New WIP up to Sandopolis 2.
Note: the WIP is on MediaFire because MicroStorage is down; I will change the link when it is back up.
Once again: requires one of the following savestates:
Savestate for Gens 11a
Savestate for Gens 11b
Sandopolis 1 sees a forced early Tails spawn to save a few frames; moving left allows me to get more speed and get topside without losing frames, and the extra speed gives a few frames. When coming back, the jump after the slide finally worked without loss of speed -- a slightly different position would make Sonic lose all speed when hitting the ground. Finally, the extremelly obvious route right before the pyramid is responsible for the rest of the improvement. I lost 1 frame (real time) in the transition because otherwise Tails would either be too forward and hit the first timed object on the next level or facing the wrong direction and lose one frame in in-game time because of this. I also do not keep control of Sonic for the score tally to manipulate Tails' grab timer for the next act. The result: 1:27::04, an improvement of 47 frames over the published run.
Sandopolis 2 has Tails starting with a zeroed-out grab timer, so he can grab Sonic without delay, giving a few frames. I also finally managed to get enough vertical speed on the handle to go through the floor and land on Knuckles' route (instead of landing beneath it losing time) without having to use the sandfall, which saves more frames. Improved precision saves enough time that the last timed object before the boss would be in the way; so I glitch into Knuckles' route, glitch under it and zip into the boss arena. The camera locks too low at the boss because of this, but not low enough that I can't hit the capsule afterwards. The boss fight is as fast as I could make it under the circumstances, which includes managing Tails' respawn to an optimal time. The result: 0:44::56, an improving of 236 frames over the published run. At this point, this act is the most improved level in terms of in-game time.
At this point, were I to paste the remainder of the published run (and if it synched), the run would be 107940 frames long (real time), or 29:59::00 -- sub-30 minutes, even with the Doomsday zone! I don't know if it is possible to improve Lava Reef 1 (I know Lava Reef 2 can't be improved by more than a couple frames, if that), Sky Sanctuary, Death Egg 1 or the Doomsday; but I know of 59 frames of improvement for Hidden Palace and at least 20 seconds of improvement on Death Egg 2. So in all likelyhood, normal Sonic will have a shorter run than Hyper Sonic in real time (because of the Doomsday and because of 1200 frames "lost" to extra score tallies in 3 levels). In in-game time, however, normal Sonic doesn't stand a chance.
