Oh dear, now Gods is finished with Nesvideos quality. Compared to the old (published) movie, this version is 14817 frames faster.
The time was improved by
  • Starting the game 1 frame earlier
  • Jumping (instead of walking) to the shop spheres
  • Taking damage differently to die faster
  • Collecting gems differently for faster shopping
  • Optimizing bonus countdown
  • Shooting some enemies differently
  • Beating bosses faster
  • Falling fantastically to some ledges
  • Using amazing shortcut in the beginning of world 3-1
Basic movie details
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Uses death to save time
  • Abuses programming errors
Special movie details
  • Hercules wannabe dies 9 times
  • One bomb-jump was performed
  • Spears turn around in the air (happens twice)
  • Quick eyes can spot graphical anomalies here and there
  • It's still a mystery why one monster does not appear at the end of world 1-2
I tried to optimize everything, frame by frame. I also used hex-editor a lot to test many different choices.
The game seems to be fluctuating in a way that prevents any minor optimizations: being faster at some point means being slower at some later point. IdeaMagnate saw a potential mistake in this movie and I managed to get rid of 6 frames, but unfortunately they came back later due to differences in lag and falling. Mainly, falling to some ledges in a certain way requires specific timing, because that's the way the Gods engine works. Also, falling damage changes between two values every 2nd frame.
This is my final attempt at this game, because there is no way to be any faster.
Gallery of Success and Failure
Edit: I don't want to make a trivial triple submission, so if/when this movie gets published, please use this 2 frames faster version instead: http://www.freewebs.com/aqfaq/gods.zip Thanks.

Truncated: Setting this one to accepted although it has received very little (= basically no) attention. It's very well played, and the constant dying is original. It's four minutes faster than the published version, which is a whole lot considering the original was only 11 minutes.


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #898: Aqfaq's Genesis Gods in 07:34.47
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Is this identical to the last version you made? Because the filesize is exactly the same and I can't spot any differences.
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Yes, it's almost the same. Sorry for (almost) double submitting. I did make another movie inspired by IdeaMagnate's idea, but the overall time was 4 frames slower, because of difference in lag and failure to fall to the ledge without waiting for the next (the same) frame of opportunity. It seems that the ledge-falling works about every 8 frames. By the way, I tested using different roms: Gods (JUE) [R-Eur][!] and Gods (J). They desynced only because there was different lag. To correct the desync, I had to add/remove a couple of frames. For example, the Japanese rom can be played 2 frames faster to the world 2-2, but the difference is not enough to be of any use, because the (J) rom lags more at world 2-3. I seriously believe this movie to be as fast as possible. There may be some parts that don't look perfect, so please ask anything. IdeaMagnate didn't seem to know much about this game ("I have no idea why you got half the items"), but still made a nice discovery, even though it turned out to be a pseudo-improvement.
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Oh, I managed to reduce 2 frames of lag from the movie. Do I need to cancel this submission again, or is there a way to edit the submitted movie file?
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There is no way unless someone with server access (being Bisqwit) simply switches the files. Come on, it's 2 frames in a 7 minute movie. This one will do, won't it?
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Yeah, but the current Gods movie has been downloaded 536 times. If the next version is equally (un)popular, that will make people watch 1072 frames of unnecessary lag. :) Anything is fine for me. I still recommend using the 2 frames faster version: http://www.freewebs.com/aqfaq/gods.zip It's perfect now. I'll never play Gods again.
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Sorry the gain got eaten by lag. If it's not perfect, I'm happy to pretend like it is.
ideamagnate| .seen aqfaq <nothing happens> DK64_MASTER| .seen nesvideoagent * DK64_MASTER slaps forehead
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damn, you'd waste 3 minutes of peoples lives! remember, those are gamers. 3 more minutes of wasted time won't matter. ^^ I'd vote yes on the new version if I could. edit: now that the movie has been accepted, I can finally vote yes. :p
m00
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Truncated, you're doing good job with the submission queue! I managed to find a total improvement of 14 frames in the middle of the movie, but even that is not enough, because destroying the snake pots at different time causes the baby snakes to burst out differently. Also, it seems that the ending-glitch won't work at any time. Being 2 frames faster in the end may not trigger the outro. I believe the only possible improvement would be lag-reduction, because the amount of lag seems to have no causal effect on anything. I have verified (with a savestate cracker) that the ending-glitch works in any level. The problem is that it's impossible to get beyond the level borders without the bomb. Edit: Ok, now I REALLY never play Gods again.
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Oh... I don't know what to say... Truncated (or someone), you'd better set this submission status to "delayed", because I may have found an interesting way to improve this movie a bit. Damn. :) EDIT: Forget about it... this movie is not improvable.
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You've said that several times already. :P I think we can stick with this one until you actually produce a faster one. Until that happens this is accepted and awaiting encoding.
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Sorry for repeating myself over and over again. That's just because I'm fighting against myself and winning constantly. :)
JXQ
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This was awesome! Put on the must-publish-asap list.
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
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Thanks JXQ, I'm glad you liked it.
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Why this is not published yet? I remember watching it when I could not vote... Time to vote yes.
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I promise this run 8/9 from me, once it gets published. It was fast and interesting, and the Atari ST style music was really appealing.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Post subject: Movie published
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [551] Genesis Gods by Aqfaq in 07:34.47
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Congratulations for the publish Aqfaq! :) Took a while from the point of acception to publishing. Cheers!
Post subject: Rate-o-bar sez "bbcode sucks!"
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(first appearance of the rate-o-bar!... edit: or not, screw you too bbcode >8( ) All the dying in this movie made me really go "What the hell?", especially given the plot of the game. The end of the game left something to be desired ("Jump over wall and do nothing for a while, game over"), but at least that was another "How did he come up with this?" moment. Not something I'm likely to watch again, but a good waste of ten minutes.
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Somebody asked me to explain the glitch that makes the game end abruptly. I did not explain it in the submission message, because at the time I recorded this movie, I had no idea how the glitch works. I'll try explaining it now (although it's still not crystal clear to me). If you observe the events on the screen, you see the player using the impact of the bomb to climb upwards in the air. Shooting continuously prevents the game calculating whether the player should fall down or not, thus he stays on the air. With this bomb-trick, the player reaches the top of the level and walks off the edge of the world. He uses the invulnerability item to absorb the damage caused by falling. Then you can hear some walking and a message is triggered that says: "Your bomb has been removed." (I think that's funny.) Then the player dies. Luckily, he got one more life to continue playing. He respawns, but the game is so messed up now that the respawn area is not defined correctly, the screen is not scrolling properly, etc. Also, who knows what kind of triggers he activated while walking outside the level? You can't tell much because the screen can't follow him. I have not viewed any memory values to find out what's happening there, but here's an image of a part of the RAM in colors: The upper part of the image shows the graphical data of the level layout. The middle part is the actual physical level. The yellow arrows show where I assume the player goes. The full level is not loaded yet, so the player falls through the empty part of the level into oblivion. I have no idea where the player is located now, but I assume that his position in Y-axis is quite abnormal. The screen can't follow him, so the value for the screen position may also be broken. To make the game end requires a very precise memory overflow. If some little detail is different, the game does not end. With different movements/timing/dying, it's possible to summon level warpings, change the music, start the boss battle, mess the graphics in several ways, get super high score, trigger messages, view a naked man (No, wait, that was another window.), etc. The ending never happened without dying, so the player respawning must have something to do with it. Alternative explanation (That can't be the case, but I like the idea.) is that the player literally walks to the "end", into the part of the memory that stores the ending sequence. The image above shows that there's lots of data down there to dive into. If you start a new game after the movie has ended, you can verify that the graphics and score count is badly messed up. You are awarded bonus gems for score + bonus gems for the score you get from the bonus gems, thus gaining potentially infinite score. (If you wait for a couple of hours, the score count ends.) --- Oh, eh, it seems that I'm still out of the true answer really. I also feel that I've already mentioned some of these things before. Anyway, I hope the movie makes a bit more sense now. The glitch is essentially a sequence of memory overflows, I guess. Now that I'm at it, I must say that it would be awesome to see this movie improved by one frame.
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