
And here I move into the walls at frames 30 and 200:
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/124153027/1frame-faster.vbm
You can also do it this way to get even better subpixels but it still saves just one frame:
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/983727147/also-1frame-faster.vbm
Of course, if you really wanted to optimize that for the whole run, it would be a hassle...
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OK, I also tried to get grabbed by the the Like-Like, but couldn't get it (I guess I'm just stupid :( ). Skipping the bomb cutscene is pretty fast then. I also didn't think that you get the Mystery Seeds at Crescent Island (I mean why don't they take away your Pegasus Seeds then? I won't complain at least (: ) That also means that there are two cutscenes taking place at the same screen (that one and the one where Ralph talks useless stuff about not taking the front door) so I don't know what happens. If you would still have to watch the cutscene that would be kind of sad because that glitch would be very slow then but it's a pretty cool glitch :(
I have not thought about the other Maple location. Yours looks faster to me.
I was also trying to get that key skip with the damage boost but couldn't get it either (again stupid me). Forget about that stupid Peace Ring. It's also good that we don't have to time every fight in the game now to see if it's faster :)
And that bossfight... I don't even know which one you're talking about =) I actually didn't care about fights in that route.
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Hi, I made a route for the game since I've found a few glitches recently and I do'nt know if they are already known.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1856296240/OoALinkedTASroute.vbm
Some explanations:
I equip the Peace Ring because it enables a keyskip in dungeon 5 that saves about 40-50 seconds but it means that you will have slower fights up until that point and you'll also have to change the ring again. It might still be faster though. You can also do this keyskip with bombchus or the boomerang but getting either of these takes forever.
After I get the mystery seeds, I walk back to Ambi's palace and trigger the cutscene where I get bombs but do not trigger the one that takes me to the palace. So when I trigger that cutscene later on, the game puts me into some kind of cutscene mode (because it expects the other cutscene to happen right away). This allows me to get over whirlpools, which is useful to get to dungeon 8. However, while you are in this cutscene mode, the path to dungeon 8 doesn't open when you push the armos statue so you have to end the cutscene mode. This is done by exiting the raft. Going ashore after swimming doesn't have the same effect so you'd have to play the harp. The game would put you back to the past immediately and end the cutscene mode.
I found out that when you're stuck in a bush (for example after doing the textwarp glitch) and savewarp, the game respawns you at another position on that screen. Where exactly you respawn seems to be stored in the addresses 0000C638 and 0000C639 (the first one is the y-, the second one the x-value). AFAIK, following things change the value of these addresses:
1) a room transition on a cart
2) a room transition on an animal companion or the first entry of a screen that has an animal companion on it or calling your animal companion with the flute
3) a room transition on the raft or the first entry of a screen that has the raft on it
So when I hop into the cart at frame 89000 or play the flute at frame 336000, that is to change these values and make sure I end up where I want to and not stuck in a wall.
I think the screen where I meet Maple is the best one you can do it because you can push the seedling while waiting for her and play the harp immediately after you grab the potion. However, you have to make sure that you have exactly 29 monsters killed after her last appearance (the number is stored in 0000C641), then dig up an enemy and kill it to make her appear. An alternative would be getting the potion from a gasha nut.
Note that in this route you can get all 8 Essences without rescuing Nayru. However, the Maku Tree doesn't want to give you the Maku Seed before you rescue her :(
Also note that you can't skip Ricky because it causes a softlock when you talk to Tingle the first time without Ricky on the screen.
And when I enter the Maku Tree at frame 313000 just to do nothing, you should of course get the L2-Sword and the seed satchel upgrade. I just did not know the passwords.
I hope this is helpful and not too confusing...
And I watched your WIP, Tompa (which looks awesome btw), and somehow saved one frame after the miniboss fight due to messing around with the subpixels (this could probably still be optimized). Also, when picking the file after savewarping, it's one frame faster to select the file with A and confirm the text speed with Start (or vice versa) instead of using A or Start twice.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/188605434/2-frames-saved.vbm