Скачать или смотреть [FWR] Spyro 1 IL - High Caves Vortex - 21.967s RTA

Run Achieved: October 31, 2023
Emulator: Duckstation (w/ Spyro 1 Practice Patch)

Happy Halloween ^^ The spiders in this level used to scare me a lot when I was younger (mostly I think it was just the way they moved, being silent, invincible to everything but supercharge and superflame, and the spindly legs.) It is a spooky time of the year, so let's avoid them with a faster route around the caves.

Shoutouts to:
‪@composer_speedruns‬ Composer for their advice on the trick for my previous run (which was beaten by Kara shortly after!)
‪@oddkara‬ Kara for optimizing the previous RTA variation.
‪@Peteguy100‬ Pete for demonstrating this line in their True Vortex TAS seen here:    • [TAS] Spyro the Dragon - True Vortex  
And ‪@n30n6r33n‬ n30n for linking me that TAS for study on a new variation of the difficult Twilight Harbor trick I accomplished a while back.

The key to this level is having very clean movement after the jump onto the first moving platform. Having good lines and minimizing the time you are gliding is crucial. The small jump charge on the 2nd moving platform is actually important to save a few frames, since charging on the sloped edge slows you down a lot.

The tricky jump itself, found by Touval ‪@Touval1‬ from what I've heard, is actually not that bad! You have to be a bit fearless and get a charging jump skitter while turning onto the railing. Making sure you are turning is important to getting the height, and pressing jump at the earliest possible timing for both the skitter and the boosted full hop afterwards is important too, but its actually a lot more consistent than it seems with a bit of practice. You can also do it from a jump charge skitter, though its slower for IL optimizations, and you want to be as fast as possible to make the cycle early enough for the charging jumps across the moving platforms. Those charging jumps are essential in being able to save the full 3 seconds over going the trickless route towards the supercharge ramp through the caves instead, which is what the current Vortex route has been for a long time. In Pete's TAS, they achieve a 21.300, so this run here is both the first 21 RTA, and approximately 0.667s off their time. Optimizing this further is really hard though. It was found that you can get magic stairs in the tunnel section, but they're extremely tight and probably not faster RTA since to do them without turning, you need a pretty specific angle and position. With mid-air turning, you often will grind on the ledges and likely lose frames to just a fast jump charge. Notably, doing the TAS variation of the jump to the platforms makes getting a low 22 time relatively simple, provided you can do the ending movement decently. However a 21 is very hard to get. I actually originally ended with a 22.01 when I first succeeded at completing the new TAS line, but I wasn't satisfied because I knew it could have been a 21 for sure if I had better movement at the end. Barely made it this time though, but there's still room for improvement. Happy with this for now though!

I think this could probably be brought to a 21.500 RTA with current strats and skill level of players right now, but its really hard to save time honestly. The platform cycles just sometimes dont line up to be ideal depending on your movement up the ramps, but also just optimizing your general movement at the end, and every turn and skitter up to the platforms and in the cave to the vortex, all while dodging enemies and the dragon at the end, makes this a pretty technical level.

Very fun level to optimize, and adds a bit of spice to this level for the run x3 I imagine it would be a little spooky to have this in a full Vortex run as well, especially right after fish ladder in Alpine, though in ILs it makes the level much more interesting. I suppose the one downside is that you can't go for the metal chest supercharge flop for style points, aha. Having 2 methods, the harder version shown here (which I believe was the original way Touval discovered it) and the more consistent, but slightly slower method, that goes more to the left up the ramp first is neat! Definitely makes this versatile for full runs, and still quite challenging for IL record.

The spiders in this level honestly look a lot more like silly looking stag beetle bugs nowadays. A couple months back I actually found a stag beetle in my kitchen! Admired it for a bit, then set it free outside carefully. These metal ones are not quite as docile, but real beetles are quite fascinating! Interesting how feelings can change over the course of many years, aha.

Spyro 1 IL Leaderboards: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

~ Xeirla