Redwin Gardner is an average man. He hears opportunity knock on every door, so he opens every door, and thus several opportunities strike at the same time, killing him and several hundred other people. This movie teaches that there is only ever swift justice for door perverts.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.6.2
- Aims for fastest time
- that's it y'all
Okay, uh, I'm gonna be honest here, y'all. I don't really know what to say here. Sometimes I get made aware of things that happened while I was gone and it sparks my interest, and that's exactly what happened here, but also pretend I said something about wanting to test the new BSNES core too. It should be easy to pretend since I literally just said it.
This is a 481 frame improvement over the
published run, a 401 frame improvement over
this rejected submission, and a 228 frame improvement over
this "sloppy RTA input". Most of the improvement comes from a character change (and thus a route change), with some better RNG and movement optimization mixed in throughout.
RTA timings for the TASes and TAS timing for the RTA are approximates. The rejected submission isn't included because I don't need another Snes9x. I have standards, man!
| | This Run | Userfile | RTA WR | Published Run |
|---|
| TAS Timing | 4:34.08 | 4:37.88 | 4:41.66 | 4:42.08 |
| RTA Timing | 4:21.84 | 4:25.61 | 4:29.40 | 4:29.82 |
| In-Game Time | 2:52 | 2:55 | 3:00 | 3:02 |
Route Change
Not only is Redwin faster to select as a character, but his starting location is a few seconds better, ending up further along in the infamous pipe room than Jeffery. That's why this run exists. Hoo boy, real... Real excitement. Real big excitement on this one.
Ship Rotation
The rotation of the ship is a mixture of RNG and a global timer, influenced by movement and actions in the opening section of the game (prior to the cutscene where the ship begins to sink). I'd initially thought this was checking the door, but further testing revealed that movement can also affect it. This rotation is forced in order to proceed, so it needs to be minimized in order to save time. Once your character wakes up after that cutscene, the game will write a number to $34E (2 byte). This appears to be a 15 second range of values from ~45 seconds to ~60 seconds... Actually about a second and a half under in both cases: The range I found was 2617 - 3510 frames. Once the global timer ($344, 2 byte) reaches the value in $34E, the screen will begin to shake as long as you're in a rotate-able room, and the ship will rotate a set number of frames later. The direction of rotation is influenced by your movement shortly before the rotation begins. Outside of this, movement between waking up and the ship rotating does not need to be optimized for speed apart from getting in position to meet the rotation, but I do so anyway since there isn't too much wiggle room anyway.
Movement Optimization
Mostly through jumping better and/or not jumping. Much like the route change, it's incredibly exciting. Top tier excitement. We're gonna have to make a new tier above Stars for this one, y'all.
Differences from Original Submission File
Originally I'd stuck to BSNESv115, managing to brute force manipulate my way down to a 2617 frame wait for the rotation. CasualPokePlayer mentioned that he was unable to get my run to sync, though (EDIT: this turned out to be user error and not an issue with the core), so I decided it was probably better to just cancel and remake on standard BSNES. I figured I could start with the v115 input and resync where necessary, but it turned out to be a nearly instant process, and by sheer luck it managed to match the 2617 frame wait I had gotten in the original improvement file without any changes to the base input, only some frame removals/additions for resyncing. The only other changes are very small changes to movement prior to the rotation. No time was saved or lost with them.
Differences from Second Submission File
Knowing how to manipulate the ship rotation and exactly what to look out for, I went through and changed up some of the entertainment stuff, but I also saved 7 frames from some movement optimizations. Hooray! Video games!
Shoutouts...
...to Spikestuff, for making me aware that not only did we now have a TAS of this game, but that it was outdated compared to RTA, and for doing all of the hard work and providing the userfile of the new route + resync of the published run for easy comparison.
...and to CasualPokePlayer, for looking into the game's RNG and confirming that the pipe room manipulation can't be any faster.
Screenshot Suggestion
Frame 6225:
This should still be the exact same even on the new file.
Samsara:
Cancelling since the new BSNES core might be causing sync issues for other people. Will uncancel if it gets worked out, but most likely I'll have to remake the run on the standard core. Uncancelling since I was able to easily resync the run to standard BSNES with only a 37 frame improvement in better ship rotation manipulation. I've replaced the file with the improvement and updated the submission text accordingly. The rest of the run is virtually unchanged from the encode.
Memory: Responding to an SOS: save our submission (judging).
Memory: Oops just noticed arkiandruski claimed it first but then didn't reclaim when it was uncancelled. Resetting to new.
Samsara: Self-replacing once again with a 7 frame improvement and some slightly less-Vault entertainment.
