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Greenwood complete! Here is the second WIP:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbuM_PcMOP4
I'm not happy with everything here, but with all the RNG, Gem requirements and magician's soul rotation kicking in I had to make some sacrifices, the most visible being that waiting in the Fire Shrine. Getting the 100 gem chest is almost certainly a good idea since gems save so much time in the Light Shrine, where I managed to manipulate some decent Gem drops. I only killed one lizardman with the sword with the idea of conserving enough gems for Southerta (I have 35, enough for 4 Light Arrows).
Greenwood is much harder to optimize than Grass Valley, so I hope I managed to put together a decent route. I'm putting this TAS on hold for the rest of the year. In the meantime I'll try to figure out a good route for St. Elles, which is most definitely going to be significantly different from the RTA one.
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Easy yes vote. Congratulations for this fantastic TAS! The new route makes a lot of sense, cutting down the forest revisit especially. Getting the jar and the hand talisman from the Town early is completely impossible in RTA, and I've tried!
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I'm currently at the beginning of the Fire Shrine. Things are looking good, although I'll probably have to do what FatRatKnight did in his WIP and grab the 100 Gem chest since a very large number of gems will be required to do Light Shrine efficiently, and I don't think I can be even close to manipulating enough gems until then. Defeating the lizardmen quickly with magic is really going to be an important improvement over Kaz's TAS (and RTA runs as well).
I kind of put this project on hold for a bit since I'm currently back to doing some RTA speedrunning.
Oh and thanks for the comment TheAxeMan! I feel the JP version is indeed more appealing because the faster text makes the overall run flow much more nicely. The text difference is about 8 or 9 minutes in an Any% run.
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Thanks a lot for the comments and the support.
FatRatKnight wrote:
It is possible to trigger the lair button while at 0 HP. However, if you were restoring part of a town, you recover some back and do not deathwarp right away, yet for whatever reason, your GEM count is still set to zero.
I actually knew about this (it happened once in my RTA attempts) but didn't think of it. Thanks for the idea! It sure would have saved 32 frames on the first deathwarp, if implemented correctly. I'll keep the idea in mind for the rest of the game.
FatRatKnight wrote:
My route involved getting lots of EXP early, and yours got the level up once in the painting. Yours means the next deathwarps require less HP to lose, but may be lacking in attack power for just a few enemies around later level ups in comparison. Considering the faster strategy before the first deathwarp, it seems doubtful you can get the "lots of EXP" like I did, and your choice is probably the optimal one to go with.
Not getting level 2 before the last deathwarp in Underground Castle was indeed the plan. The benefit of the early level 2 would be to save 16 frames on the last imp before the second deathwarp, and 16 frames on the first bird kill in Leo's paintings. But that does not compensate for the 64 lost frames due to the extra 2 HP's to deplete on the third deathwarp. And about the rest of the game, the actual EXP difference between the two strats is probably not meaningful enough in next areas where enemies give more than 30 apiece. It's hard to really tell, though.
FatRatKnight wrote:
When passing by a chest, facing north will automatically open it. I feel like this would save a frame in the painting, holding L/R since the last time you had to move north, but I'm honestly not positive about it.
I don't think it saves a frame but I'll check to be sure.
FatRatKnight wrote:
... Hmm, since the blocks in the painting had a bad magician soul position, would it be possible to fit a few extra fireballs before the fated moment? Each one freezes the magician soul in place for a short time, and you did have a bad position then.
I didn't think of that. That's another idea I'll keep in mind if that unfortunate case happens again. Thanks for the tip!
FatRatKnight wrote:
Outside of that, this looks to be an improvement over what I was planning. Love the walks, the timesaver before the first deathwarp is great, and the GEM manipulation is beyond what I thought was feasible, even with my scripts. I'm impressed, and very happy someone else is picking up where I left off and even found some things I missed.
Thanks a lot, it's an awesome project to work on, and even if it's quite a challenge for a beginner TASer like me, it's very rewarding and fascinating to do. Although, doing RTA runs has taught me a lot on the game, so at least I'm familiar with the route and basic mechanics.
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Ask and you shall receive! Here's the WIP with the first world completed.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/25484273135385711
YouTube encode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMjgZtdU_Z4
I have started Greenwood, which is even more of a pain in terms of Gem drop manipulation. We'll see how this turns out!
For the U version, only the bosses are a bit harder (except the 2nd one, harder in J). On the other hand, having about 8 more minutes worth of text and cutscenes was the deal breaker for me. In RTA running also, I tend to favor the J version.
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Bump!
All right, I have started TASing the (J) version of this. I currently am in the middle of the second Underground Castle visit, a little bit after sealing the monster lair which rescues Lisa. This project is going to be long but I am really happy to work on it.
HUGE thanks to FatRatKnight for his scripts and WIPs which gave me a lot of useful ideas. I adapted his scripts to BizHawk (only the RNG-related things and the Monster Lair listing).
By the way, I found an idea to optimize the part just before the first death warp: the last two monster lairs with imps can be dealt with simultaneously. Thanks to that I managed to save about 460 frames over FatRatKnight's (J) WIP. :)
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Warepire wrote:
LeHulk wrote:
Man, Soul Blazer is the dream. Maybe I'll get around to doing it, but all the luck manipulation involved is quite intimidating.
If I remember correctly it's bound to a frame rule, each frame being hard locked to a certain result. There was research done on that, and results were posted in the topic.
EDIT: I was wrong, but the GEM manipulation shall be pretty easy using a RAM watch.
The topic for quick access: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=947&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=75
The Critical Sword is insanely overpowered in a TAS, that was what had the frame-rule.
I'll have a look at that, it sounds very promising. Thanks!
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Man, Soul Blazer is the dream. Maybe I'll get around to doing it, but all the luck manipulation involved is quite intimidating.
Anyway, thanks everyone for the feedback! I really enjoyed making this movie.
