Posts for Randil

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Allright, I have done level 2 now. Here's the movie: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/510/Spelunker%20%28U%29%20%5B%21%5D.fcm And before you go throwing rocks at me for letting the ghost live, let me explain why I did that: As you can see, around frame 6300 I have to stop to kill the ghost. This wastes around 150 frames. On level 1, I was able to manipulate luck, to make the ghost not appear, by waiting several frames, around 20 frames to be exact. This time however, the ghost really wanted to appear :( I had to wait around 280 frames to manipulate luck for him to not appear, therefor it was simply faster for me to let him appear and then kill him later on. Besides this, there shouldn't be anything weird in the movie. The route I use is basically the same that Ginger used in his movie (the submitted one, that is), slightly modified. But due to more precise movement, this run is currently 942 frames (15.7 seconds) ahead. Enjoy the movie! :)
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I'm glad you liked it! And to Doropie: Allright, I'll try to do stuff like that as much as possible, if the audience like it ;) It neither wastes or saves any time, so why not. And to Guybrush: Yes, that was in fact intentional to stop there for a few frames, I think it's 5 frames to be exact. You see, that ball gives you a random item, sometimes a bomb and sometimes a firework. I wanted it to give me an extra life since I will use that later on, and to manipulate it to give an extra life, I had to wait 5 frames. So don't worry about that :) I'll do some more planning for level 2 now, I will try to have it done ASAP.
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I agree, level 2 was more entertaining (even though it was pink ;) ), this time this game actually got some action in it, especially around the end, when you had to kill several thugs to continue. The run looked good, the only little thing I noticed was that maybe you could have killed the thug on floor 18 as he's exiting the door. But this wouldn't save any time, so it's no big deal, I just thought it would look a little cooler. And about how many more levels you should play, I'm wondering, in what ways do the levels change as you proceed? I mean what are the differences between one level and another? As I see it, the level-designs have to loop after a certain number of levels, so I think you should play all levels until you come to a level that looks like one of the levels you've played before. In other words, play all different stagedesigns once. Unless there are like 300 different levels in this game, that could become a problem ;)
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I've decided to go with taking hits, since this turned out to save a lot more time than I first thought it would. You see, when you die you are respawned to the last item you picke up after getting off the elevator (I only figured this out recently), so this was abused quite heavily after getting the first blue key as you can see. :) Another change is that I pick up both bombs on the first floor, since I will need the second one later on. Here's the movie: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/498/Spelunker%20%28U%29%20%5B%21%5D.fcm It's 734 frames (12.23 seconds) faster than my previous run of level 1 All comments and questions are as always very welcome! :)
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nitsuja wrote:
Isn't there already a submitted movie that runs through the whole game? It's probably still in the workbench forum, unless it got moved to the new rejects forums. I'm just wondering why nobody here has mentioned it.
Yeah, I've watched that one. However, the only ROM I was able to replay that movie correctly with had really weird graphics, as well as somewhat different stage-layout. I don't know if anyone else has had problem with watching that movie with a good ROM. But in terms of quality and gameplay, I think that run could be improved pretty much, that's what I'm trying to do with this, I try to optimize both the route of course, as well as all those small details. If anyone wants to see the submitted run, here it is: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2895 EDIT: I've been thinking some of what the goals for this movie should be. One option is to go for a "fastest completion, don't get killed run", which I personally would find more interesting to watch. The other choise would be to get killed at certain places (this can save some time on some places, because when you die you are warped back to a certain point on the map)... The beauty of a "don't get killed" run for this game in particular, is that those who have played this knows how easy you get killed, and those for those I think this kind of run would be cooler. If I choose a run where I get killed at certain places, the run would be somewhat faster, perhaps 10 to 15 seconds. What's everyone's opinion on this matter?
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Now that I think about it, I believe that I exaggerated when I said 150, it's probably more like 60-70 rerecords. And I agree that it's a shame that you die so easily in this game :( Anyway, I'm glad you liked the movie! :)
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Bag of Magic Food
Oh, is it like Bomberman?
Well, you do have bombs in this game. :) But the goal in this game is just to make it to the end of the level withour dieing (which is a lot harder than it looks in the movie.) But yeah, there are some similarities with Bomberman, you place bombs and don't want to be close to them when they go off ;)
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Yeah, looks good! I didn't find any flaw this time, so continue working with this. I see you changed tactics on the bosses some too. Good luck!
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Thanks for all the feedback! And to answer all of your questions: Tailz wrote:
I've never played this game before so I have no idea what it's about.
It's very simple really, you start off at point A and you are to get to point B. Like Super Mario, basically. There are rocks and stuff that blocks your way here however, so you have to use bombs to keep moving. Rick wrote:
how did you keep the ghost from appearing? I can never seem to get it to stay away.
To be honest, I don't really know how I did that :) I know what you're talking about, and usually he turns up while getting the second blue key. I don't know what I did to stop him from disappearing, it could be that I do things really fast and that the ghost only turns up if you've played a certain amount of time. But I'm just guessing here ;) Guybrush wrote:
But I have one question, are you always as close to the bomb as you can when it explodes?
Oh yes, of this I am 100% sure. You can see that I used a lot of rerecords, and most of this movie was made with frame advance. For each bomb I used at least 150 rerecords, just to keep moving as soon as possible. First of I try to be as close to the explosion as possible when it goes off, then I start running as soon as possible. I used frame advance for this. It is extremely easy to die in this game. Take jumping and falling for example. You cannot fall more than like 2 inches in this game, otherwise you will die. Getting on the elevator is a pain too, you have jump when you get on and off, falling down ladders is simply not possible (you will die), and I can make this list a lot longer :) So this game might as well be called "Fragile Caveman" or something. And since no one mentioned anything about the route, I'm guessing it's good. I'll continue this then, and post a new WIP once I got something done.
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Looks good so far! One question though: Around frame 3400 you let a snake jump over you, and you back a bit and then shoot the snake. Wouldn't it be faster to just turn around for 1 frame, before he jumps, and shoot him and then continue running?
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I was pretty bored thie evening, so I put together a run of the first two stages of Spelunker. Here's the movie: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/487/Spelunker%20%28U%29%20%5B%21%5D.fcm Personally, I think it turned out pretty nice. If there is any interest in this, I can see if I could finish it. For those who don't know, Spelunker is a short game, it only has 4 levels. Any comments on the movie?
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I haven't played this game a lot before, but I remember the part where you turn into Megagon. As to whether or not you should transform into Megagon or not as soon as you get the key , you should ask yourself these two question: 1. Does it make the run any faster to transform into Megagon directly? 2. If turning into Megagon as soon as you get the key is exactly as fast as turning into Megagon when you get to the boss, the question only comes down to whether or not it makes the run more interesting to play as Megagon. Personally, I would prefer if you transformed to Megagon as soon as you get the key (because I find him really cool), IF this is exactly as fast as transforming right before the boss since you should always aim for the fastest time. A WIP would be nice, I'll watch it and give some feedback on it once you get it up, I too would really like to see this run! Other than that, I wish you good luck on this, Tailz!
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Looks good! I see you made use of the elevator glitch quite a lot. It was also good that you killed some thugs on the way down. How will you continue this run, Guybrush? I mean how many more levels will you do before considering this run finished?
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Hmm yes, there are almost infinite possibilities to beat this game, for example, if you want to pass an enemy you always have the choises of either healing up your main character, using protection from evil or to switch main characters. I think this run could perhaps be improved by a huge effort in testing out when to enter the menu and when to avoid doing so. And to be honest, I'm not up to improving this even more, if someone finds out how to improve this run even more than this, I'll humbly accept my defeat. And I'm not sure if this game can be beaten without entering the menu until the last room, I mean, you have to use protection from evil on yourself to get past the first dragon in the sewers, unless you want to kill it. But killing it wastes several seconds, so I'm not sure that doing this without going into the menu before that saves a huge amount of time. Plus the fact that you would probably have to run around with very low HP a lot, thus wasting a lot of time by avoiding lots of enemies and stuff like that. But still, a run where you don't enter the menu until the very last room would be about 20-30 seconds faster. Oh yes, thanks for the mental YES vote, I'll keep it in mind ;)
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Guybrush wrote:
When the litlle green guy is just about to stab you, you teleport out of danger. It seems like that enemy kills you.
In fact, that enemy is just one frame from hitting me, so if I had waited one more frame, I would have got hit. But I agree that it looks quite funny :)
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OmnipotentEntity wrote:
Galaga crashes when you beat stage 255.
To be honest, I never actually played Galaga up to stage 255, once I got to stage 200-something, I just thought "what the crap is going on?" and stopped playing. ;) But 255 stages is quite a lot too. I second a Galaga run up to crash time!
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Tailz wrote
I liked the "urragh!" the character would emit when he/she fell down that hole (or whatever it was)
Haha, I know what you mean, one thing I noticed was that even though you fall down the pit as the girl Goldmoon, you will hear a man's cry as you fall down. Maybe Goldmoon isn't really a woman??? :) I'm glad you liked the run, guys!
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Holy macarony, there are just so many Mega Man runs circuling right now that I can't keep track of them anymore. :) Great job so far, if I'm not mistaken you save quite some time by getting hit and therefor can walk on the spikes at the beginning of Pharaoh Man, right? 353 frames improvement from just two stages is quite amazing, I hope you continue like this. Faster Mega Man runs are always very nice! ;)
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You shouldn't hesitate to sign up on this because you don't feel like dream player, Angerfist. I really don't feel like a dream player either, but I see this as a fun thing to do, and something that tests both my skills in how to make a TAS as well as how to make a TAS in a group. For example, if a group of average players work really great together, I think they can come up with a result that is just as good as a group of dream players who have no teamwork at all. So at least how I see it, this is a lot a matter of teamwork too. And besides, this isn't NHL or anything, it's just a fun competition. I hope you change your mind and sign up on this Angerfist, I would be really glad if I got a Swede in my group! :)
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Allright, I have some news on my progress: To start with, here's the new WIP: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/483/Advanced%20Dungeons%20%26%20Dragons%20-%20Heroes%20of%20the%20Lance%20%28U%29.fcm As you can see, it's almost identical, here's what I've come up with so far: It's not possible to duck under the shot from the first green fish guy, since the shot is too low, I can't jump over it either. So I have no choise here but to get hit. It IS possible to duck under the shot from the second green fish guy, but this is exactly as fast as getting hit. So at first, I ducked under his shot and continued the run. But I found out that how much HP you have is a huge factor for monster behaviour in this game. As you can see in the WIP, I can enter the door in the following room before getting hit by that shot. If I duck under the shot in the room before, the third green fish guy will move slightly differently because I have more HP, and I will not be able to make it to the last door without getting hit. If I get hit by this lizardman's shot, it costs me 2 frames. So the two choises are either to duck under the first lizardman's shot and get hit by the second one, or to get hit by the first one and avoid getting hit by the second one. The first technique is the fastest, so I chose that. Another thing you might notice is that around frame 4900 I don't get hit by the green enemy. I found that if you run towards him, turn back, and start running towards him again, you will run through him, you will see what I mean when you watch the WIP. This neat trick saved 9 frames. Unfortunately, there was a flaw with this trick too. Since this made me loose less HP, some enemies behaviour changed. You know the room where I jump three times to avoid the arrows to appear? Well, it seems it's not possible to get the arrows to disappear this time, because my HP is too high. So get hit by one of the arrows. This lost me 4 frames, so I'm currently 5 frames ahead of my previous version, wiiee! Maybe all of this was a little confusing, but to put things short, my problem now is that I can't get that arrow to disappear, the one around frame 6000. If someone could do something, like jumping at certain places or something, to get it to disappear, I would really appreciate it, otherwise I'll continue from what I have so far.
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Allright, thanks SeNn for telling me that I can let Goldmoon die (and believe me, I will let her die, harharhar). However, it does depend some on how much time it wastes to pick up the staff compared to how much time it wastes to keep her alive. I'll check up on that later. I'm glad you liked the run so far, Guybrush! :) To answer your question, I don't think that jumping over the flames saves you from taking damage. I'm not 100% sure on this, but I believe I actaully tried jumping over the first flame, but still took damage from it. But I will try it out some more, maybe I'll get lucky. Or maybe I can use the protection from evil spell here to save me the trouble of waiting. So there are a lot of things for me to find out here, I'll get a new WIP up pretty soon.
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Looks nice, but as you said, you waste quite some time on the first red door. Just wondering, how do you beat a level in this game? Is a level beaten by getting to the bottom of the house? The thing I'm wondering about is whether it's absolutely necessary to enter the red doors, since this wastes quite a lot of time. And what's this glitch you're talking about? The only glitchy thing I saw in this run was when you got on that last elevator in a weird way, is this the glitch you're talking about?
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What level are you on now, Shinryuu? 111 frames seems pretty nice, seeing how good Morimoto's and Finalfighter's video was. Oh, and I think I speak for everyone when I say: Give us a WIP! :)
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I hope it gets a lot more entertaining from that point, seeing you ride down the elevetor for 20 seconds without anything happening wasn't very exciting... Maybe you could go for an "100% kills" run or something, I don't know, maybe the enemies respawn after you kill them. But I really think you should somehow spice the run up, even if you do beat that level as fast as possible by doing nothing but riding that elevator.
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It's pretty much like Galaga, right? I think Galaga could make a cool TAS, the problem is that it goes on, and on, and on, and BAM! You suddenly find yourself playing stage 900. :) However, the game Circus Charlie loops too, is it the same kind of loop in Elevator action, that it just plays a few levels over and over again? In that case, maybe this run could be like that game, that you play all levels once, and stop the movie after that.