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VANDAL wrote:
This is capable of doing what you've asked:
Ah, I didn't get around to thanking you before VANDAL. Yeah, it worked out fine, and I was able to just get a "recording" of the 4th level.
And speaking of which, here it is, and it should be fully optimized. Remember to uncheck the volume envelope box and check the left/right movement box so the movie doesn't desync.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1101738896/Demon%27s%20Crest%20%28US%29.smv
The Hippogriff2 fight is a tad better with the help of the Earth Crest (I think it was like 160 frames faster?). Unfortunately, using the Earth Crest later to drop and dash to the Crown relic takes up frames rather than saves any. And finally, watch Arma get completely owned.
"Can it be!? My 'whirlwind' move has been defeated!"
(Arma, after not using it once during the battle)
I should be able to beat Flier fairly quickly too, though it will probably have to wait until Monday, as I'm going away for the weekend.
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Zurreco wrote:
Firstly, in the part of stage 4 with the armored ghouls, I think you can save a few frames by firing off two Buster shots when you're jumping in to your flight. This way, you don't have to stop in midair to kill one of them.
Secondly, I think that if you switch to the Earth Crest after the first ascension part after Hippogriff2, you can fall faster outside and dash to the statue with the Crown relic in it. I might be wrong, but it's worth checking out.
Otherwise, excellent work. Hippogriff2 was great, and I'm glad to see that you were able to figure out the fast ascension of the latter part of the level.
I fixed the mistake I made with the armored ghoul part using your advice and saved 15 frames! Also, I will try using the Earth Crest to descend to the Crown. I didn't realize I would fall faster, but it makes sense, since that form has no wings :p
For the Hippogriff2 fight, I'm going to keep it mostly the same, but I'm going to change to Ground near the end and see if I can finish him off quicker that way (since he stays on the ground for quite a bit doing nothing, this will hopefully save frames due to him taking less hits and dying closer to the ground).
Also, during the fast ascent for Vellum 2, Firebrand looks like he's spinning ;) I really like how that came out.
I'm hoping Arma will be a good fight too. The fact that he does the tornado attack makes me think I'll be able to finish him off while he's on the ground fairly easily.
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Hey guys, I have the basic layout for level 4 down. Is there any room for improvement that anyone can see? (The hippogriff 2 fight isn't optimized, I just kinda killed him semi-well to show the next parts of the level, so I guess ignore that fight for now).
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/773522769/Demon%27s%20Crest%20%28US%29.smv
Also, is there any way to upload only sections of video so that I don't have to keep uploading the entire WIP?
EDIT: I just noticed there's some parts in the horizontal wind area where I walk when I could be flying.
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New WIP is finished, with 279 frames saved (about 4.5 seconds!) mostly thanks to destroying the pot in the upward passage. I'm getting good feelings about this run (though I'm ever aware there's a chance it won't be published, I still really want to finish it; the game definitely holds its own in uniqueness and isn't too repetitive, and the boss fights are what I expect to bring the yes votes). Expect Level 4 in a few days!
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/524685223/Demon%27s%20Crest%20%28US%29.smv
Also, Mechuyael, I tried out the standing shot in the slime for Ov's first hit. I wasn't able to save frames this way, but I may be doing it differently than you. Is there any way you can post a video of your Ovnunu strategy, so I can see what I was doing wrong?
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Mechuyael wrote:
Okay, some comments then:
2. When Ovnunu starts rising, maybe destroying the jar and taking whatever's there ASAP will reduce some of the lag there?
Wow, doing this saves about 170 frames, probably more if I optimize my jumps. It completely destroys my fight though, so I need to record an entire new one. The good part is that Ovnunu only comes out when his pulsing goop reaches a certain point in the "pulse cycle." If you'll look on my old video, the cycle only completes 4 times from the time he reaches the top of the corridor to the time he emerges. This is largely due to the five or six mini eyes that come out halfway through. A couple of casual re-recordings of this part has shown me that I did something special the first time to get the mini eyes to come out so fast, and I've only been able to get re-recordings with 5 "pulse cycles". Sorry if this is confusing, but it's a good thing, because I have a HUGE margin of frames that I can aim for having the mini eyes destroyed (anywhere in between the beginning and end of the fourth cycle).
Of course, this makes me wonder whether it's possible to kill him within three cycles. But first I will have to figure out how exactly I lured those mini eyes out and make sure I won't go insane trying too hard to attain something that may be impossible. :p
Also, I was clipping one of those statues in the beginning of 2-2. This is now fixed and I've actually saved 26 frames between 2-2, 2-3, and 2-4. You'll see 'em when I post the new WIP later.
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Mechuyael wrote:
1. Maybe you could walk over to the Hippo-statue and headbutt it instead of doing the jump headbutt for a more "elegant" frame wasting? Or would that waste too many frames?
The wasted frames are more complicated than that, unfortunately. In fact, they aren't really so much wasted as they are there to change the outcome of the fight. The fact that I turn left and right instead of jumping or standing still makes all the difference in the manipulation. The only thing I could change about these extra frames is when they happen (I did them close to the jump/headbutt to make them less noticable, but if they are an eyesore, I can shove them even closer to the jump).
Mechuyael wrote:
2. When Ovnunu starts rising, maybe destroying the jar and taking whatever's there ASAP will reduce some of the lag there?
I haven't even thought of this. Honestly, I hope that it has no effect on lag, because it will most likely desynch my fight. Though this fight follows more "rules" than the previous two, and is much easier to get back into synch. I will look more into this.
Mechuyael wrote:
3. Perhaps you could beat Ovnunu faster if you attacked him using Ground's land attack instead of the air attack as he erupted from the slime, or did you not manage to do this?
This also didn't cross my mind, but now that you mention it, it may be faster. Though in this case, I would most likely kill him when he's much farther to the left, and even if this did save frames, I may end up with a net loss since it takes him so long to move to the center before burning up.
Zurreco wrote:
...I'm very glad that you are working on this, because you seem well suited to it.
Thank you! I'm glad for the words of encouragement, especially since this game doesn't have many other people working on it (though I am extremely grateful for the 100% route plan of yours).
Zurreco wrote:
Your hits in Hippogriff1 aren't optimised, so am I to assume that this is part of the manipulation? Is it possible for you to extend any of the after-dash hops in 2-1 so that you don't have to walk off screen at the end? Also, is it too much to ask that you do a flight wobble as Firebrand? It makes him look like a 4-winged demon, which is rad.
Are you talking about hits 6, 7, and 8? Those are the earliest times I can hit him during this period. He flies just a tad too high to hit for a bunch of frames, and this part of the fight, at least, isn't manipulatable. In 2-1, extending the jumps complicates things in terms of getting caught on different platforms and having to avoid the pots or the fountain or the Arremer (?) guy. And I'll definitely add in the flight wobble. In fact, it'll be darn simple with a hex editor, which I've become all too familiar with in the past 3 days.
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Mechuyael wrote:
Too bad you couldn't waste those frames in a less notice-able fashion though.
Unfortunately, I think the frames need to be wasted in between the time the screen transitions to the hippogriff area and before I head-butt the fella.
Anyway, WIP up through Ovnunu, using the new path. It's still faster to use Firebrand on the mini eyeballs (there's lots of weird jumping and positioning if you try to kill them with Earth Crest), but Ovnunu falls stylishly in about 5 seconds, thanks to the Earth Crest.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/695797732/Demon%27s%20Crest%20%28US%29.smv
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I love you VANDAL. I tried out a more entertaining (and slightly frame saving) route through the graveyard. Then, I messed around for a few frames before the Hippogriff fight, and not only was I able to splice in the original fight, I was able to manipulate him so that he doesn't do a THING during, and never goes too high. Uh, also, when he had 1 HP left and was flashing, I was able to kill him without waiting for him to stop flashing. I guess this is a normal occurrence that I just never knew about. (If you look closely, you'll see two fireballs hitting him during the final blow time freeze).
Unfortunately, I couldn't get the new route through the floating platform area spliced in without Arma still desynching. It's a small difference, however, so I think I'll keep the first level as-is.
What do you guys think?
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1136951835/Demon%27s%20Crest%20%28US%29.smv
100 frames faster.
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Well, it's not desynching in the traditional sense (i.e. recording a movie one way and it plays back a different way). What I've been doing is copy and pasting the boss battles with a hex editor (for example, moving the block of hex that contains boss fight data backward a few frames to compensate for the saved frames). The result is that the boss behaves differently.
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Wow, so for the past four days I've been polishing and repolishing the first level, but I haven't really made much headway. I've learned a few things though, while comparing my new video against my old one:
- Flying takes up several extra frames, and so staying on the ground and killing enemies in your way (as long as there aren't too many to cause lag) is faster. It looks nice to only fly when necessary. This also makes for a somewhat more entertaining video. Unfortunately, opting to walk instead of fly seems to desynch my hippo fight no matter what I do, so no frames savable there, at least from what I can see. If I knew a little bit more about debugging, I could try to see what exactly causes the desynch. I have a feeling it has something to do with the way the game "bumps" Firebrand up onto a ledge when I'm flying at it a few pixels lower than the ledge (this happens twice, right when I collect the 20G and right when I'm flying over the last platform to hippogryph).
- The other major thing I discovered is that the floating platforms are very slightly manipulatable, especially the fourth (I think fourth) one, which I have been able to manipulate to appear about 35 frames earlier than normal. Frustratingly enough, this desynchs the Arma fight. I have tried to find alternate ways to defeat him, since he's easier to manipulate, but I can't seem to finish him off on the ground anymore. I've gotten him about an inch above the ground while delivering the last blow, but never quite as low as i got him in the previous video. The time it takes for him to flap his wings once takes a little more than 35 frames, cancelling out the saved frames from manipulating the platform and still making my first video still the faster of the two.
- I guess in my previous video, I wasn't hitting Y at the right times during the dialogue, and so I just alternate Y and Start to save frames there, except during the first dialogue with Arma, which I kept 3 frames longer, since this too seemed to desynch my Arma battle if I saved those 3 frames.
- After defeating Somulo the first time, depending on where you're standing, Firebrand will jump through the door at different times. Optimizing this only saves up to 10 frames or so. Oddly enough, I couldn't improve this from my previous video, because I happened to be standing in the right place in both videos.
In theory, I can save about 40-50 frames. In reality it looks like I can only save about 5 unless I can figure out why boss battles desynch. >.<
If you must watch the new video, which saves a meager 5 frames, this is it:
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1028714405/Demon%27s%20Crest%20%28US%29.smv
I'll be working on the (hopefully) less frustrating 2nd level next. This will probably be my final run of the first level, unless someone wants to try to help me figure out why the boss battles are desynching.
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Looks like I'll have to start fresh, but I was planning on it anyway. I have the groundwork for the most important parts, and hopefully I will be able to hex edit them in.
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100%, using your path. I do plan on submitting this eventually, but this would be my first submission, which is why I welcome any and all feedback.
And you say the Earth Crest air shot matches the Fire Crest in power? That would indeed be a faster Ovnunu fight. I'll see what I can do about that.
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A quick update: I think for the Earth Crest to be effective during the Ovnunu battle, I would need to transform soon after Ovnunu comes out. Unfortunately, there are no good opportunities to hit him with the stronger breath attack, and so Flame Crest throughout the battle seems to be the fastest.
Heading to stage 4, which should be fun.
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Hey guys, I'm still around.
I'm willing to work on this some more, and I have all the tools (but maybe not the skills) to keep going. If you read this post before I edited it, there was a moment where I thought I had never gotten the right ROM. Turns out I did have it, forgot, and found it just now. Anyway, I can keep going with this run, but I think I need to collaborate with someone on this.
Problem is, there are certain parts of the game that I'm really just bad at manipulating (SKULL BASHING). I'm happy with my boss battles though. This is the WIP up to the Ovnunu mini eyes. They burn up fast.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1419342489/Demon%27s%20Crest%20%28US%29.smv
Another edit: I just whipped up the rest of the Ovnunu battle. It's very fast, though probably not optimized. I think I saved some frames using the Earth Crest, though it may be better to transform earlier in the battle. Also, the strategy may need to be optimized so that the battle ends with Ovvy in the center, though this would prevent the use of the Earth Crest's breath attack (the one that shoots straight is much weaker).
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1342703842/Demon%27s%20Crest%20%28US%29.smv
After this I'm going to have to start doing tiny segment WIPs for everyone's convenience.
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If you've ever played Pikmin, you can probably imagine how cool a TAS would be for it... I've been playing Pikmin 2 a lot recently, and I can see it becoming a recommended video (when GameCube games start being normally Tool-assisted, if ever). There's so much to do in each stage, splitting up your captains could make for some pretty crazy multi tasking, and precise aiming of pikmin for killing enemies and even drawing out patterns on the ground (like spelling out words) would all add to the awesomeness. Oh, plus, there's time limits to each day, and an overall time limit in terms of days taken to complete the game. So that would be another interesting factor, minimizing the amount of days.
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Being unable to see the WIP of this 100% run causes me to break out into a cold sweat (the links are broken). I would really like to see what you have so far spezz...
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Are you guys talking about the bats in the first part of the underground area? That's the only place I see lag from the bats. Right at the very end, there is a bit of lag, but I think it's because I'm killing the bats, not from the bats themselves.
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Here is my most current WIP. It goes up to Ovnunu, but I haven't fought it yet. I saved a TON of frames by changing the Arma battle so that he's at his lowest point when I deliver the last hit. I also saved some frames in the floating platform part by getting rid of an entire wall jump.
The skull bashing mini-game gave me a huge amount of trouble, I kinda had "writer's block" with it for a few days, but it finally looks passable. (The hesitation at the end saved some time so I didn't have to walk so far to collect the life token).
The path through town and the water area is kinda boring, but I really like how the underground areas look.
Please leave comments and (constructive) criticism!:
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1665/Demon%27s%20Crest%20%28US%29.smv
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All right, so I found a new ROM. The rom file isn't named Demon's Crest (U) [!].smc or anything, BUT, when I load the ROM and then load someone else's SMV that has been made using Demon's Crest (U) [!].smc, I don't get the message, "You don't have the right ROM loaded!" So, I'm guessing that this ROM is okay to use? The informational text at the beginning is white, not yellow, and the checksum is ok.
One final question before officially starting for real this time: I have the "Use WIP1 Timing", "Allow Left+Right / Up+Down", and "Fake Mute desync workaround" buttons checked, and the other two not checked. This is good, right? (The left+right and up+down are enabled so I can do a small fireball glitch if I find the chance).
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Zurreco - I'll definitely try to skip a jump on the floating platforms part. For some reason it didn't occur to me at the time so I have yet to try it out. When working in frames, I sometimes lose sight of the bigger picture. I'll definitely put more work into the skull game too
As for the path through town: Ground gargoyle (obviously) is a few hundered frames faster to use. Once you hit the button to start the dash, you can jump 69 frames later to extend the dash another bunch of frames. It just so happens that I end up on a higher level due to this. The only problem is the lag caused by the pots. Once I jump over them in the route, I will compare this to just dashing straight through and over the fountain.
Still can't find the correct version of the ROM by the way.
