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franpa wrote:
One of the corridors has a hint that specifically says you need a Grenade, if it works with any special weapon than that's an odd oversight lol.
Hmmm...maybe that's a regional difference? I checked the hints and none of them mentions needing a grenade. I think the closest hint to that is the one for Corridor 6. The hint says you need a special weapon to break the seal, but isn't specific about any particular weapon.
franpa wrote:
Yeah I know TAS's are meant for speed above all else, I just hate that it often comes at the expense of style.
Doesn't always have to be. I just figured I should start with speed first to get some experience working with the game. If I ever do get around to creating something more extensive I'll be starting with a much better grasp of how to apply some of the mechanics and techniques. That'll cut down on redoing things as a result of not properly applying a mechanic or technique the first time.
franpa wrote:
If you get multiple of the same weapon that weapon will increase in level (Blue, Green then Redish) causing it to deal more damage, consume more Chips and often look different. I thought I saw you pick up multiple Sword and Sidewards Sword Beam upgrades yet the weapons stayed as Level 1 (Blue).
I did pick up multiple beam sword upgrades. The game doesn't show the changes on the HUD.
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franpa wrote:
Kinda lame that the optional corridors aren't done, they have much more insane amounts of shit going on at any one moment that it isn't even funny (Which would likely allow for more entertaining/absurd situations to happen in a TAS). They do, however, usually have less healthy but deadlier bosses (corridor 8 & 18 bosses being an exception). Watching the normal corridors being beaten it just, they just look very plain and simple lol which doesn't make for a good watch. Corridor 8+ is when they start getting interesting.
Only shooting when you're right up against an object/enemy in either game mode makes the combat feel a bit lame. While avoiding lag is a nice thing to do, killing everything a.s.a.p does mean that very few things get any time to show just how annoying they can be. Surely some performance/entertainment trade off can apply here? The harder optional corridors might make up for it though.
Skipping the transformation sequences I'm personally not a fan of, especially during the transition from Corridor 21 to outer space.
Well, as mentioned, the idea was to go for the fastest time possible. Also, this was sort of a "test" run, to see how motivated I might be to do a playaround run where all corridors are completed and different weapons are showcased on different bosses. I think the motivation might be there, but sadly I don't have the time right now.
franpa wrote:
How did you skip needing to lob a grenade on one of the entrances? How do you maintain access to first tier weaponry after getting upgrades?
Grenades aren't required to open any of the corridors. Corridor 6 does require the use of a special weapon to open, but any special weapon works.
As for the weapon tiers, I'm not sure I understand.
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franpa wrote:
Just thought I'd ask, you don't mention the ability to buy multiple things from a shop, is that an intentional omission or did you not know about that quirk?
I didn't mention it because it wasn't needed. I probably could have mentioned it and just noted that it wasn't used. It also only requires the Start button.
That reminds me, too, I forgot to mention the corridor transformation skip. Holding Select on corridor entry/exit skips the sequence. I'll have to fix that later.
franpa wrote:
Also the Speed Up item that speeds up the speed your bullets travel at, can wrap around back to the initial starting value, so you have to be careful to not get too many or else your efforts in getting faster bullets will be for naught! I imagine you are aware of this already though.
Actually, I wasn't. Strange, I don't think I've ever had that happen during casual play when I've picked up more Consecutive Fires than I've needed, either. Interesting.
Here it wasn't necessary, though. The best firing rate you can have is a bullet every frame, which requires 5 CFs. Without any of the CFs I was able to simulate a firing rate equivalent to having 4 (a shot every other frame), so it wasn't worth bothering with any of the CFs.
Derakon wrote:
Doesn't leveling up (increasing max CHIP) improve the power of your basic attack in addition to letting you carry more ammo? I forget what all is involved in gaining levels, but it seems like that might be worth detouring a little for.
No. Leveling up the chips doesn't affect attack power, it only increases the spread of the shots. A separate power up increases attack power and I picked up 3 of 4. The 4th is a reward from an optional corridor, which is why I didn't go for that one.
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Okay, so BADbrakes had this happen to him when he was playing through the game the other day: http://www.twitch.tv/badbrakes/c/3856451
I tried to recreate this in emulator and on console, but had no success. Unfortunately I only have the highlight video to go on, so I have no idea what triggers that and how to get it to happen. Anyone have any ideas?
Also, occasionally after destroying the Stage 1 boss, I've had the game skip right to Stage 2 during the energy refills instead of waiting until after them. I plan on looking into this myself, but I want to find out first if anyone already knows anything about what causes this.
Thanks!
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Assuming that everything else is able to go the same up until that set of battles, it looks like roughly 29s/1724 frames could be saved. This doesn't take into account lag management or better optimization. I didn't do much more than a simple test for comparison, though, so I could be off on those estimates.
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jlun2 wrote:
:o
If you are trying to improve the current run, I wish you luck with the luck manipulation + lag reduction. >.>
No, I'm actually just speedrunning the game. Finding the glitch was a complete accident that occurred while I was testing out strategies on the last two bosses. Even luckier was that I was recording at the time. As I couldn't recreate it at first, I just wanted to make sure it wasn't a fluke and find out just how difficult it might be to reproduce on the actual console.
But anyway, if anyone does decide to work on an improvement, I do hope it can be of use.
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Thanks for the response!
The timing of killing it right when it leaves the screen seems the most likely explanation and was my original thought on the cause. Really curious as to why doing that triggers that, though.
But I can rule out the HP theory. The HP for both cores is loaded when the fight begins.
The ship's cores do not use the same memory address that the bosses use (001F) and each core actually has its own. I found that 043F is the address for the left core and 044F is the address for the right core. Both are set to a value of 28 when the fight loads.
EDIT: I studied both your movie and mine. Then I attempted to try and recreate the glitch. What it appears is that the glitch only occurs if the left core is destroyed on a specific frame.
I might be slightly off on my frame counting, but it appears that if the kill shot registers 2 frames before the core moves off-screen, it triggers the glitch.
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I was playing around in FCEUX testing out various strategies on the final two bosses and I had something strange happen to me during one of those tests. Right when I destroyed the first core on the ship, the screen promptly faded out and the game loaded up the final boss.
I recorded a movie of it: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1847144528/JtSStage5Boss1Glitch.fm2
And here's a quick encode of the glitch occurring: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ly-ZmbXN5U
I'm not sure if this was just to do with the emulator or if it's genuinely a glitch that can be reproduced. Anyone able to shed some light on this? I was using version 2.1.4a of FCEUX.
Thanks!
EDIT: Whoops! Forgot to mention that I was using Journey to Silius (U).
Wow, pretty nice, ZakkyDraggy did it ? man thats freaking awesome, it will help expand the game, Wonderful work Zakky, also I will try get back to work once I finish a project with a friend.
I'm still at Anubis, I'm trying to dismember only 1 part to make it vulnerable enough to kill with a lv7 charged shot plus 2 bombs while I dismember him! if this dont work then probably will use your strategy on his since its the faster I saw until now.
The funny thing is that I actually found improvements for my Falcon run a few months after it had been accepted and as for the Tornado, there are a few things I've seen in your WIPs that I want to try and test to see if they'd work for a console run. So pretty much I'm going to end up redoing both again someday. I also still plan on doing single-segment runs of the game at some point, but I haven't had time lately and I know those are going to take a lot of attempts and time.
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Now THAT is impressive! That and the fact that I have no idea what in the world happened. I like the fact that it didn't look like you were even close to destroying him and then BOOM.
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It's fine. It was just meant to be a suggestion. I think I was just a bit overenthusiastic about it at the time with my emphasis, though, so I apologize for that. ^^;
I really am interested in the work you're doing. Not only is it exciting to watch develop, but I'm learning a lot about the game that I didn't know in the process. :)
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Ah. Well, I guess that means it'll be even more impressive. As for Giga-Desp 1, cool. Figured it wouldn't hurt to mention that. It doesn't strike me as something one would pick up on right away (I only did last year), but given the job you've done so far with your WIPs I should have figured you knew already.
As for Thanatos, I was just curious. Cool that you're constantly pursuing possible improvements on what you've already done before moving on.
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I really liked the Viscount battle. Did you redo it again since the previous WIP? It was really entertaining to see him get pummeled like that.
How's work on the Thanatos battle going, by the way?
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Okay, finished up Thanatos - Giga Desp 1. Left Giga-Desp 2 out because I only have a strategy that requires killing Rola at the moment.
Times:
Thanatos: 0'12"06
Arachnus: 0'18"06
Cobra: 0'19"97
Groken: 0'29"73
Virvius 1: 0'17"50
Virvius 2: 0'07"48
Giga-Desp 1: 0'17"23
Thanatos:
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/993085251/Metal%20Combat%20-%20Thanatos%20-%20Falcon%20-%20Normal.smv
Arachnus - Giga-Desp 1:
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1686853019/Metal%20Combat%20-%20Normal%20-%20Falcon.smv
There's input leading up to the Arachnus battle after Thanatos because I'd stopped intending to continue later, but then couldn't figure out how to resume the file.
Groken: I'm very sure this battle can be improved. I don't think you need to use treble shots at all in this battle and not using them will cut down on lag. It will require discharging shots, but if that's done properly it won't cause lag. I only learned how to manage this better on Giga-Desp 1 and was past here at that point. Timing was hard here because firing causes lag and results in her attacks ending up a few frames further than where they'd be if you didn't fire. This is probably the case for all opponents, but I only began noticing it here.
Virvius 2: In normal you get the V-System no matter how fast or well you do in the game. I put it to good use here.
Giga-Desp 1: It may be faster to actually pick off each orb one by one. Of course, the stage is dark, so it would take a little trial and error to figure out which ones are open and vulnerable and will get destroyed when you fire at them. I really wanted to just be done at this point, so I went with tossing a bomb instead.
If you could, however, pick all the eyes off without a bomb it would:
- Be really awesome because I don't think that's a feasible strategy for a console run
- Save you a bomb which would mean using one on Wong earlier would still allow you to use two each on Viscount and Thanatos (though I guess if you save Rola in the end on a normal run, you'd still have a bomb to spare if you're following my bomb usage plan).
Also, it's very important to discharge shots after destroying the eyes. If you do not have an empty energy gauge, Giga-Desp will take forever to expose his weak point. This is why you see me discharging four shots and then rapid firing.
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Garam2 - I've actually never seen him lead with a jump in normal difficulty. If that is one of his possible patterns, then it would definitely save a few seconds.
Wong - I almost never use bombs to do damage. They're much better for delaying opponents or softening up parts. The bomb here was used mostly to hold Wong in place so the final shot could be charged. I forget if it was necessary to use the bomb in order to do enough damage to Wong for the final shot to kill.
Also, I need to lead off the battle by taking out the shoulder joint and then need to quickly take out his head while it's vulnerable. I don't think the bomb would do enough damage to destroy the joint. I think he also turns and faces you when you hit with a bomb.
As for using a bomb as the second move, trying to launch a bomb at his head first wouldn't work because the bomb would take too long to detonate and his head would no longer be vulnerable when it hits.
Griffin - Yeah, his legs are pretty vulnerable, but the bomb probably softened them up too.
Viscount - Here the bombs were used strictly to delay his moves. Keep me posted on what you come up with. If you can cut this time down further, that would be awesome.
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Those times are my console speed run times. I'm actually currently working on the demos right now. So far I've finished through Thanatos and am going to be starting Arachnus soon.
Here are my times so far:
Garam2 - 0'06"01
Siamang - 0'08"28
Wong (using a bomb) - 0'04"53
Griffin - 0'12"11
Viscount (2-bomb strategy) - 0'10"45
Thanatos (2-bomb strategy) - 0'12"06
And I am using save states.
What I'm trying to do is just provide a demo of what my console strategies are (although the Viscount one would probably be fairly difficult to pull off on the console) as a starting point.
Also, I didn't use the "adjust aim" glitch anywhere because I don't know how it works, so I didn't know where, if anywhere it could be used. I also haven't experimented too much with partially powered shots, so there's probably a whole realm of further possibilities.
One other thing is that you wouldn't be able to use the Wong, Viscount, and Thanatos strategies in the same run following my plan because you'd end up one bomb short of what you'd need. I'm short on time right now so I though I'd like to look into this more in-depth I can't. But I at least want to offer up what I do know in case it will help.
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boct1584 wrote:
When I have a moment, I'll put together some demos of my strategies.
Please do. I enjoy playing Metal Combat immensely, and I imagine doing a TAS would be fun too; plus, laranja has already proved (to me) that it's fun to watch.
Metal Combat is definitely a lot of fun. And it certainly is fun to watch. I'm absolutely sure that there have to be improvements on what I've done or ways to defeat the opponents faster, but hopefully this will provide a good starting point.
laranja wrote:
Oh ya, if you can provide that please would be nice to watch it, are you going to use Falcon?
Yes, using the Falcon on normal mode. I'll see if I can't get them up by later today.
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boct1584 wrote:
I've been doing a lot of messing around with Falcon in Normal Mode, and I posted some pretty good times recently. Here's what I have from my last playthrough.
Garam: 22.70
Siamang: 13.63
Wong: 7.70
Griffin: 20.25
Viscount: 33.16
Thanatos: 30.10
Arachnus: 29.83
Cobra: 39.26
Groken: 30.95
Vivirus 1: 44.81
Vivirus 2: 46.58
Giga-Desp 1: 19.45
Giga-Desp 2: 20.76 without sacrificing Rola
I can't find a list of times anywhere online, but if these turn out to be any good, I'll give some thought to a Normal Mode ST Falcon run. I know laranja is using Real Mode to access the highest difficulty, but that deprives you of the story, and I don't like that.
Here are the times from a segmented speed run with the Falcon that I did for SDA.
Garam2: 0'06"13
Siamang: 0'08"31
Wong: 0'05"95
Griffin: 0'13"13
Viscount: 0'18"85
Thanatos: 0'21"11
Arachnus: 0'19"36
Cobra: 0'21"05
Groken: 0'30"38
Virvius 1: 0'18"58
Virvius2: 0'08"23
Giga-Desp 1: 0'17"66
Giga-Desp 2: 0'12"70 (I killed Rola here, though)
I know the Thanatos time, though, can be reduced to at least 0'13"08 and the Viscount to at least 0'12"51. Wong can also be faster than 5 seconds, though for me on the console it required the use of a bomb. In order to get these faster Viscount times, I would need to sacrifice using a bomb on Wong since it is the only battle I would not lose a lot of time on as a result. However, for a TAS, it's more than likely possible to compensate for that, as well as surpass the console times I've listed above. Hopefully, however, that does provide a guideline.
When I have a moment, I'll put together some demos of my strategies.
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Quite entertaining. Particularly enjoyed the wall-jumps and the boss fights. Yes vote from me.
On another note, is it just me or was the second boss's first attack reminiscent of one of Top Man's?
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I don't really know enough about the technical aspects here to really come to any conclusion, but I can say that it looks fine to me at least all the way through to the 'adjust aim' on Griffin. And even after that it seems to look fine, but for some reason the movie ends before the battle does.