SMO: Studying Metro route - session #38

# Summary:

SMO: Studying Metro route #38. I decided to keep practicing untimed trials aimed at improving my worst bottleneck (using motion control for aiming) to achieving my goal of getting a Metro boss fight 4-trial cycle average of 2.25 or better. I failed to meet or beat my metric. I decided to figure out a way to isolate the one skill by choosing a different place to practice on.

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# Context:

Audience: primarily me. secondarily: people interested in FI, SMO speedrunners, other speedrunners, people interested in speedrunning, people interested in learning.

History: I've been practicing the boss fight of the SmallAnt SMO Any% speedrunning beginner route Metro kingdom [1]. Along the way I created my guide on speedrunning as a way to learn philosophy [2]. Then I created and started following my learning plan [3] (which helped me get back to speedrunning after I had taken a break). Then I created, followed, and continuously improved my speedrunning template [4] and my guide on creating blog posts [5].

Latest gameplay problem: Keep practicing the boss fight while primarily paying attention to motion control for aiming. I'm still working on consistently beating the boss in 2 cycles using a metric called 4-trial cycle average. 

# Goals:

1. Learning goals:
1. Improve learning processes:
1. of creating the speedrunning blog post template.
2. Gameplay goals:
1. Improve gameplay processes:
1. Do 4 untimed trials aiming at achieve 4-trial cycle average of 2.25.
1. Primarily focus on using motion control for aiming
1. Don't use direction pad unless to recenter my arms.

# Action Plan:

1. Pre-gameplay phase: 
1. Document as much as I can document prior to gameplay.
1. Review the trial analyses from last session.
2. Remake list of things to keep in mind during gameplay:
3. Analyze the pre-gameplay phase.
2. Gameplay phase: 
1. Do 4 untimed trials of the boss fight.
1. After each trial, 
1. record the initial analysis made during gameplay.
1. as I'm writing, also do more analysis of the gameplay (from memory) and record that too.
3. Post-gameplay phase:
1. Evaluate whether or not my 4-trial cycle average <= 2.25.
2. Do analysis of this session's trial runs, also the older one's documented here, and older ones from memory. Look for trends or systemic problems.

# Work:

Here's the trial analysis from last session: 

• Individual trials:
• 36: 3 cycle win. I had 2 sections of snake segments left over (total of 3 segments) during the 2nd cycle. I did better about shooting near the snake head before the rest. Shadow came in handy. No overheating. 
• 37: 2 cycle win. I did better about shooting the snake without changing aim as the snake travels along its path (while also moving laterally and adjusting with motion control so that the target stays positioned on one point on the snake's path line). Forgot about shadows. No overheating. 
• 38: 3 cycle win. I think my limiting factor is motion control aiming. I had 2 sections of snake segments left over (total of 3 segments) during the 2nd cycle. No overheating. 
• 39: 3 cycle win. I forgot how many snake segments were left over after the 2nd cycle. No overheating. I did much better during the snake-train phase such that the train went the shortest path. 

• 35-39: 4-trial cycle average = 2.75.
• I think my worst bottleneck for achieving 2.25 is my use of motion control for aiming.

Here's what I want to keep in mind during gameplay:

1. Primarily pay attention to using motion control to aim
1. Don't use direction pad unless to recenter my arms.

Pre-gameplay analysis:

• I made some improvements to my speedrunning blog post template over last session.

Gameplay trial analysis: 

• 40: 3 cycle win. I did well avoiding using direction pad to assist motion control. I think I didn't use it at all. I had one section (of 2 segments) left over after the 2nd cycle. 
• 41: 3 cycle win. I did a bit worse using only motion control. I resorted to using direction pad because I used motion control badly. I remember trying to use motion control too early after getting control of the tank. I had one section (of 1 segment) left over after the 2nd cycle.
• 42: 3 cycle win. I had a bunch of sections of segments left over after the 2nd cycle. I overheated once.
• 43: 3 cycle win. I beat the first cycle with exactly 3 shots (best ever I think). I had a few sections of segments left over after the 2nd cycle.

Post-gameplay analysis:

• 40-43: 4-trial cycle average = 3.
• I think there are too many things for me to focus on while I want to just focus on motion control for aiming.

# Session analysis:

I don't think I made visible progress towards improving my use of motion control for aiming. 

I decided to try to isolate this one skill by picking another place to practice aiming with motion control. I googled a bit and didn't find anything relevant. Then I posted the following question to the SMO discord server. 

> Does anybody know a good place to practice aiming with motion control? context: i'm bad at aiming with motion control (in general, but it hasn't been a problem until now where i'm working on the Metro snake boss fight). In this fight i'm having trouble focussing on improving motion control while there are so many other things i have to focus on in the fight. how do i know i'm bad? i'm consistently not beating the boss in 2 cycles. I almost always have a few segments left over after the 2nd cycle. For more context on my work on this, see: https://ramirustom.blogspot.com/2020/07/smo-studying-metro-route-session-37.html

# Next steps: 

Find another place in SMO to practice aiming with motion control. The place needs to be somewhere where the targets move and I don't have to move.

# Footnotes:

[1] SmallAnt SMO Any% speedrunning beginner route Metro kingdom

[2] guide on speedrunning as a way to learn philosophy 

[3] my learning plan

[4] my speedrunning templates are what I copy/paste from last speedrunning blog post to the current blog post I'm working on. here's a description of my process of doing that.

[5] guide for creating blog posts