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So it seems to me that the best possible outcome is to salvage both pacifist and no sub-weapons, since I think most viewers were pretty impressed up to the point of that one enemy at the end getting shot.
To start with, are there any theories about how this might be possible at all? (personally I just like the challenge)
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XYZ wrote:
Alyosha wrote:
I am interested in the concept of this run.
You want to fix this movie or to start from the beginning and step by step to inspect possible new run?
Basically fix the movie.
I didn't follow the thread too closely,but it seems most of the run is pretty well optimized with a few noted improvements to be done. I am mainly interested in the last level where that one enemy is getting in the way. Presumably EgxHB tried many, many things to get by him, but its just too tempting to pass up...
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XYZ wrote:
Someone is working on improvement this movie?
I am interested in the concept of this run. Are people of the opinion that a true pacifist run is salvageable, with or without the arrow? I would be interested trying to make it happen, it sure is tempting trying to get by that last enemy...
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Well done!
I'm not at all surprised an improvement was found, since there are so many ways someone might approach this fight, and its right at the end of the run. I wouldn't even be surprised if yet another improvement is found.
Well as I mentioned earlier an improved fight certainly deserves co-authorship, I will add rchokler as coauthor and ask the file be replaced unless an even better fight is presented within the next day or so.
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electricslide wrote:
My only concern is in the final battle - that's a lot of hits. Is there a way to avoid the hits or does that make it much slower?
This is an interesting question. Unlike every other enemy in the game, it seems you can't manipulate the elementals to stop them from shooting you (they attack at regular intervals.) Simply dodging would have been far slower, as many of the critical hits were pixel perfect (look at 7:06-7:07 in the video for a good example.) Many of the hits come from Kuros' feet, which can't be blocked, unfortunately. One hit is intentional, at about frame 25445. You can't see it, but the fire elemental is behind the mountain and collides with Kuros knocking him into the air (this sets up the important critical hits later.)
This isn't to say that a radically different approach to the fight wouldn't have yielded less hits and a faster time, I just couldn't find one.
More generally, I would even bet that the number of plausibly optimal ways to approach this fight is greater then that for entire games (e.x. NES Shinobi.) There are many factors to consider and many paths to go down. I would gladly add as co-author anyone who could produce a faster fight.
Randil wrote:
Haha, looks like I'm still active on this forum without me knowing it. :) Great job on this, I know how hard this game is to optimize. Yes vote from me.
Do you have any other projects that I could take credit for help get finished? : )
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Oh you are right, I played back the fm2 and it desyns, hmmm strange since the fm3 works fine, let me try again.
Oh and apologies I didn't give you a chance to team up with this game, it was much further along then I thought once I first started.
Edit: Oh I found the problem, I think, I have a stray down press on player 2 at that point. I had no idea player 2 input would effect the RNG. I only exported 1 player inputs to the FM2. Interesting. I will upload a 2 player fm2 and work to patch the file to one player. Luckily RNG is easy on this game.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/20204478884032547
There this one works, while I remove that press. Shouldn't effect anything else really. Strange a player 2 input would effect RNG in a one player game.
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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/20199162381324799
Alright made it to the end!
Looks like it might submittable in time for 10 years of the original after all.
at the moment its about 1:12 faster then original, and almost 10 seconds faster then aglar's original complete WIP. (Although admittedly most of that improvement is with Aglar's own work, maybe about 2 seconds is my inputs.)
I'll take a little longer to look at the last boss fight a few more times, but I got some pretty great luck already so not sure how much more improvement I can get.
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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/20162877163042624
alright updated WIP to the last cave before the summit.
It mostly incorporates aglar's WIPs, since its just platforming it was already pretty optimal. But I saved a few frames here and there.
I also went back and realized I used the wrong level 1 WIP so resynced with the improved one and redid the boss fight to manipulate out enough mana.
I also redid the gysers and saved 10 extra frames, so that worked out well.
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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/20098347936574494
new WIP up to level 4. Currently I am 6 seconds ahead of Aglar's complete game WIP.
I opted not to use rchokler's boss 2 start as I saved more frames by getting above him quicker at the end.
I thought I would save more frames in the first section of level 3 with the gas geysers, but it seems they are only marginally useful, and since they always shoot you to the left not useful in all cases.
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Cool thanks. I went back to to the descent after the frog and saved 12 frames with a different path, so that's already 20 frames better then my WIP, thanks for taking a second look!
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Oh thanks, I didn't know you had worked on this game. I will look into those things.
I can't seem to find your WIP though, can you provide a link?
EDIT:
1. ah ok I already worked that out, thanks.
2. working on it.
3. I'll wait and see what it looks like in your WIP.
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Ok, I looked everything over and from what I can tell, the Level 1 WIP from 5 years ago is already as good as it gets. So I combined it with an updated level 2 with better routing to the boss and got the current WIP.
It is about 4.5 seconds faster then Aglar's complete game WIP to this point, mainly due to the magic strats Randil used. For comparison, Aglar's WIP was already over 1 minute faster then the published run.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/20042904239016310
I don't expect too much improvement from here on, maybe a few more seconds. The route is really straight forward after getting the infinite magic glitch.
Also, thelegendarymudkip will be teaming up with me to complete this run!
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Thanks for the feedback everyone. I certainly agree that the music saves this game from being a bore.
I don't plan to do all treasures Super robin hood or Linus Spacehead. I'll be focusing on Wizards and Warriors 2, and maybe Battletoads warpless after that.
And oh yeah, in case you didn't see it in Bag of Magic Food's post in the forum thread, here are 2 versions of the ridiculous back story Camerica included with boomerang kid, pretty weird stuff.
It's a little known fact but boomerangs don't actually return when you chuck them. They were invented by the Aborigines to train kangaroo's to jump on their back legs. The concept of using the boomerang as an aeronautic yo-yo is a confidence trick invented by Bob Smith.
"I bet that I can lob this bent stick and it will return to my hand," goads Bob to his victim, in the queue to the dunny outside the pub.
I should mention that the victim is usually in such a far state of inebriation, that he doesn't see the elastic string attached to the stick. He just marvels at the sight cries "blimin' Emma" and stumps up his forfeit.
Poor Boomerang Kid, so taken in by the ruse, he spent the entire day chucking New South Wales' entire boomerang collection every where trying to copy Bob. Now the Aborigines need them all back!
Now compare it to:
Boomerang Kid was lost by his parents on a camping trip to the outback. Luckily an Aboriginees tribe found him and saved him from being a Dingo's dinner. The Aboriginees raised him as one of their own and taught him the ways of survival in the outback.
Snapping Alligators, hungry Dingos and cute Koalas, Boomerang Kid learned about all the animals in the outback and studied their movements. He also learned to find his way around the treacherous terrain that was now his home.
Now that Boomerang Kid is older he wants to repay the Aboriginees, so when their boomerang store is raided he sets out to find them, vowing not to return until he has every single one!
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I have a small suggestion. I think it would be nice to have a visual indicator if a given game in the forum threads has a published run for that game or not. Even something simple like a checkmark. That way someone could scan the forums and see at a glance where open projects might be and how much work has been done.
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Its definitely not worth submitting. This is basically just me learning about the game for now. I even used the slower PAL version so in fact the movie would be longer (in terms of play time.)
If something were worth submitting it would be aglar's complete game WIP which is well over a minute faster. If I could make that kind of improvement I would have submitted it already. : )
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I noticed this game has a very old and obsolete submission. So I figured it would make a good short project before I try to find a bigger one.
It seems this project was abandoned several times in the past, let's see if it can be completed in time for the 10 year anniversary of the original publication. (Even though being obsoleted is not much of an anniversary gift.)
I would be happy to work as a team if anyone is interested : )
If it helps add support, here is a complete game WIP which is already a 10 second improvement over the existing submission. It syncs with the (E) ! Rom and on FCEUX 2.2.2.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/19872286978671407
I know it is not as fast as Randil's level 1 WIP, but for now I stuck with the 'does not take damage' tag as in the original submission.
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As I search for a more interesting project, I decided I'd look at Boomerang kid.
I looked back at RChokler's WIP and re-synced it. It turns out there are 2 faster stage choices (so far.) I also did some other minor optimizations. So far I am a few seconds ahead. Well, after the menu anyway, somehow he was able to start game input about 100 frames earlier then me, which I'm guessing is emulator or ROM differences. This is on FCEUX 2.2.2 and the !p ROM.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/19826986828362588
Also I noticed this from the submission of Robin Hood:
Dwedit wrote:
According to Bootgod's NesCartDB, the ROM with the CRC32 of B89888C9 is the correct dump, and it doesn't work correctly in FCEUX. The alternate dump rearranges the banks to work around emulation errors.
FCEUX seems to be emulating mapper 232 just plain wrong. Writing 10 to 9000 should select outer bank 02, but it selects outer bank 01 instead.
edit: checked the code, it intentionally has a hack to work around bad dumps, that should be taken out.
But I'm not really sure what the implications are. Quattro Adventure seems to be a rather rare case.
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Alright new WIP, got down to 4:57.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/19629482226888684
NOTE: I tried using the [!] ROM but when I did it loaded boomerang kid instead of Robin hood, so... I think I will just stick with my current [!p] ROM for now.
I looked at the secrets again, and they are mapped also to 0661 and 0662, there doesn't seem to be room for another secret since 0662 starts at 'I'.
I also looked at the new enemy killing secret but it doesn't seem to impact anything higher in memory, which from what I can tell means it only effects the current room, even though I don't know exactly how.
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Oh, nice thanks for making that video!
The run continues to get shorter bit by bit I saved another 100 frames.
I also found a glitch that saves some lag, whereby you pick up a treasure one frame before getting hit by an enemy (in this case an arrow.) With enough actions on screen the damage animation of the hearts doesn't occur, its helpful only once but stops a lot of lag.
EDIT: I finished the key map above. If there is another warp similar to 'C' then it is the fourth bit in 064A. I also found a new 'hidden key' (XX, the 3rd bit of 0642) but as yet I don't know what it does. It is located in the same room as 'F' near the bottom of the chains. Actually, it is activated when you kill the red enemy near where the 'F' path opens up. Although I can't yet determine why this one enemy triggers this bit or what effect it has.
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Well I can't seem to find the perfect [!] ROM, I guess I fail at the internet.
But in the mean time I got down to just under 5 minutes thanks to some better use of damage and hitting a platform timing.
WIP V2:
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/19519483698146179
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Oh so that is what that 'p' means, ok I will get the right ROM.
I tried looking over the secrets and how they are mapped. I found one that was way out of the others range:
064X
:::: 7 : 6 : 5 : 4 : 3 : 2 : 1 : 0
0 :: 00 00 01 02 02 03 04 05
1 :: 07 07 06 06 06 08 09 10
2 :: 10 11 XX 13 13 14 12 15
3 :: 16 17 18 20 20 21 21 19
4 :: 19 22 23 23 24 24 25 25
5 :: J 26 27 26 29 29 30 30
6 :: 32 32 33 40 34 34 31 35
7 :: 35 39 39 37 37 38 38 36
8 :: E 15 12 G F 28 28 Q
9 :: P A B D O N L M
A :: K C I ? 0 0 0 0
So far that J is the only one I found so low in the memory.
Normal keys start at 0640, but clearly there are only 40 of them. I noticed some of them effect 2 bits, so might have to look at it a bit more closely, maybe more secrets need to be found? Normal keys seem to be scattered throughout all the addresses.
I will complete this list to see if any secrets should still remain.
It seems that secret H does not effect any of the flags in these addresses, it could be dealt with differently
