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You worked really hard on this, and I think it really shows. There are a lot of new things in this run, a lot of them were things I never even thought of when I made my published run. Anyway, here's a yes vote, awesome job indeed!
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This run is almost 3 minutes faster, and was rejected for being a bad game choice.
EDIT: Nevermind, I just saw that this is the first game, and that run was Cheetahmen II. Sorry.
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Anyone remember Save tonight by Eagle eye Cherry way back in 1997? I recently found the chords for this song, so here's my take on it. (sorry about the camera angle, I taped the camera to a shelf and it didn't turn out very good)
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I took a look at 4-3, and I think I found a faster way to climb up. By jumping on the floating platforms instead of wall jumping, you save some frames it seems (it saves around 30 frames or so compared to wall jumping). Here's the movie file. Note that it's not frame optimized, so you can probably shave off more frames. Still, it seems to be faster than wall jumping.
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Nice to see that you're continuing this! It looked tightly optimized, and I'm not surprised that skipping Furball saved some time. I'm looking forward to world 4.
The only potential improvement I can see is if there is some way to move down the "stairs" around frame 21300 without making a jump. Of couse, this requires that you don't bump into any of the bats, as this will give you an upwards boost. If you could kill all bats on the way down by sliding on the steps, you could avoid any upwards boost, which should make you reach the door sooner. I tested this some now and couldn't get it to work, so it might not be possible.
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Pointless Boy: Thank you, I understand your solution. I did not consider writing it on the form 1*k1 + 2*k2 + ... I am familiar with the stars and bars trick, and I've been sniffing on it a little when looking for a solution to this problem, but I didn't find a way to apply it. Well, thanks for the solution!
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I've read that page, but it doesn't seem to answer my problem. To give an example of what I mean:
Let's say you have n=5 and b=9. This means you have 5 integers, a(1) to a(5), all between 1 and 9. Without the condition that a(j)>=a(j-1), we have 9^5 possible combinations, since all a(j) can be anything between 1 and 9. However, the tweak to this problem is that the list is sorted in descending order, so we get much less than 9^5 possible combinations. For example, the combination 2,1,9,8,7 isn't allowed because 9>=1, breaking the a(j)>=a(j-1) condition. The combination 1,3,3,3,5 is allowed, since the list is non-decreasing. What I'm looking for is, for arbitrary values of n and b, how many non-decreasing combinations you can create.
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I'm looking for a general expression for a combinatorics problem, it would be great if someone could provide an expression and a motivation for it. The problem is: You have n integers a(1), a(2), ..., a(n) where a(i)>=1 for all i, a(i)>=a(i-1) (i.e. they are sorted in descending order) and a(1)<=b where b is a positive integer. How many possible combinations of a(1),...,a(n) can you create? If possible, express it as an explicit function of n and b.
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Looks pretty optimized, but I thought the ending looked improvable, so I looked into it a little. I managed to save (I think) 12 frames by grabbing the ledge after the pink T-rex a bit sooner (the difference starts around frame 12771). This was done by making a shorter jump, to minimize the time falling down. It's not optimized, so you can probably improve it further. Here's the .fm2 if you want to take a look.
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henke37 wrote:
And a bonus one that some of you already know the answer to:
You are a rude warrior that needs to pass two men. One always tells the truth and the other always lies. They wont let you pass until you have figured out who is the lying one. What is the fastest way to do so?
This should work, and should be pretty quick:
Turn to one of them and simply ask "am I speaking to you right now?". If he is the one who is always telling the truth he will of course say yes. If he is lying, he will answer no. This question does not require any real knowledge from either one of them, opposite to any question like "is the grass green?" or something like that.
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With the latest patch, World of Warcraft's Real ID system allows players to add any WoW user as a friend, no matter what realm or side they are on. I'm guessing there are quite a few WoW players here, so I thought we could share our Real ID's here, for those who want to. My Real ID is johansodling@hotmail.com, so if you want to, you can add me. Anyone else who wants to share?
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Aglar wrote:
I started a run of this game a long time ago. The recording has been very halting including a break of 1 year because some enemies weren't moving the way I wanted. So if someone else has begun TASing this game (Randil?:D) or think about doing it you can PM me. Otherwise I will eventually finish the run - hopefully before the end of this year, maybe earlier if there's some interest in this.
Ironically, yes, I have a WIP of this game! (you know me too well). I stopped the WIP at the space shooting section at the end of the game, mostly because I lost interest in the game. So this WIP is almost a complete run of the game.
It's been a long time since I worked on the WIP, but I seem to remember I found some nice things. First of all, you'll see that I "stutter drive" with the car, which saves some time. Besides this, it's mostly optimized movements and some new strategies. I think I'm about 15 seconds ahead of the published run. I think you can shave off some more frames from my WIP, thought it's a lot more optimized than the published run.
Here's the WIP. To be honest, I don't have much interest in TASing this game, though I can of course answer any questions you have about my WIP, and share the RAM addresses I have:
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Nice idea! I have an idea of a sub section with rejected runs of games that currently don't have a published TAS and the run was rejected for technical reasons, but the game itself seems to be publishable material. A good example is Tailz's Cabal run. This list could serve as an additional "List of ideas" for someone who's looking for a new game to TAS.
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andrewg wrote:
I know that if there are many sprites on screen occasionally mines will not appear. Is there a way to manipulate more enemies on screen and this mine will just disappear?
There doesn't seem to be any way to manipulate more enemies into the screen, at least not to my knowledge. The only way I can see this work is simply to keep all enemies alive as long as possible. I have not run into this glitch myself, but it would indeed be both interesting and save time if it worked, both on level 3 and 6. I'll look into this some more.
I also find Arc's idea interesting, I'll give it a try on the first boss and see how it turns out.
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Arc mentioned in the discussion thread of my submitted run, here, about an improvement to my run. I have tested this idea, and it should save 16 frames. I'll start on implementing this improvement.
In the meantime, since there has been some discussion about the entertainment aspect of the boss fights in my run, I thought I would take this as an opportunity to discuss how the boss fights should look.
So, how would you like the boss fights? Did you prefer Arc's version of them, or do you think I should keep them as they are? Perhaps you have a completely new idea for adding a little spice to the boss fights?
Any other question/idea about the run are of course also welcome.
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Arc wrote:
First I shall congratulate you on your technical improvements. 25 frames is more than I would have expected.
I would like to share my comments on the entertainment aspect. When I made the erstwhile movie, I felt that I was the director of a very human film. You must understand that these two are forbidden lovers, and they are very passionately fighting against this repression. They openly display their deep affection for each other as an act of rebellion. But in this movie, I see them making nonsensical, robotic movements and only 'secretly' kissing. The plot has been stripped away. They have become killing machines.
I have not submitted a new movie since 2008. I have been busy with other projects, and I must admit that my last Maniac Mansion movie was a tremendous psychological burden from which I have not fully recovered. But I still have my ideas. And I would like to share one that I have for Rush'n Attack, so that it may, at least, break free from its current imprisonment in my mind.
My idea is to allow Blue to lose all but one life during the boss battles (when they do not have to move rightward). The battle with the dogs is a good choice, considering the lack of entertainment in that battle. Then, on the last level, I would allow Blue to get just a little bit closer to Red. When they approached the very tall ladder that they had to climb, I would have Blue duck down and trip the mine. Blue would be Game Over, but Red would be able to continue on without having to climb the ladder. I believe that this maneuver would ultimately result in a net gain in time.
Thank you for your input, and nice to see you here again. Your thoughts on the boss fights are fair, that perhaps avoiding the static dancing is indeed better, in particular in order to let these secret lovers show their affection to each other. Still, it would feel like copying your run quite a lot, but if you're okay with it, then perhaps I will redo the boss fights in this fashion.
Regarding the possible improvement you mentioned, I think it will work (I don't see why it wouldn't). I must admit that I did not consider killing one of the players to save time.
This game is quite edit friendly, so it probably won't take too long to redo this run. I'll start a thread in the NES section where everyone can discuss how they think the boss fights should look.
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I tried to perform antics and be more entertaining during boss fights, when possible. But since the entertainment value of this is highly subjective, it's very debatable if this runs delivers or not. And in all honesty, I don't think I'm very good at being entertaining during waiting periods in any game, but I tried my best.
I had hoped that the dancing during boss fights would be appreciated (a bit surprised it hasn't been mentioned, though perhaps you have to slow down the emulator to appreciate it), and basically anything besides standing completely still is better than some of the boss fights in the published run, in my opinion. The "kiss" at the end of the boss fights in the previous run is present in this run too, but perhaps not timed as well as in Arc's run, as Priam pointed out. In that case, I apologize. Still, I hope that some of you enjoyed the antics during the boss fights in this run.
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I've just watched this now, and this truly deserves a yes vote. I noticed some more minor improvements on level 2, but they're nothing big. Great job, and I really don't blame for not redoing this (the skate board trick could be a carrot for the next person who tries to TAS this).
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I have an old WIP of this game, I've been thinking about finishing it, but I have several other projects I want to finish first. I'm glad someone else picked it up, this game is fun, but a bit tedious to TAS.
Anyway, it's possible to skip the text before jumping on the skate board, saving a lot of time. My level 1 is 236 frames faster than yours, mostly (perhaps solely, I haven't compared the rest) because of this.
I'm kind of in a hurry right now, so I'll just upload my WIP here without any detailed comparison. Hopefully it will help out.