WIP 1
Currently at 57 seconds into the run and am
00:02.15 seconds ahead of the currently published 4 player run. This puts me at a predicted final savings of around 35 seconds which is pretty spot on with my guess when I was finishing up the 2-Player run of around 33 seconds. Slightly surprising to me is that there are only 3 less frames of lag than chupapi's run up to this point. That means
00:02.10 seconds are saved through better strategy. The two main improvements are better movement on the stairs and a better boss fight. chupapi walked up and down each stair which is almost half the speed that you travel either running on flat ground or in the air. The boss fight is improved as I manipulated the boss to appear a frame later which resulted in the ideal movement strategy for the boss fight. As a side note, I have discovered that, contrary to what I believed in my 2-Player run, the boss movement pattern is determined based on the frame that their HP loads into the ram. Previously I only believed this occurred for the last boss room and that the rest were determined by X-Value. What this means is that I can now control so that I have ideal boss movement on each boss.
Less important but it is currently
00:04.32 seconds behind my published 2-Player run. This is due in part to the fact it takes 51 frames longer to enter the first building with 4 players and more importantly that there is an additional 307 frames of lag. Now that means that the first level is actually 99 non-lag frames faster than my 2-Player run which can be assigned to being able to use 4-Players to collect items, resulting in a more constant screen progression.
A final interesting note that has no bearing on the quality of the run is the fact that at 6% of the way through the run I am already at 2274 rerecords whereas chupapi's run ended with a total of 5352. I can't be thankful enough for the creation of TAS Editor because I can't imagine what 2274 rerecords of a traditionally done 4-Player TAS would be like. I know for a fact that it would be miserable though because with these tools this is already quite frustrating at times.
As always if you have any feedback feel free to let me know. I hope you enjoy and that I did enough to entertain throughout.