For People Having Problems With XSplit

If you're having problems using XSplit there are a lot of other recording programs. but what I recommend is OBS (Open Broadcaster Software).


And here are my settings (They are overkill, I know):
https://prnt.sc/ujzptx
https://prnt.sc/ujzq08
https://prnt.sc/ujzq5k
https://prnt.sc/ujzq9x
https://prnt.sc/ujzqg2

How to record your runs

First, I am assuming you have already downloaded the game (http://gamelab.mit.edu/games/a-slower-speed-of-light/). In order to record a run, I would recommend downloading XSplit Live Broadcaster (found at https://www.xsplit.com/ -- make sure you download the Broadcaster and not the Gamecaster). Complete the installation, then open the application. In the top bar, between "Broadcast" and "Playout", select "Record" --> "Local Recording". Once this is pressed, XSplit will automatically record any game played on your computer. For now, the screen should be black. Open A Slower Speed of Light. It will take up the entire screen, but XSplit will still be recording. Now, complete as many runs as you want. The recording will not time out, in my experience, for at least a few hours. Once you have a run you are satisfied with, exit A Slower Speed of Light (closing the window is fine) and go back to XSplit. Under the "Record" tab, press "Stop local recording". You will now have a video file in the Videos folder on your PC (or in Finder on Mac). This video is a screen recording of just the game window. Now, using a video editing tool, trim the entire video except the desired run (only ever upload one at once). If you do not have a video editing tool, contact me at origamiman314@gmail.com for a copy of Windows Movie Maker. Lastly, on a YouTube channel, upload your run video. Now go to the speedrun.com page for this game, select "Submit Run", and follow the instructions there. If all went well, your run should be verified soon and you will appear on the leaderboard!

Happy running!

Movement Guide

The WASD keys control the acceleration of the player. This can lead to "floaty" movement than is hard to stop in a particular direction. This necessitates some "look-ahead". When collecting an orb, one should have already began accelerating towards the next one, so as to not lose any time completely stopping and starting. While this movement philosophy would appear to necessitate a predetermined route, one can "wing it" just fine as long as they follow a heuristically sensible path and are always predicting their next orb.

Movement Guide V2 (UPDATED!)

This is an updated guide to the original Movement Guide made by pigsticks.
This new version will contain more information as well as being more up to date than pigsticks'.

The Basics

To begin, the movement in this game very hard for beginners to understand and tough to master. ASSOL (SSOL for short) has very floaty/smooth physics which are hard to get good at fast.
I recommend playing this game casually to understand how these odd physics could translate to speedruns. A *REALLY* important thing to remember is that to get atleast slightly fast you need to learn some lookahead (just as pigsticks said).

Look Ahead

Lookahead is understanding what to do next before finishing your current task (in this case, collecting orbs). It's hard to get the hang of it for a while, since needing to do all these things (at once) may be challenging to the casual player. Just as with anything, practice and common sense is all you need have and do to get the hang off lookahead. This is a precursor to FVM, which is mentioned later in this guide.

Getting Faster

Getting faster in SSOL is difficult. It took me over a month of consistent playing and a lot of free time to get faster by less than a minute at best (over a year accounting for breaks and such).
To get faster you need to get *extremely* precise. Being consistent is also very hard, and for me, I have never really been that consistent to be honest.
An important thing to remember too is that there is a cap to speed (31.68 units) and a speed depletion (after not collecting an orb in a while, your speed slows down back to 20 units in just 0.6s! [thanks to XertroV for telling me that]; you can also collect an orb while it's depleting your speed boost to hault the depletion.
TLDR: Practice, watch guides, and understand the concepts.
***Way more info for more experienced players: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvU8bi_U_K4&feature=emb_title&ab_channel=MaxKaye ***

[wrt the modded client category: I don't think there are any important differences between the clients, but there are some patches to help improve load times & more, which could cause some physics to change, but nobody is sure. We put them in a separate category at the moment. We might combine the categories later, though it's not planned atm.]
-XertroV (Author of the ASSOL Speedrun Mod)

Pictures of the map in ASSOL:

Names of the parts of the map (Credit XertroV)
https://ibb.co/GxChmc1

***Advanced Techniques***

Collecting Trios

Trios are 3 orbs next to each other. There's a lot of them in the ASSOL map (Tutorial, Donut, next to Park etc...).
The rule to handling trios is to try to scoop all of them while moving the least for each orb to keep the momentum going. You can watch my WR run to find out how I deal with them here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X9Yj2ISdK4

Fast Velocity Manipulation
Fancy name, but what it basically means is stopping your movement or direction in a faster way then just pressing *s* or looking the way you want to move.
For example, in Final Countdown, you use FVM **a** ***lot***;
What I, and XertroV have both done unintentionally is that for example, at the final orb in the game, the orb is tilted very far to the left, so we look way, **way** more to the left than where the orb actually is so that we can tilt faster to the orb then missing it by not exaggerating the movement. This manipulation is used **a** ***ton*** in ASSOL speedrunning.

Doing the U-turn
The U-turn is a turn in the top section of the ASSOL map (as seen in the image i have provided in this guide). The U-turn is a very slow part of the game, where doing FVM is just not enough to tilt the character almost 180 degrees. You are required to slow down to around 15 units rather than the 31.68 units (the max speed) right before doing the turn. That's basically all about the U-turn. Just note that the U-turn is a very inconsistent part of the game where practice and time is needed to get good at it; Hell, I'm not even good it.

Happy running, and if you have any more questions or want to add more to this guide, reply here or message me. (please don't edit this guide since there could be some wrong things added to this guide, though I believe only mods can do that).

-AC

AggressiveCombo

pigsticks

A Slower Speed of Light

Macintosh

AarakocraRanger

Kac32

NaterBaterB

Keruj

USA / NTSC

After Decompiling/looking through ssl's recourses.assets folder, i've found every audio file, in 1411kbps (aiff), and 705.6kbps (mp3). I've released all of the audio files on youtube, though here is the uncompressed link:
https://anonfiles.com/L26871ldx5/ssl-s_zip
Enjoy!
-------------------------

İsim	Yazar
For People Having Problems With XSplit	AggressiveCombo 4 years ago
How to record your runs	pigsticks 4 years ago
Movement Guide	pigsticks 4 years ago
Movement Guide V2 (UPDATED!)	AggressiveCombo 2 years ago