Ok. So these three specifically (Beth in Junior, Brian/Joy in Senior) have the most RANDOM occurrences where SOMETIMES you service ace them, sometimes they dive and hit your serve. And im serious when I say RANDOM.
I've tried the following:
- consistent positioning of serve (obvious)
- consistent timing of the serve from the throw
- consistent timing of the serve from opponent's swaying motion
- everything above combined
I have NO explanation for how to ace these guys, and being able to do it consistently would make a HUGE difference in this speedrun.
I also tried going for Wall 3 before doing these guys to have more points in serve. The only difference was that Beth was consistently aced from the right side. That was the ONLY improvement across all 3 of these guys.
Minor breakthrough: Acing Bob, the Varsity Singles guy I've found that its a lot easier to ace Bob if you start your serve the INSTANT you stop bouncing the ball. Don't change position. Get the EARLIEST possible NICE! serve, blue from the right, orange from the left. This is somehow pretty consistent, and I don't know why. Watch my 2:00:03 run if you want evidence; I saved tons of time on Bob because of this.
From this and general testing, I can guess that it's SOMEHOW based on timing, I just don't know how. If I use a save state and just hit the serve from some position with the same real-time timing, it works. If I wait a second and then do the exact same serve, it doesn't work.
So can we get some experimentation on this? I dunno where to go from here...
From the testing that I did, it's based on timing. I have my own set of times in my head through the "NICE" range - early, middle, and late - that I work with in my notes. For the fights you mentioned above I have in my notes:
Beth Serve: Down the line Top spin (time middle) | Wide Top spin (time late) Brian Serve: Down the line Top spin (time middle) | Down the line Slice (time middle) Joy Serve: Wide Top spin (time middle, if returned move to left and up, hit across to far right) | Down the line slice (time middle)
I'll look into it more I guess, but from my tests it definitely was all just about getting max angle (line from the line, wide from wide) and timing the serve through the range perfectly.
New discovery. Doing 3 walls and maxing out Power and keeping it maxed lets you service ace Beth for free. No timing required.
If you do this, you need to get max XP on Curt and Pam, or you wont have enough levels to get 12 power 7 control with 10-10-10 in power. If you can get 7 control, 11 power, you'll have 9-10-9 in power, in which case you can
vs. Beth: right side -> wide blue
if you get the perfect XP setup and get 10-10-10 in power, then you can do the aforementioned right side serve AND
vs. Beth: left side -> wide orange
I'm starting to do 3-wall runs because of this, because its such a guaranteed time-save on Beth, and im still not convinced that acing her is 100% based on timing.
Also, having a higher power stat makes your ball fly faster, saving little bits of time here and there. I saved about 30 seconds on each of the junior class because of this.
