This topic is for the purpose of discussing #6550: Vynneve's GC Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones in 1:43:46.77

Neat! I'm super interested in this when I get off of work. I am a bit concerned, though, about only 40k rerecords for a 2-hour run with lots of room for movement optimization. (I know a lot of the game is cutscenes though.)

Rerecord counts do not always determine how optimized a run is.

Rerecord counts do not always determine how optimized a run is.

There's also the fact that the submitter, Vynneve, appears to hold 1st place in the Normal and Zipless categories on the linked Speedrun.com board in the submission comments, so might simply be frame-optimizing realtime strats. Vynneve is only 2nd on NMG though, and the one run ahead of him on the board is faster than this submission (about 1:49:12). This is not TAS timing because Speedrun.com starts their clock when you first gain control of the prince, however it's hard to tell whether that run would actually be faster adjusting for that because they don't start from power-on. Here's the YouTube video of the other run for comparison and analysis: Link to video

Also note that the game features long unskippable cinematics. In any case, please focus more on what can be seen from watching the movie. (btw I still didn't fully watch it myself, it's long) Edit: ok, I finished watching. I had the go in three rounds, but I didn't get bored at any point of the movie. It was good enough for me, despite the deliberate abstention from glitching too hard.

Sounds like the audio on the commentary video cuts out from 4:44 to 5:46. I haven't watched through the whole video yet in case there are other instances of this happening. Edit: No more audio problems that I saw. I really enjoyed the run. Watching the prince jump around on razor-thin edges and do bizarre impossible jumps was good. Wasn't a lot of downtime besides the cutscenes. The commentary really helped with the entertainment factor too because a lot was happening that wasn't obvious to me by just watching.

Vynneve is only 2nd on NMG though, and the one run ahead of him on the board is faster than this submission (about 1:49:12). This is not TAS timing because Speedrun.com starts their clock when you first gain control of the prince, however it's hard to tell whether that run would actually be faster adjusting for that because they don't start from power-on.

Actually, it seems to me that it's faster mostly because of the lack of cinematics. The audio commentary for this TAS mentioned something about deleting the video folder for speedrunning, didn't they? 🙄

Alright, I watched the run with commentary. It seems like this would be about a 1:39 according to RTA timing, which is a big improvement to the other run posted in this thread. The world-record holder of the NMG run was present in the commentary video and approved of the run :-) Surprisingly entertaining for a game with such a high number of cutscenes. Very good platforming action, which was easier to appreciate in the commentary video. I almost wish there was more combat, since Dark Prince combat has a whole lot of options in this game. After hearing the commentary too, I don't have any strong concerns about the optimization, even with a few small improvements and skips that could be implemented in a future run.

Why you didn't perform the known glitches? They are so hard for TASing?

The movie lasts until the credits end. Does it have necessary input there, or is it blank frames?

Trimmed on last input before credits (-7 minutes) http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/60059890207877968 There are 2 screens that the submitted movie skips (cheat unlocked and save), but skipping them isn't needed in the main movie. For encoding I can use either version though.

Very late to this discussion, but maybe I can answer a few questions now. I chose the any% No Major Glitches category because it's the category that makes the most sense for running on console. (I don't know if you could TAS the PC version, but I don't have the knowledge to do that). RTA people use PC version. The glitches that are used are either not as useful or impossible on consoles. Not to mention it has the most "TAS only" things that could be added. Main glitch category would mostly be the same as a fast RTA run. The route was a mixture of RTA strats, new "TAS only" finds, and re-defining what the fastest way to do an area is. As the community has never had frame data before. We now know a lot more detail down to the frame of what's faster. RTA timing would be 1:31:24. From first input, to last (when prince stops moving at the white screen). It's very different because we delete the cinematic when running on PC version. In fact the current WR is now 1:45:34 by me. The former WR holder that was mentioned helped a lot with the routing of this, as did other members of the community. I am very happy with the level of optimization I was able to achieve with the month I took to make this. Hope you guys enjoyed it :D

Vynneve, do you still have the original file you submitted? My DONEEEEEEE.dtm says it was not edited since I downloaded it, but somehow it stopped syncing for me no matter what I change in Dolphin configs (the updated movie doesn't sync either anymore). Please post it again to make sure I haven't accidentally messed something up: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/my#uploadfile

I don't know if it's relevant here, but I've noticed that running a later version of Dolphin causes TASes I've made on older versions to no longer sync. I don't know what causes it, but I have an unfinished TAS I started on Dolphin 5.0 that will sync as long as I don't start a different version of Dolphin and mess with settings. The only reason I can come up with is that all versions of dolphin share the same config files. Deleting them and starting over doesn't solve the problem for me, though. I've accepted that my TAS will sync whenever it wants to and I can't change that. Right now it syncs up just fine but I'm sure in a couple of weeks, it'll go back to desyncing from just after power on. Then later it may start syncing again even though I didn't change anything. Like I said, it works for me whenever it feels like it. Maybe it's different depending on the game, but what you're describing sounds pretty similar to what I go through sometimes.

It'd use global configs if you don't have portable.txt alongside it. I tried with and without it and had no luck tho. EDIT: Desyncs on linux too.

Sorry I haven't been checking this, just busy. So sad there's trouble publishing this, I hope we can figure it out :( I re-uploaded the dtm to the link feos posted. This is the original dtm, but I don't have the dolphin version/settings that I produced it on. I can try to get it to sync again myself. Contacting me in the discord would be more efficient in the future as well.

Thanks to Vynneve for bearing with me, the culprit was the SRAM file. When I first ran this movie, it synced just fine, so the SRAM file wasn't specifically crafted, but after I deleted it and it was created from scratch, the run stopped syncing. So not sure what dirty magic Dolphin is doing there, but here's the file that syncs (should go in User\GC): https://files.tasvideos.org/common/SubmissionFiles/6550S/SRAM.7z

This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [4183] GC Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones "glitchless" by Vynneve in 1:43:46.77

Turns out the reason it didn't sync with default SRAM was stereo audio in the BIOS settings. If the stereo flag in SRAM is zero (bit 2 of byte 0x13 in User\GC\SRAM.raw) then this movie syncs. Here's how to clear it from the BIOS menu: Post #515065.