Introduction

Spider-Man, known more commonly as Spider-Man 2000, is a 2000 action-adventure game developed by Neversoft, probably more well-known as the developer of the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games. It was the first Spider-Man to be done fully in 3D and in general still holds up rather well in terms of plotting and level design, unlike a few of its direct sequels.
This is my third attempt at this game's any% category, and is an improvement of 7040 frames (a little under 2 minutes) due to another round of optimization and the implementation of some new skips found over the years.

Mechanics and Glitches

Web Swinging
Web swinging in this game on the surface appears a bit more rudimentary then what would become standardized with Spider-Man 2: The Movie: The Game, although the basics remain the same. Essentially, web swinging works by determining a point directly in front of Spidey as a 'swing target', and if Spidey is close enough to that target he will swing to it with a press of the R button.
There's three variations of swinging: slow swinging, fast swinging, and web zipping. Slow swinging is when Spidey takes two webs to reach a target, and while slow and generally avoided it does allow for traversal without losing height. More common in the run is fast swinging and web zipping, however, as they're both very quick to execute. Fast swinging happens whenever a swing target is close enough to Spidey to be completed in one web swing, and web zipping can generally happen when Spidey is extremely close to a wall or floor while in a standing state, although there's some exceptions.
Web Abilities
Beyond normal combat abilities like punches, kicks, and grabs, Spidey also has access to four different web abilities that can be chosen via a directional input in the C-Stick, alongside shooting a normal web.
Web Gloves great boost Spidey's punching abilities, which can be exploited by only using punches at the end of combos to greatly increase damage output.
Web Dome protects Spidey in webbing that explodes after a certain amount of time, or earlier with a button press. Due to an exploit, this is very useful.
Impact Webs (trademark Ben Reilly) shoots a ball of web at an enemy. It's not as instant as shooting a normal web, which itself has useful properties, but it does decent damage and is generally useful at taking out enemies resistant to physical damage.
Web Yank yanks an opponent and....is never used lol.
Clipping
Clipping refers to a variety of methods used throughout the game in order to get out of bounds, but in the majority of cases refers to using Spidey's webs in unintended ways to push him out of bounds, be that via an object or holes in geometry. Essentially any indoor level is susceptible to clipping, and in many cases the loading trigger for the next level is present somewhere out of bounds, often independent of cutscenes that play before them.
Web Dome Ascension (WDA)
For whatever reason, the N64 version of the game has a glitch that allows for Spidey to ascend when using a web dome on the edge of a platform. After ending the web dome, it's even possible to jump out of it since the game temporarily considers Spidey to be on the ground at the end of the animation. This is used in a few levels for traversal and out of bounds movement.

Improvements shortlist

  • Swing routing was optimized in every level to be faster.
  • Scorpion, Rhino, Venom 1, Venom 2, and Carnage are all faster due to differences in attack strategies and carefully managing their health.
  • A few levels take advantage of overlaping cutscenes to save time. This is done in Stop the Bomb to start the bomb timer sooner, and in Hidden Switches to skip one of Venom's cutscenes.
  • Sewer Entrance has an OOB that saves less then a second, mainly due to N64 having a black wall present for whatever reason that has to be moved around with WDA.
  • Subway still isn't skippable ( >:( ), but 9 seconds was saved from a new lag reduction strategy and killing enough of the lizards at the right time for the level to end properly.
  • The Lizard's Maze was massively improved thanks to more optimized swinging and a way to skip the cutscene at the end of the level via OOB travel.
  • A new out of bounds in Symbiotes Infest Bugle (found by me!) saves a few seconds while leaving quite a few civilians to presumably die. Thanks Spidey!
  • Elevator Descent is skipped with a zip that pushes Spidey out of bounds due to incorrect targeting when holding swing, which saves about 30-40 seconds.
  • New out of bounds method in Waterfront Warehouse saves a few seconds over the old method.
  • A minor cutscene was skipped in Stopping the Fog by positioning Spidey very carefully before interacting with the three switches in the level, since the trigger to open the doors is slightly larger then the cutscene trigger.
  • Thanks to careful web cartridge routing, Carnage is slightly faster since I no longer need to pause Impact Webbing to pick up a cartridge.

Potential Improvements

As this game is 3D, optimizing its movement is exponentially harder then it would be for a 2D game, especially considering factors such as lag and optimal angles to reach swing points the fastest. Thus, it's likely that there's still frames to shave off in every level, but doing so would take far more time then it's worth.
For any theoretical new skips, ideally a way to fully skip Subway would easily allow for a sub 20 minute time, although attempts to do so have so far been fruitless. The Black Cat cutscene at the end of Stopping the Fog would also ideally be skippable, but again attempts have been fruitless.

Suggested Screenshot

Frame 59716

nymx: Claiming for judging.

nymx: Wow...what did I just witness!? :) This was some pretty crazy stuff and I applaud you on furthering the cuts.
Accepting to "Standard" for publication.

EZGames69: Processing...


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #8359: arandomgameTASer's N64 Spider-Man in 21:35.87
EZGames69
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Congratulations on the new improvement, and also on being the first to make a TAS on the new Ares N64 core! I’d like to claim this for pubs if accepted.
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
RetroEdit
Any
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Joined: 8/8/2019
Posts: 152
A goofy game with goofy OOB collision detection. Fun TAS. Yes vote.
Natetheman223
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How the hell did you crank this out in like a month? Awesome TAS, yes vote. I like how frequently you trivialized levels by getting out of bounds within the first few seconds. surf the web
I like 3D Spider-Man games.
Memory
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sick stuff, yes vote
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
CoolHandMike
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Did not know that Spiderman had phasing abilities but now I know better. Yes vote.
discord: CoolHandMike#0352
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [5370] N64 Spider-Man by arandomgameTASer in 21:35.87