Live reveal (yes commentary):
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/965985818
Goals
- Beats the game as fast as possible
- Uses damage boosts to save time
- Uses death to save time
- Heavy glitch abuse
- Heavy luck manipulation
done on Bizhawk 2.6.0 with mGBA code, per TiKevin's recommendation, playing the US version of the game. The PAL version loses one second compared to the NTSC-U version from the extra second for the pirate boss in Breegull Beach to appear in the last phase of the fight. The PAL version also loses time from the language select menu that pops up everytime you launch the game. English is the fastest language of the 3 available languages on PAL, so it couldn’t benefit from extra translations anyway.
This movie does lose 470 frames to the previous movie from not skipping the GBA bios.
Why did I want to make that TAS?
Superjumps save about 30 seconds and they were barely used in the old TAS.
2 new skips were found, saving about 25 seconds together.
I personally really hate the fact that you need "anonymous user" everywhere where you see the old TAS, it doesn't look clean.
Note to TASvideos staff: the old TAS ends the submission on the last required input to reach the credits, while I end my submission at looking at the IGT for the run (IGT still counts in the credits). Feel free to trim the movie if you judge that it is worth doing.
Basic movement mechanics
General info
For each form of movement listed below, changing directions in the air drop BK’s speed to 1.20, with the exception of talon trot. Running off ledges is really bad, as your speed drops to 0 until you touch the ground. It is always better to jump down ledges. A damage boost always bring your speed to -1.60. Rubbing against a wall does not reduce your speed at all. So if you rub against a ledge and jump up it, you will already be at full speed when you go above the ledge.
NEW!: coming out of loading zones, you can do a frame-perfect jump on your first frame of input even if you're in the air. Does not work with you're in talon trot.
Banjo and Kazooie
- Swimming: 1.20
- Egg aim: 1.20
- Walking: 1.60
- Rolling: 2.00
- Talon Trot: 2.50
Between the time where we learn how to roll and the time where we learn talon trot, rolling then jumping is the fastest way of movement, as reaching the end of a roll stops BK for a few frames. Roll speed is kept during a jump until a few frames after we land.
After that, talon trot becomes the fastest way of movement. It is worth noting that you can’t slide on ice. You can exit talon trot with a ratatat rap to extend a jump, however, this does come at the cost of not being able to turn in the air and still keep the talon trot speed. In this game, you can ratatat rap and flutter during a single jump, and this is used to cross over large gaps only if necessary, as the flutter after the ratatat rap brings your speed to 1.20.
When climbing up vines, the optimal way of getting as much vertical speed as possible is to get off the vines as soon as we can, and coming back onto it to be able to jump again. The reason why this is faster is that the first few frames of a full jump are faster than the speed that you get when climbing up a vine.
NEW!: if you if you jump off of vines, as long as you do not change direction after jumping, you do not drop back to 1.2 pixels per frame.
When jumping in water, you want to give a quick wiggle after you touch the water to avoid coming to a stop. If you walk out of water, your speed will be locked at 1.20 unless you give a wiggle once you’re out. This last one is probably an oversight from the developers.
Mouse
- Walking: 2.50
This transformation is very basic. All it has is a low jump and the ability to move around.
Candle
- Walk: 1.60
- Roll: 2.00
Other than walking, the candle can roll. When you roll on the ground, you can’t jump or turn during the roll. If you jump and then start a roll in the air (something untransformed BK cannot do), you don’t get a speed boost.
Octopus
Walk: 1.60 Swim: 1.80
In most cases, it’s pretty straightforward. You want to maximise the time that you spend in water to benefit from the better speed. Unlike BK, you do not need a wiggle when you dive in water to avoid slowing down. The unexpected part of the octopus sections come from the optimal way to move in the long water sections.
Superjumps and speed conservation
Superjumps are glitches that allow you gain massive speeds compared to what you can normally get. You can even chain them to get as much as you want, as long as you have terrain to do it. There are multiple ways to achieve such glitches, and they are require swimmable water or lava to be executed. The knowledge about this matter really got improved since the GR Any% TAS from 2015.
Roll Superjumps
The simplest one to explain and only works as BK. When you land off of a roll-jump on the side of a platform that is above water, if you roll on the frame that you land and jump right after, you will get a superjump. Note: the roll before the 2nd roll isn’t required, but it makes the superjump go faster.
Traditional Superjumps
Those are the ones found towards the end of the TAS in 2015, and they work with talon trot and any of the transformations that can jump. Those happen when you do a quick wiggle before jumping off of the side of a platform placed above water. Once you already have superjump speed, doing a wiggle in the air when going from above land to above water is enough to get another superjump, though it will give a smaller speed boost.
Speed Conservation (NEW!)
Once you have a higher-than-normal speed, the game will attempt to slow BK down to a normal speed. The former TASer thought in 2015 that frame-perfect direction changing was the only way to preserve speed, however, after a lot of testings, I have discovered that the tech had more depth than what it was already thought. It is worth noting that while superjumps are definitely doable RTA, preserving speed is way more risky and not currently worth it.
While making the 100% TAS, I thought this only applied to cases where you had a lot of speed, but as it turns out, you can use this pretty much at any point. The only thing that remains unaffected are boosts from water currents, and the 0 speed rule when falling straight down (since you can no longer turn).
Above water
Holding nothing on the D-pad is optimal, as the game won’t attempt to slow you down. However, if you try to turn in the air above water, the regular speed conservation rules apply with a slowdown interval that is huge.
Everywhere else
The most useful way of conserving speed. Contrary to what it was thought in 2015, frame-perfect angle change is not required. Every 6 to 15 frames or so depending on context, the game will start to quickly slowing BK down over the next frames. However, if you give a quick wiggle just before that deceleration starts happening, you will lose a tiny bit of speed, and it will delay the deceleration for another 4 to 15 frames usually.
Tricks
Egg knockback
This is the only major glitch in this run. when you hit an enemy when an egg, the game checks if you are in the egg firing mode when an enemy gets hit to decide if you must get knocked back or not. If you shoot an egg and quickly backflip, you can get a knockback at the top of your backflip when the egg hits an enemy. It may not sound all that useful, but it does save about 3 1/2 minutes throughout the whole run, mainly in the final boss fight.
Camera optimisations
Everytime you see it do some unexpected movement before a cutscene happens, I try to be closer to where the camera is going to scroll to during the cutscene, as it always scrolls at the same speed. The exception of this rule being at the end of the treasure chest and the snowflakes minigames, where your position does not matter.
Bozzeye Frame rules
Every time I learn a move, the first textbox of Bozzeye’s dialogue can only appear every 5 frames. This gives me time to get in a better spot when I need to talk to him.
RNG manipulation
Manipulating RNG in this RNG sucks. There are 4 main ways to manipulate the RNG.
- Jumping as Banjo (does not work in talon trot or with transformations) advances the RNG by 16
- Shooting an egg advances the RNG by 4
- There are random zones in the game where standing in them advances the RNG by 4 to 20 each frame
- Collecting an item
Other than that, there is NOTHING that can be done to change the RNG whatsoever. In most cases where RNG manip is required, there really isn’t a convenient way of manipulating the RNG. Due to that inconvenience, I imposed myself a 3000 re-record limit for every RNG element in the game, and if I reached that limit, I took the best outcome that happened in the time that it took to reach the limit. The only exception being the quiz at the end of the run, where I probably spent 15k rerecords on manipulating that, as getting a minigame is just disastrous.
Time save over the old TAS
| Level | Old TAS | new TAS | delta | cummulative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cliff Farm | 38820 | 38789 | 31 | 31 |
| Breegull Beach | 30072 | 29360 | 712 | 743 |
| Bad Magic Bayou | 29567 | 28482 | 1085 | 1828 |
| Spiller's Harbor | 22959 | 21511 | 1448 | 3276 |
| Freezing Furnace | 14824 | 13904 | 920 | 4196 |
| Grunty's Stronghold + epilogue* | 19281 | 19286 | -5 | 4191 |
| Total | 155523 | 151332 | N/A | 4191 |
- the old movie ended on the last required input to reach the credits, so that's what I'm comparing here. Time loss is from slightly worse quiz RNG.
Level-by-level comparison
Note: unless a superjump has something more to it than being a superjump that wasn't done in the old TAS, it won't be mentionned, as this section would get redundant.
We first still the TAS with me losing 270 frames from watching the GBA bios. After the intro cutscene, we grab the jinjo before learning pack whack as opposed to before jumping to the bridge to save half a second. Now because of that half second of lead that I got, the gruntlings are in a different place, so I couldn't do the good damage boost that was gotten in the old TAS. I instead had to leave a note for later. Nothing much changes between that and entering Cliff Farm.
Cliff Farm
In the first pond, it's faster to get the jiggy first, saving 8 franes.
After that, we get some clever damage boosts that were not done in the TAS, and we get to climb the ladders the good way.
After entering Cliff Farm, we go for another damage boost that wasn't done in the TAS.
At the end of the Klungo fight, you want Banjo and Klungo to be as close as possible to the warp pad for a faster ending, and using a damage boost, I was able to pretty much do that.
During the section that I spend in the river after the sheep minigame, I get to keep the speed from damage boosts, and that ended up saving close to 2 seconds.
In the mill as the mouse, I get a note before going into the hole for a cleaner exit, and I get a frame-perfect mid-air jump off of the loading zone that bring me to the top of the mill to avoid falling straight down.
After spawning the jiggy for getting the 5 chickens, I do some cleaner movement towards the exit.
Leaving Farm Heights, I have cleaner movement going down the stairs, and those are all the differences in Cliff Farm.
Going to Spiral Rise after open Breegull Beach, we roll through fire because game logic, and we get to see the first big chain of superjumps.
Breegull Beach
We get to fix the order in which notes were grabbed at the beginning of the level.
In the underwater section, we also extend the damage boosts by doing some wiggling.
Just before the Grunty fight, I climb the ladders better and do a better camera manip.
In the Grunty fight, for the first 3 phases, Grunty has less movement to travel from better manip.
After grabbing the jiggy from the Grunty fight, I go in front of the pylon as opposed to behind.
In the mouse section with the breegull, I cut corners tighter.
Before and after learning talon trot, I climb the vines better.
That's all for Breegull Beach.
The Spiral Mountain section is the same between Breegull Beach and Bad Magic Bayou besides superjumps and better vine climb.
Bad Magic Bayou
The first room in the mansion is now done last to save half a second.
For the damage boosts before the Klungo fight, jumping before the damage boost removes a slowdown when you land.
When dropping down to the crack after learning bill drill, I get closer to the top-right corner to manipulate the camera.
After beating all the gruntlings for the jiggy, I leave the egg firing mode before the cutscene starts for a faster talon trot entry.
After getting the jinjo in the candle cave, I do a jump that's barely possible to avoid a detour.
Doing the candle puzzle clockwise saves half a second, and I still don't know why.
With the superjump after getting the jinjo jiggy, I get to stay in talon trot since I do not land in the water after getting hurt.
That's it for BMB.
For the Spiral Mountain section, it's the same, but I really think that the note that I get in the water may be too slow, and a replacement could be faster for the TAS. I just couldn't think of one.
Spiller's Harbor
I don't know why, but the oil can also be used for superjumps. I got to use it for faster bird kills and faster movement multiple times... Also it makes you just really high? Couldn't find a use for that, but maybe with more testing, you could jump on top of the lighthouse without the spring pad.
First time the old TAS consciously does a superjump. Here's a video showcasing how superjumps evolved in 6 years. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/691504978967134208/813813818194264105/2021-02-23_11-40-19.mp4
In spillerston, I get to save 16 seconds by skipping the spring pad switch with an egg knockback. By far the biggest time save of the run.
When climbing the lighthouse, I get to cut the 1st spring pad jump early by clipping on the side of the platform.
In the sewers as the octopus, going for superjumps instead of hugging the bottom wall is faster for most of the first half.
Leaving the sewers, we can do a mid-air jump to not fall with 0 horizontal speed.
during the spring pad puzzle, I get to preserve the talon trot speed for a few more frames with the wiggling.
And this is it.
Superjumps, superjumps, superjumps, cutscene, superjumps...
Freezing Furnace
In the storage room, I do a mid-air jump.
The spring pad switch in this level is also skipped, saving 9 seconds.
When pressing the jiggy switch outside, I slide towards the left side during the pack whack animation to manipulate the camera.
the only strat that changes after Freezing Furnace is the first 2 phases of the Grunty fight, in which I do a different manip.
And those are all the new strats that are included in this TAS (minus superjumps)!
Potential time saves:
- I said earlier that the oil in Spiller's Harbor makes you jump really high, who knows if there's other surfaces like that somewhere else in the gane, or if it can be used to actually save time.
- This TAS loses about 5 seconds to RNG, and with a lot of effort put into RNG manip, I feel like it'd be better to save 3-4 seconds off that.
- With the potential that egg knockbacks have, I think more skips could be found.
Samsara: Judging.
Samsara: File replaced with a 2 frame improvement. There is no gameplay difference in the new run (one frame from a textbox and the other from truncating a frame of ending input).
Samsara: File replaced with a version that trims down to the last input required to reach the credits. It also includes a 24 frame improvement. The untrimmed file that contains the credits being TASed and a final look at the IGT is here.
Grunty's Revenge may not have the glitz, glamor, pizazz, or other descriptive words from the 1950s (the ol' razzle dazzle, perhaps) that the N64 games do, but this run definitely makes it look that way. Very well planned out, fast-paced and exciting, and full of ridiculous speedtech, just the way I like my GBA games. Excellent work! Accepting as an improvement to the published run!
Spikestuff has claimed this for publishing, and should definitely use the original submission for said publication.
Spikestuff: Publishing.