Umihara Kawase Time Attack Competition Thread

[KawaseFan]

EDIT, 21st November, 2015: With the PC version having official online rankings, the site rankings are no longer necessary and have been closed.  Feel free to use this thread for general time attack discussion.

Original post:

This thread is for discussion related to our time attack rankings section which should be starting soon.  This post won't have much for now, but will be updated when the rankings are ready to go.  Also, I'm only making this thread for now because at first the rankings will only support Umihara Kawase and not Umihara Kawase Shun.  It was just easier this way.  Shun support will come later.

There will be rankings for each door within each field, where you will be ranked by how much time was left on the timer when you reached the door, as well as rankings for the fastest time taken to reach each ending from the beginning.

Playing either the SFC or Kanzenban version is acceptable.  However, due to the original's lack of centisecond count, times with that version will have to be considered as having a lower rank compared to a Kanzenban time with the same minute/second values.

For now, feel free to share any of your best times in this thread, but in particular if you could please just have a play of field 0 and let me know what time you got, as that, obviously being the first level, is the first one I'm making sure everything works perfectly.

[texh]

Poor Shun 

Anyways I managed to pull 4:52.93 on F0, SFC is gonna be really pain to speedrun until Chirari comes out though. Which reminds me, anyone here could give recommendations on Vita?  The OLED screen sounds really tempting but the second version has supposedly better d-pad so that's probably the Umihara fanatic pro choice. Not to say another Vita may pop up by the end of the year...

[KawaseFan]

Thank you for your help, texh.

Although the Umihara Kawase Time Attack should be considered as still in the beta stage of development as the presentation of the submission form / success / error pages is pretty basic and some bugs may yet to be discovered, it is at a point where I'm happy to announce that it is now functional and accepting submissions at http://kawasefan.net/time-attack/umihara-kawase

I haven't submitted any times since wiping the test rankings just before making this post, as I shift my focus back to the Sayonara walkthrough videos (and maybe a bit of Majora's Mask 3D).  Just so you don't think something is wrong if you're the first one to look and don't see any times anywhere.  texh, I haven't put your field 0 time back in just in case you've got another better one to submit!

Things I've added since the first example page:
- Rankings now show the date and time submissions were made.  It's using the SMF time formatting and will display in whichever time zone is set in your forum account settings if you view it while logged in, otherwise it will display in UTC.
- The video site and ID fields.  If you fill these in, the time in your ranking will be a link to the video you specified.  So far the only video site it accepts is YouTube because I'm not really sure what else people would want to use.  If your preferred video host isn't on the list, please let me know before submitting your time, so I can add it to the list first.

I was also thinking of adding video requirement for the start-end rankings for verification, but I don't know if I should.

Any feedback, bug reports, etc. please let me know here.

About the Vita, unfortunately I don't think I can really help as I have the Vita 2000 and don't know what the d-pad difference is with the original, sorry.

[gori.sh]

 Here is Japan's ranking, please reference.
http://eventer.jp/kawase/

[KawaseFan]

Done.  Hopefully one day our rankings are active enough for the Japanese rankings site to consider linking to us.

I'm not doing Sayonara Umihara Kawase rankings because you already do it, so I'd like to ask you if it's OK to link to your rankings on our Sayonara information page?

[gori.sh]

 Yes, no problem. Thanks you.

[KawaseFan]

I'm the one who should thank you!

--

Would anyone be interested in an RSS feed of the latest submissions?

[KawaseFan]

OK, I think it's time to issue a challenge to everyone!

I'd like to ask all of you to get the best time you can for field 12.  I'll be submitting my own time within the next week once I get this DS capture card installed (hopefully I don't mess it up) and can include a YouTube link, and I want to see where I rank compared to everyone!  Also make sure you post here when you submit a time, so we know how the competition is going and when new submissions have been made.  Especially if you've just got first place and feel like bragging!

[gori.sh]

Would be nice if you post here? 
https://youtu.be/4zdiQD8j0V4
4:59.41

[KawaseFan]

I have just put that on the rankings page for you.

OK everyone, can you beat 4:59.41?

[KawaseFan]

It got pretty messy, but I installed the DS capture card and have uploaded my 4:59.45 to YouTube.

Meanwhile, on the other rankings board, I see that, within the past couple of days, akira and TKDL have done quite a bit better than either of us.

[texh]

4:59.86 using TKDL's route so there's still a bit of room for improvement but I'm gonna leave that to Chirari's practice mode for now.

[gori.sh]

4:59.78
https://youtu.be/uxmEvVEdBfo (slow)

[texh]

never mind

Also submitted some of my recent times in Shun if anyone feels like checking.

EDIT
holy moly, just when I thought I would finally catch up to akira in F12 he updates his time haha
4:59.93

[KawaseFan]

4:59.73 - not quite as good as you guys, but it'll do for now.

I also got 3:56.91 on Field 10, though it probably needs improvement.

[texh]

3:58.03 on F10 plus managed to get yet another update on F12 along the way.

4:59.73 - not quite as good as you guys, but it'll do for now.

Try pressing (and holding) "down" right after the first jump there next time, could have been 59.90+ easily. 

EDIT

[gori.sh]

59.90
http://youtu.be/ST8U2-fevaw
thanks for texh

[texh]

F12 - 4:59.98

[KawaseFan]

gori.sh, I also added your F10 time 3:57.81 to the F10 page.

Then I got myself 3:57.95.  I'm still hoping to get to 3:58.

But on F12, with texh and akira both on 4:59.98, the big question is: who will be the first to get to 5:00?

[KawaseFan]

And the answer is siosatou, who has reached 5:00.01.  Nicely done.

Now, my new times:
Field 10 - 3:58.03
Field 1 - 4:50.06, but it's still way behind the best Japanese times.  texh, show us how you pros do it!

[texh]

Decided to give it a try only to find out I'm left with dead 3DS and charger 300km away. Taking Umihara break till Chirari is out thus. Also I'm lot more of an "intermediate" than pro compared to the japanese players.

Kudos to siosatou on .01, would love to see his replay since I thought 99 was the limit with the route I used.

[KawaseFan]

Also I'm lot more of an "intermediate" than pro compared to the japanese players.

You're way better than me, anyway.

I've slightly improved my field 1 time to 4:50.43

[texh]

Choked through F1 at 50.73 and also tried F5 and F20.

I should have mentioned this earlier but this is what I use for reference when it comes to SFC if anyone's curious.

[KawaseFan]

Nowhere near your 3:57.05 on F5 - I couldn't quite get the last part right - but I managed 3:56.41.

I also did 3:56.30 on F6, but there are some improvements that could be made.

Always funny when YouTube thinks my videos are shaky and asks to fix them.

[KawaseFan]

This thread hasn't been updated since 2015; let's change that!

My challenge is: Field 26.  I currently hold third place on the PC rankings with 3:49.30.  The players with higher rankings are siosatou with 3:51.16 and akira with 3:50.05.

[KawaseFan]

I thought I'd make one more challenge in case anyone's interested -- Field 37.  My best time is 3:45.30, which, at the time of this post, is fourth on the PC version's rankings.  The top ranking belongs to siosatou, with 3:48.71.

[nathan]

I managed to beat the shortest route in the game in around 3:19 (kinda eyeballed the time). Here's the video. If anyone has any tips to improve that time (besides not falling off that platform on field 11, and not dying on field 55), I'm all ears. Come to think of it, if anyone has a better strategy for field 55 besides rocket jumping off the ledge and praying, I'd appreciate that too.

[nathan]

I managed to beat the game in 3:15 today, although sadly the recording was so screwed up (My VCR doesn't seem to like the Maxell bronze tapes I've been recording on) that it looks like a stuttering mess after being processed by the Digital8 camcorder I'm using for capture. I did find a technique to make my "field 55 rocket jump" strategy more reliable. If you hook above the center of the leftmost "plus sign" on the platform you start from, then go to the middle of the 3 blocks to the left of the crease on the platform before jumping, you'll make it every time (obviously, you'll need to extend the line a bit to make it to the correct spot, but you want to keep it tight). Here's a diagram if my explanation didn't make sense (apologies for my MS Paint skills).

[KawaseFan]

It looks like, for most fields, it's a matter of optimisation, working out where you can make improvements that will save you a couple of seconds, and across the fields those savings will add up.  There are a couple of fields where you could take a different route to save a bit of time, probably field 0 in particular -- I tend to hook onto the middle tier of platforms from underneath and swing to the left.  I usually get a time in the area of 4:48 this way, which is still about six seconds short of the best F0 times ever but I find it a not-too-difficult way of saving a few seconds compared to the normal way through the field.

I'd recommend looking at any videos out there of other players to get some ideas for where you can improve, or I could take a video of a run of mine, if that's something you'd like to see; I don't quite have time to record and upload one right now, but I can have one up tomorrow.

EDIT: I don't have a good full run video yet, sorry, but I have uploaded a video showing what I was describing with field 0.

[nathan]

Thanks, the F0 strategy helped a lot (the "super good speed runner" way is extremely hard to pull off, so this way's much easier). I also noticed that if you swing to the side of the platform and grab straight up, you'll hook onto the conveyor belt above, saving another second or so.