User Files from Induviel

Does Memory Blocks 1 and 2.

Found a few small improvements on MB1, main thing I think is doing a roll at the end of mission 2 so that Ezio is in the correct position for the cutscene and doesn't have to walk there after the mission is over.
Found out that when having the boost from a slope rolling gives you a very slight speed boost, very minor but after a few rolls it saves a few frames. There's a spot it could be done in MB2 mission 2 part 2, but if you do it the guard at the end is further right and you lose more that you save either waiting for him or doing slower movement.
Also found that in cases where there is a cutscene right after touching the end of the level and Ezio would then slow walk to some spot in the cutscene it's faster to do a jump before to skip some walking.

Recently replayed AC: Rogue, so I thought I'd TAS the other TASable AC game that doesn't have one yet. Kind of a long game tho.

Found some small optimizations, when starting to move its faster to roll to reach max running speed, similar when landing after jumping with low speed, since if you land with speed it auto-rolls, which is faster but it's not always possible.
When climbing up a wall the animation you get can be changed depending on when Up is pressed, usually the middle jump is faster since it has a shorter animation that the lunge and covers more than the steps, but dpending on the distance the others may be preferable.
It's possible to avoid getting the stealth kill animations by doing a running attack that barely hits the target, the attack animation with low speed is faster, tho it can be more akward to do. If it's not possible to avoid an animation it's possible to change the animation you get depending on when it starts, which can save many seconds each time.
Appart from the tutorial, in stealth missions there is a notoriety counter, and you can only be found out 3 times until it game overs, but if you die or reset a checkpoint it resets the counter, which then lets you keep rushing through the level.
Also, the rng for the enemy patterns can be changed by doing attacks.

Here, I think the two things that could be improved are maybe better rng on the tutorial, and a shorter animation on the counterattack at the 2nd tutorial after the Memory Block 1.

Does up to the bossfight. The boss level is done before the cat maze level because otherwise it messes up the position that is used for the warp to skip the first phase of the bossfight.

Also found out that the blue laser actually does less damage to the boss than the red laser, I think that's the case anyway, so I got to redo something somewhere to collect a red laser, unless the glitch thing can be used to somehow spawn red laser shots, which I wouldn't be surprised if it was a thing tbh.

Edit: Ended up collecting the red laser at the start of the third level, pretty fast one to pick up, about 2 seconds, and the teleport gets you to the same spot anyway so the rest of the level is about the same.

Fun game to TAS tbh. It goes through the first 2 levels, at this point its linear, but after this point it branches out a bit.

Uses a glitch the RTA WR does to teleport some distance, done by using the invisibility power twice in a certain interval, by how it works I think its like getting the character into some animation depending on what you do before doing the glitch. To get the teleport you have to have done the laser up and then jumped, and then it teleports the character where you did laser, offset to the right or left. Also got a weird interaction where instead of teleporting it made the character levitate if you cancelled the laser as you are going up, and do it without jumping, probably not very useful, but maybe there are other interactions that would be useful, idk.

Not too sure about the damage route, but if I don't find a way to get through the last section of level 2 faster it might be worth getting the health up, and then have the arrows maybe line up or something.

Apparently if you press down in a level before moving or anything it takes you to the next level, idk if it's a glitch or a dev thing, but it's kind of silly. Only works after the first level tho.

-45 frames

Beats the Amiga version of The Amazing Spider-Man.

Does the current RTA route, with a different clip for the screen wrap. The current TAS of the DOS version doesn't do it so thats free timesave.

The two frames of garbage sprites during the boot happen because apparently if you press escape during the transitions of the comic strip it skips them after some waiting.

Goes through the first 2 worlds.

J version is used since apparently the NTSC version crashes at the end of the game with the speedrun route. This version can also crash when entering the last level, but seems like, according to something I saw on the discord of the game, that if you don't save it may not happen, which is fine since not saving is about 15 frames faster.

Also found a glitch to give 1 iframe, which is used here just to wait closer to where you need to go thanks to tanking mines. It also gives iframes to the red mages, so its not used always. The glitch really is just another use of the glitch where you pause after entering the portal thing at the end of each level to skip the transition, or to skip the level if you get to the bonus level, but still.

-113 frames from optimization, rest from earlier input end

Goes through the first 5 levels.

It's a cinematic platformer, so there's not as much that can be done to speed it up, haven't found any actual glitches atm, but I did find a few optimizations to do throughout, and some better damage routes.

Enemies deal more damage if you bump into them rather than being attacked by them, so in many spots its better to wait for the attack to avoid having to avoid the enemy or heal up later, and taking the gun on level 2 would be slower since it takes about 2 seconds to pick up and shooting it is slow.

Goes through the first movie in the game, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Saved about 40 frames in the first 2 levels from picking up the whip in level 1 and better rolling. Couldn't find any other uses for the floor clip, other than the one in the penultimate level in movie 1, the level before it looks like it should have some useful floor clip, but in every ledge where it can be done there's extra collision inside the floor.

Goes through the first 2 levels.

Rolling is the fastest movement option here so its done as much as possible, after a bit the roll loses speed and goes back to walking speed so it's better to cancel it midway through and start a new one. Also, for whatever reason pressing B between the 2nd and 7th frame after pressing A to start a roll saves time, up to 6 frames per roll.

The second level looks like an autoscroller but it can be sped up by optimizing movement.

There's also a floor clip glitch that exists in this game, that the RTA WR does in a later level, and I got it at random in one of the ledges here, tho it wasn't useful, so hopefully that's a general use glitch and can be done anywhere useful.

96 frames saved from previous WIP https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638922624152930492 , 34 frames from Exonym's 1-1, also found 2 more frames in 1-1.
Seems like there's some kind of framerule going on, since it was only possible to gain frames in batches of 32, the framerule happens when dealing the final hit to Tom in any bossfight. In here, world 1 is 19 frames close to the next framerule, and world 2 is 26 frames close.

Missed a 12 frame timesave smh.

Interesting homebrew, most of the game is just moving right so most of the optimization there comes from lag reduction, this game lags a lot, and killing enemies also create more lag, so wether you kill an enemy or not really comes down to checking if its worth in that specific situation, and in some cases its faster to take a hit to get a projectile off the screen faster, which is the reason a random hit is taken on the Ghostface bossfight, for example, to prevent one rogue lag frame.

Also, found a few gitches, like a double jump, tho it only gives a slight jump height increase, or a way to clip through the top of some blocks.

.

Fun game.

Up to halfway stage 4, seems like probably some will have to be redone to save up health for the rest of the stage, and the boss, and some of the next stage, since the next health is about a quarter in stage 5, so I'll leave it here for a bit.

Damageless would have been a better goal probably, wouldn't have to fuzz about frames that could be saved from taking even more damage.

Funny game. Found a small optimization where you can cover slightly more per jump if you crouch around the end of a jump, saves a smidge each time, other than that, its all standard. Anyway, there's a lot of RNG in this game, having to get the speed boost as soon as possible in every level, plus either the fireball or the thunder powerups to deal with enemies faster while not losing health, or at least not as much. Some frames are lost before starting the game to get good RNG and get the fireball and the gauntlets at the start. The world version is used for the faster start screen btw.

4 stages done.

Just figured out the version I'm using is not the fastest, the J version doesn't have the time bonus at the end of each stage, so that should save time, the USA version also doesn't have it, but the startup sequence takes longer. So, will have to resync on the J version.

Edit: Actually, the J version also has the time bonus I guess? I was going off the WR, which didn't get the time bonus, I guess you just get it if you are fast enough, guess I'll instead have to check how much slower I'd have to go to not get the bonus, and see if that's faster overall. Tho, checkimg the J version, it did have sound, which is weird since the other two versions didn't, and I thought it was just something weird with my laptop, will have to check that. Could someone let me know of this has no audio, or is it just on me? If it doesn't switching to J shouldn't be too hard anyway.

Edit2: Managed to get audio, changed some sync settings back and forth and now its the same as before, but with audio, bad news tho, it desyncs if I just copy paste this wholesale on a tasproj with audio, so thats fun, at least that means I get to have audio on the World version, which has the faster startup sequence.

Completed up to after beating the 2nd boss, didn't find any good glitch to speed this up much, there are some spots where I go straight through certain hazards but nothing groundbreaking, so this will probably be a very vanilla TAS, if I manage to finish it, it's kind of long.
Might have to change this a bit to check wether getting the health up from the shop is faster overall or not, it should allow for more damage boosts, but its 50 curio, so some time will be lost farming for curio later on, appart from the time lost going to the shop and buying it. But anyway, I think I'd have to first TAS the whole game without the health up, then again with it to really make sure which is faster.

Finally done redoing the first 2 missions using analog controls, managed to save a good amount of frames from the faster and more precise turning.
It's still done painfully vanilla, with no actual skips or glitches, I'm not that good at finding those unless they are blindingly obvious so that was expected, tho I'll still try to find something if possible.

Here's a quick encode.

Encode looks like shit, and not just because the graphics are not that good, not sure how I can make it better tho.

Discovered this game from it being mentioned on the NES Whishlist forum, I thought I'd wait for the game to come out, since its still unreleased, but messing around in the demo I found a bunch of stuff that would probably make for a fun TAS, so I had to.

The game can be found here
https://megacatstudios.com/pages/the-meating

Does someone here know if a TAS of this demo would be submittable? If so I'd probably have to optimize it further tho.

Finally finished Mission 2, that's the longest one in the game, and the only one that forces stealth, so the rest should be easier, depends on if just sprinting through enemies is possible without them gunning you down.

Here's a quick encode.

I've wanted to TAS a 3D game for a while, this one seems simple enough. Haven't found any glitches, yet, only things I've found by now is that jumping is slightly faster than running, tho you need a lot of space, and the more you hold L/R the faster the camera turns, up to max camera speed, so you can preemtively hold L/R even when not being able to move to build up camera speed to turn faster.

Also, kind of crazy how much harder optimizing 3D is compared to 2D, even way harder than I initially thought.

Here's a quick encode.

If someone sees something that looks unoptimal please share.