Awesome TAS, Hetfield! It was really great to see one that was updated with all the new strategies. I loved the phantom boomerang grab of the Armadillo sub-tank! Ingenious!
Hetfield, I absolutely agree that the keyboard is an inferior input device for Mega Man X. The "distinct advantage" in "certain games" was referring to things like neon jumps in X2 or X3 and wall pumping in LttP. I have no opinion on those games either, but that is simply what I have heard from other runners on the matter. I was under the impression the keyboard was considered a "different category" or something worth mentioning across the board (regardless of game). If that's not actually the case, I'll keep that in mind next time someone says it is.
None of that post was my opinion. Was simply propagating what other runners have told me about those categories/distinctions. Sorry for the misunderstanding. ^_^
The lag is probably pretty close for MMX. The reason I thought they were different categories for MMX is because hetfield plays on keyboard and Caleb uses an SNES controller. Keyboard has some distinct advantages for certain tricks in certain games.
I wouldn't make any large cover-all claims about SNES9x versions and lag, though. For a long time, it was nearly impossible for an ActRaiser 2 TAS to be faster than a console run because all the versions of SNES9x used to add *minutes* of lag. I think the newest versions of SNES9x are slightly better, but it is still laggier than console iirc. For some games, SNES9x is faster (less lag), and for others it is slower.
Awesome! Yea this is an incredibly tricky section to optimize but I really like your solution! Your notes are really entertaining for me to read, too. Haha. I hope you include them all in your submission comments. :D
Great work as always!
I'm not sure if it is the hop that does it or if it is a thing like "two objects try to simultaneously occupy the same space and the game doesn't know how to handle it". At the very least, it is reproducible so the mechanics don't really bother me. :P
Very nice screen! This is an incredibly tricky section, as you noted. It is SO hard to optimize lag. I think you did a great job with it, though. There's simply no fast way to get through the barrel throwers (the squash animation is a huge pain!), and some enemies have to be killed to cut down on lag. This is a really nice route I think. It is so nice to see the RTA double dashes still make it into the TAS! <3
The interior of the castle is incredibly fun because it is a lot more open. The trickiest part for us was finding the "screen scroll" triggers so our double dash wouldn't just bounce off the top of the screen.
I'm sure you already know this, but there are several ways to get through the spike ball section on the far right. If you damage boost off a skeleton guy, the balls will not crush you during your invincibility frames. The damage boost even refreshes your dash, so you can cover a lot of ground. You can also dash straight through the spike balls if you dash immediately before they crush you. I don't know what the frame window is, but it should be easy enough to test. I know it is consistent though, because I used to do it pretty frequently in our practice sessions.
Keep up the great work, t0ast! This is looking amazing!
Ah dang, that is disappointing. I'm glad you had already checked into it, though!
That screen scroll glitch sounds interesting. It's a shame it doesn't appear to be useful. :(
Keep up the good work everybody!
Watching you play around after the Yum Yum battle gave me an idea. What happens if you use the void walking trick off of a bubble or something and get behind Yum Yum? Will the screen scroll upwards there? Is it a dead end? It seems like it should be possible to get around the skulls in the upper right side with a void walk.
Really good progress so far! I'm really excited for this run. ^_^
From general observations while messing around in the final bat + tornado gauntlet area, earlier kills like wagging at the edges or shooting ASAP would definitely reduce lag. I caused about 95 lag frames in this area, and I'm guessing at least 80% of those would be avoidable if I made kills at the edge instead. However, it would diminish the entertainment factor significantly for the ~40 sec segment so I opted to go for a few trick shots. Still, I took care in making sure no non-attack movements contributed towards the lag and in ending the sequence as fast as possible following the last wave of bats.
Suffice it to say, with the game's various auto-scrolling and scripted wait areas lending themselves to small compromises like these, I'm going to be making use of the "Contains Speed/Entertainment Tradeoffs" classification for this run.
I absolutely agree with this decision. Standing at the edge of the screen and just wagging away kills a significant amount of the entertainment value. As long as that was an intentional decision (which I see now that it is!), then that's totally fine. IMO 95 frames isn't a terribly significant loss.
Very nice!
Mr. K and I actually toyed around with that second double dash. We found that angle, or one similar to it, but were struggling with setting it up quickly. Those bats and the tornado show up and really screw things up if you're not immediately prepared. It is fantastic to see in the TAS though! I especially like the 3rd dash! We tried a number of different setups, but it was way too inconsistent for us to handle.
The only suggestion I have is the tornado/bat fight at the end. Have you tested killing the bats offscreen with a wag/swipe? I know Mr. K and I tested the lag doing that vs killing them on screen, but I sadly do not remember the result of that test.
That is amazing! I love it! I never even thought to use zombie hover there, but it works absolutely brilliantly. Great idea.
The cliffs behave in really weird and annoying ways. Mr. K and I tried double dashing one player ahead while the other gets crushed, but the respawn was really tough to work around. Sometimes it waited like...a full extra crusher cycle to respawn us.
Looking forward to seeing what you can do with stage 4! Really curious to see if my dashes are still optimal. :P
Yes, Joust does get harder as you play. I haven't played the A2600 version as much as the arcade and atari 5200 versions, but it should get harder. I'm unsure if there is a point where the number of spawns and the terrain layout begins to repeat (with the obvious exception of when you rollover the level number and begin at wave 1 again), but if there is it certainly is beyond wave 6.
Edit: I haven't seen this run so I don't know what wave it ends at. IIRC the NES version of this ended after wave 6 so that is why I cited that number above.
Definitely yes. Huge improvement in both optimization and entertainment value. The eel grind was superb. Brings back fond memories of feasel's attempts. Haha.
Also, happy birthday dunnius! :P
Yea I haven't tried this on FBA before. It works exceptionally well with MAME-rr though. Without some arcade version of TASeditor or the multitrack thing though, idk how it'd be possible to do it.
Haha, thanks Patashu. I'm super happy with this run. Just one minor correction: I did screw up a few strats in this run, but the main one was in stage 5 (two waves before I died). Ideally you would kill that purple frazzle without accidentally grabbing the crate; the crate is used in the next wave to kill everything before the gun despawns, and the gun is used to kill the 4 wrenchies before I moved. What you see in that run is what happens if you mess up. :P
There are also a few smash hit redirects you can do in stage 4 that I narrowly missed. Not a big deal on those.
I found a lot of significant things for a 3-player run. First off, the gun does 4 times the damage of a smash attack on the huge rats (General Vermins), so in 3P, we will make sure to have as many guns as possible for those fights, even if it means having one or two toads carrying a gun through most of the level. I also found out that with 2 players, you can hit the snowmen in stage 2 before getting blown back by the wind. Since they take two hits to kill, I imagine with 3 players you can skip all of the scripted snowman fights.
I'd really like to make a 3-player TAS of this, but I definitely lack the proper resources to make it work at the moment.