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stickyman05 wrote:
therefore i vote for workbenching in the next 48 hours!
If no one has any complaints with this run by tonight, I'm going to submit it.
Oh, since my last post, I've redone the first of the three death segments during the Rug Ride so that Aladdin's movements are more in sync with the music.
And that mike post is hilarious. The other Aladdin thread (the very bottom one in this forum) is also pretty funny.
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I'm really surprised that this game doesn't have much discussion, seeing as it makes a somewhat decent TAS. Anyway, after submitting two runs that almost immediately needed improvement, and considering for a while, I decided that it was important that I just go ahead and bump this topic, and upload the full WIP of the game that I have here.
I'd like to hear what people have to say about my run, as the game is sort of glitchy, and it's definitely possible that some major timesavers have gone undiscovered (a few of you have helped me already, so thanks!). If no major improvements can be found, I'm ready to submit this file. If any improvements make themselves apparent, the run could even drop under 11 minutes! Thanks in advance
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Thanks mudlord! This fixed the depth problems (Leon's behind the car instead of awkwardly sideways on it!) but the flickering is still present. Still, it's playable since the flickering isn't present everywhere.
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Honestly, if I'd never played this game before and then watched a TAS of it, I'd probably think it was boring too. The boss fights are, in reality, completely different than I make them out to be, so I think a lot of enjoyment comes from seeing the tough bosses get trounced so easily. If you haven't played the game before, you wouldn't make this connection. It is a shame Firebrand moves so slow. But I had fun with this run, and I'm satisfied with the final product.
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I'm pretty sure the RNG for this game has already been thoroughly researched. I know there's a specific document on GameFAQs about it, though it may only pertain to getting rare drops. Still, it's something to think about.
Oh, and while you're at GameFAQs, check out the Golden Sun guide by yours truly. ;)
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After dominating level 3 with the new stoprunning techniques, I'm glad to say that my faith in this run is restored. Expect maybe a minute and a half knocked off the new run.
stickyman, that trick for scarab 2 is faster, thanks! :)
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Thanks for the tips and support. However, the video is going to have a completely different feel to it, since I need to take damage to use stoprunning effectively, and throwing apples, swinging the scimitar, and jumping all delay the use of the stoprunning. This means that instead of killing tons of guards and making Aladdin look like a ninja, he's now going to just look like a madman skidding through every level. I'm not sure how I feel about the run anymore (I'm still going to finish it), and on that note, I'm going to skip the Rug Ride level by killing myself.
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I'm happy to see all the yes votes! I don't know if I'd do a Gargoyle's Quest 2 run though. Firebrand is much slower, and I don't know how entertaining the rest of the game would be :/
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xoinx wrote:
Submission Text wrote:
Rerecord count = 1306
Is that value tampered? That's awfully low with respect to the amount of improvements made in this movie... haven't watched it yet but will get to it real soon.
EDIT: You know, on second thought, that does seem low. Perhaps it's an error from transferring the movie from Gens 2.11 to 9.5b? If so, I apologize. However, let it be known that whether it's 10 or 10,000,000 re-records, the only thing that matters to me is the quality of the movie. I would never purposely tamper with the count.
stickyman05 wrote:
But, using the long jump, could you actually stay ahead of him or, at the very least, keep his bitch ass on the screen?
Haha! I think this might compound the problem, since jumping messes with the camera. Though for some reason, I remember watching Abu opening the hole in the floor for you... It had been a while since I'd played though, so I could be wrong (one of my favorite Genesis games as a kid). As for saving frames, I'm not too sure. Looks like it might, but then again, it could be a trick of the camera (e.g. jumping normally causes the camera to stop scrolling for a bit, making it look slower to jump, when there is actually no frame loss).
Which reminds me, right before I jump off of Carpet to fight Jafar, I jump repeatedly and hit my head on the ceiling. If anyone gets a chance, try doing this a bit longer than I did to seriously blow up the game. The camera stops completely and loses Aladdin's coordinates, causing graphical mayhem.
Hunting for screenshots. This one reminded me of the movie 300. There's probably better screenshots with more stuff going on though!
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Crap. I'm assuming you're using Gens 9.5b? Unfortunately, I recorded the movie with Gens 2.11, and didn't realize there would be a desync. The movie should work fine with 2.11, sorry for the inconvenience (is this going to be a problem?)
Ah, I didn't know that about the carpet level. But if I was going to kill myself to skip the level, it seems almost silly at that point to not just use the level skip code (to me at least).
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Shadow Byrn wrote:
You mean like completeing all the little side-quests at the end of the game? That'd be both cool and long.
I always kinda saw that as the second half of the game, rather than the end. I haven't watched any of the tool-assists for CT yet, though I'm rather curious. I'll have to watch one as soon as I have a large-ish chunk of time.
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Ugh, this is the best I was able to come up with. I'm insanely close to killing the eyeballs without having to wait another 128 frames. It seems doable if the order the last two eyeballs came out was reversed, but I can't seem to make this a reality. Does anyone have any ideas? If someone actually wants to do the fight, I would be way more than happy to let you, and give full credit if (when) I obsolete my current run.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/207416957/Demon%27s%20Crest%20%28US%29.smv
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I would be with inichi and moozooh on this one. I think skipping the cutscenes and leaving the boss battles isn't really too arbitrary or subjective. I can't really speak for whether "menu-glitch, boss inclusive" should become a new category or not, but if it didn't become a new category, someone could come along and obsolete his movie soon after by cutting out boss fights, which I feel would be a cheap shot.
By the way, can the menu glitch be used to skip any forms of Lavos? :)
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Argh, it looks like it has to be well before the counter drops from 96. I tested and you have to kill the last eyeball while the counter is still going UP to 96. It has to be anytime before the counter reaches 61, it seems, which is when the slime is about halfway down to the low point. This is brutal.
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Thanks Dromiceius! This does help a lot.
Sigh. I got even closer than the posted movie. I'm about 3 frames away, but it's still 3 frames too many. The problem is that the last eyeball is so far down in the slime that it takes forever to surface. I've been experimenting on manipulating this eyeball to come out faster, and it has something to do with the third eyeball that emerges. Waiting to kill the third eyeball will make the last eyeball come out sooner, but so far it hasn't been soon enough.
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mr_roberts_z wrote:
Must be some sort of mp3 to m64 converter.
Haha, take Beethoven's Sonata #15 in D Major.mp3 and change the file extension to m64, and viola, you have an entertaining and fast TAS of 007 Goldeneye. Try doing the same thing with a Dragonforce song and see how fast the video is ;)
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Ok, new tack, I've just been trying to kill the eyes as brutally fast as possible. I managed to kill all the eyes a mere couple of frames before Ovnunu reaches the bottom, but it's apparently still not fast enough, as you will be able to see here:
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/885520849/Demon%27s%20Crest%20%28US%29.smv
Here's an easier request than the one I've been working on: can anyone figure out how many frames off I am from getting Ovnunu to come out of the slime right after I kill that last eyeball? I'm about to tear my own out.
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Although I'm beginning to understand a lot of the disassembly, I think I'm going to have to call it quits on this particular problem. I'm getting frustrated and searching subroutine within subroutine without luck or even any hint of progress. It's probably right in front of me and I'm probably staring right at the answer, but I just can't figure it out.
EDIT: Giving up apparently doesn't stop me, and I found this:
83/BC4E: ADF81D LDA $1DF8 ; Load the accumulator with
; the value at 7E1DF8 (the
; counter for eyes you killed)
83/BC51: C90A CMP #$0A ; and compare it with the
; value 10
83/BC53: D019 BNE $BC6E ; if it isn't equal (i.e. you
; haven't killed all the eyes)
; branch to $83/BC6E
(I think those comments should be correct, though it's still my first day of learning to read disassembly so bear with me).
Now, this bit of data isn't of much use, but it did clue me in that I may be getting closer to what I'm looking for. The beginning of this block begins at $83/BC2B, and it (and the next block) contain the values 1DDE,Y and 1DDE,X as well as commands to switch the Y and X values. (remember, 7E1DDE is the address for whether the first eyeball is active or not; I'm assuming that the X and Y after this value will change the address and affect different eyes?).
Anyway, if anyone wants to take a look at this section of the disassembly, I think we can get somewhere.
Last thing before I go to bed. The memory address 7E009C could possibly be important. It comes up a few times and it seems to change every single frame, so maybe this is the basis for the RNG?
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That worked like a charm.
Unfortunately, I think I am pretty much stuck at this point. I don't know enough to actually properly utilize the information in the opcode reference. There are a few key things that I just don't get that are preventing me from making progress, specifically what the direct page is, and also how to find a subroutine that the code is specifying. To give an example of how clueless I am at the moment, here are my notes on a sample block of disassembly (the same block that contains the Ovnunu mini eye data):
83/D3B9: E230 SEP #$30 ; set bits x, d, i,
; and z = 1
83/D3BB: A542 LDA $42 ; load the accumulator
; with memory, also
; deals with Direct Page?
83/D3BD: F044 BEQ $D403 ; something to do with a
; branch to 83/D403?
83/D3BF: 220F8882 JSR $82880F ; jump to subroutine at
; 82880F (not sure what
; this means)
83/D3C3: 903E BCC $D403 ; clear the carry bit at
; D403?
83/D3C5: A636 LDX $36 ; Load X register from
; direct page
83/D3C7: AD820D LDA $0D82 ; Load the accumulator
; with memory at 0D82
83/D3CA: 38 SEC ; set bit c = 1
