Hey. Brand-spanking new account, but an old lurker of the site. Been playing LTTP for a couple years and getting very involved with glitch hunting over the past few months. Got inspired to try TASing after Tompa showcased his old TAS with commentary. But enough about me.
A couple weeks ago I wanted to start an extra serious TAS project that would involve more attention and effort than a week. I ended up deciding on 100% with no restrictions other than heart duping. I finished and showcased a first draft of this yesterday.
I see there's already talk/progress of this category, but it seems to have been abandoned. I wasn't aware of it in any case.
File:
User movie #49548211791306277
Showcase:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/304204040
This is far from the finished product. This first draft was meant as a learning experience for the run and to get a couple ideas tested. The route is currently heavily based on the RTA route, but has a few key differences:
Some dungeons are done much faster (Yuzuhara graciously gave me explicit permission to copy his inputs)
I'm dumb and forget the sky island heart piece, and have to waste some time getting it near the end.
3 chest heart pieces and the red boomerang are routed into a series of glitches with the dam after Swamp Palace.
With regards to that last point, it may seem like getting 3 heart pieces from the same chest breaks the "no duping hearts" rule, but it's not actually the case. Each of those 3 visits loads a different room before opening the chest, so the 3 heart pieces obtained are completely distinct. In fact, if you visit the 3 rooms that are loaded (Blind's hut, Mire shed, Mimic cave), you will find their chest containing a heart piece to be empty.
I decided to make an account and post this here as a progress report as I enter a preliminary phase of my 2nd draft. I've already got a few major improvements in mind:
Cane of byrna will be obtained after the book by juking the entrance. Byrna usage will also drain a lot of magic in preparation for fake powder.
Spectacle rock heart piece will be obtained before visiting old man.
Sky island heart piece will be obtained after killing Moldorm.
Red mail will be obtained from Thieves' Town after killing Blind. The armed EG for Skull Woods will be obtained by using paradox cave.
Yuzuhara's Ice Palace will be borrowed. (Skipped it this time because I wanted the draft to be done and I knew how the remainder of what he did worked, so it wouldn't teach me anything new)
Will try to activate spinspeed on the pyramid by finding the correct x-coordinate to perform a spin (RAM manipulation for plaid).
Figure out how to 0-cycle Arrghus when starting from so far away without your sword already primed.
The run is also littered with small mistakes (some blatant, some that would require in-depth knowledge and analysis to find) that I've been keeping track of in my notes for the next version. I'm hoping to continue analyzing my first draft to find all the small things that need to be improved and continue searching for route changes. Eliminating my mistakes and just doing my new item route idea should easily bring the next draft sub 1 hour.
Overall, I don't expect the TAS to deviate very far from the RTA route in terms of the general order of things. I will continue to look for ways to obtain items in ways that are only viable as a TAS strategy, and this may eventually necessitate a new order of dungeons. For the most part, though, the route is already very strong and was an excellent baseline for this project.
Unfortunately for TASing, this is an extremely robust game. A single idle frame has potential to desync the entire movie. This means you can't really splice bits and pieces together, you have to start all over to create changes. I do think I'm ready to tackle the task though.
