TASVideos

Posted: 11/11/2005 9:09 AM

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Randil

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I agree that playing a ROM with a controller is often a lot easier than with a keyboard. Therefor you could do like I did and get a gamepad. I bought this Logitech RumblePad 2, and you can set up hotkeys for the a gamepad's buttons, so I've setup "savestate" and "loadstate" as gamepad hotkey-buttons. In fact, I think that this gamepad I have is more comfortable than the SNES controller, but that's just my opinion. So if you don't like to play the games with the keyboard, my tips is that you buy yourself a gamepad, that should make it a lot easier playing. Just a tips. And don't be upset because your Super Mario movie didn't look good, seeing how much you improved it from the first version to your latest version, I think you could do a pretty good job on that game. Sure, there are stuff that can be improved, but that's one of the beauties with TAS-ing (I don't know if this is even a word :) ), you can often improve your own runs, competing with yourself.

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Posted: 11/11/2005 8:52 AM

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Randil

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Wow, When we first decided that we should improve the Lolo 2 run, I had no idea it would be this much. Amazing... Here's some comments on your improvements: On 5-2, I managed to pass the water the last time a little smoother, saving an additional 5 frames. So the time on 5-2 has been cut down by 905 frames now. Leve 6-2 could only be improved by 54 frames, you can't push the egg in the water to the farthest left, if you do, it will have sunk before you get back to it after picking up the top heart. I'll look into 7-2 some more soon, I'll get back to you on that. 7-5 could only be improved by 2 frames. This is because whenever you get off the egg, the egg stops moving for a few frames. So by taking the egg on the way down as you said, the egg stops floating for a few frames. By taking the egg the way I take it in my current run, I don't have to put up with this waiting, since I take the egg when it's already stopped at the end of the river. So this saved mereley 2 frames. 8-3 was improved by 102 frames thanks to your tips. It was some trouble dodging all the Gol fire though. And I don't really see how you mean on 8-4... Could you post and .fcm that shows what you mean? Your improvement on C-1 did not save ~20 seconds, but it did save 258 frames, which is 4,3 seconds. Here's how I played all these levels: http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload2/lolo2levels.zip As always, all comments are welcome. I haven't the time to test the rest of your foundings, and I'll be away for this weekend. But I'll get back to this on Monday. As usual, thanks a lot for your tips hanzou, you have helped out a lot with this, and it's very appreciated. I hope you find some new stuff while I'm gone during the weekend! :) Oh and hanzou, did you see the savestates that I posted? If you use them you don't have to fastforward to reach a certain level, just load the savestate for the level you want to see. To load them, open the Lolo 2 ROM, play the the movie you want to see, press File, Load State From, and then choose the savestate for that level. But on the other hand, if you find improvements by fastforwarding through the movie, then maybe I should let you continue with that. :) EDIT: Managed to save additional 70 frames on C-2 now: http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload5/C-2new_v2.zip

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Posted: 11/11/2005 12:25 AM

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Randil

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Aren't you working on a TAS for the SNES version of SMB lost levels?, megaman? I really want to see that done, so I hope you haven't abandoned it, but I guess that the fact that you want to delete your account shows that you're not working on it anymore... too bad. Anyway, I hope you can tell us why you you would want your account deleted. If you for some reason feel that you've been treated badly by someone, then talk to them about it. I don't think that deleting your account is the best alternative. Or maybe I'm way off in this, in any case, I hope this gets settled.

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Posted: 11/10/2005 5:35 PM

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Randil

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Great movie, enough said. I'm definitely voting YES.

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Posted: 11/10/2005 12:51 AM

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Randil

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But hey, look at it from the bright side, at least his essays are funny to read! :) I think my favorite sentence was "Then we lost Pontus and for an hour or two we found him bound in a tree, we wen’t to get him and when we all is under the tree". It's poetry to my ears... (or not)

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Posted: 11/10/2005 12:42 AM

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Randil

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I found this when I was in third grade in the swedish "gymnasium" (kinda like high school for those who don't know). This means that the guy who wrote this had to be between 16 and 19 years old. The teacher had written "G+" on the paper, that's how I knew what grade it got.

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Posted: 11/10/2005 12:37 AM

Post subject: Found this essay on the schoolfloor

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Randil

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Hey, I found this essay on the schoolfloor some time ago, and I can't help but laugh whenever I read it! Whoever wrote it is not very good at english. Anyway, I thought I'd post it, perhaps you will get a good laugh out of it. I might add that I haven't changed anything in it, this is exactly how I found it: "Today have I played a little game. We were suppoes to swim in a river without to get hurt... three wen’t home with a helicopter, they were bitten by a small moose. Scoutmaster Walt think that we disterbed when it ate. So now are we 7 boys left and one girl. Pour girl, every boy is on her, even me, but I don’t know why? If you had seen her once, you doesn’t want to see her again. Today we also had to hunt for dinner. We found 10 snakes. It’s realy taste great. But we all is ill after thatand tomorrow we’ll just lay in bed. Yesterday it was so fun. We played hide and seek. Then we lost Pontus and for an hour or two we found him bound in a tree, we wen’t to get him and when we all is under the tree, it’s jumps down a talliban whith an AK-4 in he’s hands and after a 30 minutes scoutmaster Walt had talked us out. The talliban said that we were in Afghanistan. See you soon, I hope / Dear Cole" Oh, and this text was approved by the english teacher, it got a "G+", which corresponds to B- or somewhere around there. I think that english teacher was just a little too nice...

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Posted: 11/9/2005 11:47 PM

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Randil

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Here's level 9-1 done 291 frames faster thanks to hanzou's tips in his first post: http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload1/9-1faster.zip EDIT: At last, I've done something that will ease up watching these small improvements a lot. I've taken a savestate at the beginning of all levels. You can download them here, in a zip file: http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload7/lolo2savestates.zip Let's say you want to see my improvement of 9-1 in this post. Instead of fastforwarding through most of the movie, wasting precious IRL time, you can instead just load the savestate named "9-1" in the zipfile. savestate 9-1 takes you to the beginning of 9-1. Just make sure that you have "read-only" enabled. Well, enjoy! EDIT 2: 256 frames saved on 7-3. Why not try my newly posted savestates on this movie? http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload9/7-3new.zip I have alos added a timetable on my own page (see signature for link) where I keep track of the progress. So far we have improved my submitted run by 1 minute and 25,83 seconds, quite a lot! EDIT 3: I've redone Castle-2 with hanzou's strategy.... And I must be getting it wrong or something. I can only get it 15 frames faster. Take a look and see if I'm doing something wrong: http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload4/C-2new.zip

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Posted: 11/9/2005 11:12 PM

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Randil

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Bag of Magic Food wrote:

Has anybody tried using the Rocky to cross the center of 3-4? I remember using that as a strategy once, though I don't remember whether or not it worked out.

If I'm understanding you correctly, it has already been done, here it is: http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload5/rocky.zip Here I use the Rocky to cross the center of the level, I think this is what you meant. Oh, and I've done 8-2 better now too: http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload7/8-2faster.zip It's 615 frames (10,25s) faster.

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Posted: 11/9/2005 10:18 PM

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Randil

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And I who thought the days of fmv movies were over... Anyway, I took the liberty to watch this, and it was very nice. I found the games physics-engine quite amazing, I mean just look at the waterarea, running and jumping like that when under the water was very realistic! :) Anyway, as I said, it was a good movie, I'm voting vote YES on this. Even though you missed breaking a stone on that stage where you're flying a bird! Oh yes, I saw that! *glaring* (joking) :)

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Posted: 11/9/2005 8:39 PM

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Randil

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Haha, I just have to post this here! I calculated how much time we have saved in total with these new techniques, and here's what I came up to: 1-5: 32 frames 3-2: 705 frames 3-4: 553 frames 3-5: 32 frames 4-2: 15 frames Total: 1337 frames The main reason for posting this is simply because of I got 1337 as the number. And besides 1337 frames is quite som improvement! I think we've done good so far, and if you're right about castle-3 hanzou, this will only get better. Perhaps the new version will be over a minute faster. And also, I've been thinking some about 4-3... On this level I wait for several seconds, and I'm just wondering if anyone knows of a way to avoid waiting this long. I've tried myself but haven't succeeded, so it would be nice if someone could help me with this EDIT: 5-1 done 112 frames faster: http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload2/5-1faster.zip aaww, 1337 frames improvement gone, stupid 1449 frames improvement now... :) EDIT 2: Here's a test run of Castle 3, using your new strategy hanzou: http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload1/castle3.zip Please comment on it! I just timed this level now, and compared it to the previous, and guess what? This is a whopping 2389 frames faster than current version of castle 3. 2389 frames is 39,82 seconds, over half a minute faster! Amazing! EDIT 3: I managed to save 150 frames on 7-1. http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload4/7-1faster.zip

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Posted: 11/9/2005 7:12 PM
(Edited: 11/9/2005 8:18 PM)

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Randil

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hanzou wrote:

Here is a run of 1-5 that saves 25 frames, and I wouldn't be surprised if there is an even faster way.

Ah yes, you're right. I'm just gonna stop saying that levels are frame perfected :) Or maybe I should continue doing so, it seems to motivate people to prove me otherwise! Very creatively solution to 1-5 I must say. Cheers for that. And about 3-4, could you post an fcm? Even if it's not perfect, I could get the idea. Again, thanks for the tips hanzou. EDIT: I redid 1-5 with your strategy, hanzou, and managed to get it an additional 7 frames faster (I don't know how :) ), so now 1-5 is 32 frames faster than before! EDIT 2: I have done 3-4 553 frames (9,22s) faster, here's the fcm: http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload5/rocky.zip Was this how you did it, hanzou?

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Posted: 11/9/2005 6:21 PM

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Randil

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That's right JXQ, that's almost exactly how I reasoned on this problem. And of course you could get z to 6,7,8 and 9 by just adding 5 to your current z's, but I'm positive you already thought of that. The reasoning would be the same if you should use, say, 5's and 2's. Anyway, good job! :)

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Posted: 11/9/2005 3:52 PM

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Randil

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Here's something that I picked up in mathclass some days ago, see if you guys can figure it out: You are to prove that all positive integers >24 can be written as a sum of 5's and 7's. For example, 25 = 5+5+5+5+5, 26 = 5+7+7+7, 27=5+5+5+5+7 and so on. This works for all positive integers >24. Prove it! :) If you've proved that, try to prove that you never need more than four 7's to write any number >24 this way.

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Posted: 11/9/2005 12:07 PM

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Randil

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The time it takes to complete to complete a level can easily be measured in how many squares you have to move to complete the stage. I found out that moving one square takes 16 frames (0,27s). This means that if you count how many squares you move on a level and divide this by four, you will get the time for that level in seconds (almost, just a little less). Okay, I've have revised and overlooked floor 1 now, and timed each level too. Here's my analysis: I measure the time by doing like this, here's level 1-1 as an example: On 1-1 Lolo appears on frame 1118. Frame 2137 is the last frame where Lolo makes a movement. The time for this level is therefor 2137-1118=1019 frames. Here are the timings for all levels on floor 1.

Level: Frames: Seconds:

1-1     1019      16.98      
1-2     1163      19.38
1-3     1530      25.50
1-4      611      10.18
1-5     1109      18.48

Comments: I looked through all levels closely, but didn't find even one single timesaver. I actually think that the levels on floor 1 are more or less frameperfected (except for 1-4 maybe). Try to prove me wrong! :) I'll get on to floor 2 soon. EDIT: I have redone 3-2 now, and Bag's strategy was faster than hanzou's. Here is an fcm with the new strategy on 3-2, the other levels are still the same up to 3-2: http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload0/new3-2.zip It's 705 frames faster than current 3-2. If you know how to improve 3-2 even more, let me know. EDIT 2: I just tried hanzou's trick on 3-5, taking the heart before killing the skull. This saved 32 frames. EDIT 3: Lots of edits for this post.... I managed to save 15 frames on 4-2 too, by moving slightly differently, avoiding enemies better: http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload2/4-2faster.zip

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Posted: 11/9/2005 11:44 AM

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Randil

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Yay! It's drawing closer and closer. Good luck on Wily 1 and 2, I can't wait to see this movie completed! I'm guessing you're still saving more and more time on each level. Are the Wily levels done much faster than in Kopernical's run?

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Posted: 11/8/2005 7:45 PM

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Randil

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Oh, that picture looks nice, seems pretty lossless to me. :) If I'm not way off, I think a regular DVD film you can buy in stores can fit around 2 hours of film, maybe a little more. How much film (measured in time) do you think you can get on your DVD's LocalH, if you use that quality?

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Posted: 11/8/2005 11:58 AM

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Randil

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CtrlAltDestroy, hanzou started such a thread recently, here it is: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3029 And I agree totally with you, CtrlAltDestroy, I think that the endresult will be really awesome if this is an open project in which anyone who wants can participate. Even if you only have an idea for one level but are clueless on the other ones, you can still get your strategy imlpemented in the run. Cooperation on puzzlegames really pays off in my opinion! So if anyone has an idea on the regular Lolo 2 levels that isn't in my current run, go to that thread and post your ideas! :)

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Posted: 11/8/2005 11:52 AM

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Randil

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Cool, TAS on DVD would be cool to see, just like SDA archive have their speedruns on DVD. A question though, I'm no digital-movie-files expert or anything, but if you are to burn the TAS-movies to DVD's, will you use the current AVIs available or will you make new AVI recordings with better quality? I don't know if any current emulator we use can record avi's to DVD quality. Anyway, the DVD idea intrigues me, keep us updated on that part!

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Posted: 11/7/2005 4:29 PM

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Randil

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Could you make an fcm that shows this trick? I tried pulling it off by following the instructions in your post but couldn't do it. It would be cool to see.

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Posted: 11/6/2005 4:55 PM

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Randil

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Sounds great, my birthday is in february so that suits me just fine :)

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Posted: 11/6/2005 4:52 PM

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Randil

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Has Nintendo set a date when Revolution will be out? I can't wait to get my hands on one of those! :) And if anyone knows this, could you tell me how things are going with the PS3 and 360, when are these consoles out on the market? Thanks in advance.

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Posted: 11/6/2005 4:47 PM

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Randil

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You have a lot of "!" in the text before some words, I think you mean to make these headlines or something, but it didn't work. Anyway, it was just something that caught my eye, you should check it out.

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Posted: 11/6/2005 12:13 AM

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Randil

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I see that a lot has been going on since I last logged in. This is a very good idea, to start a Lolo2 general topic. I was actually thinking of doing it myself, but you were faster :) I think we should naturally start from the beginning, at least from floor 2, and revise the levels from there. So if you find the time to, look through floor 2 on my run to see if you can find anything. I already think floor 1 is optimized. But it'll only be nice if anyone finds out improvements there. Thanks for telling me about some improvements hanzou, I already knew about the last boss (I've made an ~50 frames improvement some time before) and I also knew about 3-2 and 8-2. I'm out of town right now, but I'll get back to working on this run when I'm back home on monday. To be honest, I haven't done much thinking on improvements yet, I'm still revising floor 1 and 2. But as I said, I'm out of town at the moment, so I won't be able to start more seriously until monday. With that being said, I don't mean that that you should only give tips on floor 1 and 2, whatever you find, let me know. hanzou's start was very good, I think that stuff is gonna help out a lot. Me, Bag and Baxter talked about some improvement on IRC some time ago too, unfortunately I kind of forget most of them =/ I will also make a list of all the times for each level, this way we can more easily measure improvements. I'll get some times and a list up here soon too, for you to see what levels I'm focusing on. I will also try out (or if anyone else would do this) hanzou's tips to see mre exactly how much time they could shave off. I'll get some WIPs up here too soon. I already have a WIP with Bag's 3-2 strategy and another one with 8-2 strategy. Plus another one with finishing the last boss. They'll be up here soon. And about the PRO run, it seems Baxter will have to redo it again if you found another 10+ second improvement! =) As always, great job hanzou.

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Posted: 11/5/2005 1:45 PM

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Randil

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hanzou wrote:

I think it would make sense to publish this once the main Lolo 2 TAS is available as well. Hopefully this will motivate Randil to finish up the next revision of his regular levels run. =)

Is that some sort of hint or something? :) But actually you're right, I'm very motivated to do more Lolo 2 TAS at the moment. The thing with Lolo runs in general is that it's very hard to make one all by yourself, since people have so many different strategies. I think we proved this very well with this run, with me, hanzou and Baxter working hard on optimizing this run from 3.13 to this amazing 2.25. So with Lolo runs I think that if a few people are cooperating on a run, it can be vastle improved. The same goes for the regular Lolo2 run, most of the strategies are my own on that one, but since I'm not the best Lolo2 player nor the smartest person in the world, It's more than possible that a lot of levels can be improved. To sum things up, It's likely that I will improve the Lolo2 run very soon, since there is already quite a Lolo hype going on, and I would be very happy if anyone finds out more timesavers in the movie. I already know of a few that could cut down the time by around 12 seconds or so, but every little timesaver, even just 5 frames or so, is very welcome. I'll look into improving the Lolo2 run more tomorrow, and feel free to post any timesavers in the Lolo2 submission thread. :)

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