Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone (Or Sorcerer's Stone, if you're in the US) is the first piece of the Harry Potter series, and this movie tie-in game loosely follows the story of the book and movie, surprisingly becoming one of the best-selling PS1 games in the process.
Unlike the movie or books, though, Harry Potter also has the additional magic powers of walking through walls and blatantly ignoring people, as well as skipping half of his own game in order to finish the game in a magical 1:13:57.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: Bizhawk 1.12.0
- BIOS: SCPH5501.bin
- Any% Completion
- Uses Death to Save Time
- Abuses programming errors
- Sequence Breaking
- OoB Glitches
- Sacrifices some speed for entertainment
- Genre: Action-Adventure
- Intended for Moons
Aah, I am -so- glad that this over! After restarting this TAS several times, and getting annoyed at the game more times than I care to admit, this project of mine, after months of effort and hard work, has finally concluded; And to think, I only started TAS'ing 6 months ago!
This game turned out to be a lot more challenging to TAS then I originally expected. Frame-perfect skips, unexpected glitch findings and just general annoyances stretched out how long this run should've taken to finish.
Many thanks to the guys in the Harry Potter Discord, for all your help with glitch finding and investigation! This really wouldn't have been possible without you, so sincerely, thanks. Special thanks go out to Nanonym and Pr0te for helping me with many of the glitches in this run, as well as Slendbed for holding the current WR and inspiring me to actually do this TAS in the first place. Serious, massive thanks to Nano and Pr0te. Legends, friends, glitch-finders, future rekky holders... This one's for you.
I'm really happy with the results of this TAS, both with the video and the circumstances surrounding it. I've learnt a lot, met new friends, and overall had a blast making this. Here's hoping you have half as much fun watching it as I have had doing it.
Generalities
In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, you play as Harry Potter, the boy who lived, through his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Going through the school year is no easy feat - learning new spells and defending yourself against the dark arts as you unravel a mystery surrounding the Philosopher's Stone, a powerful artefact that is being hunted down by the evil Lord Voldemort, the man who murdered your parents while you were still young.
Acronyms/Shortenings
- OoB - Out Of Bounds
- HP - Harry Potter
- HP1 - This Game
- AAT - Acute Angle Trick
- CS - Cutscene Skip
- Voldy - Voldemort
Frame Dilation
The main reason why HP1 took so long to TAS is mainly because of frame dilation; entering a door one frame early or one frame late can result in the load times dilating by as much as half a second, which can knock your inputs completely out of wack, even when they should theoretically be sync'ed. Adding to that also is that the game only accepts inputs at 30, or in some cases, 20FPS, which combined with the previous dilation means that a simple change early in the TAS can have drastic effects later on.
Acute Angle Trick
The Acute Angle Trick (AAT) is a programming oversight in the HP1 engine. Basically, if you walk into the point where two solid geometries join, and the resulting angle is smaller than than 90 degrees, the game will get confused and push you into one of the geometries, resulting in HP acting bizarrely. Sometimes, HP can teleport upwards, as shown in Forest, or HP can jump upwards and grab the wall geometry itself, at which point alternating the inputs you used to activate the AAT can result in HP scaling the wall very quickly as he jumps up the wall geometries, leading to an OoB. This is the basic theory behind FSS.
Skipping Cutscene Triggers
Cutscenes in HP1 are triggered when HP walks into a specific area - usually these trigger areas are large enough to the point where you can't skip the cutscene, but in certain areas where the level design is sloppy, you can walk around or jump over cutscene triggers, and skip cutscenes entirely. This results in quite nice timesaves across the board.
Broom
In the second room, we slide down the banner not only because it's faster, but also because landing the jump in a specific way can skip the door entering animation.
Cutscene Skip on Ron saves 2-3 seconds.
Padlock Skip - if you press Square on the same frame the door unlocks, you can skip the animation of the lock coming off. You need to be standing near the door to do this; we do this twice.
Potter Parkour - You can Flippendo the block whilst going down the banister, which, combined with an earlier Flippendo and the speed boost of the banister, results in another minor timesave.
Wingardium Leviosa
It's possible to skip the Broom cutscene, but the door remains locked if we do this, so instead I just walk circles around Ron.
Broomstick Practice - Because of the ring geometry, the game will count you as having gone through the ring even if you haven't if you cut it close.
Malfoy
There's a specific strat to get a fast Malfoy fight, which you can view here:
Fire Seeds Skip
Going into the class, I do a bit of Wizard Sniping to get the block in the right spot, then go to class.
Fast Incendio - Incendio inputs are always the same, so by punching them in before the game asks for them, you can do this section ultra-fast.
Fire Seeds Skip - Using the AAT described before on this specific piece of geometry, you can grab a higher part of the wall geometry, then repeat the action to scale the wall and jump over the fence, saving about 20 minutes.
Quidditch League
By bumping into Malfoy and hitting Square at the same time, HP does double damage.
The same ring glitch from Broomstick Practice is used throughout Quidditch League.
By saving the game, quitting, doing the Quidditch League and returning, the game gets confused and spawns Hagrid in way too early, skipping a good hour or so of the game.
Gringotts
UUGH GRINGOTTS
...I hate this part of the run. 20 minutes of unskippable autoscroller. Eww, eww, eww.
Diagon Alley
Spawns in the Menagerie and Ollivanders are manipulated by what time you leave the shop cutscenes.
Forest
Forest is a neat little gem, showcasing most of the glitches from earlier in just a few minutes.
Fast Incendio on the first Incendio Wall, Trigger Skip to get around having to Incendio the bridge, and AaT to skip all the other Incendio parts. Overall, quite a quick, entertaining part of the run.
Sloth Brain
We start the split by tooting the flute. Doot doot!
Then, we have to do FSS again to get to the sloth brain. The execution's slightly different, but it's mainly the same.
To skip the Sloth Brain puzzle, we have to walk into the hedge wall at a specific angle - once done, though, all's good.
4-Eyes
Banister slide for extra speed.
Now, 4-eyes. The first two eyes are simple, but on the third eye, if you leave the room whilst the eye dies, you can skip the death animation.
The fourth eye is the most complex. First we use the eye death skip from the third eye, then re-enter the room, let the cutscene finish for the eyes flying off, and then fall into the hole underneath the eye to death-warp to the exit.
Forbidden Corridor
And finally onto the endgame!
Forbidden Corridor mainly uses movement tricks to get through it as fast as possible, abusing the sightlines of Filch and Norris and generally sneaking.
Trials
Trials, despite the name, isn't really much of a challenge.
First off, Fluffy. Mash all the buttons. Sleepy 's. EZ.
Next, Devil's Snare, probably the toughest challenge. Flipendo all the tentacles when they light up, then Incendio the main tendril. Standing in a specific place during the Incendio makes Ron push you into a loading zone, saving 10 or so seconds.
Next, key. You liked Quidditch? Well, here's more of that. Nothing special.
Finally, Wizard's Chess, otherwise known as "this makes no sense" chess. Luckily, it's pretty easy to move to the right spaces with just a little bit of common sense.
Voldemort
Troll - basically move all the objects out of the way. There's a small timesave at the end by dropping the chair at the same time the troll falls into the pit, giving us control over HP a few seconds earlier than usual.
Knight - running into the bell saves having to Flippendo it, which gives us more time to charge up the second Flippendo.
Knights II - Basically skipped with one precise jump. Usually you'd have to fight them all, but you can just skip the fight entirely.
Voldemort Phase 1 - By keeping the pillar out of the line of sight of the camera, the game keeps spawning it, allowing us rack up hits on Voldemort quickly.
Voldemort Phase 2 - Dance around the mirror, Flippendo it twice to hit Voldy with a big ol' blast. EZ.
Voldemort Phase 3 - Mash Square, then hit X at the right time to do damage. Even easier.
And that's HP1!
This TAS could be improved by optimising movements and not saving at the start of the game - however, the Frame Dilation I previously mentioned means that I'd practically have to re-do the whole TAS, and I really can't be bothered with that. Besides, the timesaves wouldn't be that major, so it's really not worth the effort.
Screenshot Suggestions:
I've got a few screenshots to suggest:
- First off, Potter Parkour at 19038.
- Next, Fire Seeds Skip at 64247.
- Incendio Wall Skip: 164461
- 4-Eyes Glitched Ending: 197643
- CHAAAAAIR!!!: 251209
- Clody Skip: 256339
Once again, thanks for watching, and happy TASing, you speedrun wizards!
Fog: Replaced with a spiked file that fully syncs.
Fog:
Someone else can judge this. Nevermind, judging it again.
Fog: Replaced input file with a trimmed input file that only shows the credits.
Fog: This was a good run which seems to skip a lot of things. However, there are a few things which were brought up in the submission topic as well as what was noticed by myself while watching.
Starting out of the gate, I noticed that the memory card was saved twice when the file was being created. This was a minor time loss of about a second or so, but it's not that much of an issue.
The next two issues are related to each other, so I'll be putting them together. This was pointed out a few times by people in the submission topic where the movement didn't feel optimal. Movement in this run exclusively uses the D-Pad, despite the game fully supporting analog controls. This does lead to less precision in the movement. It should also be noted that the camera can also affect movement, depending on what direction your facing. From what is understood from the RTA community, the analog sticks have an input lag and makes certain tricks harder to setup. However, this is basically moot in a TAS as it could be easily worked around. I would have preferred if the movement was done with analog (if such movement is more optimal), but I'm not going to let it be a major sticking point.
Now for the run itself. The run was pretty decent, but there are definitely a lot of slow spots. Some example of slow spots are certain long cutscenes, as well as the auto-scroller in the middle of the game which goes on for roughly 20 minutes. This can't really be helped currently due to not being able to skip these, but it does regardless take away from the entertainment of the run. The overall reception from the audience was mixed, and I feel similarly to the audience. The run does aim for Moons, but I just don't think the entertainment value is there for what the game is.
Accepting to Vault.
