Jet Set Willy speedrunning videos

[RuffledBricks]

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The intriguing thing is where the optimisation of walkthroughs will stop. I think that we are now very close to perfect routes and executions both in JSW and MM, possible improvements are minimal, and in many rooms simply not possible any more.

Well I initially thought I was done with speedrunning JSW a few months ago when I recorded my last Warpless run, but as I mentioned earlier in the thread we had a new member of the community join recently who spotted a few things we'd missed, and that's helped rejuvenate interest in it as of late. Sometimes you just need new people to stir things up a bit.

The one thing I still never really fully got my head around about speedrunning JSW was how best to optimise deathwarps in the game, as it's a really elaborate balance between the time you save by ditching lives ASAP and the time you save by shortcutting specific rooms. I feel like the route I've got at the moment is a decent speculative one for handling this quandry, but I'm sure a more scientific approach could probably find better parts of the run in which the lives could be ditched.

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Is Matthew Smith aware of the existence of the speedrunning community and your achievements? I think it should thrill him to know how much time people spend on his two games and how much effort they put into activities related to them - now almost 40 years after he created them...

I don't know if he is aware. I watched Kim Justice's documentary about Smith on YouTube and it seems like he doesn't have a huge amount of fondness for JSW these days, given his rather turbulent history with the game. I believe he's still proud of MM though, and it was briefly floated that we should try to get him involved on the commentary for the MM race at ESA the other month, but it was ultimately concluded that his commentary probably wouldn't be PG enough. 😄

[RuffledBricks]

Okay, so I revisited the Top Landing using the jump that Danny uses over the green balls in The Bathroom and found some very interesting results:

It appears that if you are doing an Any% (or Warpless) run, which requires losing all your lives bar one before the end of the game then doing the Top Landing item last is ever so slightly faster due to the increased game speed.

However...

If you are doing a Max Lives run then because you lose just one life the game speed is such that it's actually slightly faster to do the Top Landing item first.

Either way the time difference is very minor, so if you have a preferred order of doing it then it doesn't matter *that* much (less than a second difference either way). But speedrunning JSW does come down to applying as many small time saves across the run as you can, so depending on what category you're doing it's an interesting variation to take into account.

[jetsetdanny]

RuffledBricks, many thanks for this comparison! 👍 It is very interesting to see this matter investigated so thoroughly, and the comparison video is just brilliant, great stuff! 😁

So your analysis confirms my choice of doing the Top Landing first when doing a Max Lives (Rollback-assisted) run, which is what I mostly do. It's good to know.

When you mention 'doing an Any% (or Warpless) run, which requires losing all your lives bar one before the end of the game', do you mean that losing your lives is actually required (by the rules of that run, or by the hosts of the event, or something), or that's it's allowed (because it speeds you up), but you don't actually have to lose lives if you don't choose to? And what exactly are Any% and Warpless?

[IRF]

From RB's previous posts, I don't think losing all lives (bar one) is required by the rules, but that it's a tactic employed in order to speed up the game (when measuring a 'real time' completion time), because the program drawing the remaining lives slows down the game (only slightly, but it adds up over the course of a whole game).

(I'm not sure about your terminology queries.)

From your perspective Danny, of basing the speed of completion on the in-game clock time, the running speed of the program is not a factor so I think you should definitely stick with your tactic of 'Top Landing item first'.

Edited March 2, 2022 by IRF
Lop to Top

[jetsetdanny]

Thanks, Ian! 🙂

If I ever find a room in JSW called "Lop Landing", I'll certainly collect the item in there first 😁

[Sorry, just couldn't resist it! 🤓]

[RuffledBricks]

Yes, as IRF says, losing lives isn't mandatory in Any% or Warpless runs (apart from Conservatory Roof of course). However, you're going to struggle to get a particularly competitive run in those categories without doing so. Partly because of the increased running speed of the game, and partly because some rooms are just quicker to complete by losing lives.

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And what exactly are Any% and Warpless?

The definitions of these categories can be found in the opening post of this thread, but basically:

Any% = just complete the game as quickly as you can (excluding cheat codes).

Warpless = complete the game without utilising any of the unintentional warps around the map (i.e. Rescue Esmerelda ceiling, Watch Tower ceiling, and rope warp in On The Roof). This doesn't include deathwarps, which are still permitted.

Both of these are common categories in speedrunning. Another common category is 100%, but this only really applies to JSW2 as you can complete that game without collecting all of the items, which you can't with JSW.

Edited March 9, 2021 by RuffledBricks

[RuffledBricks]

Also, I managed to finally get a sub-20 min Any% run today. Hallelujah.
 

Still contained one slightly irritating mistake in On A Branch Over The Drive, but the rest of this I'm very proud of.

[IRF]

On 3/9/2021 at 8:21 PM, RuffledBricks said:

rope warp in On The Roof

There's a potential rope warp in The Beach as well, isn't there?

Edited March 2, 2022 by IRF

[RuffledBricks]

3 minutes ago, IRF said:

There's a potential rope walk in The Beach as well, isn't there?

Yeah, I never managed to find a use for it though, so I don't really tend to mention it out of saltiness.

 

[IRF]

It's also more perilous as you might hit one of the crabs embedded in the sand.