OK, so I'm working on a Legendary Axe TAS. People are welcome to compete with me because I'm a total n00b to making these things. Below find several variations on the 1st level.
Awright, editing this first post to include all the revisions to avoid spamming my own post count.
1st attempt
Mostly walking, skip the spider w/ axe power-up.
2nd attempt
Mostly hopping, some walking near the boss, stopping to kill spider and get axe power-up.
3rd attempt
Mostly hopping, stopping to kill spider (improved strat). Slower than the fastest run by about 500 frames. This is a decent bit slower but the boss fight is much faster as will be future enemy kills. I'm wondering what the net trade-off will be.
4th attempt
Mostly hopping, skip spider w/ axe power-up. Improved boss strat over attempt 1. This is the fastest run but it leaves me without the axe power-up. Not sure how this will affect later levels, though it takes 2 hits with the unpowered axe to open power-up statues and twice as many hits to kill enemies. I can't remember where the next power-up is, but I hope it's not out of the way.
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OK, so I've got frame advance down and I (after several minutes) have perfect frame timing for getting past the title screen and into the game, but I keep screwing up and I feel like I need a rewind button. Do you peeps automatically save a state every 60 frames or so or what?
Maybe I'm asking the wrong question. Every time I mess up I have to start over. How do I pick up from where I left off in a recording?
To explain further, whenever I make a mistake I play back the movie I just made, set it to read/write, and then play up until I get near where I made the mistake. I stop playback and start recording (cntl+shift+r), but mednafen resets whenever I start recording. I can't figure out how to pick up recording where I left off.