Tony Hawk's Underground (THUG1) is the fifth game in the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater franchise, and it is the first game in the series to branch out and have a full-fledged story. In THUG1, we have four difficulties: Too Easy, Beginner, Normal, and Sick. Sick, as you can imagine, is the hardest difficulty and will be our choice for this TAS.
The old TAS was 47:50.85 and was completed in February of 2016. Not too long after it's completion, new tricks and glitches were discovered that made it obsolete. Now, we have a time that is a few minutes faster than the old TAS, faster than the current RTA WR (even when counting the minutes of loads console has over PC), and it looks even cooler than before!
Game objectives
- Emulator used: Dolphin 5.0 (stable)
- Use brand new tricks and glitches to take the old TAS and push it to the next level!
- Destroy the current RTA WR and show the true potential of the game.
- Style points!
This game will be using a
verification file that will setup CATBAG (one of the newest tricks that we will talk about), bind our moves properly, and allow us to choose a different skater look this time around!
Verification Movie
In the current THUG1 ruleset, you are allowed to setup your character, customize him, create tricks, and assign tricks to flip, grab, and special. We do all of these things in the verification movie. While customizing the character is optional, we just opted for the "Andy" preset, creating tricks and assigning tricks is really important and, alone, will save two minutes or so.
The Special Tricks we assign are Indy 900 (due to the insane amount of points it gives), Semi Flip (a really fast special flip trick that gives a good amount of points), and Mix It Up (the fastest manual animation in the game).
Create-A-Trick Broken-Ass-Game (CATBAG)
CATBAG is the biggest trick in the game's history. Originally discovered by PokemonAce101 in THUG2, the process was copied over into THUG1 by SubZeroReptile where it's true potential could be realized. It isn't a complex trick, but it is multifaceted.
For starters: Starting in THUG1, players had the ability to create their own custom tricks. The trick comes into play since the game doesn't have any sort of check to ensure you did the proper trick. All the game looks for is the NAME of the trick in the trick string. So, if you had a Created Trick called McTwist, the game would think you actually did the real McTwist. If the game told us to do a McTwist, we could use the Created Trick version and it will count!
Of course, we will abuse the hell out of this. Instantly, we can now move McTwist out of our Special Trick slots, put in another trick to optimize points further (especially on Sick difficulty), and have Created Trick called McTwist as a replacement. However, we take this a step further.
In several sections in this game, there are callout sections where you are tasked to do every trick the game gives you before proceeding. An intended mechanic is that if the same trick is called out several times, you only have to do it once. Now, if you have the same trick on multiple combinations, regardless if it is a grab or a flip trick, the game will count it all as the same thing. This means we can get rid of ALL of the RNG in the game by having every trick in our basic trick arsenal (save for one) be one trick, in this case, Nut Buster.
To do this part, we have to get past a check in the trickset menu. Normally, if the same trick from one spot is assigned to another, the game would just reverse the two tricks. However, it was discovered that if you take a random Created Trick, assign it to wherever you wanted and replaced the random Created Trick with the one you wanted, the game WOULDN'T check. As you can tell, this is a well-made game.
Created Tricks are also allowed to have whatever pre-made trick animation you want, with spins or even sound effects, and you can also modify how long an animation must last. Currently, the lowest we can go is 0.4, but I am sure this will eventually be circumvented as well. With this, we have crazy tricks that last 0.4 seconds, and we can pull off a lot of them really fast.
The problem? Because the animations don't take long, the tricks hardly give any points. It would take four CATBAG tricks with a manual or two to even get SPECIAL, which isn't optimal. So, as a sacrifice, we opt for one of the combinations (usually up grab or up-right grab) to be either Madonna/Judo or FS Shifty/BS Shifty so we can get SPECIAL as quickly as possible (as a Boneless + 180 Judo or Boneless + 180 BS Shifty will give us over the 3,000 required for SPECIAL).
Now that we got that trick out of the way, we can now talk about the run!
New Jersey
Chapter 1
Quick Nollie (QN) is the first trick we use right off the bat and is used in a few other places to animation cancel your skater. Normally the skater would slowly get on his board before going forward, but QN cancels the animation, puts you on your board, and gets you to start rolling. Time to start the game by doing the goal Help Eric.
The very next trick, discovered by yib123, is Porch Skip. With a precise angle, you are able to jump from the porch to your right after spawning in the first goal to the top of the garage. This skips a lengthy animation of pulling yourself up.
Now, the first issue of the run occurs here, albeit I couldn't find a way around it. Depending on your RNG seed (which is determined by buttons pressed, frame count, etc.) will be where the skateboard parts spawn and how fast they move. After going through a few different seeds, I couldn't find one that would work in my favor, so I had to do a small jump here, unfortunately. This wasn't an issue last TAS since we did all of the setup at the beginning instead of in a verification file.
Once we get to the barriers, I do go for style instead of speed. When we jump over the two barriers in one clear jump, we do lose around two frames to it. But, due to how cool it is and it's complexity (nearly pixel perfect), I elect to go with it. This is the only instance that "cool" is slower than fast.
Walk Charles is an auto-scroller and a lengthy one at that. The alternative to this goal is about 45 seconds slower, so we have to do this for the time being. QN is, again, used here. Once I grab Charles' leash, I do let go and grab it again at different intervals. Fog discovered that you could let go at a certain time (when the second counter on the top ticks down), re-grab, and not lose time. So, out of boredom, we mess with this a little.
Get in Tight With the Street Warriors is a dumb goal. I got *really* close to a 0:47 but, unfortunately, it is a little out of my grasp. Maybe someday?
Now it is time to Impress Muska. Well... I think I impress him. ;)
Chapter 2
This chapter is pretty self-explanatory. It serves more or less as an extended tutorial on the game's mechanics.
First, we have to Impress Joey, which isn't too bad. After, we Impress Shawn. With the new ability of CATBAG, we easily handle the call-out tricks section since virtually every trick is named the same way. RNG is literally dead.
When it comes to Demo New Playground Setup, we need to attain 100,000 points. To easily accomplish this, we will be using one of the most well-known glitches in our franchise, butt-slapping. The glitch, which was introduced in THUG1 and it is apparent all the way into Proving Ground, is done by approaching an edge, ollie-ing, doing a trick (grab, flip, or otherwise), and mashing the ollie button during the beginning of the animation. The more times you are successful, the higher your jump will be and, with the new CATBAG trick, the timing for this is extended.
After impressing the locals, we have to do the chapter finale called Get the Stolen goods From the Dealers. Originally, this is supposed to be a "sneak" mission and you must do it without your board. Years ago, Coombs discovered that you could get into the Street Warriors car, retry the goal, and the game wouldn't take your board away. This may look like it loses time, but it saves several seconds!
Chapter 3
To start off Get the Scrap Metal For the Tombstone Maker, we roughly do the same thing we did in the last TAS, save for an additional acid drop for a small speed boost. The bigger changes in this chapter come after this goal is completed!
For starters, with the brand new CATBAG, I am able to buttslap a few extra times. With this, and some clever movement and speed, I am able to accomplish jumping the bridge without even touching the car! This one, I am sure, will stay TAS-only for a while. ;)
Next up, we take advantage of how the gap system works in the goal Get Access to the Train Station. The game asks us to circle the security guard a few times but, if we jump at a VERY precise part of the grind, the gap will be given to us and count towards the goal. Just need to do this a few times, perform a frame-perfect cutscene skip, and we are good to go.
For Impress the Bratty Kid, I decided to go with a different strat than I did last time. And, surprisingly, it worked!
Now, for the biggest reset point in the RTA run: Rescue Eric. Here, we will be attempting the biggest skip in the entire run called Eric Skip. This trick was originally found by Pyatters three years ago, it is performed by letting go of the car on one of three very specific frames. If done correctly, the game will skip the entire car segment with us chasing after the dealers and take us straight to Manhattan!
Manhattan
Chapter 4
High Score had a big change due to us having more buttslap capabilities as well as being gimped in terms of how many tricks we had available to us. PokemonAce101 theorized that we could buttslap off of the hole in the street, get insane height, and get a lot of points with the Indy 900. Turns out, he was right!
Hold-Grind Combo is now trivial since some our CATBAG tricks are named after grinds.
Help the Student has a few routing changes in it, but a lot more style in it as well. The first notable change is that I elect for a weird wallride, called a boostplant, to get a little bit of height to get the purse and acid drop for speed. Luckily this is slightly faster than the real method, as it looks cooler!
Right now would be a good time to talk about boostplants, as I will do them a few more times through the run (especially Tampa). If you hit wallride on the same frame as doing a grab, you will do both at the same time. And, with a fair amount of up+ollie (which is normally wall jump), the game will store them until the animation of the grab trick finished. Once it is done, it will perform them all at once. We can manipulate this a lot, as you'll continue to see through the run.
Kill 5 Famous Skatespots is pretty self-explanatory. Just mainly about point optimization!
Chapter 5
Crash and Burn the Car is a difficulty-exclusive goal change for Sick. In the other categories, you would do Film the Local but, in Sick, it takes a long time. So, instead, we opt for Crash and Burn the Car. With a little bit of manipulation, we barely have enough time to overheat the car before throwing it into the water.
Hit the Killer Banks Line is still the same-ish.
In Help the Local Skater, we had a REALLY good RNG seed that had us get two cars to skitch off of. Skitches is important since, after you let go of a car, you can quickly grind to get even more speed. With good grind optimization, you can keep the speed up for a while.
Since we have Nut Buster as virtually every trick, we get the final goal done pretty fast!
And, I won't spoil Gap the Burning Taxi because it is pretty fast and looks kinda cool too. (:
Chapter 6
Speaking of cool, just watch Help Stacy's Relative.
To end off Manhattan, we have Old School Skating Techniques that features some optimizations and some CATBAG tricks. Not too much different otherwise.
Tampa
Chapter 7
The Tampa AM is near!
Remove All of the Stickers is our first goal here and it features several optimizations over the last TAS, including a boostplant to get the height we need to get to the third sticker. On the fourth sticker, we go at an odd angle so we can wallride backward. With that, we get ourselves in a better position to grind and wallride to get to the fifth sticker faster.
Get the Best Donuts has roughly the same route from the last TAS, with some minor differences.
The same goes for The Skateboarding Bandit, since it is a lot of grinding. I did, however, get some cool jumps!
Revenge!!! is mostly the same as well.
Chapter 8
With the introduction of CATABAG, Party Boat Skate-Tricks is now a viable goal in Sick. Originally we would do Wallplant Combo but, since RNG is no longer a factor, we elect with the former now.
Beat Andrew's Best Combos is all about combo optimization and there isn't anything too abnormal or fancy here to speak of.
Bowl Grind is literally the same.
Prove Yourself is the same way.
Impress Tony Hawk was one of the biggest RNG sections in the game. Was. Now, it is a simple goal. After we impress Tony, we have to get more points than him, but we have to wait out the timer. So, there is a lot of shenanigans here.
One cool trick here that has no practical speedrun use is the lip glitch. If you start a lip trick but cancel the animation before the trick appears in the trick string, the game will have you in a weird semi-lip state. The next time you do a grind, you will lip instead.
At the end of the goal, we do a frame-perfect cutscene skip that will transition us into the next chapter.
Chapter 9
Place in the Vert Contest starts as soon as we perform the cutscene skip. With this goal, we have an optimal combo we go for to get just enough points to get third place. This combo was found by me when I was working on the TAS. Now, it may look like I do not get enough points but, on the very frame I hit pause, I do perform the Indy 900 to get enough points!
Place in the Street Contest more or less is the same. New combo and everything!
Now, this is where some of the magic starts! For the next three minutes, we have to participate in a points contest which ends in a 1 versus 1 against Eric Sparrow. Even on Sick, the amount of points you need to win is pretty low. So, for the next few minutes, we do a lot of buttslaps, boostplants, and try to make a cool line in the process. BIG COMBOS!
Chapter 10
We choose Birdhouse since they are the first choice. Team Tony for life.
San Diego
Chapter 11
Nothing really special happens in Rooftop Technician. Just some small optimizations with the Spacewalk, but that is about it.
Flip the Big Stairs is where things start to get a little strange. For the second, third, and fourth attempts over the stairs, the game will ask you to perform "Temp." Why is that, you ask? Remember how we bound all of our tricks with a Created Trick? Well, it plays a factor here!
Instead of Double Kickflip and other double-tap tricks, the game will display "Temp" instead. As long as you do the combination that is meant to be there on that attempt (or, in this case, any Nut Buster), it will count it.
Last thing here is, after we land, we jump and get off of our board. This skips an animation of us doing it for us and proceeds to the next part faster. Plus, we float!
The finale of this chapter, See A Man About A Horse, is another mission that we have to wait for the timer. So, we use this time to boost up our stats, do some nonsense, and setup for the next cutscene skip: Skeezo Skip!
Once the timer hits around the 15-second mark, we are allowed to try out the skip. If done properly, this trick will set you up directly in front of Skeezo, skip a cutscene, and it also sets us up for Nighttime San Diego in Chapter 13!
Chapter 12
We instantly start up the next mission, Acid Drop The Two Towers, and it is a pretty simple mission to execute. Nothing has really changed.
Let's Get This Party Started features two tricks. The first trick, found by SilentLaws, takes advantage of the one-two counter in this goal. When you wallplant a green spot, there is a second delay before it increments our right counter to show you completed it. If you wallplant the wall and retry goal, it will carry the wallplant over into the next try. By doing it on the far one, it saves around five seconds!
The next trick was accidentally discovered by me, but was refined and figured out by TH126. This next trick has us keep the wallplant in our combo the ENTIRE goal. As long as we are on our board, we can run into the green spots on the walls and it will count as a wallplant. This saves on a few animations and keeps our speed up!
To end off the goal, we run out of bounds (or death warp) to get us closer to the next goal, No Band...No Party, Bummer! In this one, nothing much has changed except a small optimization at the end that reduces our buttslapping by a few.
All We Need Is A System And Some Rims is literally just a time trial in a cart. It's kinda lame. Unfortunately, I couldn't replicate my old TAS' time of a 0:27 and instead got a high 0:26. This is already noted as an improvement for me.
Chapter 13
Unfortunately, for Round Up The Posse For the Demo, there was a video found not too long after I finished that featured a route that was around a second and a half to two seconds faster. However, besides that, the goal is still pretty fast overall with some small optimizations here and there, including on our way to the fifth posse member.
With the next goal, we do 3 Is No Crowd, Find More Kids, we have a very easy goal of getting 50,000 points in one combo. A simple Indy 900 combo is enough.
The Kids Love Those Free Stickers! had nothing big change.
For the finale, Tear It Up at The Demo we mess around a little bit while we are waiting for the timer to expire more. Won't spoil it. :)
Hawaii
Chapter 14
Speak Hawaiian had nothing big change.
Get Lei'd has a different route and is a bit faster overall now because of it.
Pineapple Killer was a horrible experience to TAS, not going to lie. This goal just wasn't very fun, but I used some creativity to make it interesting.
Drain The Pool has a cool grinding trick and is overall faster because we go for a buttslap on the left instead of the right.
Chapter 15
Impress the Girls had to be changed since we don't have access to a lot of good tricks, outside of specials. While it looks like we can impress two sets of girls at once, it only does one or the other.
Luau Competition has a vastly different and more optimal combo. Unfortunately, it doesn't look as cool. ):
Wallows Combo Bowls is the easiest goal in the game.
High Lines had a vastly different and really cool route change. There are a few changes I made that saves around .5 seconds overall, just to end off with a cool boostplant. Come to find out, as long as you don't manual anywhere in your combo, you can complete the goal. The hard part is just getting from one point to another fast.
Off the Walls features a relatively new trick on the first go around. If you have a Handstand in your combo when you grind the right rails, it will count the gap. However, we still need to manual back the second time around. An acid drop here helps out a lot.
Climb the Hotel is trivial for us and buttslaps. We do a cutscene skip to finish this up.
Chapter 16
Hotel Hopper has a new strat that I found while I was working on this TAS. All we have to do is a very precise boneless and we get across no issues!
From this point onwards, we cannot retry Craziest Footage Ever. Technically, we have to have McTwist in our Special Tricks in order to do this goal. However, the goal doesn't initiate the check when you get pushed into the goal on the first time, though any subsequent retries will notify you to add it. Since we have CATBAG, we just need to do our McTwist Created Trick.
Since, again, we are limited in moves, we have a different combo than we did previously. However, even then, this is still a second or two faster than the last TAS!
For the transfer to the ground, you need to do at least a 900 trick. Indy 900, since it has 900 in the name, counts!
And, to end it off, we do a McTwist to the right side. This gives us the gap and we don't get the slow-mo. This part was found by Cmacthegreat and is funnily called "No Slow Mo Bro."
Vancouver
Chapter 17
Skate Tom's Part features CATBAG for the Nollie part, and it saves around two seconds to five seconds (depending on how well you time your left trigger presses). We don't do this for Pressure, since the time save is even less and it takes away a CATBAG slot from something more important.
To end off this goal, we do a brand new frame-perfect trick discovered by Tyler4711. If you start the next goal on a specific frame, it will, almost instantly, cancel out the beginning text. This saves around two seconds but, if you do it too early, it will cancel out the first goal and you will have to do it again.
Filming A Line is an autoscroller, so we mess around a little.
Bust Some Flatland is more or less the same as it was in the old TAS. We could have CATBAG tricks named after flatland tricks (and we do this for Beginner and Normal), but the game could ask for ANY flatland trick, so we don't do it for Sick.
For Party Dregs we do an auto-retry to get the skaters back to their initial position. This saves around a second and a half overall!
Slam City Fan has only one small change, and that is with a wallride to gain a little bit of extra speed.
Return the Guest Passes has a few tricks that help us to cut corners and get a more direct route to the passes. These are pretty hard to hit in an RTA run. As well, we have to do all of this in a singular combo.
Impress the Reporter has a new combo I created while working on the TAS that works really well, especially since we are more limited overall in terms of tricks.
Funnily enough, I found a new strat in Pick Up Everyone in the Limo that involved us being spun around by the poles we hit at two different points of the run. However, it doesn't work too well and loses several frames.
Slam City Jam
Chapter 18
Destroy the Street Contest, again, features a new combo that is faster than the RTA WR. During this run, I also found out that, depending on what frame you hit "End Run," will be how many points you get. While it didn't matter for the Tampa AM contest, it means a LOT here, as one frame difference meant we got fourth instead of third. So, some basic RNG manipulation is used to help us out! (:
Learn the Hip Transfers was found out to be faster overall than Blimp, and it features a small tech change when it comes to hip transferring. If you slow yourself down just enough, you could transfer with the minimum jump height. Because of this, it makes this goal several seconds faster than Blimp!
Destroy the Vert Contest also has a brand new combo that is pretty difficult and has some RNG manipulation as well! I tried a few different combos, but the one in the run is the fastest I have found that gives us the number of points we need.
For Best of Show, we have to get more points than Eric and complete his line. Well, the game isn't programmed too well at the end.
Vancouver (Second Visit)
Chapter 19
This is the shortest chapter in the game that actually has goals. We only have to do one goal here, and we choose Adio - Show Off Your Skills. With this goal, I found several very precise jumps that keep our combo going.
Get the Moscow Trip features a new trick where we run in front of the bus to get a better position to the trophy, get it, and still get out of town!
Moscow
Chapter 20
Ready For Battle is different from the last TAS, but the idea is still the same. The Indy 900, if done two frames later, would've bailed us!
Blind Big Brother has a small change that I found mid-TAS that involves us grinding a little less. While it is smart to continually grind, we cut the route a little bit to get a camera around 0.5 seconds faster.
Over the Wall has nothing really huge besides the final two glitches: Bell Skip and Daytime Moscow. Bell Skip is a simple cutscene skip of the bell ringing. The effects of Daytime Moscow we will talk about in Chapter 22!
Chapter 21
Manuals for Muskovites has nothing really important. Just some frame-perfect flatland tricks!
Ratings Stunts has a small route change that involves us spinning our Indy 900 and Semi-Flips to get even more points to finish the goal faster. We get a lot of height in the process!
Circus Act involves some more frame-perfect flatland tricks. The combo can't be optimized much further since we cannot start the combo with a special flatland trick without wasting time, and we cannot have a flip or grab in it as well.
Warm Up just has us spinning an Indy 900 by 180 degrees or so to get us an easy 90,000.
Double Dome is a finicky goal. There are times where you will jump over Eric, land, it and it does not give it to you. Sometimes it never works at all based on your positioning. And, other times, you get what we got here. (:
Chapter 22
Now, Daytime Moscow. This trick was setup before alongside Bell Skip. If you got the glitch, the game would skip out on a few cutscenes, including a dialogue with a guard, and place you in the dome instead of in the courtyard. For some categories, this glitch saves a TON of time. For us, only a few seconds. Another side effect is that Moscow will be Daytime until the final goal of the level.
Anonymous Caller features a slight route change to get the guards that is around two seconds faster, again found by Tyler 4711. If we could get one more speed stat, we could make it a bit more optimal, but there is no place until a little later where we can get 1,000,000 points.
Now, the confusing part: We have to do spine transfers with 360 spins over a satellite. Easy, right? Just get 20 360s and it's over?
Well, you can also do spins in increments of 360. 360 gives you 1 (obviously), 720 gives you 2, and so on.
Now, if you combo the 360 spins together, the game starts to freak out. This part is still not completely understood, and it involves some really freaky math and equations. Additionally, for unknown reasons, buttslaps play a factor in what you get as well.
In Beginner, the combo is a buttslap 720, buttslap 900, and a 360. That gives you 11. If you modify even one of those spins, or go without buttslap on one of them, the game will count it differently.
For Sick, we need 20 360s. Until this TAS, a combo was not known. After a few hours of messing with it, I found that a buttslap 1080, buttslap 900, butslap 720, and a regular 360 gives you 21. Where'd we get the extra 14? I don't have a clue.
Party Favors is a bad goal and if anyone ever finds a skip for this, I will love you forever.
Hangover Cure is the only time in the entire run we can get the speed stats we need before endgame. So, with some swag, a lot of speed, and a lot of tricks, we get what we need in a long minute combo!
Straight Outta Moscow is our finale for Moscow. A small skip was found by Biglaw a day before I TAS'd this part where we can clip through the ending fence. The jump is pretty precise, from what I can tell, as well.
To finish up Moscow, we skip out on another cutscene. However, we need to be careful here as we can softlock the game if we press the ollie button at the wrong time. The softlock would effectively end the run.
New Jersey (Second Visit)
Chapter 23
Create-A-Trick is trivial since we have Soul Skating as a trick already!
Combo the Entire City has a small change at the end that has us get the final marker a little faster.
We do a cutscene skip to finish this chapter up that saves around four seconds from the dialogue.
Chapter 24
Do All of the Tricks was a horrible RNG-infested goal. However, with CATBAG, it is a bit easier. The biggest problems, still, is that we have to do lip tricks, which aren't too bad in their own right if you know the combinations.
Score Big? Yeah, I scored big.
All Levels
Chapter 25
We go ahead and choose the first five skaters availabl and give our new team name the original team name of "1" (don't worry, you aren't going to see the video anyways). In the verification movie, I gave Tony Hawk and Bam Margera different tricks to make their missions slightly faster overall.
Now, we have to use those five skaters and do a level specific challenge to make a Pro Video!
Chapter 26
Moscow's Lost Tapes is first Pro Goal. The biggest change here is we take a couple of leaps of faith to cut the grinding out a little bit and saves a few seconds in the end.
Vancouver Spine Transfer Challenge is our second goal and we specifically look choose Bam Margera for this. The spinetransfers are pretty simple, but we have to have a 200,000 point combo to end off the challenge. With a couple of tricks, coupled with an Indy 900 and an acid drop, we get this done easily.
Hawaii Huge Spine Challenge is a simple challenge. The biggest thing we do here, however, is we stop right before the fourth transfer to reduce our speed to zero. If we don't do this, we go realllllly high into the air and waste a ton of time.
Florida THPS Challenge has us do four specific challenges that has the game take away certain abilities from us, such as manualling or even spine transfers. We choose Tony Hawk for this and, with his new tricks, make this a trivial task. We end it up with a buttslap Semi Flip combo.
Now, the final Pro Goal: Jersey Spine Trickspot Challenge. With this goal, we have to have a gap in our combo and just do a bunch of tricks. Since we have to wait for the timer, this is the last time we can mess around with boostplants and buttslaps.
To finish this goal, we have a double-frame perfect glitch called Vid Skip. This was originally discovered by TkMala on one of his runs and it allows us to completely skip the Pro Video at the end of the game and go straight to Eric.
I will note that there is a different variation involving a frame-perfect pause+ollie combination to bring up the menu, but this is slower for the TAS. This version could only work in another level (so, loading back into NJ would cause an extra load) as, if you did it in NJ, the game would freeze and then load the video anyways.
Chapter 27
Tear Up Eric's Best Line is the final goal of the game. If we completed the game before, the game would be in a New Game + state and we would skip out on this goal completely. Since this is literally the only change NG+ makes, no one runs it.
Not much has changed in this goal, honestly. There are some small optimizations submitted by cmacthegreat, but it is roughly the same!
After over four long months, the TAS has finally finished. This TAS beats the old one by 3:39.05, resulting in a 47:11.8. If we discounted all of the loads, which I have yet to do, this run would be around a low 41, which is really insane. The current RTA record, which virtually has no loads, is a 45:49 by SilentLaws.
I am happy I finally got this finished, and I am happy about the overall improvement. While there are a few things that slipped my memory or I didn't do that I wish I checked on, this was still a blast to work on. All of the theory crafting, all of the collaboration, and all of the TAS streams really made this for me.
Thank you to the ever-awesome Tony Hawk Speedrun Community! You guys continue to rock! <3
For next projects, it will be a little while before I can get back into stuff like this. However, once I get a chance, I want to re-create the THUG2 Classic - Normal TAS and (finally) make the American Wasteland TAS's that I said I would two years ago.
Again, thanks again for reading my comments and I hope you had as much watching as I did creating! :)
