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Very nice! I knew of this glitch, but on the crate nearer the end of the level not on the first one. I also didn't know that you could get all the crystals with this glitch in one go, I thought that you would just get one and so it would be too dull in the long run.
The boss fights were great and I'm impressed at how much style you were able to get out of them. That little trick at the end of N Gin was excellent as it allowed you to kill his final form in one cycle. I tried for ages to figure out if that was possible. Also, that slide+spin tech looked much smoother than what I did.
I think that this game deserves a 'glitched' category as it offers something fundamentally different to the any%, but I definitely think that Pirohiko should improve my all levels run. By the looks of this he could do something really special.
Easy Yes vote.
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It's great to see that this got TASed. Some of the tracks were more interesting than others (ironically, Interesting Voyage was quite the opposite). Beware of the Dog was my favorite track and your corner-cutting was top notch throughout. Voting yes.
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The wire physics added a nice dimension to this run making it more entertaining than Universal Soldier. Perhaps there was a little too much autoscrolling, but you handled them well. Anyway, here's another yes vote to maTO the TASing machine.
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Personally, I think that any% would have sufficed for this game, but it was great to see that a run got done nonetheless! Some of the emerald levels were pretty interesting having never bothered to collect them back in the day. Yes vote.
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Baxter wrote:
Before I judge this, I would like some opinions (particularly from the people who voted 'yes') on the following:
It taking not much effort to make a particular TAS should indeed not be a factor in voting or judging if the movie has 1) good TASing quality 2) entertainment.
But, not requiring much effort also might mean that the TAS looks a lot like the speedrun (which for this game completes the game in 1:16). If we go by this:
mmbossman wrote:
...which would make an optimized TAS and an unassisted run nearly identical. That isn't superhuman, and doesn't belong on the site.
Then I would judge this TAS to be too similar to the speedrun, and reject it. There is no need to rush the judgement of this submission though... so I'd be glad to hear some opinions on this (particularly the people who voted yes) since this particular point hasn't really been discussed (it was mainly about the difficulty of TASing the game).
Is this TAS different enough from the speedrun to warrant publication?
(Or perhaps you are of the opinion that what the speedrun looks like should not influence what's published at TASVideos?)
Let me know :)
I think that coming to a decision less than 12 hours after asking for more opinions is too soon, but I'd like to contribute for whatever it is worth.
Generally, I stick by what I said earlier in this thread, however I hadn't considered what effect a real time run would have on a TAS. I don't follow SDA and so I have never seen the Myst speedrun. To put it bluntly, this is not SDA + tools. We are two very different communities with two different types of content. This content is also judged by different people and to different standards. Therefore, it seems strange and unnecessary to me for the decisions of one website to conflict with, and impress upon, the decisions made on the other. So, yes, I don't think that what a speedrun looks like should influence what is published here. If a run is thought overly simple and the level of entertainment is detracted from as a result then it is in violation of our rules and will be rejected by virtue of bad game choice rather than comparison with SDA content. Myst DS was generally received positively by the TASvideos community and so should be publishable. Of course, the awesomeness that can be achieved with tools should be a significant factor, but I do still believe that it is secondary to entertainment.
A run like Where's Waldo is very easy to make, but in my view it was rejected primarily because it is incredibly boring. Myst, on the other hand, can be distinguished as it is mildly interesting and the trivialities in optimisation don't seem to have detracted from the viewing experience to the same extent.
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This reminds me of Randil's NES storybook submissions. I enjoy Deja Vu runs because I am familiar with the game, but I don't enjoy Uninvited and Shadowgate because I am not familiar with them. Storybook/Point-and-Click adventures are difficult to enjoy to the casual viewer, in my opinion, because 1) whatever gameplay exists is usually very choppy, linear and slow 2) they are usually quite drawn out for what they are worth (the examples I listed above are around the 8-9 minute mark, even some platformers/action games have been meh/no voted at this length) 3) many of them are quite obscure to begin with, meaning that the audience that they would appeal to is very small and probably doesn't warrant off-setting site standards for the publication.
On the other hand this submission seems quite unique. 1) The graphics are pretty nice and the transitions between different parts of the game are quite fast and fluid. 2) it is incredibly short, without any time to become properly bored in the true sense of the word, which is desired in a game of this type. 3) Myst is a very popular game and so a wide viewing public could appreciate this submission.
So, yes, I do think that this should be published.
I don't think level of difficulty to TAS should be a deciding factor in whether or not it should be published. That goes for games that are trivial to TAS as well as those that are incredibly difficult. Of course, where a considerable amount of effort has been put into making a run it should slightly tip the scales in the author's favor, but the weight attributed to it should be given with caution.
P.S. sgrunt's DS encode logo is cool.
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That's a cool trick. It's a shame that it can't be used. I just got around to watching your WIP and it was great. You seem to have a great grasp over TASing this game. I look forward to seeing the finished run and I'm glad that you are committed to finishing it.
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I played through some of this game a few months ago. Six minutes is a very impressive time as I always thought of this game as being long(er). The run itself was pretty good, but it'd be cool if you could improve it :) Yes vote.
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I couldn't get this to work with anti-DS either so thanks for the encode. The run is coming along fantastically and I was very impressed with how much improvement you were able to find over your last WIP. I'd single out the same moments as Bloob as my personal favorites so far. I have large dent in my floor now from the impact of my dropping jaw, expect a bill in the mail Mr Grunz.
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Congratulations on your accomplishment! Unfortunately, I cannot read Swedish and so it looks like I'll have to wait 9 years for the English translation before I can take a look ;-)
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That really was a blatant Turrican rip-off. While I don't find the series overly exhilarating, tool-assisted, bouncy, run and gun action is difficult to argue with. Decent yes vote.
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I remember trying to improve ideamagnate's run a while back, but this game desyncs massively and I gave up quickly. Did you find a way to fix this, out of curiosity?
Anyway, great run and a yes vote. Swift and with some nice glitches thrown in too. It's good to see that this got done.
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Seeing the fastest box route would be interesting, but switching from 'aims for fastest time' to 'aims for fastest in game time' halfway through a run probably wouldn't do down well here. It'd probably be fastest to go through the game to get the running shoes and then back through with them. I'd watch a 100% run, but it'd never be accepted here as it would be very repetitive.
Like I said above Joy2Key is a good way to go if you want to use your controller, but if keyboard suits you then that's cool.
Also, you may want to record a (very half-assed) test run first to make sure that (1) the game is emulated properly/at all all the way through; and (2) you should plan a 'mask route'. Using the mask saves 1 second per use in Crash 2 so it should be the same here. If the three masks take you more than one second out of the optimal route then it is not worth it. Also, certain levels take your collected masks away automatically (it is the 'boulders' levels in Crash 2 so it may be more frequent here as there are more different types). Because of this I wasn't able to find much use for the invincibility, but it is still worth testing. Most importantly however, is that just having a mask and taking the damage can get you by certain enemies and timed objects faster (I do this in one of Crash 2's sewer levels quite often, but I can't remember which one), it may also open up different routes. A test run should only take a couple of days, alternatively you could just watch SDA's speedrun to see where the masks are placed, but I don't think that that method would be as reliable.
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Dromiceius wrote:
I have 1984 on standby. Definitely looking forward to reading the rest of that.
Sticky wrote:
1984 - an amazing book. One I will cherish forever, and will proudly proclaim as a part of library.
On the topic of 1984, I finished reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley yesterday. It is difficult to think of one without the other...
I've been raking my brain since then trying to decide which novel I prefer and I guess that it may be Brave New World. I just find it so much more interesting. It is often cited as a great Dystopian novel, but it could also be considered to be a great Utopian novel. It explores a world where everything is perfect; everyone is happy, world peace, the absence of complicated emotions. Through the novel we see how those things fundamentally affect what makes us human. Of course, Huxley's 'perfect world' shouldn't be taken as a likely outcome, but it definitely gives some food for thought.
1984 is also great. I loved it when I first read it, but then I studied it exhaustively in high school and have fallen out of favor with it since. Perhaps it is worth rediscovering, but not for a while yet.
Both are definitely worth reading and both have relevance nowadays, but in completely different ways.
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I'd watch a run of this game, however I'm unsure of how it would be received by those not familiar with it. This game has very repetitive levels which was already a problem with the previous two titles. I believe it may be more of a problem here, but I'd like to think that the occasional race/scuba level might make things more interesting.
I think that 25 crystals + bosses would be a good place to start.
I'm guessing that you either 1) want to use a USB controller to TAS and the answer is that you will need joy2key because I can't get newer versions of pcsx to take controller input directly; or you mean 2) that you are wondering if Crash 3 takes analogue input, which it does and I don't think that this is supported by pcsx, however I don't think that the PSX joysticks were particularly sensitive and it shouldn't cause large time loss.
I'll happily watch your WIPs and provide feedback here if you post them. My Crash 2 run may provide some inspiration, but you may want to carefully test continuous-sliding v slide-jumping on different terrain gradients because that may save some time. Also, I wouldn't be at all surprised if slide-jumping was faster in Crash 3.
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This is one of the GB's best platformers and is a good port of the SNES version. Unfortunately, this is this run's downfall. I don't think we need runs of both games as they are too similar. Some games ported to GB have different levels to compensate for the different hardware, or different techniques/glitches that would make both publish worthy, but there's no strong evidence of that here. Voting meh.
This is still a decent first submission, but bad game choice. I think that your work has some promise and I would would be great if you perhaps looked into TASing another game.
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Voting yes. This is a fantastic choice for a TAS, and so unexpected too. Fast, great level-breaking glitches and various moves and techniques to be applied to different scenarios. The driving levels are annoying, but one can't have it all I guess.
It looked well played too and it seems that you made a lot of effort to optimise everything. I did notice that you get a frame of lag when you jump in the driving stages, which you did even when you could have driven around the obstacle (or perhaps it may have been caused by the obstacle spawning). Also, why do you wobble while waiting for the ceiling to rise in 3-3? It seems like you could charge up a dash in this time and bounce to the island in the middle and over to the other side. Level 4-3 was the highlight of this run. Good work.
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I think that this is the route I posted:
http://rapidshare.com/files/356986266/mukroute.txt
This route isn't particularly good and so a few months later I made an improved route:
http://rapidshare.com/files/356986910/Route_v2.txt
This route is still very improvable. I started recording and there is a link on this page, but I lost some motivation when I had to change the emulator (and effectively start from scratch). I started doing more research on this a month ago and modified the route which is still half finished and I've identified the following issues:
1) It would be faster to start with charmander, and there should be a way to do it without messing up the other glitch pokemon.
2) Is it faster to take hitmonlee or hitmonchan from the dojo?
3) I need to plan the trainer/fly harvesting better; firstly so it is fast, and secondly so it is dispersed more evenly through the run.
4) I glitch a mew to L100. This is probably not necessary as I have a L100 Gengar and would be picking up other glitch pokemon. I'd like to plan a route with a lot of diversity in pokemon used in battle, but without loss in time.
5) Lua scripting is a big deal in this run. A few lua bots could be made. Firstly, a bot that would test the A button patterns for getting max crits in battle before we get gengar would be massively useful. Secondly, when we start catching pokemon the same cde could be modified to press A in accordance with the capture formula.
I only got half-way through writing my third route with these thought in mind, but I'd forgotten much of my knowledge. I've chronicled much of what I've done here: http://tasvideos.org/Mukki.html#CurrentProjects
I was hoping to return to this after I finish my Golden Axe run soon. Your weezing idea is cool (especially with a weezing, which we would need) there is a lot to consider and if you wanted to look into alternative routes that'd be great. If you were also interested in TASing that's cool, we could perhaps co-author.
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Voting yes. Congratulations on making this game more entertaining than I thought it could be. The varied use of all the weapons was a great choice as it meant that there was always a lot of action on screen. Part of me felt that perhaps the grenades could have been used to further mitigate lag. For example, in stage 11 could you have thrown grenades backwards to kill the guys dropping from the ceiling to stop the lag that their weapons caused? There were other similar situations throughout the run (I'm assuming that those blue fish can't be killed). This, however, is minor. Great work!
