well, I couldn't get an upload to work for the 'start from savestate' movie I made, so I'll describe what I did. Oh, and I suck at TASing this game apparently, so if I could somehow get the .m64 to work/uploaded don't laugh at my n00bishness. (I'll try and see if I can post the .m64. edit: see bottom, the 2nd one desynched, and the 2st one won't play for me.)
I tested sidehopping in different ways- up slopes, down slopes, and a few other things. I compared the sidehopping of MM to OoT, and there's very slight similarities and differences, especially if tool assisted. when I redid I used 75% speed, and got very good results. bottomline, use sidehops, because I was able to replicate the same sidehopping results as OoT. here's what I found.
up slopes- normal, slight angle: maybe because I did it in real time, but on some angled slopes it was a few short hops in a small amount of time, but turbo didn't work so I had to button press really fast. it didn't get a lot of good results, which is probably due to me not using tools.
edit: after using tools, (75% speed) I was able to scale 15ish degree slopes very well, and fast.
up slopes, really steep angle: I was able to scale up these incredibly fast with sidehops. the degree of when even in realtime that the speed increase is notable is around 35 degress above the horizontal.
horizontal, no slopes: Link sidehops just as fast in OoT, so could be better than a roll if backwalking and then needing to readjust without needing a new angle.
best part: on frictionless surfaces, Link can immediatly sidehop in the opposite direction that he's facing. I was literally able to on ice sidehop back and forth without feeling any frictionless affects.
I might try and redo the .m64, and I'll try and post my results.
edit: hm, made another one and it desynched. and I did some testing using slowdown, and was able to get much better uphill sidehops. in general, I found sidehops in this game to actually be very close to that in OoT; so here's some final pointers.
use it for uphills, especially steep ones, or where you would normally readjust yourself and backwalk up it (like the hill just before the ice crystals in Termina field). If it's at least a 15 degree incline, I would suggest to try to optimally sidehop up it, and test if it's faster. if it is 30 degrees or higher, I highly recommend sidehopping up it. I got pretty fast up very steep hills; you can get much faster with frame advance.
use it instead of rolling to make some adjustents, where you'd need to move to the left or the right some; use rolling for backwalking at a different angle.
since you're good at testing a lot of stuff and finding fastest paths, I highly recommend adding sidehops to whatever testing you do for finding the fastest way to get somewhere. with full TAS tools, Frame advance and savestates, I'm sure you'll get even better sidehop results that I did.
