Hi everyone, I'm back from the dead! :)
Sorry, but I haven't posted to announce that I've completed the game, sims included, in 45 minutes. Rather, I've finally started to TAS ActRaiser again. So... Is anybody else secretly TASing this game? I'd be willing to work with you.
In any case, I'm back up to the beginning of Bloodpool again. I managed to shave frames off of Fillmore Act 1 and Act 2
again.
In Act 1, I now take a route along the tree branches, which saves about 15 frames, probably because there's a part where I speed up while falling from the trees.
In the Sim itself, I now build another road while heading down to the third lair. I built a table with population growth for Ogreslayer's TAS, Sir VG's SDA run, and my previous WIPs. Looking at it, it looks like Fillmore will probably grow enough after I've left that that square will be used (remember that I'm using "cheat roads" to leave Fillmore sooner, so I'll be waiting more in later towns). I lose about 300 frames building that extra road, but there about 720 frames between construction phases, so it should be worth it.
In Act 2, I let myself get hit by 2 of the enemies since it saves time due to going through the water faster. Overall, I saved 20 frames in Act 2. I'm now making it my official policy to go through every level at least twice, because I always manage to find another way to save time. Competing against myself seems to work well.
I also did some investigation of the game mechanics. It turns out that there are two memory locations (7E08C4 and 7E08BC) that when used together take the guesswork out of finding out how much of a forward boost you will get when jumping, and whether or not you'll get a height boost by using the sword at a certain point in the air. I can't exaggerate how much easier that's made things for me. I also found miscellaneous other memory locations, like the X and Y positions of the angel's arrow, but I'm not sure how useful they'll be yet.
It's interesting that I regained interest right now, right at the time gocha is starting to add/enhance lua support in Snes9x 1.51 (I only noticed after restarting my TAS). I'm not sure whether I'll have any use for lua, but if you guys can think of anything, I'm open to suggestions. Anything to automate stuff would be awesome :).
Here's the wip:
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/247010340/ActRaiser%20%28U%29%20%28Zidanax%20WIP%205%29.smv