This is my first full-game movie on Dolphin, I hope that it syncs and that you will enjoy it!
File info
- Game version: USA (rev 1)
- SHA1: 2252edd39961d3de9cf8ce529b721856960b8715
- MD5: a2feb2d57ec670615ac9f1d13e1db49b
- Frame count: 51931
- Lag frames : 605
- RNG manipulation: 323 frames in 30 fps sections and 37 frames in 60 fps sections
Emulator settings
- Dolphin 5.0 with Lua Core v3.5.1 (syncs on 5.0 stable)
- Dual Core: off
- Idle Skipping: on
- JIT Recompiler
- DSP LLE recompiler
- Wii aspect ratio: 4:3
- No GameCube Controller, one Emulated Wiimote
General info
This is "Star Battle Arena", the solo mode of Mario Party 8 which leads to the game credits. You face an opponent in the six game boards, and then defeat Bowser in a final boss fight. This RNG gauntlet has been quite a popular speedrunning category with 58 entrants on speedrun.com and a WR time in 50:15 by StillSoftSpoken. In contrast a TAS of this game mode is expected to take around 24 minutes.
This movie file took inspiration from the strategies used by both Mizumaririn in their WIP up to the end of King Boo's board and the full TAS run of 豪華客船乗組員 on Nicovideo (part 1 up to the end of King Boo's board, part 2 for the rest). Mizumaririn had the fastest strategies and times known at the time on the first three boards, while the Nicovideo TAS was the state of the art for the rest of the run. I also tested some creative strategies from Truepixel__'s playlist but none were actually faster (and it is a shame given my love for several of these strategies).
Routing wise this TAS reused the known fastest strategies on DK, Shy Guy and Bowser's boards. I brought minor improvements to the strategies in Goomba and Koopa's boards: respectively landing on a red space in turn 1 instead of a blue space (6 frames faster) and better coin route/hotel investment (roughly a couple seconds saved). A detailed description of the board routes is given in this Google doc and a detailed time breakdown of the movie is available in this Google spreadsheet.
Known improvements
I lost 21 frames compared to my planned route. In Goomba's board my opponent got 10 coins from their coin block instead of 5 (15 frames slower), and in turn 2 of Shy Guy's board I landed on a blue space instead of a red one (6 frames slower). Both inaccuracies were kept because I was not able to manipulate RNG well enough in order to get a faster time locally with the planned strategies.
My RNG manipulation was also not ideal, especially in the first two boards. This makes sense because this was my first experience with it and my progress is already noticeable by comparing the first half of this movie to its second half.
I intend to improve this in the future, notably with help from better RNG manipulation. I have ideas to automate and make my RNG manipulation process more efficient with Lua scripting.
EDIT: added encode link + minor rewording