LEVEL 4 WILL BE ADDED SOONISH!

The "first generation of 140 runners" on the SDA forums soon discovered that the activation animations of orbs can vary by about 0.25 seconds, also that the starting animation's length wasn't consistent either. After a long time and a shift of active 140 runners these issues had been figured out and confirmed by the developer. For all upcoming runners, I want to explain here how the engine works and what the requirements for a quick (or rather "early") orb activation are.

The moment the beat of the title music starts, an internal metronome of the game at 140bpm (hence the title, 140) is started within the engine and it will continue to run throughout the gameplay the whole time (except at one scene but I'll get back to that later). The orbs will only activate on full beats of the music (1-2-3-4, as the music is in a 4/4 time signature). That is, if you reach an activation panel shortly after a beat, the animation will start but it will take a few more frames to start the activation on the next beat. If you reach the panel shortly before a beat of the music, the animation will be played much quicker and the orb will be activated one beat earlier. This means, you can only get activations every ~0.43 seconds - except for orb 1-5 which for some reason resets the metronome and will always activate quickly.

After knowing this for some time, I have observed the orb activations and sought their fastest activation cycle. I'll try to list them here and update if I made any errors/new early activations get found. The activation beats refer to the optimal movement after catching the orb and reaching the panel.

1-0: 1 (No bgm, tested with metronome; guaranteed early activation when you press and hold the space bar by booting up the game) 1-1: 2 (probably; tested with metronome) 1-2: 3 1-3: 1 (very tight) 1-4: 2 (tight) 1-5: Always quick, optimal movement would make it start shortly after 3. 2-0: 4 (tight; no bgm, tested with metronome) 2-1: 4 2-2: 1 2-3: 1 (super tight) 2-4: 4 (very tight) 3-0: 3 (no bgm, tested with metronome) 3-1: N/A; no beat music, not tested with metronome yet; also gameguy bridge being almost impossible in version 2.0 makes it hard to find the optimal beat there 3-2: 3 (according to the music, not the global metronome) 3-3: 2 (with quick Eevee skip), 4 (with quickZet skip) 3-4: 2 (in the latest version; until it's now not proven early 3-4 from old version is possible!) in legacy: 3 (super tight and very risky)

Hope that gives you an idea on how to plan the runs. Happy running!