Posts for coolpapa

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Joined: 3/6/2017
Posts: 9
feos wrote:
This run won't go to Moons in its current form it seems. However when you have no limits on speeding this up, death abuse is welcome. But when you apply it, I suggest you this: before you die play pacifist, then when you sacrifice yourself, get mad and kill everything you possibly can. In the next level where you need to die do the same switching. This will add variety and density. Also, with such a huge improvement possibility, I don't think I can accept it to the Vault right now, even though the whole run will have to be redone.
Makes perfect sense. Thanks for the advice!
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Joined: 3/6/2017
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Patashu wrote:
Well, if optimizing the game's clear time is now non-trivial, you can aim for Vault... ;)
Good thought, although I'm not sure how non-trivial the route is. It really is just dying as soon as the game marks you as being past a checkpoint. Then it respawns you a little bit ahead of that (1000-ish frames worth of autoscrolling time), and so even with the wasted time for the death animation, you save 500 frames or so. You can in theory do this 9 times over the course of the game, but I'm not sure if you can earn enough lives to take all those deaths. I haven't worked it all out yet. Maybe I'm not done with this game yet....
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Joined: 3/6/2017
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feos wrote:
Any opinions on this run's entertainment value, people?
Seems like the vote totals are answering that question. :) I would appreciate if anyone has thoughts on improvements. At this point I feel like I just don't know how to turn this game into an entertaining TAS. Is this game maybe just not TAS-worthy? Edit: And just to add to my frustration, I figured out a way to save about a minute to a minute-and-a-half (over the whole run) in the autoscrolling parts by dying at the right spot in the level and abusing the game's "halfway point" markers. Not much fun to watch, though.... :)
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Joined: 3/6/2017
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Whew, ok. Turns out re-doing a boss fight is way easier when you have all your notes about it already. The updated file is here: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/37853505367705836 Thank you for catching that and helping me out.
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Joined: 3/6/2017
Posts: 9
*headdesk* I'm not quite sure what happened - the movie must have somehow gotten back to a savestate right at the beginning of the final boss fight. And I think that in renaming files and moving them around, I lost my recorded savestates for the fight itself. I'm really angry at myself right now. Should I just rerecord and update the file somehow? I have no idea what the procedure is.
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Joined: 3/6/2017
Posts: 9
The speed upgrade really doesn't save any time. The screen scrolls at the same speed no matter what - the speed upgrade definitely helps with entertainment value, though, since you can run around dodging enemies like a crazy person. Also, AFAIK there is no point to take any damage during the run time-wise. So I would think the default for an entertaining TAS would be to take no damage. Should I still make that a stated goal?
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Joined: 3/6/2017
Posts: 9
All told, I'm actually kind of ok if this run doesn't get published. I can do better and I'm going to regardless of how this one is judged. Thanks all for the feedback.
Post subject: Adventures of Dino Riki (Help a newbie?)
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Joined: 3/6/2017
Posts: 9
Hi everyone. I recently decided to try my hand at TASing. My first real attempt (after the traditional messing around with SMB1) was Adventures of Dino Riki, which TMR put back in my head during NESMania, and which didn't have a run published at all. I submitted my first run, but the reception was lukewarm. I can definitely make a run which is more entertaining, and more optimized, so I want to spend some time doing that. Here's what I have right now: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/37594403826893708 So, some questions for the general public: 1. This is an autoscrolling shmup, so the TAS needs to rate highly on the entertainment factor. In this run, I aim for doing lots of crazy dodging at high speeds to create interest. How does it look so far? 2. In this run, I don't pick up any upgrades besides speed. The HP upgrades/restores and diamonds (points that also earn extra lives eventually) are almost certainly irrelevant for speed purposes, although it can be pretty entertaining to fill up the screen with your HP bar and rollover the extra life counter. Do those make any difference on how a TAS would be perceived? 3. Weapon upgrades. The early weapon is pretty bad, but I don't believe it slows you down particularly - I believe it does as much damage as the other weapons - the upgrades improve projectile speed and number you can have on screen at once. It will slow you down a bit in boss fights, but not by a lot. But there's one type of enemy later in the game where I really want to show off the crap weapon - they're these black spheres that form a circle around you and move steadily closer until they hit you. It IS possible to kill them with the basic weapon and take no damage, but it takes a lot of careful frame-by-frame movement to make them collide with your shots. Showing off killing those with a crap weapon is the only reason I avoid weapon upgrades all game. Should I just let that go and pick up a better weapon? That would probably improve the time in boss fights by a few seconds, but wouldn't affect the entertainment value of the run, since I only kill a few enemies anyway. Those damn black spheres are one of the things I remember most about this game from when I was a kid (that and the badly-drawn platforming), but I feel like I might be the only one who cares at all about murdering them in the most humiliating way possible. I could also get good weapons for boss fights and then go back to the crap weapon for the black spheres, but you lose speed when you get hit. So I could plan around and only get hit when there is a boot upgrade on screen, so I could immediately get the speed back and not lose any time. Thoughts? I appreciate any input folks have on the video. Thanks!
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Patashu wrote:
While slightly arbitrary, it has merit for being impossible to accomplish RTA.
Yeah, that's what I was going for. I didn't think a straight-up speed run would be interesting if optimizing boss fights is the only thing. Maybe I should be aiming more for something like this Gradius run? http://tasvideos.org/711M.html