...any TASing time has gone straight to DKC2 the past 5 months.
planning on improving it, are we?
anyways, I actually decided to take a look at UTK2 1-1 frame-by-frame. haven't done an all OK/COOL run -quite- yet, but a couple notes:
You can actually attempt to use the gel between it's first selection and when Angie interrupts you. It won't do anything.
DO NOT TOUCH A 5TH SHARD BEFORE ANGIE INTERRUPTS YOU AFTER SHARD #4. YOUR CHAIN WILL BE AUTO-BROKEN (WITH MISS) FROM THE GAME FORCING THE SHARD BACK INTO ITS PLACE. [may be possible to do this, but even under the best of starts, I can't pull it off myself]
and on a general note, you can hit SELECT while the CALL portrait (the triangular shape) is appearing on the bottom screen (before the character portrait appears on the top screen) to turn on skip mode before any text starts appearing. skip mode spends 2 frames (maybe 3?) on each page of text but does not speed up character transitions.
and some "checkpoint" times on my current OK/COOL run (using the ingame timer as a reference and with SKIP mode enabled):
Vitals @80: 4:50:04 [note: Angie won't let you use the gel before Vitals are at 80]
Gel [cuts]: 04:49:19
incision: 04:48:53
under a prior frame-by-frame (NOT recorded, unfortunately), I had over 4:30:00 left on the clock, but I had about 5 misses (a couple on the incision - switching render mode to SoftRasterizer fixed that one - and the left tooth was being a prick) so it's not the best possible by a significant amount.
I'll have a (very unrefined) movie file up later today covering 1-1, I hope.
currently trying to sort out why (exactly) shards 3 and 4 are giving me a GOOD result instead of COOL.
update: Got the XS and All Cool/OK with 4:39:06 left, but there's definitely some adjustments that can be made to optimize this... problem is, I flat-out suck at minimizing frames, even on a Frame-By-Frame playthrough.
Things I know from my run that can be improved:
Syringe technique is... well, shitty. I'm more efficient on the actual DS than on an emulator, to my own surprise. On the run, it took me from 4:58:23 to 4:50:04 to get the vitals up to 80.
I found out kinda late that Gelling can be done extremely fast on everything except the incisions (as in multiple OKs on the same exact frame). I discovered this when putting the bone back together, and I got 5 OKs simultaneously when gelling it, with the last OK a few frames later.
I dropped a bone fragment back onto the plate during reassembly, costing me some frames.
Need to figure out the most frame-efficient method of gelling the incision
Need to optimize the frames on everything that involves dragging. currently, I at least hold the position for 2 frames (that is, "drag to" on one frame, sustain for one frame), which is probably 1 frame longer than necessary. I found out that some of them can be done without waiting for that second frame.
the surprises I found mostly involved tool switching immediately after a call - in most cases, you can switch before the tools come onscreen, and this probably led to me getting one bone shard placed before Angie interrupting me to tell me to place the bone shards on the bone.
3) There is a microphone involved when dealing with one specific strain of the neo-GUILT (and, memory serving correctly, only appears once in the story mode, although I haven't yet gotten through the X missions yet). I believe you CANNOT do anything while the screen is gassed, though I haven't checked that personally.
I believe you needed to have the mist clear first so you can do things, but followup times you can do things after you blow but before the mist full clears.
That seems to be the case, as getting through the Extreme difficulty (X-mission) version of that Neo-GUILT pretty much requires you to be using tools while you blow the mist out.
My definition of perfect surgeon for this game isn't all XS rank, it's all cool's, with the exception of the one or two times you're forced to get a good (eg. the first tumor you find in the second mission).
In most cases, those goals line up (unless we don't count Chain Breaks as a non-Cool result - chains get broken for certain events such as draining a Nous tumor before using the scalpel on ALL prior ones in that sequence). 4-1 is the one mission where they don't exactly line up due to...
One particular mission will get a C rank, simply because it can be beaten in roughly .5 of a second by using the healing touch 3 times instantly.
lemme pull up the bonuses/XS rank requirements on that one (4-1: Collapse) real quick (Gamefaqs is actually useful for something...)
In his walkthrough, Azn Psycho wrote:
SPECIAL BONUS (Hard)
Completed with 180 left 400 [not an issue]
MAX CHAIN Over 60 500 [fastest route has a 0 chain]
Internal bleeding treated >19 500 [fastest route treats 0]
Internal bleeding burst <2 600 [not an issue]
...so I guess the question on this one (with respect to an XS run) would be how fast can we get the 61+ chain and the 20 Internal bleeding treated, since after that, spamming HT will finish it in less than a second (your estimate).
...with it being healing touch all the way (no penalty for using it, making missions significantly easier to pass on hard), or no healing touch unless mandated (making missions significantly harder).
With the exceptions of 4-1 (if we decide to actually try for any points and XS rank as indicated above), 7-7 and X-7 (both effectively require HT activation at the END of the operation, or else you'll instant-fail from hitting a red pipe), I say use it at will.
On the subject of Under the Knife 2, I do have a couple things that I noticed from me kinda bumbling through it... on easy... with the equivalent of infinite Healing Touch (on missions that have it. yeah, I know, scream at me later):
1) You know those artificial membranes (the ones you use the forceps for, such as immediately after a tumor removal)? only takes a tap with the medical gel in UtK2, which means they won't eat up any significant time. This information is the ONLY reason I managed to S-rank the limited gel/no stabilizer mission sight-reading it. (one of the bonuses on the mission requires every wound that can be sealed with artificial membranes to be sealed with them)
2) S-ranking the missions require you to get EVERY bonus possible from the mission. If a Perfect Surgeon [All S-rank] TAS is attempted, it will be a bit longer (with respect to a "Sadistic Surgeon" [lowest time] TAS) mostly due to one mission that ends when a certain action is performed by the player. Personally, I would still prefer the Perfect Surgeon approach to it, since the Sadistic Surgeon approach for that mission is just Healing Touch->Healing Touch->End [Fission Mailure]
3) There is a microphone involved when dealing with one specific strain of the neo-GUILT (and, memory serving correctly, only appears once in the story mode, although I haven't yet gotten through the X missions yet). I believe you CANNOT do anything while the screen is gassed, though I haven't checked that personally.
4) There are probably a couple missions that are utterly IMPOSSIBLE to avoid misses on [and thus, S-rank] without manual Healing Touch use (this means Healing Touch is activated Manually). Can't say for certain which ones they are, as I haven't studied all of them in-depth yet.
5) "Improvising" is going to eat up some time due to how the alarm system on the locks work [you can remove all but the lit "fuse", but then you have to wait for the light on the lit fuse to turn off before removing it]. Healing Touch is NOT advised for a TAS on that level. the penlight does NOT have to be over an area for you to work on it, so memorization is the way to go here.
also... bump?