United KingdomI think doing the K level after the normal ones was intended when the rules were written, but the categories are so underplayed that I doubt it would matter much if you did the K levels earlier (that is to say, the rules would be adapted if enough people decided to do K levels early). I personally prefer doing K levels at the end in IW practice (mostly because it's more relevant to the full run), but yeah you could go either way
(sorry for the late response, notifications are sent out very late right now for some reason)
The specifics are a little complicated and even I don't fully understand them after 2+ years of running this game, but in general, you want to:
- avoid upwards slopes by jumping up/over them (they decrease speed)
- ride downwards slopes, unless they're too steep (an example of a steep slope is at 37 seconds in 1-6, where you would grab the O letter)
The only exception to riding shallow downwards slopes is if you're already at your max speed, in which case they can slow you down a bit - this was a fairly recent discovery, so you can notice some differences in cart movement between my/JXD's runs of 1-6 and packattack's run of 1-6 (the same applies to 4-3 and 6-2). But in general, just try to learn where the jumps occur by watching the record times, rather than worrying too much about the specifics.
a few of the highest-ranked runs on the any% leaderboard use homebrew (with USB loader), and it's not necessarily banned, but there have been a lot of discussions around it due to the much faster load times. not sure how qualified i really am to talk about it, since i'm really bad at any% (and full-game in general), only have a 100% run up, and don't even have a homebrewed wii to begin with. i will say that, recently, it's become clear that load times were more complicated than we had previously imagined; there are loads of small variations between the various methods of playing the game, and it's possible for USB load times to be almost matched when using the virtual console version, as well as when using more recent wii models (since they have a different disk drive that doesn't accept gamecube games).
all in all, i would say your runs would be accepted with homebrew for the time being, but there may be changes to this rule in the future
all I can say is that you need to be good enough to complete mirror mode and shiny gold time attacks at all, let alone doing that for all 71 levels fast enough without getting drained completely (+ if you don't know where the majority of the puzzle pieces are then that section will easily take five hours or more)
Considering my Wii loads very quickly and (presumably) faster than pack's did, that might be why DA in 2-3 was a success for me but not for him. If that's the case, then this is a much bigger problem than I imagined. At the same time, though, I didn't experience any difference when switching to this Wii from my old (slow) one, in levels like 5-3, 6-1, 6-7, 8-5, etc. so ultimately I don't feel comfortable going with this theory (yet). Maybe the variance is larger in rocket levels, but I never actually tested those on my old Wii and I don't have the means to use it now.
This is a concern I've had for a while, but it doesn't really have a simple solution. I'm supportive of emulators being used for ILs, with the exception of those that use death abuse; after respawning, the timer always starts later on emulator than on console (ranging between a few frames to several tenths of a second), essentially meaning that """faster""" times are achievable on emulator (and, furthermore, that you could theoretically make it impossible for a console player to even compete in, say, 2-3). The problem I see is that creating a rule specifically against death abuse on emulator is a little complicated, because death abuse gets added to new levels every so often (8-4 just last week and 8-7 in the future, for example), and it also restricts competition on the side of the emulator player, in that they can't do the optimal routes for a decent portion of the levels.
TLDR I'm not saying emulator needs to be banned at all (at least I hope I'm not), I'm just bringing up a concern I've had for a long time that could cause problems if nothing is done.
In that case I have absolutely no idea what's going on at all. I did quickly test from a new file (going there as soon as possible, not having completed Car Challenge) on the DeSmuME version I have, 0.9.9, and got 10. I'm starting to wonder if it's not actually an issue with the emulator; I'm completely unfamiliar with the TASing process, but is it possible to somehow use the inputs in your 0.9.9 TAS in 0.9.11 and see if you get 30 there? If whatever affected it can be replicated on console (not that it'll be easy to figure it out, though), I guess it'd be safe to put in a TAS, which would be pretty big (assuming you get 30 from subsequent circles as well).
In my experience, I've always gotten the same amount of coins from the circle (which I think was 10, haven't played the game in a while), so it's probably an issue with the emulator.
About the upgrades in general: I haven't really put much thought into routing vehicle upgrades, so I get the basic race bodywork for each vehicle after finishing Dino Domain (= 75c), and I've always managed to get those 75 without ever getting coins from the sand puzzle. You could probably get one of the basic speed upgrades (50c per vehicle, I think) before finishing DD with the help of the sand puzzle, without sacrificing much time. Since you have to wait for the ice balloon to thaw out anyway (assuming you go ice balloon -> drawing balloon), you could probably do it 2 or 3 times and still catch the ice balloon before that (and doing it more wouldn't really matter much; the sacrifice would be well worth it). I'll try this out (and upgrade the car) next time I do a run.
A few runs on the leaderboard (including Michael's run) use USB loads, but there have been talks in the community to ban them and pretty much everyone agrees on banning them, although nothing has actually been done for some reason. The ban is based on how it's also banned for other Wii games and Tropical Freeze on Wii U, and that Michael's run was actually played about half a minute worse than JXD's run but is above his on the leaderboard anyway. You could technically still get a run accepted with it right now, but I'd just run with the disc in your situation, even though it loses time (I run on disc myself and also have really slow loads).
I'm not familiar with what Wii Flow is, so someone else will have to answer that.
A lot of people in the community these days already know, but I don't exactly have the best load times. I started out running this game on my Wii U (~2014) with my really old disc (~2010); in October I then bought a Wii (age unknown) and most recently in January I bought a new disc (unused). None of these three setups gave me good load times (evidenced by playing 7-7; the loads are slow enough that the level has always started on the wrong cycle for me).
While it has been suggested to me that the problem may also come from my Wii's disc drive being in bad condition, I'm looking into alternative solutions. As much as I'd hate buying the game yet again, would the Wii U VC version get past the problem and give me sufficient load times (so as to not only be able to run 7-7 ILs but also save a minute or two in any%)?
You can record ILs with anything thanks to the replay function, but full-game is a bit trickier, and I have problems capturing it myself. The best I can suggest (and what I do) is propping up your phone to point at the screen (either between objects or on a stand), but depending on your setup it may give you a really bad angle (like it does for me).
I do full-game runs and generally play this game a lot, but I've recently been turning to ILs and seeing what I can do there (mainly to improve my full-game runs). Considering the times I've seen even for the simplest race, AL Car (low 54 on SRC but I've seen a 53 on Cyberscore), I'm curious as to how these were even attained as I've only managed a high 56 myself. Naturally it's a huge pain to record DS gameplay (and nobody even plays this game so this won't be seen) but it'd be so useful to just... see what I'm doing wrong. If any of the top IL time holders are reading this, is there anything in particular you did for your runs?
Should I be submitting my times as WiiUVC even if I play Wii U with disc? I've submitted all of my times as Wii so far but there are plenty of differences between Wii and Wii U.
I haven't played much emulator myself but I'd assume it'd affect load times only (I don't recall getting much in-game lag). However the load times are already affected by which console you play on (I use the New 2DS XL so my loads are pretty fast compared to a normal 3DS or a DS), so if anyone were to ever upload an actual video of a run we'd have to consider timing it differently (i.e. listing time with and without loads, like many games do).
Uhh ignore what I said about Downforce. I screwed up and confused it with Air. Air 2 is the fastest, sorry.
So far the only OoBs I know of in races all use the plane and are in Fossil Canyon, Jungle Falls, Spacedust Alley, Star City and Splashdown Pass. Unfortunately, of these tracks, SdA is the only one that uses plane in Adventure but it'd save a good amount of time regardless. Pretty much all of the clips involve driving slowly off cliffs to "flip" the plane, and then driving into walls to push yourself back out underneath the track, so it'd be interesting to see how they're optimised.
Videos, where I was able to find them: Overworld: FC: , SdA: , SP:
So far, that is the only difference. I've spent a lot of time trying to find anything that could speed it up beyond that, but haven't had much luck.
My best attempts at finding skips have all come from clipping OoB in the Overworld, and attempting sequence breaks. Unfortunately, the game is actually glitch-proofed pretty well, and many things that would have allowed for skips in the original N64 game have been fixed.
Also saw your TAS run of Ancient Lake. To my knowledge (I haven't spent much time with Time Trials) the fastest you can go in any vehicle is through using Taj or Wizpig (unlocked from beating Adventure and Adventure 2) with the Downforce 2 upgrade.
Have any glitches been discovered that make Any% faster than 100% (provided balloon touch challenges are played flawlessly)?
