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Link to videoMovie file.
12472 frames ahead (03:27.87 seconds.)
In a surprising twist of fate, Temple of Sands 3 actually becomes an interesting level! It was already possible to go out of bounds at the very start of the level, but that unfortunately led nowhere, as going back in bounds was impossible. Thankfully, I found (completely by accident, while casually testing the level..) a new out of bounds at the start of the desert section.
In particular, this level becomes much more interesting because of the number of choices you are given. The section is pretty linear, and guarded by two boundiary walls: as such, navigation while staying on top of these walls makes for an interesting and hard to optimise route, as well as finding how to stay out of bounds while not wasting time throughout the level. Usually being out of bounds is strictly faster, but due to more advantageous terrain and the fact that this level is pretty linear, if I wasn't able to stay out of bounds for the entire level, staying in bounds would have likely been faster, but staying out of bounds allows to skip the fight at the end, saving a lot of time and, more importantely, a sword use!
In particular there was one area where I had to get creative: the grappling point in the middle of the level. The problem here is that there's a gap right after the grapping hook not crossable by normal means: I either had to get on the bottom wall (which would have wasted time due to needing a triple jump, and being farther away from the optimal path than the top wall) or find a way to conserve enough height and speed so that I would be able to land on the top wall again.
The solution? Simply use the grappling hook! The grappling hook retains all your vertical speed and changes it based on the position where you jump related to the grappling (in my case, all my falling vertical speed got converted to significant positive vertical speed). Altaïr's horizontal speed when he jumps off the grappling is based on how far away he was from the grappling point when initially grabbing it, so I grab it with the maximum distance possible. If I had gone too far, I would have been stuck on the ground below when swinging.
This was pretty precise and hard to optimise, due to a lot of possible approaches when doing the jump, but it turned out to be one of the better looking tricks of the game in my opinion.
A fun fact: you can actually kill grappling points if you fall with enough speed on them. It seems they are coded like vases (and as such coded as ennemies), since they give you a red orb on death and do the same sound as when you kill a vase..
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Experienced player
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This is a random desync, not anything you can do about it other than redo. FBA desyncs quite often, and the only way around this is to play back your movie often and check for desyncs.
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Still fails to sync. Dip switches set; desyncs right at the start (doens't select the correct ship.)
I would advise waiting for the FBA release before doing further work on this, it fixes CPS1 sync stability.
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Link to video
This is the first 13 minutes of the game! There's a lot to comment about this, but I'm keeping it for submission (too lazy to rerwite most comments here.) Estimating final time to be around 40 minutes.
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2686 sets, 2229 clones, 4195 total in fba-rr VS 3733 sets, 2442 clones and 6175 total in fbash.
FBA shuffle supports 1980 extra games than fba-rr. Many games also have improved emulation, and rerecording is much easier as well.
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Assuming you're tasing arcade games, I would advise you to stay away from FBA-rr and simply use the latest FBA build. Currently it's much more robust than FBA-rr (which is based on a six years old build) and supports recording with basic savestate functionality, and rerecording is under heavy work as well.
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I was ranting on an arcade related IRC channel about FBA-rr as usual, then a FBA dev, derek, contacted me, informing me that FBA had officially implemented a replay system into FBA just a few days ago. This is pretty big, as FBA-rr is known for being horrible, and the new replay system allegedly desyncs much less and is more stable.
There isn't much to say about this other than to see it for yourself: http://www.fbalpha.com/downloads/. Source is also available. Replays are under Game > Replay.. The implementation is different from FBA-rr's implementation, along with a new extension (.fr). Rerecording is not implemented yet, currently only available to testers.
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Incredible run, and a great example of how good a TAS with a 'cursor' can be when detailed attention is paid to movement (favorite were the bounce parts with gravity switching.) Yes vote.
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Link to videoMovie file
11560 frames ahead (03:12.67 seconds.)
A youtube user came out of nowhere and suggested to me two new out of bounds. It turns out that this saves a lot of time, 2718 frames exactly, and makes the level more fun to watch. Unfortunately because of how the level is built it's impossible to go from the first half out of bounds area to the second half, which would save much more time.
