If you aren't busy working on other TAS projects at the moment, may I suggest giving Majora's Mask a try? If you liked OoT, you'll definitely enjoy this one.
MM runs very well on Project64, too.
There is a lack of agreement between this site's principles and my own. People who haven't even played the game are posting as if they knew what the heck they were talking about, deciding whether to accept the speedrun to the site's collection via the Workbench, and evaluating the run after it's been published. You can't do any of these tasks effectively without a very thorough knowledge of the game and all tricks involved. This is perhaps part of the reason the rating for Guano's first OoT run is so low. All someone who hasn't played the game would know is that (1) the run isn't very "entertaining" compared to, say, the SM64 speedrun, and (2) there were a few tricks that were not included in the run because they had been discovered after its completion. Some people assigned low scores solely based on these two reasons alone, without considering the fact that OoT simply isn't an action-filled game like SM64, or that a run that's two and a half hours long requires hundreds of hours to make, and it simply isn't practical to redo more than half of the run to implement a minor timesaver until it's certain that no more would be discovered in the near future.
Sure, this site isn't SDA. If you're curious about how things work over there, Radix hires established community members who have proven their expertise in a certain game to look over new submissions of that game and evaluate their quality. As far as I know, no one on SDA has ever requested that "forwards backwalking" be executed in a real-time run, and timing isn't as crucial in console runs as it is in tool-assisted runs. Perhaps this is because we all know the game well enough so that backwalking wouldn't ruin our enjoyment of the runs to even the slightest degree. I'm making the assumption that most people who are against backwalking generally don't know the game very well, because the most common complaint is that viewers "can't see where the runner is going." This sentiment is nonexistent on SDA, where all users who actively participate in speedrun discussions are expected to have completed the game in question once, if not ten or 100 times. In any case, I certainly did not expect to see this backwalking issue get brought up over and over again, ad nauseum, ever since Guano began his initial run. I believe that demanding TAS runners to sacrifice time intentionally for "entertainment" is an insult to the dedicated team of SDA researchers who worked so hard to slice OoT's necessary completion time in half over the last six months or so. They've truly made some unbelievable progress, and to make a run that doesn't comply with the highest standards of perfection is, as TSA said when he quit his own OoT run, a "dishonor to the work done by so many." I'll admit that some of us SDA folks may have been unrealistic in what we've come to expect from other speedrunning communities, but certainly this big of a difference in philosophy came as quite a surprise.
By "completed," I meant the portion of the run that's been done up to the end of the latest WIP.
You can't hex-edit Mupen files, so to correct a previous mistake, you have to restart from the mistake and lose all progress that's been made since that point in the run.
"Entertainment" shouldn't be included in the criteria for the simple reason that it is a subjective evaluation.
You guys don't get it.
If a run isn't optimal because of a trick that was discovered after the run had already been completed, that's okay because it was out of the author's control. If someone were dedicated enough to do an improved run, the old run would be obsoleted by a new one that incorporates all tricks. The decision to remake a run would be based on the amount of time the new trick(s) would actually save relative to the length of the whole run and the time needed to produce it.
If a run isn't optimal because the author willingly chooses to waste frames, that's unacceptable because it was in his control.
I firmly believe that "entertainment" is a terrible criterion to be included within speedrunning guidelines. "Entertainment" is a very subjective evaluation, whereas speed isn't. I personally think that backwalking adds to the run's entertainment because of the unpredictability factor, but there are other people who may think otherwise.
I think I can speak for the other folks from the SDA OoT discussions when I say that we would all like to see an optimal run that's as close to the game's theoretical limit as possible--and if the run cannot be frame-perfect, then everything under the author's control should be as close to perfection as possible.
In any case, this is a moot point because Guano is going to redo the run from the web skip, and his work will include all tricks known up to this point. Quite frankly, I don't see the point of arguing over a matter that isn't even relevant right now.
It's all relative to the overall length of the movie, and this is true for all speedruns. For a run that's over two hours long, a few seconds of improvement may not be enough to warrant restarting from that far back, if it weren't for the damn desynch. Now, this is not to say that high standards shouldn't be upheld throughout the production of the run (such as the use of frame advance for forwarding text and executing precise maneuvers), but 3-5 seconds of unoptimised play in a single spot is negligible when compared to the run's two-plus hours. If there were a reliable way to hex-edit Mupen64 files, then the run would need to be frame-perfect from start to finish. The obsoleted runs you are referring to are significantly shorter as well as hex-editable, so naturally the standards used to evaluate and compare them are much higher.
From my understanding, as long as the first dungeon you complete isn't Woodfall, Tatl won't give you that long speech. (You also learn the Oath to Order when you defeat your first boss, whichever one it is, but the cutscene with the giants isn't what petrie is referring to.) Snowhead is the first dungeon to be fully completed, and the order is
Woodfall 1 -> Snowhead -> Woodfall 2 -> Great Bay -> Stone Tower
I've taken a look at the "testrun" update. Very nice text-forwarding and usage of frame advance in general. I didn't expect that you could hit the Skull Kid before the timer even started ticking, or play all those notes on the ocarina without them appearing on the screen. Well done, AKA.
(For some reason, during the entire recollection with the princess, the screen was all black for me. Is this the case for any of you?)
No, you can't use a Deku stick to carry the flame over.
Yes, you could do it the normal way, but it's slower by at least 20 seconds, including the mini-cutscene showing the platform rising. Without fire arrows, you'll also have to spend about 10-15 more seconds for the extra cycle in the Gekko battle. Another disadvantage is that you wouldn't have the Gilded Sword for the Odolwa battle (since you need to have gotten the fire arrows before the smithy is in business), and this could tack on about 10 seconds. Deku bubbles are also slightly more inefficient than arrows in the Pirates' fortress. So in total, I'd say about 50-70 seconds are wasted for completing Woodfall in one shot without either the sword or arrow upgrades.
On the other hand, splitting Woodfall into two segments involves an extra Deku hover to the temple (6-8 seconds) and four bomb hovers (~15 seconds). So it looks like this may be the faster choice after all. If you think you could convince me otherwise, please go for it. I could easily have missed some important factor(s).
Anyone see the glaring problem with the proposed route modifications yet?
You need the bow to complete Snowhead optimally, especially the boss battle.
You need a bow and Fire Arrows to complete Woodfall optimally (the Gekko battle and shooting the torch).
You can't have both at the same time. Because Snowhead Temple is so far away from the warp point, Woodfall must be split into two parts.
If Woodfall is split up, there's no point in trying to get the hookshot with no bow, since the bow can fire much more quickly than Deku bubbles can.
Hence, petrie's route still prevails.
EDIT: This doesn't work. (Can you see why?)
Here's the proposed new route for completing Woodfall Temple in a single segment:
* In the entry chamber (1), roll off the platform and hookshot to the left torch (2).
* Jump onto the flower-shaped platform and hookshot to the torch surrounded by butterflies. (I have the exact location at which to aim if needed later; the positioning is a bit tricky.) Climb onto the platform while avoiding the switch and enter the door (19).
* Follow the path to the mid-boss' chamber (16). Once inside, defeat the Dinofol (4 HP) with a Gilded Sword (or Deku stick) jumpslash.
* Head to (4) and shoot the eye switch, then Deku hover to the Gekko's chamber (18).
* Finish the initial phase of the Gekko battle with a regular sword slash. In phase two, use Goron pounds followed by Fire Arrows to defeat the duo quickly.
* Get the boss key, and head to (20) to shoot the torch (21) with a fire arrow.
* Enter the now-unlocked door and drop down to the platform with a Deku flower. Climb onto the platform with four blue rupees as Zora Link, then hookshot either one of the torches and proceed to Odolwa's chamber.
* Defeat Odolwa (20 HP) with repeated quickspins.
Here's a possible route modification:
As AKA and bkDJ brought up, you don't need the Bow to retrieve the hookshot from the Pirates' Fortress. You could use bubble blasts as a Deku to shoot the guards and the beehive, which I've confirmed.
Now, bubble blasts take time to charge up and are not as easy to aim. For a TAS, it might be practical to get the hookshot before the bow so that Woodfall could be done in one segment.
What do you guys think?
No. All you have to do is take out the OoT in front of the scarecrow and it'll ask you to play a song. Then, when it asks you whether you want to learn "a mysterious song that allows you to manipulate time," say no. The SoDT and ISoT are learned implicitly along with the SoT, so there's no need to learn them from the scarecrow.
The only two scarecrow locations that I know of are the Trading Post and the Astral Observatory. You won't ever be going to the latter in this run, so you only have one choice. Have you looked at Petrie's route yet? I'll work on a more detailed version in the next few days.
I'm sorry to be blunt, but if you don't know the game well -- and by that, I mean very thoroughly -- it's rather unlikely that you'd be able to make any helpful contributions here (except perhaps for comments on technical issues, such as emulator-related ones). MM is a complex game, not one like Mario that anybody can easily pick up.
There is a minigame on the (inner) Great Bay Coast (offshore Zora Hall) which involves breaking five pots. If you can break all of them with a single boomerang toss as Mikau, you win 90 rupees.
The Scarecrow's Song has the same functionality as that in Ocarina of Time. You set your own tune, and there are certain spots in the dungeons where you could call the scarecrow and hookshot to it. This saves time in Snowhead Temple. As BoMF said, you have to redefine the song in every three-day cycle, so only do it in the third cycle (the long one).
Um, no you don't.
You enter the Inn via the Deku flower in East Clock Town, then make a left and enter the first door. In that room, next to the fireplace, is a treasure chest containing a silver rupee. Note that the door is locked unless the townsfolk have evacuated, so you'll want to get it along with the stray fairy per Petrie's route.
Have you been following Petrie's route? If not, I think you should be, though getting the Hookshot early may be a good idea.
In one of the rooms on the Stock Pot Inn's second floor, there is a chest that is only accessible on the night of the third day, when the Clock Town residents have all evacuated.