Pacifist goals are great for unassisted runs, but rarely translate well into TASes
Huh? I was under the impression that this site had a whole category for pacifist runs.
There is only a handful of games on this site that have categories for pacifist runs. Thats because only Rambo and Top Gun style games are generally suited to such an ironic category.
I would say that any game in which the enemies are the primary obstacle (as opposed to the level layout, etc.) is a potential candidate for a pacifist run. Castlevania is absolutely a candidate in that respect. Clearly you don't agree, but I do wonder -- between this run and the currently published Castlevania run, which do you prefer? The only practical difference between them is that the current one kills a lot (all?) of the enemies in the levels, while this one kills none of them.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Probably what happened is that the encoder pushed a button for him to go to the credits.
Anyway, things like this should not be considered when deciding which run is faster. If your run gets to the credits faster than Matty's run, then your run should "win". Having a longer listed time because your run includes the credits and his doesn't shouldn't matter.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Thanks for the encode, Grincevent! This was a great run, as I'd expected. The playing with enemies was excellent (particularly the crows and Fleamen), and the bossfights were impressively quick. The run is also very different from our existing Castlevania 1 run -- that one racks up a massive body count through heavy subweapon use, while this one attempts to cause as little damage as possible.
My going hypothesis is that Simon wants to take over the castle for himself, so a) he doesn't want the servants to turn against him, and b) he wants to cause as little property damage as possible. :)
Easy yes vote, and a great start to your career as a TASer. Welcome!
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
The only possible damage boost in 02 is off of a bat, and the bat would die, which violates the "pacifist" rule.
I'm looking forward to watching this as soon as an encode becomes available. The test run was great; I'm sure the optimized one will be even better!
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
That "outside the map" glitch looks like it's just a missing wall in that room, which isn't promising for replicating the glitch elsewhere. But the framerate's atrocious so it's hard to be clear on what exactly he's doing.
The only other simple alternative I can think of would be a very narrow wall (like, 1 pixel wide) and a sufficient horizontal velocity to skip past it, which again I have trouble believing would happen anywhere else.
I could easily be wrong though. I hope you find something useful!
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Yes, I do. Publishing these runs will not make it more difficult to find TASes that will appeal even to non-fans of the game, as we mark those with stars, and have a separate page listing all of those.
Mm, there's more than two "levels" of run, though. The starred runs are (supposed to be) "the best of the best"; the runs that jlun linked are more like "the worst of the rest". If I'm just browsing the NES games listing and it's crap game after crap game then I'm going to conclude that most of the site is crap.
Perhaps what's needed more here is more obvious access to "submissions by platform sorted by ranking". Along, of course, with encouraging more users to rank movies.
That said, if the Front Line TAS were a minute shorter I'd probably vote yes, because it's just so stupidly goofy.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Well, I enjoyed it. And you encouraged me to get Agent Under Fire, which I'm now playing and enjoying as well. Why didn't I realize that they'd continued to make fun and silly Bond FPS games after Goldeneye?
Anyway, yes vote. Nice work!
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Awesome, thanks. :)
Nice TAS! That glass ball trick really breaks the game open, doesn't it?
I wonder if maybe the failure at the end of the game is due to some kind of anti-cheating mechanism built into it...is it possible for a game to detect that it's running within a modified framework of some kind?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Aww, I was looking forward to watching this, but VLC 2.0.3 doesn't handle the encod properly for some reason -- I just get a green screen. A shame.
Also, of course, a shame that the game cannot be finished. I assume it plays fine outside of Hourglass? Anyway, thanks for making the effort!
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Ehh, so long as you're forthright about requiring glitches to solve the levels, I don't think it's a big deal. You just don't want to have hapless non-runners stumble across your levels and get frustrated because they appear to be legitimately unsolvable.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Even if Cecil was revived in the Zeromus fight, I imagine you'd need him to be a Paladin in order for the Crystal to work properly. At least, I assume that any other character using the Crystal would not work (otherwise you could have e.g. Kain use the Crystal!), and isn't Dark Knight Cecil is a different character from Paladin Cecil?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I'd generally say that using the whip outside of boss rooms is fine, but it should always have a clear purpose (either for speed or entertainment). I mean, you shouldn't just swing the whip randomly.
Personally I think that you should be able to destroy projectiles, but I don't know if I'm in the majority. Certainly I think anything that appears during a boss fight is fair game.
Good luck! I look forward to seeing the run on the workbench. :)
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
If I recall correctly, the current FF4 run doesn't skip any of the plot except for the Sealed Cave boss (which hardly counts as it just comes out of nowhere). Otherwise the main glitches I can think of are the one used to powerlevel Rosa, and the one used to kill Zeromus before he refills his health. Whereas, didn't the previous Earthbound run do some fairly major skips, and then the glitched run came around and just skipped even more?
In other words, I do think there is a significant difference in scope between an FF4 run with this glitch and one without it. And perhaps more importantly, it's easy to define what's "allowed" without using this glitch -- just don't overflow the warp counter. Of course, a run using this glitch would take over the any% title, and the old run would have to be named something like "any%, no warp glitch".
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
It looks like the game is simply iterating "press a direction and jump after a set interval" -- the interval is known, as is the time limit on the game, so you can easily calculate exactly how many times the loop can be processed in a perfect game. Then you animate enough to make it so even a perfect game doesn't run out of content, and you're done.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
The big problem is that I can't avoid killing at least 1 bat, in the best scenario possible. It happens in stage 10: I use a bat to go over the ceiling, but if I take the lower route, there will be a bat in the way, and I don't think I can avoid killing it.
Ah, yes, I'd forgotten that bit. Well, there it's unavoidable, as you said, so killing one bat is necessary. Like killing the bosses is necessary. But the bat in stage 1 should still live.
Ravens die too when they hit me...
(and don't tell anybody, but I killed a snake in the medusa fight :p)
Snakes and fireballs and mummy wraps and so on ought to be killable during boss fights.
So you think I should avoid at all cost any contact with these enemies if I redo a run? And the category of the run isn't too arbitrary to be submitted?
Personally I think the run could be submitted. It feels very different from the existing run -- that run is all about throwing around as many subweapons as possible to rack up a huge score while slaughtering the enemies; this run is about sneaking through the castle and assassinating the guys in charge while leaving the peons alive. :)
Especially, if you can find some way in stage 10 to avoid killing a bat, then that removes any ambiguity about the "pacifist" aspect. But even if you absolutely have to kill a bat I think it could still work.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Ah, an encode! That makes it much easier to watch. :)
On the whole, I think that if you cleaned this run up a bit, it'd be totally submittable. The only time I thought you "broke conduct" was when you used a bat to do the damage boost in the first stage, since that caused the bat to die. Otherwise there was a lot of creative use of enemies, and boss fights that are completely different from the ones in the currently-published run. Great work!
Unlike scrimpeh, it doesn't bug me when you use the whip outside of the boss fights (and it's done three times, not once).
I find it amusing how the developers didn't account for the possibility that there'd still be candles out for Drac's second form. That's some serious sprite flicker there.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I would call that category "minimalist pacifist", personally. Though the fact that bats die (?) when you jump into them is a bit problematic for the "pacifist" angle, though.
Congrats on finishing your first TAS! I'm not set up to watch it, alas, so I can't provide feedback.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
