Alright then, I guess since I have progressed pretty far, and added another hour and a half to the total time of the movie, here's the next version of the movie:
Test run 1, update 4[/url], up to the beginning of the Ocean Palace. Actual time is 03:40:05 (combined between two movies, due to Snes9X WIP 1's movie limit), with the game time at 03:24. Use WIP 1 to watch this movie.
Two save states are included - slot 0, at the beginning of the End of Time, and slot 1, at the beginning of Magus's Castle (both work on the first movie).
As for notes, besides the usual stuff (needing to optimize movement, needing to optimize battles, avoid healing during battle when unnecessary, etc), there's a lot for this version:
- Magus's Castle was a pain and a half to go through, and took over a half an hour to complete. (Yes, a half hour, for one dungeon.) Slash and Magus himself were the biggest contributors to the length of this dungeon - Slash just seems to take forever to bring down, especially given he has 6000 HP between two forms, and the best you can do is 400 damage X-Strikes, and I had to do an incredible amount of healing and luck manipulation to get Magus down in any decent amount of time and looking halfway decent. I don't really like either battle, as well, but I'm not certain how much more they can be optimized, though..
- There are a few battles in Magus's Castle I didn't avoid as well as I should have, especially the ones going up the first vertical set of ramps with the Rolies rolling down.
- I do spend time fighting unnecessary battles in Magus's Castle to learn Heal with Frog, in the Hunting Range to pick up the necessary trading goods to get three Ruby Vests (along with weapons for Crono and Robo), in the Tyrano Lair to get Cat Attack with Ayla, and on the Mountain of Woe fighting Rubbles to build up Lucca's tech points faster. Magus's Castle and Tyrano Lair can definitely be improved on, though, and I'll need to do much better research on the enemy encounters in both dungeons to help save time.
- The seemingly slow moving dialogue sequences involving Magus prior to battling him, as well as during Crono's dream sequence after defeating him, are autoscrolled by the game and can't be sped up by any means.
- The scene in the main hallway outside the Queen's chambers in Zeal, where you watch Schala walk up to the strange sealed door and unseal it, must be viewed to advance the story - you can't charge the pendant otherwise. The same is true after defeating Giga Gaia - the game won't even let you leave the room until you talk to Melchior to receive the Ruby Knife. (It seems that by Magus's Castle or so, the CT programmers got much better with flag programming, and it's become much more difficult and rare to avoid battles and important events since then).
- I intentionally suicide on the Golem fight on the first trip to Zeal to save time. Speaking of that, now that I know I can take out the Black Tyrano before it has a chance to fire off its' fire breath twice, I should only heal once immediately prior to its' bite to keep the bite target alive, to both save time healing and to allow the Golem to wipe out my characters more quickly.
- The one item I unseal in 1000 AD from the sealed pyramid after getting exiled from Zeal is the Swallow for Crono, his third best (!!) sword in the game, and also raises his Speed quite a bit. It also makes dual techs involving Spincut really powerful, which I abuse over much of the next couple parts of the game.
- While going back through 2300 AD to pick up Epoch, I take the "hard route" through lab 32 by not racing across on the bike. I actually found it to be much faster than spending the minute or so racing on the bike, and might go this way the first time around in 2300 AD and not race on the bike through the whole movie, if I'm able to.
- While rapidly buying stuff in the Earthbound Village shop in 12000 BC, I intended to buy 3 Shelters instead of whatever I did wind up buying at the end of my buying spree (I don't recall which item I did buy), which explains my healing with items instead of a Shelter right before Giga Gaia, and my return trip to the shop after Giga Gaia is defeated to actually buy the shelters that time.
There's probably a few other things that I can't remember off the top of my head.. anyways, if there's any comments about the run between the beginning of Magus's castle and the Ocean Palace, fire away.