Note: the rerecord count for the run should be 46773, but the inputs were copied to a new file to ensure sync.
Introduction
Resident Evil is a influential survival horror game, taking elements from Sweet Home and Alone in the Dark and combining them together into a strongly designed whole.
Despite the longer input length, this is an improvement over the current TAS done by Uroboros and arukAdo by a few minutes in gameplay time from the implementation of various glitches found over the years, alongside optimization of various rooms. Most of the time discrepancy comes from more accurate loading emulation, which extends transitions by a few seconds each.
Tricks and Glitches
- Rapid-Fire
Guns generally have a long cooldown between shots if the shoot button is held down while targeting. This cooldown can be shortened significantly by letting go of target for a frame, which cancels part of the animation and allows guns to be fired at a much higher rate. This is used whenever more then one bullet needs to be expended.
- Pause Quick Fadeout
Using an item from the menu normally causes a slower fadeout back into gameplay, but this can be cancelled with the normal fadeout by pressing start a frame or so after confirming a selection, saving a handful of frames each time.
- Blood Cutscene Skip
When first starting a game as Jill, Barry normally starts a cutscene where he examines blood near the fireplace and then asks Jill to find any other clues. However, this can be skipped by opening the menu at a precise frame, which prevents Barry from walking to the fireplace. This saves about 20 seconds.
- Chemical Skip
Collecting the Armor Key normally requires getting Chemical to kill the plants guarding it, but this can be avoided with a very precise positional line-up to push Jill the wrong way through the plants. This saves about a minute.
- Richard/Serum Skip
Normally, it's required to save Richard in a run due to Jill refusing to move forward until Richard is either cured or dies. The timer in the background for Richard dying is about 5 minutes, which is too long to wait, so normally it's fastest to go get the serum.
However, it's possible to avoid this with a method similar to Blood Cutscene Skip. By opening the menu as the camera changes into the cutscene, it's possible to gain control of Jill while the cutscene is playing. Leaving during this state confuses the timer of Richard dying to be set to the length of the cutscene. While this does cause a bit of waiting around, it's still much faster then getting the serum and saves about 2 minutes.
- Plant 42 Cutscene Skip
Jill normally gets saved by Barry after defeating Plant 42, which takes about a minute. This can be avoided by leaving the room the same frame Plant 42 is killed, which gives you control during the cutscene upon re-entering once you open and close the menu. Killing Plant 42 again then spawns the key, allowing the cutscene to be skipped and saving a few seconds.
Improvements shortlist
- Run was done on the Japanese version of the Director's Cut for faster text and to avoid strange emulation errors with the American release.
- Various minor frame saves in individual rooms from iterating on Jill's angle to be more optimal, too many to list.
- Multiple minutes saved from implementing Blood Cutscene Skip, Serum Skip, and Plant 42 Cutscene Skip.
- Chemical Skip was updated to match RTA's method, which saves a few seconds.
- Due to extra Flame Rounds being necessary for Plant 42 Cutscene Skip, a few seconds are saved traveling through the mansion by shooting the most in the way zombies rather then dodging them.
- 5 seconds saved on Yawn 2 from having extra Flame Rounds and optimization.
- Small bit of time saved after Yawn 2 by not unnecessarily re-equipping the Grenade Launcher until the forced menu after using the crank again. Also, the emblem from Death Book 1 is examined earlier to skip a small animation of its model retracting.
- 8 frames saved from entering the elevator in the kitchen by avoiding a camera change.
- 4 frames saved backtracking by having a spider's hitbox push Jill forward slightly.
- 5 seconds saved pushing a statue in the Underground rather then retracting the wall again.
- 8 frames saved entering the username on the computer in the Laboratory.
Potential improvements
- The PC version of the game has the ability to skip Yawn 2's intro cutscene by firing Acid Round through a wall. From testing, it appears how walls interact with rounds is different on the PSX versions, making this not work. Having this be available would save about 20 seconds, barring routing differences from the extra ammo.
- A very odd bug exists on the PSP emulated version that changes a door location near Yawn 1's boss room to the entrance to the Garden, skipping the need for the four Emblems. While more then likely an emulation error, having this work on a real console would probably save a minute or two. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqwezx7TERk)
Suggested Screenshot
Frame 45284 (Richard Skip)
Darkman425: The longer time compared to the previous publication comes down to more accurate emulation leading to longer load times. The gameplay improvements with more refined movement and techniques, the implemented skips found over the period of 12 years, and even killing a few more zombies makes this a much faster run of Jill's campaign. Nice work improving on an old run over a decade old!
feos: Restored cycles and rerecords.
