Joined: 10/6/2011
Posts: 1697
Location: RU · ID · AM
It’s like [v][vA][][][v][vA][vB][vC], but it depends… There is no change of direction, as you may think, btw.
The important things are running from far enough to that obstacle and having enough speed. The more speed you have, the more powerful second spindash you can charge. Sometimes it’s 1 rev, sometimes it’s 4, sometimes (very seldom) it can be full 6. Interesting facts some Sonic hacks do not have such behavior, but some others do, and there are some hacks having quite different variations of this bug… Also, it’s probably my favorite of all Sonic glitches, which has an extremely wide application.
S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2
my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)
As WST said, there is no change in direction.
When you spindash, the camera moves back to where it was 30 frames ago, then it steps 2 frames at a time until returning to the current frame. If this is enough to scroll the object offscreen, then Sonic will just go through the object: most objects do not check collisions with Sonic when they are offscreen.
Some hacks clear the position buffer when you spindash, so that the camera locks in place instead of scrolling back.
All of them. We will keep improving this run until the end of time.
The only other zone we're going to redo is CNZ and maybe MHZ.
I'm also gonna have to edit FBZ in some time way. Apperently in the latest iteration of that zone we missed a capsule ring in Act 1 due to rng differences, and fixing that will likely desync Act 2 because that extra ring will extend the score tally by a frame.
Just to extend a little more the new glitch in mhz2: you can spawn the capsule buttom and the capsule itself at the same time, this prevents it from spawn at the end but if you don't adjust the possition correctly you can get crushed in the boss arena. I don't think that save time in the transition 'cause Sonic always jump on the second engine of the ship, but I wan't to show this.
Link to video
The progress becomes slow because we had not enough free time in october, but now we have done 1:30 of CNZ1. We hope finish the level in the next weeks.
Joined: 10/6/2011
Posts: 1697
Location: RU · ID · AM
Kimimaru wrote:
Amazing! What was that glitch with the cannon at 46 seconds?
Most of the glitches, including that one, are not actually new. I recommend watching ORKAL’s videos if you know more of S3&K glitches.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL01596721403E0594
It’s good to watch them with subtitles enabled, but for some reason I can’t turn them on recently…
S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2
my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)
Here is the new CNZ 2, saved 38 seconds.
Link to video
And Hyper made a Atlans encode of AIZ 2, an amazing job from him showing both characters at the same time.
Link to video
Joined: 10/6/2011
Posts: 1697
Location: RU · ID · AM
Having an Atlas encode for this is very good, because the viewers without knowledge of Sonic TAS will certainly wonder what the hell is Sonic doing. I think the final publication should have a clear reference to such an encode, at least for the first zone.
S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2
my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)
Indeed, I hope to see more Atlas-ed levels in the future, this is great.
I do too. It would be awesome to see what Sonic's and Tails' perspectives are at the same time.
Here is the new MHZ1. I saved 25 seconds by using a much faster route for Knuckles' area and some general improvements everywhere else.
Link to video
Also after I was done with the new CNZ1 run I found more unobtainable signpost monitors in the CNZ2 boss area. Guess what they all are.
https://i.imgur.com/W8fsoNv.png
Here is the new MHZ2 improved by 36 seconds.
Link to video
So from redoing MGZ, CNZ, and MHZ we saved 3:53 in total.
Here's an update on the run. I fixed that issue we had with the missing capsule ring in FBZ1 and improved the end of HPZ by 274 frames. We decided to redo SSZ because getting that to sync might've proved to be close to impossible with all the possible desyncs that can happen in it, and it's short and easy anyways. I also haven't forgotten about fixing phase 1 of redeye in DEZ1.
Joined: 8/8/2005
Posts: 296
Location: NSW, Australia
Something completely off the wall for the more technically inclined: a friend of mine was doing a S3&K speedrun and... this happened: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/348033969?t=00h40m18s
That link should jump to the relevant part, but the whole run is included for context. Basically, with no emeralds, the runner enters a special stage, is placed in the hidden special stage 8, and then is gifted all seven Chaos Emeralds upon exiting. You'd think after 24 years I'd have a handle on this game, but yet again I am utterly bewildered.
Joined: 10/6/2011
Posts: 1697
Location: RU · ID · AM
mike89 wrote:
Something completely off the wall for the more technically inclined: a friend of mine was doing a S3&K speedrun and... this happened: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/348033969?t=00h40m18s
That link should jump to the relevant part, but the whole run is included for context. Basically, with no emeralds, the runner enters a special stage, is placed in the hidden special stage 8, and then is gifted all seven Chaos Emeralds upon exiting. You'd think after 24 years I'd have a handle on this game, but yet again I am utterly bewildered.
Man, I hope you saw how I suddenly «got a chaos emerald» without even taking that oversized ring. I know it’s a hack, but as it’s a layout-only hack, something similar could happen in the original game.
So, the truth is that this game is very crazy, we still often do new discoveries in it!
ExampleAnother exampleAnother oneOne more
All of those were discovered in 2018, can you imagine it?
S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2
my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)
Something completely off the wall for the more technically inclined: a friend of mine was doing a S3&K speedrun and... this happened: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/348033969?t=00h40m18s
That link should jump to the relevant part, but the whole run is included for context. Basically, with no emeralds, the runner enters a special stage, is placed in the hidden special stage 8, and then is gifted all seven Chaos Emeralds upon exiting. You'd think after 24 years I'd have a handle on this game, but yet again I am utterly bewildered.
Note that after this he lost his shield and did insta-shield with more than 50 rings without transforming into super. So the "gaining all emeralds" is probably a graphical glitch in the results screen. It does match with legends about the 8th special stage giving all emeralds, and a similar occurrence might be the root of these legends.
I am curious what caused the 8th stage to show up, though. This points to memory corruption (and maybe the all-emeralds display as well); but it could have happened at any point in the run, though.
We figured this one out, it's due to the emerald count in Save Slot 8, and what we have come to call "Zero Frame Loading" a save file. Where there is 1 frame prior to the data select screen showing on screen that you can load the highlighted save.
So isn't useful for TASs nor for speedruns now (as it has now been banned in the non-NG+ runs).
SuperSonic created a video showcasing it with all emeralds here:
Link to video
From the code what it seems like is the emerald loading is done based on where the "cursor" is on the data select screen.
After pressing start on the title screen it goes through and loads the emeralds in each save slot sequentially (to build the data select screen), but doesn't clear it after the 8th one, and it's at a stage where the "cursor" hasn't loaded the emeralds for the current file yet.
So that single frame allows you to load the emerald data from the 8th save slot into your current game - however, it doesn't do the counts etc so you can't transform. For that, it requires entering a special stage and failing it (or completing it), to save the emeralds to the current file, and then a re-load of the save file to actually apply being able to use super/hyper.
It also works in reverse as well, as I have had the reverse happen in All Emeralds runs, where this bug has caused me to lose collected emeralds - as my 8th slot had none.
It's very useful for building fully completed save files for all the characters, as you could just get all emeralds on save 8, and then just use this glitch to "copy" them to other save slots (by pressing B on the data select screen on the desired save file, and then zero frame loading again).
Joined: 1/24/2018
Posts: 303
Location: Stafford, NY
Maybe this particular glitch won't be useful for a TAS directly, but perhaps it could be used to build a consistent verification file for NG+ runs? For example, you could tweak one of the "100%" submissions to run in Save 8, play that movie, copy the emerald data from Save 8 to Save 1 using the glitch after the movie finishes, then use the SRAM state after you perform the copying as your verification file.
c-square wrote:
Yes, standard runs are needed and very appreciated here too
Dylon Stejakoski wrote:
Me and the boys starting over our games of choice for the infinityieth time in a row because of just-found optimizations
^ Why I don't have any submissions despite being on the forums for years now...
I guess the other option is if someone wants to do a valid TAS or speedrun for "get best ending for all character variations". So the goal is to end up with 4 save files with all emeralds collected for S+T, S, T and K.
So you'd start out with clean SRAM, and start on slot 8 with whatever character can be optimally routed for All Emeralds then essentially use this to NG+ the other 3 variations.
Obviously soft-resets play heavily into it, so might need to get creative for Gens, I won't trigger Evil_3D or Kaan by mentioning the B word :D
I know I'm a bit late but here's the final WIP with DEZ2 and DDZ. I saved in entire minute in DEZ2 with new routing and heavy optimization.
Link to video
Evil_3D already made the full run encodes and is currently uploading them. So all that's left is the submission text. Any suggestions on what we should explain would be very helpful.
