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Here's the file I sent to FuzZerd:
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1161557945/Sonic%20the%20Hedgehog%202%20%28JUE%29%20%5Bexclamationmark%5Dtest.gmv
I was able to handle the game pretty good after CP1 but when doing EH2 I was very unused which is why I think that level can be improved by a descent amount of time. Even after CP1 (which was as far as I went) some things where unclear. If you jump and hit the ceiling you'll keep the speed you had when you hit it but sometimes when jumping of some down-slope angles you can keep your speed throughout the jump without hitting a ceiling which I never understood why. At around frame 6400 in your WIP I also didn't get why the "double-jumping" method makes you jump higher than just pushing it once.
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Wow, I didn't know it was that long since I last checked this thread... nice to see progress is being made!
I just wonder - in EH2 it seems that my test run, using the upper route (which I sent to FuzZerd), is just 6 frames slower than in the run you last posted. Would that be your final version of that level? My knowledge about the game was very limited when I did that level so I'm pretty sure at least 6 frames can be squeezed out from my version of that level if a "real" Sonic TASer would try it out. I might be wrong though but it's worth trying if you haven't.
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Randil wrote:
Aglar wrote:
I started a run of this game a long time ago. The recording has been very halting including a break of 1 year because some enemies weren't moving the way I wanted. So if someone else has begun TASing this game (Randil?:D) or think about doing it you can PM me. Otherwise I will eventually finish the run - hopefully before the end of this year, maybe earlier if there's some interest in this.
Ironically, yes, I have a WIP of this game! (you know me too well). I stopped the WIP at the space shooting section at the end of the game, mostly because I lost interest in the game. So this WIP is almost a complete run of the game.
It's been a long time since I worked on the WIP, but I seem to remember I found some nice things. First of all, you'll see that I "stutter drive" with the car, which saves some time. Besides this, it's mostly optimized movements and some new strategies. I think I'm about 15 seconds ahead of the published run. I think you can shave off some more frames from my WIP, thought it's a lot more optimized than the published run.
Here's the WIP. To be honest, I don't have much interest in TASing this game, though I can of course answer any questions you have about my WIP, and share the RAM addresses I have:
Wow, that was actually surprising, even though it somehow wasn't:). Thanks for the run, I need to go back and change a thing or two in my own run then.
I think this game has quite some TAS potential with its physics that's quite difficult too master. The boring parts are of course the stages when flying in space, but I'll finish this run - some time.
Also, expect quite a lot more than a 15 second improvement when it's done:)
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I started a run of this game a long time ago. The recording has been very halting including a break of 1 year because some enemies weren't moving the way I wanted. So if someone else has begun TASing this game (Randil?:D) or think about doing it you can PM me. Otherwise I will eventually finish the run - hopefully before the end of this year, maybe earlier if there's some interest in this.
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sameasusual wrote:
"Uses death to save time (no life is lost however)"
What exactly happens at the end of stage 2?
This is a timesaver tha has been used for a long time. Basically if you beat the boss and leaves the screen before the score starts ticking up, which would that a couple of seconds, the score will not move at all - the death itself isn't actually needed, but hard to avoid:)
DefEdge wrote:
Anyway, once again, awesome improvement, hardly any holding back. Although I thought I saw something during that last level where you got snagged on the stairs near the end. Was there nothing that could of been done there? I'm guessing the momentum was not able to be preserved due to the bounce, but still a definite yes vote from me.
Because of how the star physics work in this game, shooting the star earlier (with different y-position and y-speed) wouldn't give it the height it needed to last long enough.
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Ok, short after I submit this run I see that Hotarubi has now become a member so it'll be great if someone could add him as a co-author now (to both runs)!
To Hotarubi:
I submitted the runs because I couldn't know how long it would be until you showed up. And also, we're not really the only ones who have the rights to TAS this game and by never getting done with it we would kind of stop others from being able to TAS it. Glad to see you:)
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Cmuben wrote:
here is a good riddle: "a census taker goes to a house, and a lady answers the door. He asks her how many children she has, she says she has 3. He then asks, how old they are. She says the product of their ages is 36. He says, well that's not enough information. She responds, saying "the sum of their ages is equal to the number of the house next door." The census taker looks at the house, thinks for a minute, and says that is sill not enough information. The woman responds, "the oldest plays piano". The census take says thank you and leaves. How old are her children?
One quick guess is 9, 2 and 2 since he can't decide the ages by the first two clues which means that the house number has more than one series of 3 numbers whose product is 36. Doing some fast calculations in the head I think 13 is the only house number where this is the case with the series 6, 6, 1 and 9, 2, 2. And since one of them is the oldest (which I take for granted means being at least one years older than the others) the answer should be the second of those.
Also wouldn't it be enough to just give out the first and last clue to solve this, since I think there only exist one series of numbers that meets the first case and having a tie for the highest number?
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Very soon, both runs will be up in the submission queue!
I'm not sure how to do with the submitting part though. Hotarubi, the one who I've done most parts of the runs, haven't been heard of in a long while - not been at YouTube for 2 months. And since he's not a member of this site I can't add him as a co-author, which he has done more than enough to deserve. If someone know him better than me, you can inform him that the runs are about done and that he must register here. Or if not, could I submit it as my own run at first and then, if he joins later, he could be added as a co-author?
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My thought was to submit a run of this game as an april fools' submission last year, and I beat it in 4:34.83, but when I watched it through I didn't think it was funny enough for such a submission. I think that maybe your game play might be even better than mine but what you lose time on is that you pick up those extra fuel cars and thus have more fuel points to tick down after each level.
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Oops, I seemly selected this as an FDS game. I don't know if this matter but it should be a NES game which would be nice if an editor could change it to:D
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Yes, I did a test of this and it worked, nice find:)
I've tried to find appropriate memory addresses that reveal whether an enemy must be killed to open the door but with no success unfortunately, only some counters that tick down regardless of what enemy you kill.
Another thing that will improve the run, which I found quite a long time ago, is that you, in the first village Coralcola, don't need to talk to the boy who says that Mike is a good baseball player or something.
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I don't have any tip for how to reduce lag more than just to try many different approches of the same strategy and sometimes wait some frames here and there. I do have some interesting facts about the boss battles though.
Many of the bosses' actions are depending on the value of memory address F6. If the boss has two actions that can occur, it will select one of them if the value is even and the other if it's odd. F6 will move to the next value every frame while on the level selection screen or when an action that is connected to the address occur. These values CAN NOT be manipulated, but what series of values you'll be getting can be controlled by pushing start at different frames at the title screen.
The bosses which this will have the most impact on (from what I've understood) are:
1. The final boss of level 1 (Bull band): When you hit the boss and the value of F6 is odd, the boss will directly come up of another another hole, otherwise three lamps will fall down the screen, which takes around 2 seconds, before the boss will show up again - which is of course not what you want. And thus before you enter the boss room you'll want to have a series of number ahead of you where as many as possible of the 26 upcoming numbers(the boss HP is 26) are odd. I made a lua script to calculate this but I rather give it away via PM because it looks terrible. Tell if you're interested.
2. The ghost dog in level 3: Whenever the boss comes to the center of the screen it will move horsontal if the value of F6 is odd, otherwise it will move towards the character and when it returns to the center, if the address 4B5(will tick up everytime you hit the boss) is >= 7, it will divide itself into smaller parts and wait about 3 seconds before you can hit it.
3. Second last boss in the game: I've haven't actually done any research at all but I suspect that the address controls how the boss jumps.
Good luck to you! - if the text above didn't scare you away:)
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mklip2001 wrote:
Out of curiosity, is there anything happening with the improvement to this run? I haven't found a forum thread for the game, and this new gimmick in Gimmick! looks like it should be awesome.
Yes, it's being made (both this and the "best ending run"), and has been so for way longer than it was supposed to. We worked much the first month but after that the progress has slowed down significantly, which though has given us time to really revise and make sure we've done everything we can. Last week a new cool trick was discovered for example. It hopefully won't be too long until they're completed.
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I now tried to end my run (the published one) 1 frame earlier and it actually completed the game as well. So this run clearly isn't better in any way.
EDIT This wasn't EXACTLY the same though, watch the last 17 frames:)
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I'd like to see an explanation from the autor regarding the reuse of the previous run before I cast my vote.
I can clearly say I won't yes on a run of which 99.6% of the inputs come from other people. If this is the case, IMO, you need to:
Redo the run from scratch, and then write yourself as the autor.
OR
Keep this run and add the previous autors as co-authors.
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Looks like my submission really did inspire someone to improve it. That wasn't exactly expected from my side, nice find.
The improvement is due to pushing up the second last lock by the "double vine climb" instead of the single. This doesn't actually makes the level itself faster which was expected but it makes it possible to end the input 1 frame earlier which I didn't consider.
I'm not that happy about one thing though, I'm really sorry if I'm wrong here. You're marketing the run as your own while it to looks to me like the only thing you did was changing the last 17 frames or so. In theory this means this run just could've been done by some random person who got lucky at the given situation and who doesn't have much understanding in how the game works otherwise. I'm pretty sure this isn't the case here but I just wanted to lighten up my heart a little.
As stated previously it's a nice find though, which of course shouldn't be taken away from you. Good work!
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Aglar wrote:
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and all that stuff.
Later today I might give away some christmas presents in the NES forum, which I've saved for some time
If anyone had trouble finding them, they're here and here.
