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I've been working on the main game the last couple of days and found quite some new strategies and micro optimization tricks. The boss battles I've done are also faster than in the posted boss rush run. I can give it away via PM if anyone's interested, since I think I might have a submitable run ready in just some days depending on how easy the last bosses turns out to be, so there won't be much waiting time for you anyway.
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Made some adjustments here and there. Up to where the WIP ends I saved 19 frames besides the time gained from skipping that portal.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/410381908/Battle%20Kid%20-%20Fortress%20of%20Peril_WIP.fm2
caitsith2, I see that you've put down quite a lot of effort on this game. Except what's shown in this thread I recently found the map at VGmaps and saw it was also made by you. Did you plan to finish a run to submit at this site? Since if you intended to do this yourself I of course won't steal it away from you.
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Well, because of the "trivial" controls of this game and no lag (?) I thought it wouldn't hurt spending some time with this again. Having never really played this before I just took the same route as caitsith2. I started from scratch and after the first boss I was 100 frames ahead of my own gameplay in caitsith2's test run, 46 frames faster boss fight was nice. I stopped after the first appearing/disappearing-block area and don't know if I'll continue since I was kind of disappointed that I couldn't cut away more of the waiting periods there.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/338032627/Battle%20Kid%20-%20Fortress%20of%20Peril_TESTWIP.fm2
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Thanks for all support but I've found this run being way too awesome for this website to have.
Actually this run is me playing the first level in 800% speed. The real rerecord count is equal to the only digit that isn't in the "official" count.
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Awesome! I haven't watched any WIPs since HT2 so I could enjoy even more surprising stuff! Didn't expect to be listed as a co-author, maybe I shouldn't vote because of this(?), but I suppose adding all users who did contribute to the final version has been a tradtion in Sonic runs.
Great job on my favorite Sonic game!
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To warp from 3-1 to 3-2 you first need to get to level 3-2 and get gameover there. When restarting in 3-1 you just need to climb down (or up) the ladder before the boss room, using the glitch of your choice. Then you'll end up in 3-2. The same method can be used to warp between various levels in the game if just an appropriate climbable is found.
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mklip2001 wrote:
Yeah, I'm glad to see Mario too. Why is he better in 3-3?
In the previouos run Luigi was used for this level, and the reason Mario beats him is mainly because of their different jumping physics.
When starting a jump Mario's vertical speed is 90 while Luigi's is only 48. Then every frame Mario's speed is decreased by 4 while Luigi's speed is decreased by 1, which means Luigi jumps higher but much more slower. So much time is gained in the vertical areas.
Toad's jumping physics works almost the same as Mario's but his starting speed is only 83 so he have to do 2 super jumps to reach some of the platforms which makes him much slower here.
:)
I actually started an improvement of my old run long ago, but lost the interest quite fast.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1184806702/Startropics%20%28U%29WIP.fm2
This game has an 8-frame rule for when the screen goes black, good to know if you can't find where you lose time. I think this game might have some hidden treasures left since I didn't use memory watch at all in the published run. Expect MUCH luck manipulation:)
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TheAxeMan wrote:
camhack script...
Looks really nice! I suppose the run will be more enjoyable to most people using this, even though I think staying out of the the screen as much as possible also has its charm:)
For that work, you truly deserved a higher score than me!
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Randil wrote:
The wobbling serves no speed purpose, it's just an antic that was thrown in. (at least I think so, Aglar recorded this level, perhaps he can correct me on this. I don't think it affects RNG).
Yup, it was only for fun. Subpixels don't exist in this game. Instead they have a speed counter that increases by 1 every frame you push forward until it reaches 29 and it then goes back to 20. Values from 1 to 4 (if you hold down b) makes you move 1 pixel forward every other frame, 5 to 15 move you forward 1 pixel / frame and 16 to 29 move you forward 2 pixels / frame. Pushing backwards decreases this counter by 2 and giving no input decreases it by 1, hence why you won't lose time while wobbling if it's done right.
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klmz wrote:
More about this 1-player movie:
If a new 2-player movie comes up and is accepted to obsolete the current 2-player movie, it shall as well obsolete this 1-player movie as long as the new 2-player is faster than this one.
I don't really agree with this. I think both runs have their own charm, and to the 1-player run's advantage it has a huge amount of less lag which is also very apparent when comparing the two runs. Might be because I made the run that I like the category better than others though...
Anyway if obsoleting this with a 2-player run becomes popular among the viewers, it's not enough to just beat the time in the 1-player run since that's really easy (I could surely make such a run in a few days) but must also be on the same level precisionwise. This can quite easily be checked by looking at the ingame counter at address 0x002.
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klmz wrote:
According to the ROM checksum recorded in the input file, this movie was originally played with a bad dump "Snake Rattle N Roll (U) [b2].nes" that had been wrongly recognized as the good dump for a long time (just like the case of "Gimmick! [b1].nes"). However, it has been confirmed that this movie can sync with the currently verified good dump. I am wondering whether the author of this movie has any unrevealed info about the ROM version specially.
I just used the same rom as the previous runs have. Just for testing, I downloaded the file named "Snake Rattle N Roll (U) [b2].nes" to see if that was the same as I'd used but the checksums didn't match which I find quite strange. How do you check if the dump is good/bad except from looking at the file name (which seemly can't always be trusted)? Doesn't seem to be a big problem with this game but might be in other cases.
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Well I and andrewg are the ones currently working on the TAS and since this game isn't Super Mario 64 or anything, at least I didn't think other people were looking for new tricks at the same time. If you now are looking for other tricks than this, it would be a good idea to first PM one of us to get updated on the set of new tricks and strategic differences we've made, since it'd be nice to have save some surprises left for the public when the runs are done.
I suppose it wouldn't hurt explaining how the trick above is done though. In the room before Mouser do the following:
1. Pick up the POW-block
2. Throw the POW-block
3. When the POW-block hits the ground, pick up an enemy at the one frame where this will result in you not picking it up, and instead having it fall of the screen
4. Enter the bird head and you'll be carrying the same enemy you tried to pick up earlier using a different palette
(you can do whatever you like between step 3 and 4)
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Yeah, I knew about Hanzou's run, which I compared my test run to.
What speaks against a 1-player run would be that the current published 2-player run obsoleted the 1-player cathegory. But on the other hand those runs are almost 5 years old and people might look at it differently these days.
Maybe I'll go for TASing both runs - time will tell...
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I've been thinking about taking on this game for some time. To get used to it, I started by making a 1-player test run (currently the only publication for this game is a 2-player run) and when it was done I thought it might not be such a bad idea to also have a 1-player run on this site. Some differences in TAS perspective compared to the 2-player run include:
Much less lag
Easier to see what's going on (Sometimes in the 2-player run it's pretty hard to know which snake that's most relevant to watch)
More food to collect
Are there any interest in a 1-player run? You can check out this test run to get an idea what it would look like.
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Mine is submitted.
Not any of my best work but TASing under those restrictions was quite amusing. It was also a good reminder as for why I will never make a serious attempt to TAS a Mega Man game again (lag).
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Expert player
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marzojr wrote:
I think this small trade off could be thought of as a speed for entertainment trade-off.
That would be an ingame entertainment trade-off then, and hitting it with Sonic would be a real-time entertainment trade-off:)
Nice run so far by the way! I'm not very entertained by watching Sonic zipping through levels but at least it's interesting to see how you set up each of these tricks:)
