Collecting data for cv2 FDS

What am I doing?

I'm using a tool that will automatically pause the timer during loading screens and inside doors on the FDS version of cv2.
Why? I'm collecting data.

There's a specific glitch in the FDS version where if you transition into a screen on the exact same frame as the day or night transition would happen, you go into the next screen and the day/night transition doesn't happen at all and it doesn't change into night. Since the textbox doesn't appear, this is about a 10 second save in the speedrun. For a 4 minute run, that's a lot of time!

Now of course, you will have to be frame perfect from the start of the game until the night transition happens. Not an easy thing to pull off as you have to do a floor drop at the start of the run, which is very hard to do on the same frame every time, there's likely to be some variance here in terms of how fast you can get out of the first town. As well the game lags a lot, so you want to try and minimize lag as much as possible.

Speaking of lag frames, think about it. Simon loses 2 frames for every jump in the game. And since you have to get the frame perfect screen transition, if you got one extra lag frame it will not be possible to use a jump to adjust.

So with the tool I'm using the timer is only running while the in-game clock is ticking. That way I only have to worry about my movement throughout the screens, and not things like on which pixel I talked to the merchant who sells the holy water, how fast I switched the cursor from "No" to "Yes" and confirmed the purchase. As that will vary a lot as well.

I'm collecting data and writing down the times from the start until I get to the second town where the night transition will happen. And then figure out a setup that works for that specific time. That way I will have a lookup table of which setup I need to perform to get the glitch.

I need to collect a lot of data but the idea is that once I start getting the same times over and over, then I can get a feel for which setup I need to do during a real run. It's a lot of work for sure! But it's possible with enough data and feel for how many frames ahead or behind you are - that you will know which setup to do to get the glitch and have it be more consistent.