SMS Beginner Practice Diary

2020/02/19 (2h + 1h45)

Bianco 4
Switched to the WR air strat (momentum spin off hut after coin 7). Less consistent than previous strat (spin-jump → hover to far plank) but loses 5s tops when failed (unless land too far right on hut and roll off, even then tbh…). I’m ok with the inputs – spin → A → A – but fail it often for reasons – not enuff speed (get in-place rollout), failed spinput (a tuff one, since rolls a 3/4 turn from NW to NE – Zale suggests moving stick up to N and rolling 7/8 to NW, could be hot). But not fussed cos can just side-flip onto plank then hover → dj → wall-kick like before. This strat requires hoverslide off coin 6 roof; thankfully this is consistent within a couple of attempts now!

Consistency grind certainly showed improvement and some minor corrections:

75% of attempts are sub 1:40, best is 1:06.25.

Bianco 6
Not a productive use of time cos the secret ending is still inconsistent. Got a single (!) successful run at the end – 1:56.78. Will revise this section with position code, all possible cycles grind.

Everything else not too bad. Taking time to run up before spraying after arch; doing sprayslides with rising sprays always (press+hold A+R, then dive), much better. Need to watch dives and rollouts up slope more carefully to space pre-grating slide. Def sprayslide rather than hoverslide there (and everywhere else on the level tbh, so tight on space). Dive → rollout → spin-jump → hover works well. Movement in secret is somewhat improved as well – key change is to jump → dive → space rollout onto first cube. Also, if falling off, try to slide down cube slightly while wall-kicking to then get ledgegrab on cube.

2020/02/17 (1h45)

Bianco 5 (Petey)
Happy I had the Spaven albums to hand so Petey didn’t make me start defenestrating my controller. No real complaints otherwise. Need to just keep practicing the approach to get used to not falling off; details re ledgegrab vs rotating hover, spacing hill-climb, etc. can wait…

Petey itself showed up a lot of mistake tendencies that can easily be fixed, plus extra strats:

Spam spray no big deal, since can focus on individual ones in strategic locations rather than spamming and tiring hand. Def need to learn the map to predict locations and where to clean goop. Need to practice bouncing on goobles for water. Happy to maintain beginner Petey hosing strat, while waiting for spacing and spam-spray to improve.

That’s about it! Best time 2:55.42 (pattern lost 6s), got a couple sub 3 by the end but definite improvement trend from just keeping it clean, no major mistakes (i.e. fall off wall, missing Poink hits, and Petey strats as above).

2020/02/16 (2h30)

Bianco 6 (approach)
D: This section I feel I rly didn’t get far with. I bonked into.. the arch, the sign, first tree, second tree, path seam, pianta, bridge pole. oof. spam-spray dives not working cos spam-spray input still inconsistent (should find an opp to practice). So been trying to get basic spray dives but have mixed results timing those and need to focus. So just try again.

Bianco 6 (secret)
This was ok; used old beginner strats. Opening was consistent when concentrating. Didn’t try momentum spins. If waiting for cycle at the end (for blue platform to approach), the beginner strat with spin-jump-dives and in-place rollouts worked fine. A good test of patience, since have to delay rollouts and line-up camera for sjds. Will try out waiting for the cycle (rather than going for samu’s round-the-left beginner movement). Sort of came together by the end. Just try and try again!

2020/02/13 (1h30)

Bianco 5 (approach)
Back2learning. Started with the wr strat, practiced for 50 mins, concluded it was inconsistent :P it fun tho! The spin dj y-turn off the log requires a lot of log space, turning left at the right speed+timing, and possibly going fast enuff to get enuff hight. Got it about 5 times. The follow-up section requires too many button-presses so I let it go. I’ll learn this as soon as I can tho – it’s the only elegant way of doing that section other than maybe samu’s advanced method; the beginner strat takes bad racing lines.

Beginner strat: triple-jump like in Bianco 2, but then need to start going left along wall. I like to turn while in hover and hover-dive, but that could well be slower than turning on foot and doing a spray-hoverslide. Same goes for getting on 2nd wall – I’ll just buffered-spin-jump out of initial waterslide and do the same turning while hovering just over the ledge to instantly hover-dive.

Movement up the hill is a bit raggedy improv – should rly do a spam-spray and try to rollout up hill, then dive and go with whatever momentum u get (or jump-dive a few times). Just do whatever for now and we’ll take a closer look in due course. Best Petey approach was 33s; tons of room for improvement.

2020/02/11 (2h45)

Bianco 3
Good consistency grind today, totally fine with my strats. Forced myself to not reset to get consistent at backing stuff up (e.g. failing initial hoverslide). I don’t have a good feel for the jump+spray-slide after the arch still, but largely resolved to let it fix itself eventually. For now, hold spray long as poss, dive late as poss.

Have a consistent camera-less sideflip onto pole now (tho not always first try). Have to approach with tight line, turn out, then 180° in, fairly close to get hight. If failed many times, line up camera directly behind pole – e z. Hit that consistently now, as well as the rollout-hover up the hill (tho I sometimes mis-space and have to hover back and fwd to retry). Not fast but I wasn’t getting either last prac so good stuff.

The more I play, the less I suffer with the cycle in the secret, tho deaths keep happening to all the small mistakes u can make (being late on stuff or mis-spacing initial run-up, mostly). Found a nice backup – if a bit (like 1s) late on initial bit, spin-jump-dive onto centre-right moving blocks section. Seems to work • . •.

Consistency grind reveals need to focus on inputs in secret + easily distracted by music (ofc lol). Happy with results tho. In 51 recorded attempts (no-reset), we had only 6 not die in the first 25 but 16 in next 26. Started getting more and more sub-50s, best was 43:67. Gonna think up a way to do stats to rly prove consistency…

Bianco 4
The goal was to sort out the remaining strats in theory (i.e. the post–coin-7 section). So from the plank at the back, jump + hover + dj seems the play but placing the dj in the usual optimal spot is too tight cos the angle is normal to the wall (with the usual strat, you come at it v parallel so have more space). Decided to just dj into right peak wall, and hover round to left peak roof. Can be slow if mis-angled, admittedly.

Getting to the shine is a huge mess. Turns out you can’t jump-dive off the rope, but have to jump, then time a dive v early. Otherwise seems reliable-ish to run the jump → dive → gp inputs (i.e. keep going str8 on rope) but can easily turn by accident if angle misaligned, can easily over-shoot end plat (don’t rollout until momentum dead!), so rly just needs more labbing of angle of approach and familiarity with inputs.

2020/02/09 (1h30)

Bianco 3
Had a long chat w/ 1ups so don’t remember learning much this stream lol. We did take a closer look at the secret stage. Eir advice to hold right after the rollout from the dive-out-of-spin-jump was the missing piece to making it consistent (“I only found out you could do this a year ago” lmaooo… I mean I was mad I didn’t figure it out myself last week).

I’m still really lagging in the cycle often, getting taken out by the big spinning cubes. 1ups’ best guess is I’m too slow on rollouts, losing lots of speed. Other things that lose time: late cs skip; late dive-out-of-spin-jump. Resolved to fix this by “just gettin good” i.e. forgeddaboudit.

I implemented the re-dive to space well at the end of the cubes section. Jump-dive → rollout → jump-dive → dive → rollout is the play. Now very consistently hit the shine at the end!

2020/02/06 (2h)

Bianco 2
Started what’s to become one of many auto-pilot practice grinds, working out which strats I’m happy with in practice. Here they are:

I rly wasn’t paying much attention to what was working and what wasn’t today, just trying to get some kinds of times down. Towards the end of the sesh, we got a good few down – five sub 2:10, best were 1:53:04, then 1:52:90. The real consistency grind is yet to come. Bianco 3 next.

2020/02/04 (2h30)

Bianco 4
On the whole, a 4-day break seems to rly mess up my consistency. Early days problems. Still went ahead and grinded this level out.

The near-mast air-coin strat really sucks still, cos getting the angle to get there and angling the spin-jump are both hard, but I can always start practicing it again when general mvmnt improves. The other one is ok tho. This is my setup:

I keep messing up the post–coin-8 stuff, so a quick vid check is in order but it’s probs just choking.

The earlier stuff is ok, decided to go for hoverslides on the approach to coin 2, then rollout and side-flip, which gives a lot of hight, so can maybe clear the wall. If not, start going for ledgegrab. It’s f i n e. The spin-jump I was doing is slow cos can’t seem to buffer obtuse-angle spin-jump so get v wishy-washy angle.

Realised something important about hoverslides – the timing is different if done out of held ↑ + half-R vs if done instantly (with the same inputs). For consistency (and cos it’s necessary when starting a level), I’m forcing myself to learn the timing by starting with those inputs held. If you run fwd a bit while spraying (↑ + half-R), you can input hoverslide at any time. Then there’s no such thing as early X press; the main reason for fucking up is early R drop. Just practice X into R-drop timing (hard cos 3 frames-ish), to retrain the muscle mem when it goes awry.

Not much to report run-wise – got a 1:23:00 as my best time near the end, and in general wasn’t happy with my learning speed today. Onwards…

2020/01/30 (2h)

Movement – Waterslides
Did a solid 40 mins in Delfino, mostly hoverslide → spin-jump → gwkd over the airstrip boat hut (the classic). amazing how clearing your head to music improves hoverslide consistency. When I mess it up, it’s usually pressing X too early (sometimes a bad R-B release-catch) so a sharp burst of focus when it happens to delay X and break the short-term muscle mem and we’re gd.

Bianco 4
I couldn’t find an air-coin strat that worked for me – the direct jump is too inconsistent. So I looked around… we have a couple of options:

Try to get both consistent (I think 1st is faster cos of twin peaks dj angling, tho had trouble getting it consistent cos there’s so little room there).

Otherwise only small problems to report. Y-turn onto wall can lead to sideflips and rope-grabs… hammer out with exp. Not much prac on final rope yet. Spin-jumps at over 90° are reported to be inconsistent by mwolfe… KnucklesOhNo. May have to swap that with side-flip till we figure it out. Else that’s basically the route… ripe for brainless grind, coming up next.

2020/01/28 (1h15)

Bianco 4
The main takeaway of doing tHe mOVeMeNt LeVeL is that movement has to improve. ahh. A bit of free-running in Delfino + Bianco is in order (thx Jpep 4 suggesting). Hoverslides… really do be much worse than on the day I learnt them still hah.

Strats for approach:

Not much time to practice rest of level. Do dives + rollouts on wall (still keep falling off), go into buffered spin-jump down-left onto high wall (50% consistent; can try side-flip + ledge-grab instead), then dive+rollout onto coin 4, do the obvious thing up to coin 6, then idk. Tbc!

2020/01/24 late (1h45)

Bianco 2 (Approach)
The first 50 mins were fairly distracted chatting/music haha. Did get some prac sliding b/w sign and goop, 33% consistent up from 0 lmao. Thx Jpep for suggesting holding up-left (while sliding on the edge of the goop) to avoid slowing down. Hoverslides still a disaster, log-jump took a while to get again cos I turned off sound (?). Still dropping inputs and misjudging mast hitbox on windmill. Getting a bit of feel for the different off-the-wall strats, but Jpep turns up in chat so we go for a deep dive…

Bianco 2 (Off-the-Wall)
We looked at a whole bunch of strats. Starting from hover onto wall, Samu says dive, fall off, spray (↑+R), then hoverslide. The ↑+R sets up a consistent hoverslide by switching to hover (X), then R-cancel-into-B to hover-dive – just like at the start of the level. This means we fully land. If hoverslides are inconsistent, could jump + spam-spray-dive (or just spray-dive). JP says rollout is better… idk why but guessing cos the spray-rollout clears the goop ahead.

Diving straight out of fall-off into spray DOES NOT WORK always. just clocked JJ fails it and blames “the physics”. oof. Even when holding up, the water doesn’t always drop close enuff.

His alt strat does work tho – finally figured out how thx to JP. Took me a hot minute to spot you can’t dive from a hover-rollout (lol); turns out you re-hover on landing, so can go straight into hover-dive. Dunno if faster but gives another method to mess about with ig.

Bianco 3 (Secret)
Def getting on the first sliding block more reliably thanks to delayed rollout (thx Noki). Seems like you have to be so fast to hit the second one with a jump-dive – probably dive sooner after spin-jump. Spacing has been tuff too – don’t forget u can double-dive to get a short extension. Aim to have cleanly rolled out at end of solid path, to space for shine-grab (thx JJ).

2020/01/22 (1h45m)

Bianco 2 (Petey)
It took me ages to realise the backflip in the hard strat has to be done before Petey opens his mouth, else water gets in and closes it before the spam sprays come out. Big detail! So the turn and mouth-open have to be anticipated (hold R then press A when the turn happens).

Had some trouble standing in the right place (bare headbutts and some non-turns) and spam sprays are inconsistent, but just a matter of timing + input grind. Easy strat is trivial; medium strat I couldn’t get cos I tired my fingers out spam-spraying.

Still working on the shine visual cue – I can kind of see the tesselation now. Once the vine shadows are aligned, look for dark _| (L) almost entirely surrounded by white tiles, which horizontally alternate with a stilted pause symbol with a v dark right bar. The top edge of the middle L is the right spot. Lessee if it works!

Bianco 3 (approach)
Had v inconsistent hoverslides today – thinking of bringing this and spam sprays under daily input grind, tbc.

The dive → rollout → spray → jump → dive thru the arch is bad, seems slow and I keep spraying in the wrong place. After checking both tutes, seems all I was missing was holding R from the rollout all the way until the dive.

Sideflip onto pole is 40% consistent. Keep muddling dive + hover-rollout on hill, just keep trying.

Bianco 3 (secret)
Loads of small details are missed by the tutorials here:

I didn’t spot that Samu does 2 dives (not jump-dives) approaching the end of the middle path, duly noted. Will also try to do first jump just before imaginary line between near edges of yellow blocks.

Also, do I spin-jump then dive (Samu) into sliding block section or spin-jump-dive (JJ)? Tbc.

2020/01/21 (1h45m)

Bianco 2 (approach)
Started using hoverslides (clearly much faster). There are two input series, performed back-to-back:

Do B asap after A lest there be too much forward momentum and Mario misses the hover puddle. Will practice these separately until whole is consistent (currently about 50%). Had to relearn timing of log-jump cos slide is so much faster now haha. Am now turning using c-stick rather than l-stick, cf Samu.

To get waterslide on wall, go in at obtuse angle. No rollout, then spray forwards until almost at floor. Can then input full hoverslide. Really struggling to get between sign and goop – make save states. JJ has alt strat – rollout off wall, so spray is sent far forwards and clears goop. No difference in starting hoverslide. Can also hover-rollout into insta hover-slide?

Hover onto spider! And sideflip from very edge of cubby-hole (ledgegrab → wall-kicks is too inconsistent for now). Can aim quite high with sideflip.

Petey I
Gotta make spam sprays consistent and avoid spraying during backflip so Petey doesn’t close mouth. Otherwise just keep at it.

2020/01/16 (1h)

Movement – Waterslides
Lots of different techs for these I’ll have to keep revisiting – none of them consistent yet :P E.g. Hoverslides: find myself inputting the dive too early and missing it often. Can’t get spam-spray-dive with inactive FLUDD? Probs can’t spam-spray with inactive FLUDD!

Bianco 2 (approach)
Put a bit of time into waterslide → log jump. Maybe about 75% with it now.

Waterslide: hold up from level start, lightly spray, then dive. Don’t know how switching into hover before diving helps but do see that a lot at top level. TBD.

Have to go right a bit during downhill slide to line up log jump, bonk if too aggressive. Timing for dj and tj mostly chill (input lag testing tbc).

Must hover at peak of jump, then dive+rollout on wall. Hoverslide would be kl but can’t input that fast for now, nor do I know the inputs ha. Bianco 4 slides on wall should give me some context to prac+internalise that stuff.

Rollout from wall is not working out, dunno how to spray water directly in front and mess up whole section. Also kind of a mess getting to/diving on spider – revise tutes.

Spin-jump into windmill cubby is OK, keep hitting ceiling when sideflipping. Ledge-grab works out but either way, wall-kicks send me out to the top-right. Not made it up to the top a single time yet!