Touhou Speedruns?

[ojisama]

there is a cap on how much you could go faster.

like any speedruns actually ?
I mean, I'm pretty sure that going under 4:56 for Mario Bros 1 is impossible, at least as long as they don't find some new glitch for this game.
but people still run the game.

[Drake]

You keep trying to use other speedgames as comparison but they're never even close. SMB1 has a minimal time because there is no known way to execute any better than current frame-perfect inputs.

I'm beginning to think you don't really understand speedrunning. The fact that you would compare TAS-level optimization to autoscrollers is honestly baffling.

[Monarda]

This is still going ?
I thought we already had reached the conclusion:
"The Autoscrollers can only be cleared faster by doing the bosses quicker, making potential quite low, the Fighting games have a speedrun potential, other games such as some from PC-98, StB and DS also have possibilities."

[Karisa]

other games such as some from PC-98, StB and DS also have possibilities."

"Some" from PC-98? Pretty sure it's just HRtP. PoDD would just be luck as far as I know? (Well HRtP would also be luck with bombs hitting maximal tiles, but still one of the most speedrunable in the series after the spell-based/fighting games.)

Also don't forget ISC.

The standard games are pretty much just a routing exercise, not much potential for optimization.

Hmm, LoLK Pointdevice might be another option since the stages are no longer fixed-length. I've seen it casually raced on Twitch occasionally (only by players who are very inconsistent at that difficulty though). An optimal speedrun would never have to use the checkpoints, though.

[Maple]

Yes, i'm necroing a thread just short of a month of inactivity, but i wanted to share a finding.

【TAS】東方輝針城 Lunatic 咲夜A NN Speedrun 17:38.27
Double Dealing Character speedrun.

Video is from June 2015. By using SakuyaA, it's possible to speedkill bosses, often before their spell card bonuses start to go down. No bombs used at all. Note, though, that the player wasn't 100% focused on speed, on the midbosses he took his time for the nonspells. It could be made shorter by ~1 minute.

[Mero]

Note, though, that the player wasn't 100% focused on speed, on the midbosses he took his time for the nonspells. It could be made shorter by ~1 minute.

Stages have a fixed length, and when you kill a midboss too fast there are filler waves to make up for that time and so the stage keeps its pace, He most likely speedkilled Cirno to have more power for the boss, and he speedkilled Seija in Stage 6 because the stage ends when she dies.

[Karisa]

It depends on the stage, whether the stage spawns additional post-midboss enemies on a global timer, or the same wave regardless of time. They're usually pretty common-- DDC has those additional enemies in every stage (including Extra, unusually) except stage 6. (IN is an exception, not including any post-midboss enemies.)

You can usually tell by whether the second half of the stage always remains synced to the music, even if you don't know the exact counts of enemy waves.

Hmm, I think I'll try to list the stages that have these post-midboss enemies...

[Hakkai]

We did a race on Touhou 15 : LoLK when it came out.
Since it was a special run to end a full Touhou Marathon stream, we split into two team (one really good player ~ can 1cc most of the game in lunatic and 3 okay-ish player ~ can 1cc some game on normal).
It was our first playthrough so we went in point device mode, lunatic for the 1-man team, normal for the 3-man team, we switched player at every life lost and it was pretty tight until Clownpiece.
It was something really fun, but i'm not sure that it could still be feasible since that most of the players now know the boss patterns. (well, it's still doable, but the fun part was trying to find out how boss patterns worked, now it would be only skills but it's not a bad thing either)

Doing a pure speedrun wouldn't even be pleasant to watch since you probably won't be using most of the game mechanics except bombs (no crazy graze milking points and stuff).
Instead of a speedrun, a pacific run would be more interesting i think.