Posts for gymnast86


gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
There's been a bunch of talk and speculation in the Wind Waker Speedrunning discord about what a TAS would look like. With our current understanding of this memory leak, a TAS will get very few items (most likely wind waker, bombs, bait bag + bait, and leaf). Bait can be used to lower the game's memory by quite a lot (~30 Kb per throw if it spawns in) and this can be used to start pulling invisible items (bombs in this case) to actually start the memory leakage. If the memory is fragmented correctly, we can also skip most of the endgame cutscenes because there isn't a big enough memory space for them to load. The route would probably look something like this: - Wind Waker - FF1 Gossip Stone + Rupees - Savewarp - Greatfish Cutscene Skip - Bombs - Forest Haven (buy bait bag + bait) - Begin Memory Leak and pull out ~350 invisible bombs - DT CS Skip - Leaf - Superswim around the overworld loading islands as we necessary (to fragment the memory correctly) - FF2 - Helmaroc CS fails to load - Ganondorf and Overworld cutscenes (can't skip these since we need them to get to Hyrule) - Courtyard CS Skip and have barrier fail to load (this skips needing to beat FF1) - Barrier Skip - Trial Skip (ideally with unloaded trials door) - Light Arrow Skip - Final Staircase Skip (ideally all enemies never load and the door opens immediately) - Puppet Ganon Cutscene fails to load - Hover up to the top of the room and heal with fairy in pot - Ganon Cutscene fails to load as well as the arena barrier - Void out to reload the area and start the Ganondorf fight - Win Theoretically, if we can get this to work the run should easily be under 45 minutes. I'm not sure when this will be looked into more though, since most of us seem to be more concerned about finding more consistent strategies for RTA runs.
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
Yeah, I wasn't expecting to take so long writing the submission comments. I kind of mentally feel as though my work on the TAS is over, so recounting how everything works together in the route, as well as the techniques used throughout the run feels draining to write about. I'm trying to power through and finish it soon though.
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
Link to video Good news: the TAS is done! Over Winter break I essentially decided to work overtime on completing this TAS. Motivated by the new skips that were found as well as being closer to the end, I put in about 8-10 hours of TASing a day from December 26th through January 3rd and managed to finish the last 3 dungeons to complete the run. The live reveal will take place on January 20th at 12 PM PST on my Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/events/HQ9OlTQcReCwbYHqgujpmw I will be submitting the TAS here shortly after the reveal. (The entire dtm syncs on my machine without needing to load savestates or use hacks or anything! Woohoo!)
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
Another new skip! This time for the 1 small key we get in City in the Sky: Link to video I'm not sure exactly how much time this saves but it should be more than 30 seconds once the skip is properly optimized (which might take awhile considering how convoluted this skip is). This skips having to go to the west side of the dungeon and form a bridge with the spinner (as well as getting the small key on the other side).
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
Newest WIP to display Arbiter's Grounds in all it's glory: Link to video The first room can be crossed with brakesliding since sand only reduces Link's speed when it's positive, it doesn't hinder negative speed thankfully. I can also get in a roll after pulling the chain to open the first gate which nicely lands right at the edge of the floor before the sand. The gate that normally requires lighting the 4 poe torches actually only checks for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th poe torches to be lit (as the devs probably assumed you couldn't get the rest without collecting the first one and obtaining its scent). So instead of using the first poe, we can go get the 4th one early (thanks to a conveniently placed pillar) and use the scent from that poe to go and get poes 2 and 3. We also collected a red rupee from the redead before Poe 3 to get the 300 rupees necessary for fixing the City in the Sky Canon. Once we're past the poe collection, we can immediately go and get the boss key (which is really badly protected, even the bug limit RTA category can get it early) ad then proceed to go through the dungeon backwards to the Spinner room. Thanks to brakesliding we can cut out a wolf transformation that's normally used to cross the giant sand gap in the room right before the Deathsword miniboss. Thanks to Midna's supercharge attack, we can lock onto Deathsword and then use his height to get past the gate that normally blocks the spinner chest and skip Deathsword, which saves ~20 seconds. I improved the Stallord Skip so that now it only requires 1 bomb to clip past the gate. This is good as 2 bombs would have forced me to get a heart somewhere in City in the Sky since there's one room where I will take 2 hearts of damage from a fall. Overall, I'm very happy with Arbiter's Grounds, and I"m hoping to continue the progress faster over the remainder of my winter break.
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
New skip that saves 2 and a half minutes: Link to video This saves a lot of time due to the massive amount of cutscenes this fight has between its phases. It also means that Clawshot Actor Displacement finally has a use! A new WIP of Arbiter's Grounds should be coming soon once I optimize the skip.
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
Link to video New WIP with a lot of brakesliding and wolf dashing. The reason we get the Final Blow is because it's required for dealing the final attack to Ganondorf. We run past the golden wolf early on since learning the skill spawns us back in Faron Woods which is inconvenient during Midna's Desperate Hour. From this point on the run is basically a dungeon rush with Arbiter's Grounds, City in the Sky, Palace of Twilight, and Hyrule Castle, and very little overworld travel. If I can keep up the current pace of work, I'm hoping it'll be finished by next spring.
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
In regards to exclusive TAS tricks for TPHD, there are actually several crazy ones. As seen in the video above, TPHD actually has Wind Waker superswimming in it which should allow for skipping Zora Armor in a full game TAS. There's also another nifty trick with water, that allows you to skid out at extremely high speeds known as Aquasliding. It's a bit limited, but still useful in certain scenarios. Link to video There's also a rather funny technique known as superwalking which allows Link to travel at double his walking (or as wolf dashing) speed and is done by alternating between perfectly Up Right and perfectly Up Left every frame. Obviously this is used everywhere and basically obsoletes rolling. Link to video
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
Link to video New WIP from Snowpeak until the end of Lakebed. We're continuing to drop bombs from the real bomb bag so that we can fill it with water bombs later. Once the Ball and Chain is obtained we can leave Snowpeak since we don't need to beat the dungeon to complete the game (thanks to only needing the CitS mirror shard to get into the Palace of Twilight). We get two orange rupees to significantly fill up our wallet to nearly the 300 rupees we need for the CitS Canon. Right before the water bomb chest, I through a bomb into an offscreen waterfall which made the bomb despawn. This was necessary as it allowed me to take out the last bomb much faster since this game limits you to having no more than 3 explosives out at one time. (If I hadn't thrown the bomb into the waterfall, I would've had to wait for the 4th to last bomb to explode before pulling out the last one.) Lakebed is the one temple where a boss key skip is possible since the loading zone to the boss is always active unlike other dungeons (Which is great because the boss key takes a rather long time to get in Lakebed compared to other dungeons). Morpheel can be done without Zora armor by using water bombs to refill our air while swimming around. (This will be used again when the TAS reaches Zant's Morpheel phase.) Unfortunately there was no brakesliding in this WIP, but the next one should have a fair amount of it.
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
Link to video New WIP up until entering Snowpeak. As usual there is extensive use of brakesliding to save time going up any slopes as wolf Link. This section gets two bomb bags since the first one we get will disappear after we do our next savewarp and we need water bombs later for Morpheel and Zant. As for snowboarding the goal is to stay in the air for as long as possible since Link obtains his highest speed while in the air.
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
Link to video This segment finished up the Lanayru Twilight Section which means no more dumb bugs from here on out. It's the longest twilight section, taking more than 10 minutes to complete, and it makes heavy use of brakesliding as did the last section. The reason we transform into human Link and exit underwater through the top of Zora's Domain each time is to avoid a cutscene that normally happens with Rutella. Castle Town makes heavy use of dash cancelling since the base running speed in castle town is really slow as wolf. As for rupees, anything above 80 is technically unnecessary but we gotta go for those swag points. The extra grass rupees waste no time as we have to wait for tears to form before they can be collected.
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
FitterSpace wrote:
That brakesliding technique looks really insane. I remember hearing about it when it was first found, but I don't know much about it. How do you do that, and what does it do? I noticed you used it while going up slopes, so is it like Z-sliding in Ocarina of Time?
Brakesliding is done by holding L and Up, followed by L and ESS down on the next frame and then holding just ESS down. This changes Link's facing direction by 180 degrees and makes the speed negative as now he's travelling backwards. This helps going up slopes as normally slopes will slow Link down quite a bit, but since he's facing down the slope while brakesliding his speed becomes higher. The speed will decrease very slowly over time, but it would take a solid 30 or so seconds of brakesliding for it to become slower than dashing up a hill normally.
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
Apparently I never posted the WIP from January in here so those of you who only follow this forum get 2 WIPs today! This first WIP was made before the discovery of brakesliding, though not much would've changed had it been utilized in this segment. Link to video This next segment utilizes brakesliding around half way in as that's when it was discovered. Unlike RTA, warping out of the basement is barely faster for TAS since we can push the graveyard bug near the well, quickly obtain the graveyard tear, and well clip into the loading zone instantly after. Link to video For both segments keese LJAs are much faster than dashing and jumping is faster than dashing up a slope which is why it's used a lot on upward slopes that have a ledge.
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
As far as an HD TAS route goes, getting the grapple hook is unfortunately required as HD has no way of getting to the Leaf without using the grapple hook. You can't zombie hover up since any items you collect while dead don't actually get collected in HD. You can't zombie hover up the outside either as there's no way to heal and get into the top most loading zone of forest haven (which is the highest loading zone on the overworld). Light Arrow skip in this case would not be faster, as getting boomerang would be a 4 minute detour and Light Arrows take ~1 minute to get. We can however, skip getting the quiver and get past Phantom Ganon using this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk-3Tox2Kjw Also, as SlowKing was mentioning, there is in-fact a way of doing Early Master Sword with simply an Item Slide from the top of Forest Haven. I did it with frame advance on console and then spliced it together to look like real time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jLBKV0ipoQ With all this in mind, this is the fastest route I can think of: - Skip intro CS - Superswim to Greatfish - Superswim to Submarine, get caught, beat FF1 with broken lighting (Beating FF1 is required to spawn the King of Red Lions, otherwise the game will crash in Hyrule 2. The lighting will be broken during FF1 due to the game trying to apply endless night weather effects) - Spawn at Windfall, get Bombs - Superswim to Bomb Isle submarine, obtain bottle - Superswim to Dragon Roost, get Wind Waker - Catch water in bottle, Rock Skip - Watch Delivery Bag cutscene, exit to pond area - Pour water on dry bomb flowers, blow up pond rock (Normal bombs don't work here, only bomb flowers) - Emter Dragon Roost Cavern - Go through first room - Hover up to second story (having an RNG falling rock kill a keese for a heart) - Go through the final few rooms until grapple hook - Savewarp out after grapple hook, exit DRC - Savewarp out to the front of DRI - Island Hop (an item slide with so much speed you can get to other islands in a single frame) to Forest Haven - Ledge Clip in and watch Deku Tree cutscene, climb up and obtain Leaf - Leaf out to highest southern entrance of Forest Haven and perform EMS - Helmaroc Skip with Item Sliding and Roll Clipping - Hyrule 2 - Item Slide clip to Hyrule bridge to skip going through the castle - Barrier Skip - Item Slide into Ganon's Tower - Trials Skip - Obtain Light Arrows - Phantom ganon Skip - Item Slide up grand staircase, grand staircase skip - Puppet Ganon Skip - Ganon If there is a way to get the Leaf early discovered in the future, then getting the boomerang would be the ideal option as a first person item. It would also allow for full Light Arrow Skip, Dragon Roost Skip, and Bottle Skip.
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
Link to video I had to redo this section because I didn't realize that running as wolf to the Lanayru Gate is faster than calling Epona until after I had finished Lakebed. That was a demotivating facepalm moment, and when combined with going to college + having an Overwatch addiction, the progress on this redo was painfully slow. Anyway, now this section is around ~6 seconds faster than before, mainly thanks to running to the gate instead of calling Epona (saves 5 seconds), but I also got to implement a few small optimizations I thought of after doing the section originally (all combined save ~1 second). Hopefully the progress on this will move quicker at least for the time being while I'm on winter break.
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
Link to video This segment seemed to go relatively smoothly, the only part that took longer than it should have was manipulating the blue rupee to appear on the first possible frame(which took about 3 hours of testing various buttons combinations to finally get). The clip through the gate in the beginning is extremely precise and requires a near perfect angle and position to get quickly, and it was honestly probably the most difficult part of the whole dungeon to get right. After the clip the dungeon basically becomes an LJA playground.
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
Link to video New WIP Progress has been pretty slow since I was in Europe for 2 weeks followed by being at SGDQ for 5 days. During this segment I learned that Shadow Beasts do not like to cooperate at all for the most part and it took a long time to manipulate each of the sets to get good RNG. I had also actually managed to TAS all the way up until Lanayru Gate Clip but was then told by Dragonbane that I could clip through the Eldin Gate as well so I had to go back and redo that. I had to space out the dashes as wolf link leading up to the gate so I could get a proper dash into the cutscene before bonking on the gate. On the way back the same applied so I could get a dash as soon as I regained control after bonking on the gate. I'm hoping to make more fast progress now for the next two weeks before I head off to college.
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
Slowking wrote:
Nice. :) At 1:12 at the file select can't you press up once instead of twice down?
Unfortunately, no. I think you can do that in OOT/MM but ever since TWW it hasn't been a thing.
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
WIP 9, nothing particularly annoying about this segment, the spiders were surprisingly cooperative (only took about half an hour of manipulation to get past them), currently about 35 seconds ahead of the old TAS at collecting the Gale boomerang. Some of the rolls may look a little unoptimal due to how much delay there is before initiating them. However as far as I could tell, I could only get max speed as quickly as possible when delaying the roll until Link walked over a relatively flat piece of ground Link to video
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
Sorry about that,could've sworn I set it to unlisted >.<
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
New Update to Master Sword: Link to video Currently everything is going pretty well, I have more rupees than necessary without wasting any time and the MS time is ~19:54, 26 seconds faster than the old TAS. The worst part was probably the keese manipulation for skipping the midna jumps in the poison fog area. Overall though I'm happy with this segment.
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
Slowking wrote:
Are there glitches in the italian version that aren't present in the japanese one?
No, but NTSC/PAL doesn't have to do the quest to get the 5th triforce chart that the japanese version has to do, which saves around 5 minutes. There is one skip that JP has over NTSC/PAL though which is the barrier cutscene skip (another instance of void warping to skip a cutscene). On another note, there was a theory quickly formed that you could skip earth and wind temple by going into hyrule a 3rd time with the triforce at ff3 by skipping the helmaroc cutscene and then going into ganondorf's lair again to play that sequence of cutscenes since the animation set would be correct. Unsurprisingly however The Wind Waker decided to say, "Fuck You," as it turns out that the cutscene in ganondorf's lair will only ever play once even though the previous helmaroc cutscene can be played an infinite amount of times. If you enter the zone again, you simply spawn in the room with nothing happening, and savewarping will take you back to windfall island for some reason. Another interesting thing to note is that on the NTSC/PAL versions of the game, it actually is possible to pull the master sword in Hyrule 2 due to two lines of code being removed from how the game determines what layer you're supposed to be on, the only problem is we have the wrong animation set. It is possible to skip switching animation sets by skipping the helmaroc entrance cutscene at ff2 but once again the cutscene in ganondorf's lair says "fuck you" since it's a cutscene that only works with the second animation set, and therefor crashes with animation set 1.
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
We can now skip the cutscene before puppet ganon with two recent discoveries this morning, the first is the actual cutscene skip which dragonebane found: Link to video Since the cutscene is never called, puppet ganon never comes out and so therefor there are no keese, however we quickly figured out how to get around that issue: Link to video Overall this saves about 1:30 which is pretty sick It also closes the gap between Italian and Japanese a little bit more. If we can find a few more cutscene skips, italian may end up being faster
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
Dragonbane found something that could potentially be useful for the TAS, Skipping cutscenes after a loading zone: Link to video To do this you need to get storage and then touch a loading zone for only 1 frame to activate it, but still have control of link afterwards. Then void out within roughly 1 second and link will appear on the next map as if he voided out. The cutscene never even gets called to play because voiding out is specifically designed to not play the cutscene in any area. Otherwise you could potentially watch the same cutscene twice if you voided out in certain areas. Now, because the cutscene never gets called, the flags associated with the cutscene never get called either, so we can't do this on cutscenes that need to set certain flags like the helmaroc cutscene in ff2.
gymnast86
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Player, Published Author (130)
Joined: 4/10/2015
Posts: 32
Link to video Surprisingly the worst part of this whole thing was manipulating the blue rupee to appear. The final push and turn around is a little janky because of how precise pushing an enemy in this game is. I'm honestly surprised that I was able to get enough distance without having to backhop and attack forward during a swing from the bokoblin, so that was pretty neat. Hoping to make faster progress now that this trick is out of the way (and the next few minutes is basically just running and jumping).