the first ridge water glitch surprised the hell out of me (hi, this is vorpal btw). great queen fight. good stuff.
uhhh I had no idea someone was working on a tas or I would have made a vid of this sooner. there's a mapskip in ridge water that I had written off for realtime camera-freeze runs. If you clip into the wall left of spawn and go left to the edge of the map then down, there's this invisible wall. Usually if you try to edge past the right edge and continue downward inside the wall, you either get frozen in the glitch terrain or you just get ejected back inbounds. But you can get past it somehow, and then there's a map glitch area further down. I would've recorded a video of this earlier, but I got it once last year while screwing around, and then tried for another couple hours to get it while recording but got frustrated and gave up.
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1216211824/ecco-ridgewater.gmv
I'm mentioning it because I'm not at all sure what else that first glitch you do in ridge water is capable of. If you can get in the left wall w/ it, this may actually be doable. Thought I'd mention it.
voting yes.
EDIT: Hm, I wonder if it's possible to glitch out the sides of the Tube. That would make it interesting, especially if you can glitch back in
Because the glitch requires control of the camera, it's not possible in either tube or machine. Similarly, because the game doesn't let you bring up the map in either tube or machine, the mapskip isn't possible either.
if we're going to skip those levels, it will require more new glitches =/
there's a minute or so worth of new stuff. there's a second map skip, this one in Deep City, near the first glyph. That cuts out most of the level. Then there's a spot in Jurassic Beach, after swimming into the left volcano, where you can just swim into the wall and then swim straight to the end of the level.
There's also a spot in Origin Beach, at the bottom of the current, where you can just swim into the right wall there too. But it seems useless.
Finally, this was found years ago but I don't think it was posted over here? May as well rectify that. You can clip into the ceiling in some (not all) passages that are one block tall and lined with spikes on the bottom. See here. The long-standing SDA individual level for the lagoon uses it in the area where you get the key and there's a dolphin swimming around; you can skip having to sonar the starfish over to the rock and instead just clip into the ceiling and swim up. This was tantalizingly close to being the original lagoon sip, but there's an invisible wall in the middle of the wall between you and the exit. And the entire level is skipped now through a better method, so whatever. The only other place I know of where you can do this is a spot in the undercaves, but it's useless there too.
This game's been enjoying something of a renaissance on the realtime speedrunning side of things. Thought I'd share the new discoveries.
Because Gens stores movie-start savestates outside the movie file for some inconvenient reason, all of these movies start from boot, so you can fast-forward through the first stage until they get to where they're going.
Medusa Bay map skip: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1064819288/ecco-mapskip.gmv
None of us have the slightest clue why this works, or where else in the game it could be useful (if anywhere). I've personally tried bringing up the map in a bunch of weird places, but nothing. It's as simple as it looks: go to that spot & bring up the map, and the end-stage trigger just happens to be there when you cancel back out.
Lagoon skip: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1172427106/ecco-lagoonskip.gmv
You have no idea how glad I am that this exists.
Spike shaft clip: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1742255977/ecco-spikeshaftclip.gmv
Don't know of anywhere this is useful. Can be done through both left and right walls. Seems to have something to do with the flipping animation Ecco does midair if you keep tapping C.
Enemy bounce clip: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1895339660/ecco-enemybounceclip.gmv
Same; don't have anywhere this is useful yet.
Weirder glyph skips: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/792616493/ecco-glyphtech.gmv
Given all the crazy stuff the TAS does with glyph skips, this was probably already known to some extent over here, but since none of us did I'm mentioning it anyways. If you idle, Ecco's idle floating will ignore the glyph's pushback (you can chain it by tapping forward to let it immediately restart from your current position), and then you can change the direction you're facing to get pushed out in a different direction. In realtime runs you can even sometimes save a badly-aligned skip by having it push you back into the correct alignment, but that shouldn't be an issue here. This particular gylph skip is the only one, to my knowledge, that was not considered possible before, at least in realtime, but is possible now (if glyphs weren't actual objects and didn't physically block so many passages, many more would be possible)... no idea whether this is slower or faster than the weird clip the existing TAS does at the end of Ridge Water, but it's worth a shot.
route improvements:
-going right across the ice at the start of ice zone is bad. The glyph is pretty much straight down-right from spawn.
-island zone: there's a better choice for getting the key glyph. Go right across the four islands at the start, then down, then left and through the really small spike-lined passage. That glyph over there gives you exposition when you sonar it, which I assume is the reason why it was ruled out, but it also acts as a key. Weird.
It'd be really awesome if someone started TASing this game again. I have no doubt there's more stuff yet to find. This game is broken as hell; we just don't know the particulars yet.
Good luck!
Finished a game with it.
The good news: Pepe helps a lot in the sky castle. You can skip the red gel miniboss fight in either of two ways. If you grab Pepe on the preceding screen, float down through the screen transition, and then hold right and jump over him, you reach the portal without having to wait however long it takes him to move back. That's slow, however, since you can also just skip that area entirely. In the screen with the sage of save, the game makes you fight the red gel by having conveyors reach up to the top-right, which leads to the passage towards him. You return there after you beat him, at which point the conveyors reach towards the up-left and the passage forward. You can just infinite-jump up there early and save yourself the trouble. There's a few other things, but they're harder to describe than to find.
The bad news: I wasn't able to skip the volcano. You can complete the stream sanctuary early with level 2 pepe, but the plot trigger towards the next dungeon doesn't activate. The first wizard is still standing outside the wizard's building in town selling pepelogoos, preventing your entry, and if you go through the background and infinite jump over the top of it to reach the backyard area where the chest with the sun medallion is, the chest isn't there.
The water medallion chest inside the building, however, is. Which doesn't exactly help.
I tried a few things to see if I could hit a trigger, but none worked, unfortunately. Far as I can tell, it's required that you beat both volcano and stream before you're able to reach the ice pyramid. Really hope this isn't the case and that I just missed something...
http://telebunny.net/talkingtime/showthread.php?t=13244
Basically, if you reach Rapadanga without saving the game, then the debug merchant appears behind one of the bushes in the long featureless screen to the right of the palace entrance (the background layer behind where the holy fountain is). Each time you talk to him, he stuffs 9999 gold in your wallet, and he sells the legendary sword/shield and the debug armor.
The debug armor lets you change pepe's level at will. Meaning, you can switch to level 2 pepe and not freeze the game when you try to blow out a flame in stream sanctuary. Meaning, you can probably skip the volcano, barring anything else stupid. And since the armor activates pepe if you don't have him, you can probably get him in the sky castle too, and then break the hell out of the place with infinite jump.
I say probably because I read this 30 minutes ago, and those past 30 minutes were spent reaching to and talking to the merchant to confirm this works at all. Haven't gotten far enough in the game yet to test further, but I'm pretty sure I know what I'll be doing over the next day or two.
Been trying to break this game recently. The game looked like it would be fairly easy to speedrun up until today, but then it broke my spirit. Ended up doing a testrun just to see what kind of time I would get. The following's all from the perspective of an unassisted runner, who found absolutely no information about this game anywhere. Personally I hope a tas would find a lot of tricks and optimizations that I didn't, since I only played the game for a couple weeks, but since I didn't find them myself I can't really comment on new sequence breaks ;)
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/233492517/redzone%20testrun%20v1.gmv Unassisted testrun with lots of rerecords. SDA time is about 2403, if you're curious.
There's lots of skips and stuff in there. Fairly confident the overall route is decent, at least with my level of knowledge. Walking speed (Mirage walks faster than Shades who walks faster than Rocco) and the biggest skips requiring explosives determines who dies where. I implemented every worthwhile skip I know of, even if I'm not sure if I would actually use them in a run (mission 6 power plant, this means you. there has got to be an easier and/or faster way to do this, but hell if I know what. if that area looks bizarre, that's because there's force fields and instant death everywhere).
TAS would probably skip destroying the power plant in stage 1, which saves 8-10s. I don't do that because, as far as I can tell, it's near-impossible for a human to get through the rest of the first four missions without having to land at a repair depot, and that would erase the time gain. Cut it fairly close already -- tail's just one shot away from getting destroyed. Also wish I'd managed hellfires better up through mission 4 (could probably kill one of the 3 turrets at the start of the supply corridor entrance to reduce lag, and they would kill the sub faster), but I didn't feel like restarting. I don't know of any other glaring strategic errors. Aside from the part in mission 8 where I check the map to see where I'm going and then forget to rerecord that out, rofl
tricks that I ended up not using
-Rocco, like Shades, can do a skip in the final mission bunker, but since he can only damage boost himself straight away from a solid object with his rockets (as far as I know), you have to go to the right area, push an oil drum up and left, and then use that to set up the damage boost. Takes way too long. Mirage, as far as I know, has to play the level normally.
-The first computer in mission 3 can be skipped. Shades can do it with a grenade boost, but that's suboptimal since you want to kill someone this mission to save yourself the extremely long walk back, and shades is way faster than anyone else in M10. Any character can do it by pushing an oil drum to the right warhead, jumping off it to the right, and then just holding up to land past the warhead (you'll get time to move up when you're falling from the top-of-oil-drum level to ground level). This is obviously slower than just using the computer though.
-If you skipped the first computer and, for some odd reason, want to not die and walk out, you have to jump back past the warheads (which won't have started moving once you activated the second computer). I think only shades can do it, but I didn't exactly try very hard. Mostly mentioning this because, if you damage boost to the left side, you can use the proximity mine on the floor to do the other boost past the missile, which is kinda cool.
-There's a couple other places in bunkers where you can clip through obstacles with explosives, but they're not worth detailing, as Mirage's faster walking speed tends to be better (M2) or you skip the bunker entirely (M5). Seems that you can boost through most obstacles, but not walls? I've had 0 success wedging myself into a wall.
-The big barred doorway obstacles that you get rid of with det charges or switches seem to be much harder to clip through than other obstacles. Regular obstacles are extremely easy to clip through; go up to them, get damage boosted away while holding forward, then jump.
if you choose to tas this game, good luck. you'll need it.
I've kept trying the above skip whenever I got a new idea, and while I found a couple interesting things (if you take damage, you have a one-frame window where you can jump after the 'damaged' animation finishes, even in midair; it might be related to possum-hopping), nothing worked out. I'm really curious to see if the skip is theoretically possible though. Is it possible to input a cheat that locks the rocket charge bar on full?
Also, one other improvement... could've sworn this was in my last post, but I guess not: at the beginning of the stage 5 boss sequence, Axel sits on the ground and stares at you for a bit before jumping in his mech. He can be manipulated into jumping in earlier by swinging your sword.
You can get pretty close to skipping half of stage 4. By heading left on the top of the ship and trying to boost up+right as you fall off the back edge, you can almost reach the door to the inside of the ship and skip the entire outside section, including the flamethrower miniboss. I'm posting this here in case someone more experienced in TASing than me wants to take a crack at it, since the above is my best attempt.
Also, on the stage 6 boss, killing the four turrets on the outside are not necessary to defeat it.
Thanks for replying. I had finished a run a couple weeks ago, which has just been formally accepted to SDA (the reason I remembered to check this topic) and is available here for now. The final time is 0:06:56, almost a minute faster than the current SDA run, but I guess I have to redo it now, haha.
The comments for my run are included in that zip file and are pretty descriptive, but you don't need to bother reading them. If you know what's going on in the run it's rather obvious.
About everything else:
I was not able to get the candy skip to work, so I cut it out of the run. If you can get it to work that often, however, it's definitely worth redoing my run for. I'm going to go try harder, but do you have any specific advice for it? [edit] nevermind, I managed to do it somewhat often. There's no need to explain.
I also did eventually figure out how to consistently replicate the menu trick. The TAS threw me off for a while because it only pressed the button for one frame, but I did eventually figure out how to do it, even coming to the same conclusion as you, that I needed to wait until the screen went completely dark.
For the Inner Lavos battle, I decided to have Marle use Ice 2 to deal the last 1100 damage. I chose this strategy because it requires no luck, because it makes me able to select Crono's moves faster, and because this does not require Crono to take an extra turn. In my experience, if Crono takes that extra turn, Lavos always has just enough time to use Shadow Slay. Using slash instead is an interesting idea, although that runs into the same problem as Ice Sword 1 + 2. I also hadn't expected it to make future crits more difficult; I guess I don't understand that part of the game.
Also, I took the easy way out on the Lavos Core and used Confuse on the left bit instead of a crit. I had simply given up at that point, since that crit was never happening despite repeated attempts, and the center bit was even starting to use Crying Heavens exclusively the more consistently I did the previous battles. I gave up at that point and decided that those were acceptable for the run. I've been thinking about it, however, and I'm becoming more and more convinced that an RNG seed is carried over from the previous save, and that I should go do various things on that save and keep trying to see what happens. I was certainly getting consistent enough luck in the run itself. Do you know if this could be the case? [edit] I'll be heading back home tomorrow, so when I get back I'll start trying things and seeing what happens. I put this run off for a while, but I think it's time to start making attempts again.
And, finally,
Max speed Crono in Haste is twice as fast as Inner Lavos arms. However, the faster the battle speed is, the closer the speed gap is. Even TAS can't precede the sickles at the fastest speed.
That makes me feel a lot better, as I felt bad about bumping the speed down to 2. I thought the TAS used battle speed 1, but I just went back and checked it, so I guess I wasn't paying enough attention.
Anyways, thanks for your reply. I greatly appreciate it. :)
I'm thinking of improving the current SDA ng+ run (which is just luminaire spam, even when the boss has only a thousand health remaining), and so I went back and skimmed through this topic and watched the old ng+ tas. That was pretty helpful. For battle strategies, I'm probably going to copy it, like so:
Shell: Crit with shiva edge, slash, luminaire
Inner: Luminaire x2 for arms, then ice sword 2, luminaire x2, ice sword 1
Core: Shiva edge crit on left bit, attack right bit with marle to drop defense quickly (and thus avoid a long attack by the center bit later), luminaire x5
When I started planning for this run, I originally wanted Marle to crit inner lavos twice to deal the last 1100 damage you need after 3 luminaires, but reading this topic shows that it'd just mess up the crit tables, and casting ice sword 1 and 2 is probably just as fast as luminaire, crit x2 anyways. I'd just crit with Crono once, but that seems to let the battle go on for just long enough that Lavos casts flame battle. Oh well.
Anyways, the above shouldn't be news to you guys, for obvious reasons. I stated it mostly so you could correct me if I have the reasons incorrect. What I actually want to do, however, is ask a few questions. Namely:
-How does the menu trick work? Do you just open the menu at the specific time? What are the margins of error? I'm currently just mashing X and hoping I get it, which in addition to being galling to me personally, has the side effect of me not being able to react to it quickly if it does work.
-How do you skip inner lavos using sickles after Doors of Doom?
-Why do you want the center bit to Time Change? Would it be faster if it just used a regular attack?
And, finally, where's the fastest place to grind levels? ;)
I have not played the game, so there may be some added value that I don't get, but... I watched this movie, and I was struck with a desire to stop.
I mean, really. Hitting your own teammate can only get you so far. Besides jumping over the pit, the rest of the movie can be summarized as running around and throwing stuff randomly. And no, standing on someone's head while doing that doesn't break the monotony.
I really don't like playaround movies unless they have a clearly defined goal and work towards it relentlessly. Otherwise, it seems pointless and I'd rather just go do the same thing myself.
Voted no.
Who cares?
Some of the stuff you're twisting your panties into a knot about can be explained away by saying that 'it served it's purpose, now we don't need it anymore.' Mentioning it again would just be a red herring (and although I think that a small amount of red herrings is useful to keep the reader thinking and add depth to the world, you obviously do not agree).
Why couldn't Tom just take the prophecy himself?
Because the prophecy could only be removed by either Tom or Harry, if I remember correctly. If it shows up missing one day, and Harry was at school... well, who could it be?
On that note, having the prophecy only be removable by the people it regards is a bad plot device. There's no point in keeping a store in the ministry if you can't open them. But that's the way magic works, I guess.
How did anyone know Tom's spell backfired and he was reduced to vapor if there was a fidelus charm on the house? No one else was there. It doesn't even make sense that they Hermione or anyone else was able to see it, as Peter did not tell them the secret.
If Dumbledore wasn't in on the secret I would be incredibly surprised. He may have retrieved Harry and told everyone (but that also wouldn't explain how a memorial sign got put up at the entrance to the house).
Plus, for all you know, it may be semantics: the secret could have been worded "the hiding place of James and Lily is..."... well, if they're dead, they don't have a hiding place, so the secret is nonfunctional? This just goes to show that you can explain anything away if you want to, I guess.
Against the minister? Hello? A guy is getting attacked here, she can't rescue him? It was stated that the Dementor went out of control, it wasn't planned. There was no justice planned here. There was no authority given to kiss.
I think Fudge was glad for the excuse.
[edit]
There was nothing to protect it if it was attacked head on.
Did the books specifically say that, or did they just make no mention of it? I don't remember that part too well, so bear with me.
Uh huh. The locket fought back when it was attempted to be destroyed, and the cup absolutely nothing. And the Lestranges could get to it no problem, or anyone with them.
The cup didn't have any parts that could move, so it'd be hard for it to fight back. Also, the Lestranges had no reason to "get to it". Bellatrix didn't know what it was, and she was in complete terror of someone else finding it. And anyone visiting the vault with Bellatrix would have to get past her aswell (and possibly the gringotts goblin who came with them).
I do find it galling that nobody besides Dumbledore realized Voldemort had horcruxes though.
Yes and this makes so much more sense than throwing it in the chamber of secrets?
Voldemort didn't have the time to throw it in the Chamber, he was on the way to a job interview. He could possibly have been intending to move it if he got the job, but that's beside the point. Hell, even Ron and Hermione expressed disbelief that he hid it in the Room of Requirement.
The diary wasn't protected, there was no protection on it, it was given to Lucious. And this one was meant as a weapon.
I meant that the ability to influence others was a sort of protection, but I understand what you mean.
What the heck was Albus talking about that his hand was blackened because he wasn't as fast as he used to be?
Either what was already said, or he was referencing putting the ring on before letting his mind think a bit. Fast in this case could refer to the speed of his thought processes.
Why did Tom guard one Horcrux so elaborately and barely had any protection at all on the others?
What Horcruxes didn't he guard?
There were:
The ring, which had an unknown amount of protection and a rather nasty curse.
The locket, which we all know about.
The cup, which to get, you had to... break into Gringotts for. I'd call that protection.
The diadem, which was impossible to guard in such a way at Hogwarts (and if Harry is correct in that Voldemort hid it while on the way to a job interview, he didn't have the time anyways). Security through obscurity. There were rows upon rows of stuff in that room; Harry got incredibly lucky when he remembered it.
The journal, which managed to lock itself in the supposedly-inpenetrable chamber of secrets.
And the snake. Making the snake a Horcrux was a really stupid decision.
How did Tom get his wand back?
He had over 10 years. While I have no idea how he did it, it wouldn't be impossible, and I imagine he kept tabs on it after exiting the forest of albania.
Why did Minerva buy Harry a Nimbus 2000?
She wanted to wipe the smirk off of Snape's face for continuing to win stuff.
And then there's a lot of stuff that was either cut out or put in solely to add dimension and depth to the world (Dumbledore's silver instruments + memories, Florean Fortescue, etc).
I always got the impression that the main reason characters kept missing when trying to curse others was bad aim, not slow curses. When you can't dump a thousand machine gun shells into a single target, your chances for hitting lower dramatically.
But yes, I did not like the battle of hogwarts at all. I mean, seriously. There was a distinct lack of apocalyptic upheaval and/or avada kedavra. And whatever happened to non-verbal incantations, anyways?
Actually, I'm working on Perfect Cherry Blossom on lunatic. I can get to stage 3 if I'm incredibly lucky. :P
I meant for there to be an incredibly self-deprecating tone when I listed that 'accomplishment', if you didn't notice it.
Also, some spellcards make me think that there is, indeed, a random element to the games (see: Chen's last spellcard on lunatic in PCB, sakuya's stage 6 spellcard in EoSD). It's obviously not too much though, and I would be surprised if the non-boss portions used the RNG to any significance at all.
I play with the keyboard, and my problems don't tend to stem from control issues. I'm much more fond of just running straight into bullets personally (especially while trying to reach the item collect line!).
It takes a lot of practice to become good at these games... my best accomplishment is still one-crediting Embodiment of Scarlet Devil on easy.
Play Jet Force Gemeni. Cuz it doesnt work in 3:rd person veiw if you dont have something like a mouse to use as aim.
I loved JFG. It controlled extremely well. That was actually the one thing I was hoping JXQ didn't mention in response to my post - just move to third person.
(why did I mention that here? I have no idea)
it locks up frequently when the Adobe Acrobat plugin attempts to load
Because Acrobat sucks. :P
Try the FoxIt reader instead.
On an on-topic note, I'm using firefox 3 and I love it (the firefox 3 alpha, gran paradiso, to be exact). I can't see japanese characters either, but I don't care much since I don't know the language.
You can get pretty close to skipping half of stage 4. By heading left on the top of the ship and trying to boost up+right as you fall off the back edge, you can almost reach the door to the inside of the ship and skip the entire outside section, including the flamethrower miniboss. I'm posting this here in case someone more experienced in TASing than me wants to take a crack at it, since the above is my best attempt.
Also, on the stage 6 boss, killing the four turrets on the outside are not necessary to defeat it.