Hey everyone.
First, sinister redirected me here, and this is my absolute first post on this website despite being aware of it for years. Sorry if I'm necroposting or if it's in the wrong spot, as I genuinely don't know.
tl;dr: I've speedrun stuff since around late 2016 - early 2017 and in that time, learned how to TAS, and despite creating a few full TASes (for Batman, and two games called Dreamworld Pogie and Ralph 4) never submitted anything to TASVideos since I've always created more "human theory" or RTA things. I never really had an interest in TASing to break a game like you folks do. Still, there's been some excellent TASers that tried to bridge that gap (Dreamyao for instance) when it came to TAS only -> RTA strats. I have a 9:57 in Batman, and he joined the Batman Discord and offered all of us Batman runners possible RTA strats that weren't known, or things that were "likely RTA" that could be potential time saves.
So, with that in mind, I offer the Chip & Dale TASers maybe two things that weren't(?) known:
The first is box ascension:
https://twitter.com/junkyard_dave/status/1710927985409503655
Basically, the chipmunks can gain height if they jump and throw boxes at each other. I TASed out a logical section this could be used in a TAS (F2) and you can ascend very quickly on the vertical scroll. I'm not 100% sure, but each chipmunk might have to have the same subpixel (didn't test if this was true - but sometimes ascending would just fail on me with proper inputs) but, if that isn't true, likely what is true is lag frames. There was 5-6 lag frames in F2 that I had to rework basically the inputs around, which immediately makes this strat likely non-RTA. Still, for real TASers, this I feel is a legitimate time save and could be used in F2, as above, possibly D (depending how the invisible wall interacts in D3), Zone 0 climbs and possibly the A climb with some extreme wizardry. I also don't know as I didn't TAS the inputs more than once, but I made each chipmunk I believe move for 5 frames, fall for 3 and grab each box for 2 (and jump prior to the entrance for the same amount of frames). I never bothered to understand how subpixels worked in this game, as RTA, it changes nothing you can do strat-wise.
The other was from 2019:
https://twitter.com/junkyard_dave/status/1173469549171052544
You can delay activating Zipper by triggering the box with a dead chipmunk on a balloon, which, can in theory, allow you to bring Zipper between screen transitions. Zipper in the game is very scarce and only in a few stages, and my end goal was to see if bringing Zipper into I would automatically kill the caterpillar boss (sadly, doesn't seem so - but maybe someone else can toy with that and make it a reality.) One cool thing that I don't know if it's true or useful in a real TAS, is if you do this and carry the invincibility over between screens (at least in the caterpillar screen, didn't test others) is the invincibility actually stays permanent, but only for that one screen. There's too much of a gap between Zone 0 zipper and the screen transition above to probably carry him over to exploit that, but maybe a new caterpillar kill could be created that exploits having invincibility in that boss fight.
Anyway, hope this helps out REAL TASers. :D
Thanks for all the work you guys do! I've definitely used many TAS videos as a reference over the years from this website and know firsthand how much goes into it.
