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Randil wrote:
I tried this game a long time ago, without any luck. However, I still have the RAM addresses I used. I'll go ahead and post them here, perhaps someone will find them useful.
I don't exactly remember how all those RNG addresses worked besides that they somehow influenced the outcome of enemy movements and such.
It seems that every "manipulateable" enemy already have been manipulated in the best way, doing it to the bird in the last level would of course be useful but it doesn't seem possible.
Address 0056 is also quite funny. It actually only gives the X|subp|pos when you're walking or jumping on the platforms, and when you're climbing it instead shows the Y|supb|pos!
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As far as I could search, no topic about this game existed so here it pops up now.
To make a long story short, Aqfaq encouraged me to look for improvements of the current published run. In the end I managed to shave of one frame (in the last level) which I'm not really exited about submitting. I now enourage you smarts guys (and ladies if any) to try and improve it further. Unfortunately I have no clue of where to find it either than that if you improve level 3 by 1 frame you'll gain 11 frames there due to the frame rule:
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/441501818/Donkey%20Kong%20Jr.%20%28JU%29TAS.fcm
If no improvement is to be find I might submit this in an unknown distant future, but for now - good luck:)
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Having watched the nerd's review of this game probably made me enjoy this run more than I'd otherwise do, but there's nothing wrong with that. TASing AVGN games can also be a way of attracting more people to visit this site, which alone makes this run very publishable.
Yes.
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mega_man_3 wrote:
Awesome demonstration Algar!
Hm, you're not the first one calling me that. Maybe I should switch username - which seeems to be quite popular these days.
About your WIP I can say that discovering making enemies disappear is incredibly nice and will make up for a big improvement. Can it be used on other enemies than the ones in the WIP, or do you even know what criterium an enemy must fulfill in order to disappear like this?
Now I'm sorry to be a little nitpicky but I found a small improvement in the last room of Top Man's level. I here managed to gain 4 frames in that room(didn't watch the memory so well so you might be able to improve it further), I think the key is to walk on the spinning objects (can't remember what they're called) that goes downwards - since if you continuously change Mega Man's state (between walking, standing, sliding etc) you creature more lag in general.
To bad you where that unlucky at the boss, if I counted right you lost 19 frames on that situation. Have you tried exchanging lag frames for ingame time frames? That is for example if you slide in a laggy area you can sometimes stop for one frame and slide again on the next frame resulting in one frame less of lag. You won't gain/lose any frame there and then but you advance the ingame counter which can be good for manipulation of any kind without having to wait.
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mega_man_3 wrote:
I think it will be faster if I start with Top Man for my run because Hard Man takes 28 hits to beat and that's way too long. I even did the math for it.
Start with Hard Man = 28 hits + 4 hits for Top Man's boss fight = 32 hits = 16 seconds
Start with Top Man = 14 hits + 7 hits for Hard Man = 21 hits = 11.5 seconds
I know I have to wait for about two seconds for Top Man to do his Top Spin before I can hit him again but I think the time difference will be worth it!
I think this route has been discussed before but never really got implemented so go ahead and try if you like.
While testing a new way of jumping in the first room of Hard Man's stage I found another thing. If you shoot magnets before a big bee appears and then make the bee appear before the magnet has left the screen the magnet will travel up and will, with the right timing, hit the big bee. Short demonstration.
Also I noticed that my run was faster than your test run at the end of the first room due to some better Rush maneuvers. Here's how you could've gained 2 more frames in your run.
Edit: Links works
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Speaking of your route choice I first got the impression that your only timesaver would be using Rush Jet in Magnet Man's level. I now see that you'll also be able to use Spark Man's weapon on Magnet Man and this might get your route strategy to work. However, it will probably be a very close call and even if you beat my time by a few seconds it's no guarantee that your route is faster since you might be able to do the old route faster then me. So kudos to you for even trying this:)
mega_man_3 wrote:
I also have a new strategy for the Snake Man-Gemini Man-Needle Man route. I will start with Gemini Man (not for the entire run just for that boss chain) so I can use Rush Jet for that stage so that when I go to Snake Man's stage it will already be full. I can use Shadow Blade for Gemini Man unless there's some other weapon stronger than that besides Search Snake.
Cleaver strategy, when I tased this game I really should've done some route planning instead of only focusing on getting the levels faster than in the previous run - I was young and stupid:). About your choice, I think it would be faster going Snake/Gemini/Needle because the only extra things needed is to pick up 4 small weapon refills in Snake Man's stage and then you can use search snake on the fishes and the boss in Gemini Man's stage.
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mega_man_3 wrote:
Aglar wrote:
Baxter wrote:
Wasn't there a strategy to use rushcoil earlier in the first room, shooting the enemies sooner, and avoiding a lot of lag?
Yeah, I used that in my run to save magnets for the boss. I think it wouldn't be as effective in his run considering his different strategies in that room.
I had to save up on Rush Coils fo rthe boss fight against Hard Man because when I run out of Rush Coil, Mega Man won't be able to shoot any bullets.
Ok, but if it really would save some time you could skip using Rush Coil in one of the places and use it there instead. For example, if I remember right, the Rush Coil jump up the first ladder only saves a few frames so perhaps you could trade this with the other.
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Baxter wrote:
Wasn't there a strategy to use rushcoil earlier in the first room, shooting the enemies sooner, and avoiding a lot of lag?
Yeah, I used that in my run to save magnets for the boss. I think it wouldn't be as effective in his run considering his different strategies in that room.
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Thanks, I've done some comparisions to my run, showing whether you gained or lost frames:
Room 1: lost 28 frames - couldn't use magnets
Room 2: gained 1 frame
Room 3: gained 5 - superbly executed:)
Room 4: gained/lost 0 frames
Room 5: lost 2 frames
Room 6: lost 5 frames - I think lag management could've been better here, even though it's very random
Room 7: lost 2 frames
Room 8: lost 2 frames
Room 9: gained/lost 0 frames
Room 10: lost 1 frame - was this necessary?
Room 11: gained 68 frames - no weapon switch
Room 12: gained/lost 0 frames
Room 13 (Boss): lost 597 frames - no magnets on the boss (nice fight nontheless:D)
Total difference: lost 567 frames
I suggest you to continuously compare your progress with my run if you aren't already, though some lag management can be hard, or even impossible, to replicate. I must say I'm a little sceptical about the route choice since it seems much to regain almost 10 seconds later but I take it that you've done quite a bit of research regarding this so feel free to surprise me:)
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Had a quick look at your WIP and want to share a (quite boring) 21-frame-improvement in level 1-10 that I found while watching. Hope you can hex it in.
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Bag of Magic Food wrote:
I'm not sure how you could "manipulate" them anyway, since they fall according to your X coordinate.
Well at least it went very manipulating the same type of enemies in the Shadow Man revisiting stage even though I don't remember exactly how, and I'd be suprised if this isn't the case with these enemies as well.
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adelikat wrote:
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
Good idea. The only downside I can see is that Top Spin pushes you back a little after a successful hit in the NES version.
If timed right, couldn't it also push you forward?
Sort of yes. If you turn around and use it on an enemy it'll still push you backwards which is wanted direction here. It would also be possible to manipulate the parachute-enemies to not fall all the down and thus not having to use Top Spin at all, if it's faster.
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Great run! It managed to keep my interest up the whole time even though I liked levels 1 and 2 best. The frequent item pickup in each level shows that the routes where very well selected. The most positive thing for me was, though, that I got it to sync all the way through, excellent!
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A japanese fellow has beaten my time due to a new trick on the moon level: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQObPomgA_w
It's very much easier to perform than the previous glitch and not as spectacular IMO but indeed faster and thus it should to be on this site.
Overall the run is pretty sloppy and I think I can do 5-6 seconds faster. If so, should I just give him credits or add him as a co-author (since his discovery is the only reason for redoing this run) even though he's not a member of this site?
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mega_man_3 wrote:
I'm going to make a Mega Man 3 speedrun!
This time I decided to start with Hard Man then go to Top Man then Shadow Man.
I chose this route because I found a glitch that allows you to access the Rush Jet early. After you beat Shadow Man you highlight his weapon in the weapon switch screen then you press right then start.
The time is made up by using it in Magnet Man's stage.
Using this route you'll lose about 10 seconds in the Hard Man stage and some in Top Man Level and Shadow Man as well. Have you tested deeply that this route is faster?
Good luck with the run nonetheless, and using a new route (if better) would be very nice of course.
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mmbossman wrote:
One thing I noticed that I failed to do on my very first attempt at TASing was the placement of your character at the finish line of each level. Since he always heads to the left side of the screen, did you test to see if delaying the moment you touch the finish-line would be helpful in order to maintain a position closer to the left side of the screen? This could help reduce the time that the character moves from the spot you lose control of him to the spot he ends up at the very end of the level sequence. I realized that some of the levels have scrolling properties that keeps the character in the middle of the screen, but it seemed like the end of some levels didn't have this effect. I'm sure you probably looked into this already, but I just wanted to make sure.
Yes, it's best to be at an as leftmost screen position as possible. For example you can see in level 2-5 that I turn around to get a "lefter" position at the end. In some levels getting the optimal position is impossible but I always made the best out of the situation.
Oh, and having your character off screen is equal to the best position.
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If you're going to submit a run like this you should think about that in this game Mega Man is a bit slower in air than on ground. So a basic principle is to only jump when necessary and then do as small jumps as possible.
Another thing is to keep track on enemies health points in the memory, the shield enemies(address 06d0) seem to be invincible for some frames after you've hit them so watching memory to see whether your shots hits or not will be important.
And of course, start watching the pixel- and subpixel values if you haven't already.
I made a test run through the first level http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1309941200/Mega%20Man%20%28U%29no-glitch.fcm which should be possible to improve further.
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My spontaneus reaction from this is that the dragon skip is probably the most surprising and amazing single situation in a TAS I've seen so far.
For my thoughts about run in general I don't really have words to decribe it's greatness. I think though it's best summerized by saying that I'm proud of having a published run next to this one:)
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Bisqwit wrote:
Aglar wrote:
I'd really like to give this 10.0 for technical value but I can't, sorry - not your fault but those bastards at Capcom who can't make consistent games:)
That's not what "tech quality" means. You're not supposed to judge the game, but the play...
By inconsistency I don't mean I think the game's bad, just that the amount of randomness is so high that a perfect gameplay most likely only can be found with bruteforce. Sorry for confuseness.
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Awesome run as we can always expect from you. Really nice commenting about the randomness- and subpixel parts, I've kinda went through the same thing even though it looks you've might put a little more dedication into it:)
One thing was a bit unclear to me though, you say that you sometimes "avoid" subpixels to save time. Do you mean you don't care about them, or set them to 0, or does some other magical maneuver?
I'd really like to give this 10.0 for technical value but I can't, sorry - not your fault but those bastards at Capcom who can't make consistent games:)
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Guybrush wrote:
I started working on a new run some time ago, but stopped again due to lost motivation and fading interest in TASing. I thought I could share the WIP of the 100% run.
Useful RAM addresses
You can accelare to the top speed in the beginning of each level by jumping and touching ground as little as possible (touching the ground reduces speed a bit every time), same goes for slopes.
I hope someone improves my runs, as they are quite improvable. I don't think my WIP is perfet either.
If someone has some questions, contact me via e-mail as I don't browse these forums anymore.
I actually started tasing this game (the any% run) some days ago, and compared to the WIP I got better times in all levels we both played using some small detail tricks. I thought it might be best announcing this so people doesn't independently start runs of this game.
If somone would like to co-operate or tas the 100% run (which I don't know if I'll do yet), pm me and I'll share with some tricks I've learnt on the way.
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A new screenshot is needed. I took a few myself here, so perhaps an editor can choose one of them and add it. I personally like nr. 2 and 5 best.
It also wouldn't hurt if a more entertaining movie description was added, such as some more info about the improvements.
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Bisqwit wrote:
Was there a challenge somewhere?
When it comes to single situations - reducing lag in room with disappearing and reappering blocks in Magnet Man stage, having Magnet Man die in the center wasting as few frames as possible, getting the Hard Man battle right, the sequence with the spinning toys in Top Man stage, the room that goes dark in Shadow Man stage, manipulating the bulldozer in Spark Man stage right, manipulating Needle Man right, snake glitching without Rush Jet, the first room in both gemini stages (as written in the submission text), manipulating "Quick Man" right, subpixel positioning to make the flies disappear appropriate in second Needle Man stage and the room that goes dark in the 3rd Dr. Wily level are those I recall as the hardest ones.
In general - item drops, managing lag and subpixel positioning (without wasting frames) to slide over holes caused most trouble thoughout the run.
GeminiSaint wrote:
@Bisqwit
Oh, you must mean the part in the water area.
Well, in Mega Man 3, shooting any weapon (including the regular buster) cancels the blinking animation. So, yeah, he shot the Metal Blade to kill the fish enemies, canceling the blinking, but the invencibility period was still in place.
Having that user name, it was quite trivial to answer it I guess:)
It also wouldn't hurt if a more entertaining movie description was added, such as some more info about the improvements.