I'm going to try to give some general constructive feedback for TASing. It takes a long time to be able to effectively and efficiently make a polished TAS for submission.
On this line of thought, I note that your previous submission had 465 rerecords for 525 seconds of gameplay. This is less than one rerecord per second of gameplay.
If we consider information here: http://tasvideos.org/MovieStatistics.html
Average movie length: 24:08 (1448 seconds)
Average rerecord count: 28818
This suggests that an average published movie on this site has roughly 20 rerecords per second. This would imply that you should try roughly 20 times per second of gameplay to save frames.
Now obviously if you are just walking to the right at a fixed speed, there isn't too much to do, but this is where you should try to take a fastest route that is creative. When you get to a point where you accelerate, decelerate, or have to solve a problem for the fastest solution, this is where your rerecords should come from. You should be satisfied that you solve the problem to the best of your ability before you move on. You should know that it isn't within your capabilities to save any more frames. You should be using frame advance almost all the time when trying to implement the solution to these difficult problems. This is where we look for optimization.
Now obviously this takes a lot of patience and perseverance to hold yourself to a high quality standard, but it is the only way you'll get better at TASing.
For now I would say roughly 10 rerecords per second is a good goal for a short game like this for a new TASer. A movie file of this length should have roughly 5000 rerecords, give or take plenty. It's just a rough gauge. Most experienced TASers can use roughly 800 rerecords per hour (I meant this in terms of real life time, not game time.), so you can quickly see how minimal 465 is. Obviously if you become more experienced you will be able to get to that level, but we all had to start somewhere.
It's not actually about the rerecord number, it's obviously about the level of quality. So the rerecord count is more of a persoal gauge for you to see if you're spending enough time on relevant segments. It's obviously easy to waste reloads or even hack the rerecord count high (so we never really consider it fully), but it is good for both you and us to understand statistically how much effort was put into the TAS.
Two obvious things to note:
- Use autofire A only when necessary. Hearing the loud monotone sound for many seconds isn't very amusing. Clearly you can't do anything, just walk to the right but using autofire A in many places doesn't feel like a god played the game (it doesn't automatically make a good TAS, for me at least)
- You bumped against a wall somewhere in level 1, and (I'm not sure but) possibly you could still improve positioning on the staircase sequences.
You did very well with the boss fights. When you reached the point were you can't improve the boss fights time-wise, the next thing to do is to improve the boss fight entertainment-wise (but everyone has a different taste and I can't give you pointers on what else to do in a boss fight other than being sure to not lose time due to bad positioning which you avoided this time. At least, as an important pointer, I think the run could be more amusing with less autofire A)
Maybe a third obvious point: Only 280 rerecords this time... Kirkq has a good point there and I agree that you should use rerecords when necessary. However I don't agree about this:
Most experienced TASers can use roughly 800 rerecords per hour, so you can quickly see how minimal 465 is. Obviously if you become more experienced you will be able to get to that level, but we all had to start somewhere.
This sounds like being a good TASer implies to have a low rerecord number. Maybe Kirkq didn't mean so, but I want to clear it up anyway: It is, aside from your effort, largely game-dependent how high or low your rerecord number is going to turn out to be. Maybe in this game where you simply walk to the right while jumping / flying you won't spend a high number of rerecords, but you can use rerecords to redo the parts where you jump over a gap or on / across an enemy until it's looking satisfactory. While TASing the Mario Land 4 hack I even had a place where I faced much lag, so you could use rerecords to reduce this lag (I don't know how or if it's possible at all, or if it's in the original game at all!). You shouldn't worry about lag reduction for now though...
But, NitroGenesis, you should learn TASing is more than just going through the game at 50% speed and enabling autofire at certain times. I don't know how interesting it is for you to engage in TASing the way I mentioned above, but this is how I TAS. Maybe you'll find it boring and time-consuming to spend much time on a small place in a level.. it is up to you how you are going to make your next TASes. After all I'm just saying I'd like to see more from you than just an apparent 50%-speed-autofire-A-TAS.
After writing all this, I think kirkq actually did better than me at giving advice. I just feel like you shouldn't worry about the rerecord number, just use the rerecords and make an entertaining movie.
EDIT: Oh, and you went the slower route again.
Here a movie I made for you to compare.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1603492354/shinchan1.vbm
- Jumping seems to have 1 delay frame, so only jump when necessary (You can make entertainment/speed trade-offs if you wish)
Not used in the movie above
