I just counted the door skips in Wesker's WR. He got 8 of the 12 available door skips for 24 seconds of time save. What have we wrought upon this game?

That's a real shame. I guess it might at least be possible to cut off the bubble on the left side a little sooner and only recover one of the fireflies, but the tiny time save almost certainly doesn't warrant the precision of positioning the flies to deactivate the middle mask with only three.

Was skimming Wesker's VOD from yesterday. In that room you get to from the tiny frog area, the molehill that appears open on the Switch version is actually already open. You can simply go in right away without waiting for the animation.

I just tested with an input viewer to confirm my hypothesis from my stream tonight: it's consecutive frames. If you press down on the analog one frame and up on d-pad the next frame, you get the trick. Two frames doesn't cut it, same frame doesn't cut it. (Other combinations of up/down on analog/d-pad also work, as long as you use the two separate methods.) All the other stuff about door position and whether specific doors work or not is actually just red herrings. You just need good timing.

(edit) I also have not yet gotten it on keyboard. It's conceivable that it might not be possible on keyboard if the game interprets WASD controls as one single thing where you can only be holding either up or down at one time. However, I can't rule out the possibility that I'm just bad at consecutive-frame timing on the W/S and up/down keys.

Thanks, I literally wrote down the invisible frog differences and then forgot to calculate them in entirely. For the red cyrstal area, let's look at the difference as being comprised of three things:

• On the PC version, regardless of when you visit the red crystal area, you have to walk from the obelisk to the left platform to fly away. This is about 8 seconds of extra walking before you can sing, timed from my PC version PB.
• On the PC version, you can't fly from right next to the tiny frog pipe. You'd have to walk all the way back to the save point. That's about 6 seconds, timed by comparing your PC version PB to Wesker's 37:28.
• If you substitute the tiny frog pipe for the lava frog pipe (on the assumption that you're able to fly away), the total time difference to reach the obelisk is about 13 seconds. (I measured this comparing my Switch PB to Wesker's 37:28.)

Good reminder on the extra obelisk on the way to lava area. Obelisk animations cost about 7 seconds. Looks like the invisible frog shenanigans amount to about 15 seconds for the firefly and about 6-7 seconds to load up the right frog.

I think all the tiny frog puzzle changes are time neutral. You can still do a similar fast setup either way.

In total that sounds like there about 45 seconds of advantage for Switch in any%:

• Gain 7 on invisible frog for preloaded frog.
• Gain 15 on invisible frog for caged firefly.
• Gain 19 by taking tiny frog pipe instead of lava pipe and instead of having to walk back to the tiny frog checkpoint to fly away.
• Gain 8 not having to walk from the red crystal obelisk to the left platform.
• Gain some small number not having to wait for electric slugs to explode.
• Lose 7 to an extra obelisk.
• Lose a small number walking the extra block near the giant frog.
• Menuing to reset level after giant is also probably very slightly faster on Switch than on PC.

Coming back to version differences...at the moment all I can think of that affects the run so far is the following:

• There's an extra block outside the giant frog area on the Switch version. This costs a few seconds.
• There's a preloaded frog and a firefly to make the invisible frog area easier.
• You can fly out of the lava frog area, allowing usage of the tiny frog pipe instead of the lava frog pipe.
• You can move through exploding electric slugs immediately rather than waiting. (Or is this in the newest PC version?)

The tiny frog pipe vs lava frog pipe difference is actually only about 13 seconds. Between all the other things it's probably like a 15-20ish second total advantage?

You guys are amazing. Fantastic job sorting it out. Grats on the new WR! (edit: also I'm embarrassed I didn't think of a simple explanation like up+down lol)

Does this work the same if you use keyboard controls? That might be a simpler way to pull it off than the analog + dpad thing. (Or it might not. I'm at work right now and would have to hold a controller in my hands to have a sense of which would be easier.)

Random tiny optimization for that same room: when you stomp to push the crab block, push him far enough that his right edge lines up with the edge of the ledge just above it. This will cut down on one extra jump for the upside-down frog, saving something like a second.

With that setup you may even be able to stomp the second slug immediately after he spawns, it looks like he'll just pop up right on top of the frog and get eaten instantly. (Or did you already try that and the bubble maybe picks up the slug instead?)

Yeah, that's what I've been doing for lava frog, as soon as he leaves chirp range. Sadly the chirp range is huge.

I pretty much haven't come up with anything new other than actually taking advantage of the Switch differences to use the tiny frog pipe. Almost all of my time save just came from the stuff you guys came up with, so cheers to both of you. My sum of best after everything (including the 7 seconds from skipping a slug on tiny frog) is 36:00, so I definitely think low 36 is in reach and a 35 might barely be possible on Switch.

I'm so sorry. My brain keeps thinking about this game and I can't stop it.

In the tiny frog area, near the three-bird puzzle, there's a mole hill. That mole hill goes back to near the entrance, where there is a door. That door leads to an area normally used only in 99% runs. If you take a couple quick bird rides, you end up to the left of the obelisk that we skip using the nearby teleporter (the one that waarschijn used for return travel after giant frog in his PB).

I think this might be a viable reroute option for any%. If you take this path, you bypass the slightly slow first room (I think it's just shy of 2 minutes long) and the dumb birds hovering over the cut grass right after it. However, going this way might mean you don't take the tiny frog's pipe, forcing you back to taking the lava frog pipe.

Alternatively, you could activate the obelisk in the tiny frog area, take the tiny frog pipe, but then fly back to the tiny frog area to use the mole hill and take the door. I think this probably isn't the way to go, though, since it adds a lot of extra movement on top of the route deviation.

Another thought I have is that this route might specifically only be faster on the PC version, since you need to take the lava frog pipe there anyway. All this needs to be timed, but I figured I should just post this here and see if you (either of the two of you) have any thoughts.

(edit) craaaaaap you can't get back from the teleporter area here to the right to actually reach the birds/cut grass area because of a wall

During my attempts today I managed to accidentally cause the following glitch entering the door to the lava frog area:

Notice the door fanfare doesn't play, and Toki Tori immediately enters the door. This saved about 3 seconds. I have literally no idea how this happened, but if either of you guys have any thoughts, this would be a tremendously useful time save. (As far as I know all I did was press up when I got to the door.)

I highlighted the entire run in question. Here's a link to the specific point where the skip happens:

In my chat today, waarschijn hypothesized that you can do the tiny frog puzzle without stomping down another slug. I tested it and it does work. Should save about 7 seconds there.

Oh, for the record I timed the 37:10 run which I just submitted using this proposed method. If you were to use the existing timing method I think it's 37:06 or so.

Yep, that wording reflects my proposal. (Although I might rephrase "after the ending cutscene" to "after the last frog enters their pipe" to be totally clear.)

I've been thinking recently about the way we time runs of this game. Currently it's based on the way I set it up when I started in 2013 - time starts when you land on the ground and "gain control" of Toki Tori. However, upon reflection this is the wrong way to do it, because you can chirp while descending to lure the nearby bird - and in fact, all current runs do this, to my knowledge.

My proposal would be to change timing to begin as soon as the screen starts fading in from the "delete saved data" blackout effect. This would probably add about 4ish seconds to all existing runs, but the timing would then include all time where the player has control of the character. Thoughts?

Yeah, you can't take off from the red crystal area until you walk to the left and activate the obelisk, I attempted from all points before that. With lava frog, on Switch version you can definitely just stomp the pole and let the frog go, then fly away immediately.

I vaguely tested how soon the frog counts as collected on the PC version the other day. It's not quite as early as the door opening starting, but it's pretty early. If you do the proposed route of tiny first and visit the red crystal, then you can just let yourself get sucked in with the tiny frog there. For the other ones, it's probably better to err on the side of caution, but I'm sure you can save a second or two here or there if you're willing to be more risky.

Yeah, ok, way simpler route change. Go into the hole after tiny frog. Don't go into the hole after lava. All mole hills will be open. I think this also means you can do either lava or upside-down first and it shouldn't matter? Since you can fly out of both areas. Will have to think about it.

(edit) I think the flight distance from both lava frog and upside-down frog to reach the branch point between their respective paths is equivalent.

(edit 2) I am deeply smart and I see that Waarschijn already figured this out:

"By the way, the reason we did the upside-down frog in any% last was because its portal doesn't have a checkpoint nearby, so we can't easily warp. On the Switch you can do tiny frog last if you want. Or do tiny frog first, go through its portal to activate the molehills, then get invisible and upside-down, and then get huge and lava. It shouldn't matter for time."

Turns out it does matter for time, because the shorter visit to the red crystal after tiny frog and not having to traverse the ladders at lava frog are decent amounts of time save. But yeah, if you do tiny first and take the pipe, you can probably do either the lava path or the upside-down path first and it's probably time-neutral. Actually, maybe you specifically want to do the upside-down path first to get the more difficult puzzles like 2 frogs 1 block out of the way?

Hey there! I decided to pick up the Switch version finally and give it a go myself. I think I just came up with a slight improvement for the any% route, based on a mistake I made practicing the tiny ancient frog:

• At the beginning, skip the tiny frog; do giant and then lava instead
• After the lava frog is captured, leave via flight song (saves time climbing the ladder and dropping into the hole)
• Fly back to the beginning of the game; go do tiny frog (slight time loss on the flight movement)
• After tiny frog, get sucked into the grate to go to the red crystal
• Walk left off the tiny frog's platform, which puts you on solid ground right next to the bird nest (saves time waiting to get picked up in the clouds by the bird)
• Fly from here to the normal place to continue the run

I think this'll save 10-20 seconds or so. Problem: it puts hcfwesker's awful bird manipulation in the tiny frog area (sorry, I've been practicing it for like 2 hours and it sucks so bad lmao) deeper in the run, so it might become a bit more reset-heavy.

(edit) Actually...I think we can just do tiny first and do the crystal area from there? Then do giant and lava and fly back to do the rest. I just confirmed that visiting the crystal with only tiny collected activates the first mole hill, but I'm still testing the rest.