" If you are further to the left, you have a bigger time window to not messup your exit dash, but the penalty is bigger if you mess up. If you are far to the right, the timing is basically impossible."

that is exactly what i was thinking. good stuff icy.

Sorry for the double post but i have remembered something else about the AP1 input loss. I remember having the same problem on EE2 (up top) and on SE2 (with Tails). I believe it may have something to do with the crumbling blocks. Ive asked a few runners to stop by here and help. i remembered them talking about it on stream, i just do not remember exactly what they said.

[edit] and good luck on the speedrunning! this is a great first game to pick up. Im fairly new to speedrunning myself and the classic sonic community has been great. everyone seems super helpful and kind. keep it up! chaos is a great stepping stone to the other 8bit games and possibly move onto the 16bit games :D

1.) The Aqua Planet input drops suck. I actually take a slower strat through the level (act 1) due to the inconsistency. I speculate its because the entire level runs like ass, and my theory is because of the scrolling clouds are too much for the game to handle. So maybe look into a more consistent strat for yourself, so your not losing runs on BS like that.

2.) I was having a discussion about the SE boss glitch with FlyingFox. She believes it happens when you hit Robotnik on the exact frame he shoots his weapon. A good person to ask about this specifically would be brad86. https://www.twitch.tv/brad_86 Send him a whisper. He is a good buddy of mine and a really chill dude and loves to discuss chaos :) He has tried in the past to get that strat consistent.

3.) As far as the exit dash I made a video on it. Im going to copy and paste a message i sent to Fox about it here. If i recall correctly, you can save ~3 sec over the course of the run doing it.

[copied message start] "I may have gone way overboard with this, however i had fun doing it. I took samples on TH1 from you[fox], maman, brad, and myself playing Sonic Chaos. I wanted to see if there was in fact an optimal way to finish a level after sonic hits the goal sign. Keep in mind that its a small sample size with 30fps video, but i believe there is enough data here to say for certain. video link (its an unlisted youtube video, as i did not have anyones permission to use there video)

<chart<

I made a chart here after going frame by frame in the video. obviously twitch clips is far from frame perfect, so everyones sign lands at a slightly different time. I factored that in the chart. I also chose 4 points to take the time from to see exactly what was optimal. The big discrepancy is the first difference, between when the sign post lands and the frame the screen turns white after the stage is completed. This is when we have the option to spindash off of the screen from the middle or just stand there ect. The next two points are just score and title card, I expected those to be very close among us and they were. The most surprising thing is the fluctuation between title card and next level loaded. (I chose the frame the screen is no longer 100% black, as we have control of sonic then) For some reason mamans title card lasted the same amount of frames mine did, but his level loaded much later. The same amount of frames for our title cards makes me believe he was holding A to fast skip like i was, i would have no idea why he lost time there. anyways, the good stuff is last. maman and i had the right idea, but i believe he lost some time going more to the left to peelout, where i just stood on the sign. (i wonder where the optimal place to spindash is) Anyways i took the difference between my time and you and brad (mamans time loss confusus me, as he shoudlnt have a time loss) and figured you and brad could possibly save around 3 seconds ish over the course of the 9 levels in the run that use the sign post. its a free time save. i really thank sophira, because she was in my chat and we were talking about how it did seem faster but neither of us had any clue on how to check" [message end]