So I started up a new TAS after a dilemma in the speedrunning route between going for a 38 or 39 cycle strategy. They both have upsides and downsides. I'm only a spectator of sYn_stream on Twitch so I don't actually speedrun the game, and my understanding of the sim sections was lousy so I wanted to TAS it to understand it.
I ended up spending 40-70 hours on the first action segment though. Much of it was spent simply learning the ropes and seeing if I can further understand the AI by inspecting the RAM. I kinda wanted to get it over with, but there were many obvious time saves to me despite the 400iq needed just to fucking jump around thanks to the fact that every jumpboost you do has an effect on your jumpboost windows for every single jumpboost thereafter, causing immense amounts of permutations and making certain maneuvers possible or impossible.
I'm doing this on bizhawk/bsnes. It has much longer loading times than the Snes9x 1.51 TAS, probably due to emulation accuracy. I lose 41 frames before level 1 even begins, however the action segments suffer no differences so far.
Here are my current time saves on Fillmore Act 1.
video: https://youtu.be/MVlSyWPyC2g
-2 frames
On the very 2nd jump, I fit in a full 4pixel jumpboost
-2 frames
On the enemy immediately following the above jump, I damage boost him as opposed to jumping over, because there isn't enough space to do a 4pixel jumpboost.
An ordinary unboosted jump will cost you 4 frames of crouching idle upon landing. A 4pixel jumpboost will push you forward the equivalent of 2 frames of running, thus halving the cost of jumping, down to 2 frames.
A damage boost will cause 2 frames of idling during the animation, thus it is equal to a 4pixel jumpboost.
-9 frames
I precisely damage boost the gorilla to be launched onto the branch. There's only a two-frame window to execute this, but it's a major frame save, as opposed to the slow jump over his head from the 2011 TAS
-x frames
Due to oddities in hit registration, I take damage from the hornet on the hopping tree a frame earlier than I would if I was going a frame slower. That is to say, despite the fact that the hornet has been spawned for the same amount of time, and despite the fact that all of his RAM addresses are 100% identical, and the fact that we meet at the same exact coordinates, we register impact 2 pixels sooner than we would if I came into the area on a different interval.
This fact doesn't slow me down, but it does shuffle my jumpboost opportunity around and makes me have to jump a frame earlier to get a 4 pixel jumpboost, meaning I land 2 pixels less far than the other TAS. This was a problem because I couldn't 4pixel jumpboost onto the following stump in a position that let me complete the following section as fast as the old TAS, no matter how many permutations I tried, and I always lost a single pixel because I couldn't get the 1 frame of falling accel boost onto the 2nd hopping trees hand. However, I was able to jump off of the tree while it was a few pixels higher in the air, letting me fall 1 pixel further, thus making up for the lost pixel described above.
-2 frames
I land next to and damage boost the brambles
-12 frames
While falling into the bosses room, I shorten my distance by 2 pixels to offset myself by 1 frame due to a hit registration issue in the middle of the fight. If I don't offset everything by 1 frame, I'll get hit on the frame one of my attacks is supposed to come out. It was very difficult to find new ways to get hits in. At one point, I turn around and do a back slash to evade taking damage from a mysterious hitbox that immediately disappears, which is also why I have to turn back around to keep attacking.
This would be a 13 frame save, but for reasons unknown, I get an extra lag frame loading the boss, as opposed to my bizhawk reconstruction of zidanax's TAS.
all in all this is the first serious TAS I've attempted. I quite like it.
edit: I've overhauled the 2nd paragraph, the explanation of the first -2 frames, and the 1st paragraph of the -x frames explanation