If there's a way for me to start from a save-state, I know it goes against the rules though, I could start on level 99 or whatever and collect all the flags in the shortest time possible. I have no idea how ridiculous level 99 would be or even if it's acheivable to grab all the flags and have enough time to finish the stage. It would take insane human reflexes and perfect timing definitely!
I think one difficult stage would be enough for this "just for kicks" run. I just finished a bunch more stages and am up to level 58 (I keep getting better at the game). I would never play 20 levels consecutively or whatever, this is just a game I occasionally donk around in for twenty minutes or so.
So let's say I do one complicated stage. Any specific suggestions on how to make it the most entertaining two minutes possible?
If I do a TAS again, I'm considering doing it with an esoteric NES game my friend Jon showed me last semester. It's called Antarctic Adventure. You're a penguin racing to the finish before time runs out and avoiding obstacles along the way.
The game never officially ends, there's just progressively more and more obstacles as the levels progress. I've been playing it without tool-assists and made it up to level 45 (except for saving at the start of the level since there is no continue feature - and you really don't want to go through 44 consecutive levels again! I don't use save-states in the midst of the level. With some of these levels if you make more than 3 mistakes, you won't be able to finish in time, so you need some skills yo). I think this would be interesting to TAS a few levels - it would be a very short run. Just the first few levels.
If any of you haven't heard of the game, do yourself a favor and play it now. So much fun and such a simple game!
I'm not doing this run with the intent of it being published here. I just think it'll be a fun run to do. If it gets published, awesome!
I've never TAS'd with FCEU yet, so it'll take me a while to get used to everything. And this week won't be a great time to start this due to college constraints (two tests coming up).
Any suggestions are welcome.
Wow, it's been February since I updated here.
New Mojave is the most boring planet. If only I more deeply considered what this run would entail... I should have planned more out ahead of time to see if this would have been worth it. Still, I'm happy with how my run came out in various areas. I just watched it in full again today after months of not even looking at it and realized a few things:
For the first few minutes, I wasn't good with the TAS techniques and so I didn't bother much with optimizing. I just sort of did the run with a couple manipulations. I stopped myself from doing many re-records when my run would have been much better if I had dealt with certain situations better. There were so many missed opportunities. If I ever do a TAS again, I will not half-ass it ever.
From Drakonis on, I put a lot more effort into my run, and it showed. It helped having 7 missiles and many other upgrades too.
But this game really gets too repetitive towards the end that I don't expect anyone to watch more than 30 minutes of it. 16 tracks per planet is way too much, I wish it was just one division per planet!
Not only would it be too repetitive for others, it was too repetitive for me. I know some of you wanted me to keep it going, and I'm glad this brought some entertainment to some people, but I'm telling you straight up, New Mojave is no fun. 16 tracks of that is too much. There's only so much you can do with the Marauder on these tracks to vary things and I've hit that wall at the end of Bogmire. The only differences in other planets is how I react with the environment, but same general principles. Push AI off ramps, force AI to go the wrong way, and a LOT of violence and showmanship.
I think my run from Drakonis on succeeded there. I never expected this run to be published. I'm just viewing it as a work of art. And I'm happy with my creation no matter who approves of it or not.
If I do a TAS again, I'm considering doing it with an esoteric NES game my friend Jon showed me last semester while we were blazing in my apartment (drugs are bad, mmmkay). It's called Antarctic Adventure. You're a penguin racing to the finish before time runs out and avoiding obstacles along the way.
The game never officially ends, there's just progressively more and more obstacles as the levels progress. I've been playing it without tool-assists (except for saving at the start of the level since there is no continue feature) and made it up to level 45. I never allow myself to use save-states in the midst of the level. With some of these levels if you make more than 3 mistakes, you won't be able to finish in time. I think this would be interesting to TAS a few levels.
If any of you haven't heard of the game, do yourself a favor and play it now. So much fun and such a simple game! I love it sober, drunk, or high.
One place where I think fast-forwarding definitely makes the game more entertaining is when you need to gain a bunch of EXP in an RPG. You could just fight battle after battle at regular speed mashing "attack" and "okay" (to speed up the messages) for hours to gain a few levels, or you can hold fast-forward down and auto-fire the attack/okay key. Most RPGs prevent you from staying in one place gaining EXP for too long by increasing the amount of XP needed to gain the next level and/or decreasing the XP you receive at the end of battles with weaker foes, so you're not really gaining an unfair advantage. You're just lessening the amount of mindless boredom time spent.
I mean, no one actually enjoys those battles where it is The Waiting Game (thanks for the link CtrlAltDestroy, interested thread) - mindlessly mashing a button for minutes upon minutes so you can gain a level. I wish RPGs incorporated other ways to gain XP than the mindless battles.
I agree with xoinx about the beneficial times to use save-states that don't take away much from the enjoyment of the game, and sometimes make the game more enjoyable. For instance, remember the horrible jumping control with TMNT for NES? You get to the end part of the level and have to make a precise jump to clear this gap. If you fall, you have to retrack through the level. My housemate Tom recently brought his old-school NES console with some games and I found TMNT far too frustrating to be enjoyable without save-states due to horrible control. Now I just save-state before those annoying jumps and otherwise play unassisted.
Personally, I always play through games just to play them at first, but then my I can't help but shooting for 100% beating and completing everything the game can offer.
Playing a game for 100% completion and the likes is a satisfying goal indeed. I'm just saying the first time through, instead of looking to GameFAQs, speed runs or TAS runs, to play it through yourself without aid. You won't be playing the game as mechanically and finishing the game with be more satisfying. Then after you've had a good feel for the game, go ahead and look everything up on it you want, and play again when you feel like it.
I'm more concerned with the fact that I always get very very anxious when I notice that I could have done things faster, or if a dialog seems like it is taking too long. I know I'm not shooting for a fast completion time or anything, but in the back of my mind I'm thinking "man, this is just seconds of my life I just wasted by taking the left path to a dead end when I totally should have gone to the right."
I hear ya. I've responded in similar fashions before. But now I look at it from the perspective of "I'm bored and have some free time - I wasn't going to do anything productive now anyways, so just have fun". I'm very much a perfectionist in many facets of life (I think many TAS'rs have this trait to some degree as well), and have been trying to regain hold of my enjoyment of life, allowing some insignificant flaws along the way. I've made changes with how I deal with friendships, relationships, creating music, enjoying music, movies, video games, school, and many other areas for the better.
So, my theory is that we become too sophisticated as gamers for the old classics to really hold our attention like they did when we were younger, and that's why it becomes so goal-oriented.
It's still possible for the old classics to hold our attention like they did before. I find turning off save-states, rarely using fast-forward, watching the intro, and trying to follow the story (no matter how cheesy) helps a lot. And try to approach the games from the perspective of "I'm bored and want to chill out, I'll play this for fun". I play until I get bored of it, save, do whatever else for a while (maybe something productive even!), then come back to it whenever I feel like it. I used to make my goal to beat these short-ish games (an hour or less) without taking any breaks. So I'd continue playing even when I felt like doing something else. To return to playing games for fun, I had to stop this. If you feel like doing something else - stop. You're not playing the game anymore and you'll enjoy it more when you return to it later.
Well that's another factor, yes. And an important one. But my point still stands that emulators save-state abilities have probably contributed to the shift in the way many people (especially those interested in TAS) approach video games - in some ways for the worse (like I mentioned here), but in some ways better too.
I find it easier to steer away from a goal-directed approach in life through an alteration of consciousness - meditation for the sober crew.
I've noticed that with my past couple years of video gaming, I've been concentrating much more on "beating" the game than actually "playing" the game. I attribute the problem primarily to the influence of emulators, save-states, speed-runs, and TAS runs.
When I was growing up video games were a significant part of the free time in my life. I only played the games on the consoles then (NES/SNES), but sometime around when I bought PS1 I learned about emulation. At first I was just thinking, "Cool! I can play all these games for free again!" and didn't know anything about save-states. I played through the games just for fun.
Sometime after reading about speed-runs, learning how TAS runs were made, and attempting my own TAS, I used save-states more and more during my gaming. It became a natural habit for me to save before any difficult part in a level and jam the "load state" hotkey everytime I fucked up. This only hurt my gaming!
I didn't enjoy playing the games as much anymore. My only goal was to finish the game. I didn't care about searching around for secret items, collecting coins, wandering around talking with people trying to find where to go next, or having the stamina and reflexes to complete a stage without using the save-states (video gaming skills yo). I over-relied on save-states and strategy guide. (I also over-used my fast-forward key to skip through dialogue and story, which is somewhat related.)
What I did to fix my bad habit? I disabled my F keys while playing (via a button on my keyboard). Now I very rarely use save-states and find myself enjoying the games again.
For instance, compare beating the Ninja Gaidens with save-states to not using save-states. With frequent save-state usage, the game is very simple. I forgot how frustrating the game can be, and more importantly, I forgot how satisfying playing through the game without tool-assists was.
BTW, Ninja Gaiden 2's story is sooo lame compared to the first one.
I once thought about doing Anticipation for NES as the lamest run. But I keep getting too lazy to do it.
For those who haven't played it (shame on you), it's like pictionary, except the AI starts to draw the picture and you hit a button to answer when you know what it is. With a TAS, it would seem like the player is telling the NES what to draw.
Fad topics may die, but since they are topics, and hence, not biologically alive, fad topics also will not care about dying. I mean, it means absolutely nothing to them. You know, because they don't have a consciousness, or a brain, or anything. I even doubt they have a soul.
I've now made it up to the 6th stage without error. There might be a way to save another second or two from some of these stages, but they'd be very risky and could ruin the run easily.
I forget how many stages are in this game. I know 7th stage is the auto-scrolling carousel level. I think 8th is where you're flying with a copter thing. I don't recall how many more there are.
Still, I'm confident I'll be able to make a run through this entire game without dying, without emulation tools, and with great speed.
Sorry for the massive delay, I had finals week right around then. Had to do a lot of studying. Now I'm back home for summer and have more free time again.
I hadn't played Yo Noid in a couple weeks, but I still am doing fairly well. I've now made it up to the 4th stage without error. I think I can definitely make it through the game without dying with some more practice.
I haven't practiced the 4th stage much - in fact I still haven't found the quickest route there. I'll have to work on that. In this run (see link below) I tried something slightly different and it obviously didn't work out. Right after that section is where I usually mess up (at the big gap between the two fire blowers). I think I might have to slow down or use an item there.
http://detachd9.homestead.com/files/video/Yo__Noid_sr3.zip
Okay, now that my high has worn off...
This is my 3rd attempt. (The 2nd attempt I made a few stupid mistakes at the pizza contest.) I've now done the first two stages and about 70% of stage 3... before I made an error. I was supposed to jump a couple frames later so I could make it on the top level. You'll see what I mean.
I cannot help but think my stage 3 run can be improved, even when I don't make mistakes. I think there might be a quicker route, or a quicker way to climb up certain areas, and occasionally I notice my forward motion being halted at certain areas. I'll work on it.
Here's the first stage, pizza contest, second stage, and most of the third stage:
http://detachd9.homestead.com/files/video/Yo__Noid_speed_run2.zip
My first attempt with going through all the stages. I'll try more later. Right now I'm still a little high.
http://detachd9.homestead.com/files/video/Yo__Noid_-_speed_run1.zip
I do the one tough part of the 1st stage a bit sloppy and lose about a half-second. But then I get a really lucky pizza contest. Then I mess up one of the uh "less difficult" jumps in the 2nd stage. Very stupid. So I end the movie playback there. The 2nd stage actually looks impressive when I run through it right.
My bad. And your run would have to be slower since you were doing a pacifist one.
I could speed-run the whole game, but I have no idea how to manipulate the pizza contests, or if it's even feasible on a "non-tool-assist" run. And also, when running through each individual stage, I'd say I only make it through without error 1/3 of the time per stage. It'd be tough to make it through each level, at the quickest pace possible, without error. Perhaps it would be an interesting feat at least. I'll consider it.
Yo! Noid is a simple yet fun platformer on the NES. The TAS's for it have all been rejected since it isn't fun to watch. I couldn't agree more. But I sure love to play the game.
The game is really easy if your only goal is to beat the game. But when you're also trying to speed-run it (that is, without slowdown or savestates), you have to make very precise jumps at parts. If you jump a couple frames too early or too late, then you will either die or not finish the stage as quickly as possible. Here's my current times:
Stage 1: 90 seconds remaining.
Stage 2: 95 seconds remaining. Perhaps improvable by a second.
Stage 3: 107 seconds remaining. I think this could be improved by a second.
In stage 1, there's only one area where you should slow down, and right there, you have to time your jumps very precisely so you do not have to slow down again.
In stage 2, there's only two areas where you should slow down. Otherwise it's straight-forward. The 2nd set of icy moving platforms are a royal pain.
In stage 3: there's only one area where you should slow down. At least I haven't found a way to avoid the last enemy without slowing down.
I haven't tried the other stages yet. If anyone can beat my times by a second (without using emulation tools), I'd love to see the video.
I thought it was a really cool video. I'd love to see it with more games. It also reminds me of Video Armageddon in the movie The Wizard... and there's nothing cooler than that!
Some video games are much funner when high than drunk. Especially games with nostalgic value and awesome music.
I tried playing Yuu Yuu Hakusho on SNES and I didn't understand what was going on at all. I'll check out your demo, truncated.
edit: The Sega Genesis version of Yuu Yuu Hakusho is majorly different from the SNES one. That or I accidentally selected some other mode of fighting.