I finally went and watched both Catastrophe and Erim's runs, and I took some notes. I have not seen a side-by-side, but I am downloading one. Anyway what I wrote down are some possible points. Since I am not nearly as knowledgable about FF6 as the people making the WIPs, I am not claiming that these are actual mistakes. But I think I should say everything I thought of just in case.
First off, my intuition was that the skip Celes trick should be used and the sketch glitch should not. Apparently I am wrong on both counts? I forgot that you would be without sprint shoes for a long time with Kutan, and I probably underestimate what you can do with the sketch glitch.
Anyway, Cat's run first:
+ Narshe cave star thing
+ opera house menu skip
- luck manipulation on fights... I mean how many fights you enter, not luck inside the fights. How many fights you enter looks like how a console run would look, which doesn't seem to me like a good sign.
- too many chests... You probably already realize this by now. I got to thinking though. Some of those chests you picked up, were you following Peter's run on SDA or his speed guide on gamefaqs? Because there were some things I wouldn't do that were in both. Anyway, there's probably even more incentive than the normal RPG to be minimalist, since there's a lot of crazy desperation attack or Joker Doom kind of things you can do.
- too many won fights... I could be missing something, but why beat up all those regular enemies? Is it for the gold? I wouldn't have figured you would have fought any unnecessary fights for EXP or gold.
- A couple fights I didn't understand why you were doing what you did, but I figured you knew what was up. The one I wrote down is that mini-boss fish guy going down the waterfall, where you waited forever on the previous fight and then used the desperation attack on the boss fish. But since Erim did the same thing independently it must be correct. Maybe there's multiple sets of non-boss fish and you have to take all the time anyway? That's the only thing I can think of since it's been a while since I played FF6.
Now for Erim's run. I watched this second and this is in comparison to Cat's run, so I won't say duplicate things:
+ much better luck manipulation in general
+ all the critical hits =)
+ apparently, glitching past the soldier but still getting Celes
- equip more than 1 sprint shoes at a time the first time
- reason for the fights on the mountain?
- also, why waiting before the final guy runs from a fight? Is it to manipulate when the next battle occurred? If so, I couldn't tell. =(
- talking to the guy inside the base to get Genji Glove?
- why not use rod against Tunnel Armor? Maybe there's a better place to use it later, but I doubt it, and by the end of the movie you have Joker Doom.
- worth getting Rhodox rage? I forget exactly what you did by now, but I think you only snared one guy, and it would have been quicker not to get it? I dunno.
One last thing. Does your name come from Lufia? If it does, I bow down before your awesomeness. =) If it doesn't, oh well, you're still awesome. Only not quite as much.
Oh in case you're wondering, I'll get back to SDA tonight or tomorrow. =) I saw your sig before you changed it (I think) and... oh wait, I'll just say it there where appropriate.
Anyway, since you're playing FF2/4 now, maybe you can watch my run when you're done. ;)
Edit: Oh god, I forgot how annoying the fan would be to operate. Even worse in a TAS probably. Maybe you should get someone to figure out the memory address to watch for fan speed? Or maybe lemming velocity? I dunno, but something.
Well, I went back on a TAS WIP watching binge, and I have to say good job, even if it was only one level. ;) What is your progress now?
Everything flagitious has said is absolutely correct. Going back and looking at what I have, the levels in question are Polar 8 (2 lost) and Classic 7 and 8 (1 each). From what I remember, you need to use 2 Exploders in Polar 8, and 1 Blocker each in the Classic levels.
I think it should be obvious that getting all golds would be the way to go. Minimum completion would be kinda trivial, although there are runs like glitched LTTP on this site I guess.
I think what would actually be useful is if someone went and figured out the minimum number of lemmings needed in each world to get gold. Of course, this would make a TAS a pain in the ass because you'd have to figure out which levels you could let extra lemmings die to save the most time.
Disclaimer: I have not yet watched samurai goroh's WIP, but I have watched as far as Boco and Tilus got.
Maybe I'm missing something, genji, but I actually would have expected a little more than 2 minutes faster at this point than the ultima garden time. Yes, I know that is the PS version, but this is a TAS. Not to criticize samurai goroh at all of course. Probably the time attack is just very optimized.
Well I also wondered about the green star. It's probably too much to expect people to realize that there are 2 different colored stars that mean different things. I think that maybe the best icon for a notable movie would be something like an exclamation mark, although keeping with the celestial body and SMW item theme, perhaps the crescent moon from SMW would be a good icon. Also I think more could be done to mark the published movies that are technical demonstrations. Maybe that exclamation mark from before? Dunno, just throwing out ideas.
As for this run not getting a (yellow) star, I actually thought the previous obsoleted short SMW should have already had the long SMW's star. Not only is it shorter and this route is iconic, if you look at the levels that are in both versions, it's no contest. The long run doesn't even bounce off the p-switch in the first castle for instance. It's one thing if the next version of the long run will be the most star-worthy, as JXQ says, but at this moment, I think this version is obviously the best.
Intuitively, I would think that capping Ryu's AP under the different thresholds would be of the utmost importance. So high priority, in fact, that I would have him die in certain fights if I had to (dunno if it's needed).
Sorry, I probably won't be that much help because I almost never watch TAS WIPs. With the not being able to seek, but mostly because I already waste enough time and effort on SDA, I usually don't bother. Sometimes if someone makes an AVI of a WIP (as in Boco's FF5 or fuzi's SO1), I'll watch that, but in those cases usually it's more in demand, so everything that could be said will be taken care of by other people.
I will help out though, as far as just following this thread. Text strategies, but for this game it would probably be best to use screencaps to illustrate things in many places. I'm willing to try out strategies for different levels, so you could say what you're doing on a level and see if any of us can think of anything better.
To make this post not totally worthless, I'm not sure if even everyone on this site knows about it, but definitely the best place to upload WIPs is http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php
I dunno...I think part of why I found L2 to be so easy was that I rarely bothered with trying to save all the lemmings
Oh right! I forgot about that, so I was just talking about getting all golds. Settling for bronze would make L2 easier for sure. I guess it's good then, because it builds in picking your own difficulty.
spineshark wrote:
But most of my experience with Lemmings fans was on the Team17 forums, where the original was (rightly) praised frequently as an amazing game, but I never heard anything about Tribes. (the conclusion I have come to, after thinking about it, is that Lemmings got a windows re-release, which meant more of the younger crowd knew about it)
Another reason for this might be that you are on the forums for a L1 remake? :P I'm sure you would get different results if it was a L2 remake.
Oh and Dacicus, what he means is that there was DOS L1 and L2, but only Windows L1 (also a PS1 version btw). So some people might not be old enough to remember L2. Although honestly, I don't think many people would buy the later versions who hadn't already played the DOS/Mac/Amiga versions.
spineshark wrote:
edit: incidentally, what sort of increase would appear in movie file size if it was recorded with mouse inputs?
It'd be negligible. Remember, emulator movies aren't video but just button presses with timestamps. So I'm guessing recording mouse input would just add x and y coordinates for each frame (or maybe delta coordinates, and doesn't save if it's 0, or something like that). The files are really small anyway; I think they'd still be really small. And of course, once the avi is published, since that's just video output, there will be basically no difference there.
spineshark wrote:
edit: Ahh, okay, I just got all excited when I saw the comment about playing with fast forward and frame advance simultaneously...it occurs to me that the PC version probably didn't allow using jobs on FF either, so it makes sense. And toggling back and forth is still going to look way cool, hopefully.
It'd be essentially on all the time anyway, right? You would just switch it back on the very next frame.
Well good luck! First time TAS makers tend to pick overly ambitious first projects it seems, but hopefully you can be one of the success stories. ;)
Hey spineshark! I think people would love to see this done well, as I think it would definitely get a star. It'd actually probably be the best run on the site IMHO. But it'd be insanely hard to do, especially since people would be noticing new things all the time. (The NES Lemmings run can't go through the first several Fun levels without multiple iterations.) I think it would take a TAS veteran to do it.
Yeah, I implied that you would be turning on fast forward a lot. Actually, here's the thing. AFAIK Snes9x still can't record mouse input. (Maybe get nitsuja to rectify this?) I don't know whether or not ZSNES rerecording is prime time yet, but it does handle recording mouse input.
Anyway, it's the mouse input that would make it truly insane. (You could even "play around" in your free time, moving around the mouse cursor to say "hi" or form a star or something.) If you could control where the cursor is frame by frame, you could do some really interesting things and be able to select different things as fast as you need to. An alternate option, especially if that doesn't work, is you could hit 7 to toggle the mouse on and off a lot, and record that way. Essentially everything at the bottom would be controlled by the gamepad, and the cursor itself by the mouse. It's of course useful to use the mouse because using the gamepad to control the cursor is a little slow.
Oh and PS: While I think most fans (me too) think Lemmings 2 is the best one, I thought it was generally considered the toughest. At least, I certainly thought so, and some levels (like Take Up Archery) still make me shudder to this day. The SNES version is a bit different though, and I would agree that it is easier than DOS Lemmings 1.
FYI: The FF5 run from SDA has been submitted. After all the processing and such gets taken care of and it goes online, it would be a good help for a TAS and maybe provide some motivation. Worked for some other SNES RPGs.
I haven't watched your WIP, but I'm actually surprised nobody has tried TAS'ing this game yet. Maybe it's because you can't really save much time in the microgames? Dunno.
First off, just letting you guys know that while I haven't watched the BoF3 run except for bits and pieces, I have looked into matters and while there's room for improvement, the run is actually pretty solid. It's done by DavidK5, who has the best BoF3 guide at gamefaqs, the BoF5 sticky, and has Perfect Dark records at the-elite. You can take a look at the speedrun guide here.
SGreenwell wrote:
Would Ryu and other party members even be able to live through certain attacks without higher levels?
This is a TAS, you know. You'd be able to beat the game even without fighting K Sludges and the like.
SGreenwell wrote:
Also - Have you looked into using shamans and the transformations? I remember that some are much more powerful than others, which could be useful for dungeons and boss battles.
I can't speak for Atma, since he's actually working on this, but IIRC they aren't worth the time to get the shamans and then combine. There may be exceptions. Also remember that all of them get unattached near the end too.
Wow, that BoF3 run came completely out of left field for me. I was totally excited, then I saw that it was over 10 hours. Huh? I don't get it; the guy who does it seems rather competent, but that time looks pretty bad. I haven't finished downloading it yet though, as a disclaimer.
Also, I'm totally surprised that BoF2 would take over 5 hours, since I would have bet that the console speedrun would be around that long (and my intuition is pretty good for these sort of things).
I do agree with everyone that I would love to see a BoF3 TAS, since it is my favorite in the series behind 5. I have noticed a strange phenomenon with 3 that I don't recall seeing with any other game. People who are BoF fans seem to rate 3 very highly, liking it more than 4. Yet people who don't care as much for BoF all seem to like 4 better. I've asked over 50 people, and this always seems to hold. I have my theories, but it's still weird. And now that I've posted this, someone will offer themselves as a counterexample. ;)
I agree with Wandering Road that it probably actually won't be as hard as it could be to plan, and I agree with those answers to Jyzero. I don't see how the Retort glitch could be useful either. Skipping Celes and Mimic Joker Doom both sound like winners to me.
Highness wrote:
I'd watch anything that is faster than the run on www.speeddemosarchive.com
If it beats that time, I think it's publishable here. Even though it can be improved. Problem with this run is that it will draw so much attention and imputs, which eventually will force the creator to re-start and re-make every single frame that someone feel is errornous. :D
That's some low standards. :P Seriously, out of all of the FF runs currently at SDA (plus the FF5 and FF8 that have been completed), trust me, FF3/6 is definitely the least optimized by far. Because of some of the things we know now, the TAS time should absolutely slaughter the SDA time.
Assassin wrote:
i just tried dying in the WoR overworld, and it is.
where is this SDA discussion, anyway? i can't find it.
We actually haven't talked FF3 in forever, but Jyzero is talking about this thread. It's about all the games on Ultima Garden, but you can add to the discussion if you want.
Wandering Road wrote:
Jyzero wrote:
Oh. That's it? That won't help at all, since you'd have to record the powerleveling.
In that thread, I listed the FF6 time with death abuse. Apparently this is only for the PS1 version anyway. What I want to know is, did the runner really level up Terra to 99 legitimately? Because, um, that would take a while and be pretty annoying. Maybe there's some glitch?
You could've made a thread about the game, to see if anyone had interest in doing it :P
Well, since all of the "popular" games have already been discussed, whenever someone not actually doing the run themselves makes a thread by this point, it usually doesn't really lead to anything.
Atma wrote:
Hardly, press a on the last character that displays (usually) and it advances.
Even on the fastest text setting, the text advances faster if you hold on to A. Originally I thought you would have to let go of A for a frame, but you can just hit A to talk, hold on to it the whole time, and hit B to screen advance. It's not bad, but other games are easier, where people have just done it by holding on to turbo A.
Atma wrote:
Also, that run is on a 'todo' list, after a few others, and the last post was about a month and a half ago.
Just because the last post was a while back doesn't mean it's abandoned. He's still doing it after redoing Mario & Luigi and then running Lufia 2.
I am so glad that someone finally has posted about a BoF game! Anyway, it might not be extremely useful at this point, but Dragondarch over at SDA is working on a BoF2 run. I'd like to help, and I know the game decently, although admittedly I remember this game the least out of all 5 of them. I think it'd be annoying to do a TAS though, since optimal text advance is more difficult than most games.
Ryu is required, Rand is a given, Bleu is basically a given (I think, maybe not true in a TAS since you have to go get her), so there is only one spot left in question. This is easier to decide in a TAS because you don't have to worry about surviving, so whoever does the most damage: Katt?
I have a save beating the game at level 26, so levels will be ok in a TAS, especially since you will be able to easily run away from everything. You might still want to fight C Sludges or Giant Island enemies to make things faster, but I'm not entirely sure if it's worth it since Ryu will be doing most of the damage.
That's all I got for now, besides whatever is in that other thread. Good luck!
PS - One question: are you shooting for the best ending?
Seiken Densetsu and Final Fantasy are in separate worlds, made by separate development teams. There are some shared elements, mostly in the earlier games in SD (like chocobos in this game, moogles in Secret of Mana). But there aren't nearly enough to be considered the same world, which would have to share many elements, including important ones such as the Mana tree.
Whatever, someone wake me up when GB Star Ocean or Lufia is done. ;)
Sami, here are some pictures to explain what I mean.
1)
What about this path instead of going up? This way you don't have to kill any bees. I am not sure which way is faster though, but SpiDeY mentioned it and I agree with him.
2)
I think we are talking about different levels. Anyway, I was saying you don't have to run or jump "through" anybody. For the first guy, if you jump a little earlier, you can land on top of him, which I think is quicker.
3)
I wasn't talking about normal jumps exactly. What I mean is, you know how Rattly hops along while "walking"? You can do a short hop and normal jump from the height of the hop (shown here), and this clears many of the jumps where you use A. This might also be useful in other Rattly levels.
4)
After you go through a small gap to the left, you can then go through this gap here while going down. This is faster than going around to the far left, which is what you did.
I worded that poorly. I wasn't saying that Lost Vikings was an RPG (it is 100% a puzzle game). I just said that I really enjoyed it and thought it would deserve a star once it was redone.
I know you can't please everyone. That's why I said "all in all, the choices look good."
I'm not too concerned with representing all the genres either, because you can't force a run that doesn't belong. I was just pointing out that you said including some variation like RPGs was good and that you liked the current selection, which IMO has none. A lot of people who like RPGs also like Zelda, but it is pretty much the definition of action/adventure. I know ultimately trying to pigeonhole games into strict genres might be pointless, but c'mon. Circle of the Moon is as much an "RPG" as Zelda.
Edit: FWIW, Excitebike could be considered a "sports" game. That's a different discussion though.
All I have to say is: what a good game!
People looking for Lufia on GBA should have played this game instead. I myself only discovered it somewhat recently.
I just watched the run and there are many great moments I liked such as catching up to the guy who throws TNT in Screech's Sprint, making the blue guy get angry and then let him get crushed in Castle Crush (also all the bee "killing"), and of course, all of Parrot Chute Panic. However, there are some nitpicks I wanted to bring up. These are just things I wanted to make sure you're considering. Maybe what you have is already fastest for some or all of them.
1) I think the Squawks shortcut in Toxic Tower might be faster, too. Also what SpiDeY said about Squawks in Castle Crush.
2) In Rickety Race, you don't have to run into the back of anybody. IIRC you can get a speed boost instead by stomping on the first guy (jump earlier). I'm sure you tested and found that short hopping downhill is best btw.
3) In Toxic Tower with Rattly, you don't have to do near the number of A button jumps that you do. For all of the ones (most of them) that are barely out of normal jump reach, you can do a short step (what happens if you just hold say Y and right) and jump to get the necessary height. This technique might be useful elsewhere as well, but I can't think of any in particular right now.
4) In Screech's Sprint, there are two path choices I'm wondering about. After you get the hidden barrels to blast you left and up, as soon as the vertical path opens up, you can veer left immediately and get another two hidden barrels to blast you up and to the right. Also, right after the part where you squeeze through a small gap to the left, you can go straight down and squeeze through another small gap, instead of going around the bramble structure.
All of these come from normal playing though, so obviously you would know better than I do.
I think maybe a good idea would be to have a "recommended for newbies" page and a "best runs" page. There's currently a conflict of interest because the star page also has to take into account other factors such as the popularity of a game. And "best movies (recommended for first time viewers)" is a bit misleading.
I agree completely that the number of star videos needed to be reduced. That list doesn't look very comprehensive though, or my memory is bad, because it seems like there used to be a lot more.
I'm glad I'm not the only other person who thinks that the wrong SMW run was removed. I am also on the MM1 > MM2 side, but all in all, the choices look good.
Truncated wrote:
- there should be some variation in genres, meaning some platformers, some shooting, some RPGs
...
As such, I'm quite satisfied with the current selection.
Why would you be satisfied then if not all genres are represented, i.e. there isn't a single RPG on the list? This includes Secret of Evermore, the unstarred run that I think deserves one the most (if Ouzo ever finishes his Lost Vikings remake, that would be another).
To clear room for future runs, all of the runs on the recommended page are deserving of course, but the ones that I would think of removing from the current page are one of Ninja Five-0, Bionic Commando, and Umihara Kawase (definitely not UK, probably Bionic Commando IMHO), one of Arkanoid and Gradius (I would say Gradius because to me it quickly gets boring after a while), LTTP (it's long, and there's the first Zelda already), and replace the SMW.
Just to let you know, I scrutinize these and any other suggestions people make (i.e. with real testing), so I appreciate your comments.
Milon: Twin does so much more damage than anything else. You win on the same Twin anyway.
Baigan: Tellah needs to wait to get around Wall, and I can't split the Ice3 or else Baigan won't die. I win on the first Twin following Tellah's 2nd Ice3. If I just parry and wait for Tellah, I still win on the first Twin following Tellah's 2nd Ice3. So any time gain would be negligible (like not having to revive someone after the fight).
Kainazzo: Holy mother of God! I was sure that he is weak to Lit whenever he is out of his shell and weak to Ice in his shell. But I just tested and you're right. However, Palom basically NEVER survives Big Wave, so it doesn't help me one bit. I win with Lit2, then Lit3 and Lit3. Lit2 + Ice3 isn't enough, so I win on the same Tellah spell anyway. Very glad you told me this though, still. It would have looked smarter at least.
Magus Sisters: This is the one battle I said I could have used a better strategy in my comments: only using Ice3 with Tellah to make the later parts quicker with an extra Ice3. I tested and Quake seems to do about 75% of the damage on Cindy that attacking does, if you don't critical any. It turns out that I would kill Cindy on the 2nd Ice3 even with the Quake damage, so you are right; Quake seems to be strictly better. Because it still takes me the final Ice3 to win, this cost me ~10 seconds. Interestingly enough, the Quake strategy means that the better Ice3 strategy is irrelevant.
Now, to throw another curveball, with Bandannas and decent luck, I think you can kill Cindy with just one Ice3, which would be the fastest of all because then you could start Ice3'ing the others without having to wait for Wall to wear off. To do this though, you would most likely have to be attacking with Cid instead of Quaking. =p So, this is another case where I learn something very useful for normal play that probably wouldn't affect a speedrun.
This segment was weird in that I kept on "improving" it, but then when I looked at the time it was actually slower. And in almost all battles I think I have optimal strategy (i.e. 0 better ways), yet there are at least 3 better ways to have done this one (3rd one coming up). And I think this was the only segment where I knowingly left a faster strategy on the table: reflecting Ice3 off your own guy and hoping it hits Cindy. I didn't actually do this because there's a 1/9 chance of success, but with 1/3, I think it would be worth it.
Golbez: Nobody seems to believe me no matter how many times I say it. At low levels, it is impossible to get Kain in the air. Impossible. I have tried on ZSNES in slow motion and everything. I also tried while running, which actually helps in FF5. I tried about the first 10-15 record attempts trying to catch lightning in a bottle somehow. Unless you can luck manipulate Golbez somehow (which is not pertinent to speedrunning), it is impossible. Your stats are simply not good enough. Yes, I know you can get Kain in the air. That is for normal playing.
The classic use for the steal equip trick is to let Rydia or Rosa equip a Silver shield. Actually, apparently I already wrote something about this on the SDA thread back in December (I wrote a bunch heh), so I'll copy and paste:
I also considered a couple more tricks/glitches. The instant mass dupe trick involving the Avenger sword is tempting, but unfortunately getting the Avenger involves winning a chest fight in the Sylvan Cave. I think actually, a worthy possible trick is to give Rosa a Silver Shield, which would allow for less D Machin leveling. I didn't do this because:
1) most importantly, it's dangerous playing with low levels and I didn't want to save myself stuck
2) I didn't dupe anything and the run would be glitchless (I don't count Dark Crystal as a glitch)
3) I'm not sure it would save time by making an appreciable Rosa leveling difference, and there are other ways to speed up leveling like leveling Cecil less or Rosa less as is or getting lucky with Attacker/Defender maybe
In the end, it probably is worth it because it would allow Rosa to skimp at least one level I think.
Edit: It doesn't bother me personally, and I know your point, but I wanted to ask you to tone down your rhetoric a little =p "the bosses leave room for lots of improvement" "alot of the ones in the middle leave much to be desired" "lots of time can be saved on without luck manipulation" Even if everything you said were 100% true, most of those (not the Magus sisters one) would save 10-15 seconds per. So total almost 1 minute, out of 235. ;)
What about this path instead of going up? This way you don't have to kill any bees. I am not sure which way is faster though, but SpiDeY mentioned it and I agree with him.
2)
I think we are talking about different levels. Anyway, I was saying you don't have to run or jump "through" anybody. For the first guy, if you jump a little earlier, you can land on top of him, which I think is quicker.
3)
I wasn't talking about normal jumps exactly. What I mean is, you know how Rattly hops along while "walking"? You can do a short hop and normal jump from the height of the hop (shown here), and this clears many of the jumps where you use A. This might also be useful in other Rattly levels.
4)
After you go through a small gap to the left, you can then go through this gap here while going down. This is faster than going around to the far left, which is what you did.