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New WIP, possibly the last one before I publish the run.
Link to video
So I found out that hex editing out 1 subframe before every pause will make the pauses 1 frame shorter, and I did this for the whole video here. However, the emulator itself is incapable of produce the necessary button presses for this to happen, so should this even be allowed? If I did this for the entire run, it would save 1 second for every 30 pauses or when using key items.
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A-M wrote:
It's strange but I found this video where Krauser is beaten with only 8 kinfe swings : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZoR2xflH5o . What do you think about it ? (easy mode maybe)?
And did you try the OoB just after killing Krauser to cut througt the wall? I'm afraid it's longer than the in bounds route but it may be worthy to try.
Perhaps it is easy mode, and/or he's taken a lot of damage and has low accuracy. The least I've managed is 11, and that's with a decent accuracy overall, and only getting hit 2-3 times this whole run. I didn't know there was an OoB after fighting Krauser, but I'll look into it.
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Vykan12 wrote:
The more I see shots deliberately missed to lower difficulty, the more I cringe. I know you're deep into the run already, but if you ever choose to make another one, I recommend foregoing the missed shots altogether as a "speed vs entertainment trade-off". I also think it would look better if every knife hit led to an A prompt (whether it's a head swipe or a knee swipe), something about knifing an enemy in the chest just seems sloppy for some reason, like it should only happen in real-time runs.
Not missing shots would be a very bad idea. Bosses like Del Lago can take 2 extra harpoons, Mendez can take 2 extra incendiary grenades, Garradors take 1 extra rifle shot, and Krauser can take extra knife swings. My current 5-3, Krauser takes 19 knife hits, but I've seen him killed in as few as 14 (and that's on a professional difficulty run). For the knife swings though, I kinda agree now looking back, that they seem kinda sloppy, but using chest hits allows me to wait for more enemies to cluster, so I can kick 4 or 5 off the bulldozer instead of just 2 or 3. If Leon doesn't kick most of them off before the truck comes, Leon is kinda screwed.
Edit: I was able to limit my knife swings to 11 for the Krauser fight, but they have to all be head hits. Setting it up for all crits is a little difficult, but I've already saved 4 seconds.
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My vote is for 073, although 067 is also a good choice. IMO though, the title screen should be the image used on the site; it's simple, readable, and easily identifiable.
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Dolphin (with RE4 at least) doesn't seem to be able record on subframes themselves, but by hex editing you can force it. All it does is allow an input to be inputted 1 input early, but the input will be delayed till the next full frame...so in essence it doesn't really do anything, other than making some inventory stuff easier for me to do (some pauses add subframes...which is annoying)
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A-M wrote:
This discovery is awesome! So you need to pick up something laying on the ground 3 frames before the cutscene starts right? Is it frame perfect?
It's maybe the begining of other cutscene skip. It would be so nice to avoid the cabin fight or better : avoid raising the puzzle wall at the begining of the castle.
Yes, the cutscene skip is frame perfect. I will test other cutscenes to see if they can be skipped. It would be nice to skip the cabin fight or the lion/snake/goat puzzle but sadly I don't see this as possible for either. Using cheats, I went OoB before the cabin fight and found out you can't use the lever to raise the left/right gates to proceed. Also, there's no item to pick up on the bridge to do a potential skip (unless we can kill a flying crow or something). The castle puzzle I don't see working either since there's no item close enough to the door to pick up. I already tried to skip the cutscenes where Ashley yells "behind us," the truck starting up while being on fire, and the truck crashing, and none of those I could skip.
A-M wrote:
and another question : what is the timing window to do the Laser Skip Glitch? Is it frame perfect or more? I always wondered about that.
All I did was let go of B for 2 frames. It does not matter which 2 frames while the laser wall is coming toward you.
A-M wrote:
Thanks and keep it up!
PS : why did you let the elevator cutscene before Krauser? It can be skipped
It's simple really...I didn't know it could be skipped. :p. I can just hex edit in a start press and I won't have to redo much.
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Oops, I accidentally discovered something useful, and save 5 seconds.
Link to video
I also discovered (because I made a hex editing error) that this game can accept input on subframes. It doesn't seem to affect how the file syncs, so far, but it does allow all inputs to be done 1 frame sooner (or at least Dolphin is displaying it being done 1 frame sooner).
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I redid the end portion of Chapter 5-2 and managed to eliminate the need for two pauses.
Link to video
EDIT: I am going back and redoing chapter 5-2, cause apparently if I command Ashley, the regenerator opens the gate for me. Managed to save 14 frames.
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Chapter 5-2. This one was...interesting, and by that, I mean a pain in the a$$. Probably spent about 2000 rerecords just to get the grenade drops.
EDIT: This WIP is bad. Apparently, I can destroy the last truck with 1 hand grenade, which eliminates the need for two pauses. I'll upload an improvement later today
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A-M, a YouTube user messaged me claiming that you had found a way to bypass the 5-1 garage door faster during one of your streams. Do you know of such a strategy?
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Warepire wrote:
For runs to be hosted on SDA the runner (or someone the runner has given permission) has to submit it, if the holders of the faster times don't submit their runs there is no chance for SDA to host them.
Which is exactly why I don't trust them to have the fastest times :p but I do understand your point Warepire. It's funny though, because during their Awesome Games Done Quick charities, they've hosted two Resident Evil 4 runs that beat current SDA runs by 10-15 minutes.
jlun2 wrote:
I know of two reasons why they might not want to submit it to anywhere but their own channel.
Only listing 1 as the other one has a high chance of derailing this thread.
Be a rebel! Derail this thread! Do it! Do it! Do it!
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jlun2 wrote:
I looked at the page of your WIP, and assuming the time is half of the actual time based on your encodes, it's 1:08:45.10 by the time you end your WIP.
I haven't watched the run on SDA for a while, but given that it's 1:50:53 long, and you only have like 4 chapters left, that's a huge improvement! Nice work!
The record is 1:29:48 on the PS3 version with newgame+, but for newgame idk the record. I don't trust SDA with keeping the best times, cause they still have my very shitty run on there that is 20 minutes slower than the actual record, haha. I'm hoping that I can get about 1:37:xx, but unfortunately most of the time saved is purely from loading differences.
AngerFist wrote:
Interesting way of getting the item at 04:58. I assume you measured it to be the fastest way of obtaining it? If so, could you have done this for other items aswell?
What do you mean? If you don't know, the enemy has the card key and killing him causes him to go thru a death animation, then he drops the key. If by "interesting" you mean waiting for me to pick up the key, it's cause it hasn't spawned yet.
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Patashu wrote:
If the only difference in PJ2.0 vs N64 is lag, then wouldn't it be able to be console verified still? In the same way the SM64 TAS was console verified, even though mupen had different amounts of lag in different places, because the game only polled on input frames and so the TAS could be a stream of input frames.
I will need to do some more tests, but I am fairly certain the N64 Zeldas poll at a constant rate even during lag frames, so verification is impossble unless the emulator is 100% accurate. Mario64 has a variable poll rate, which is why it syncs.
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When Leon faces Krauser in the ruins, I could use a RL right there to immediately skip his attack phase (so he throws his flash grenade to unlock the metal door), but other than that I don't see any other use for the extra money I have. Collecting it didn't waste much time though. I got 26,600 on the cart ride, and collecting 1 drop costs 4 inputs, so that's 16/30 seconds lost...so it's not too tragic.
EDIT: I found out that at some doors there seems to be a "frame rule." Let's say Leon enters a door at frame 100 and the game finishes loading at frame 200. I can enter the door at 100,101,or 102 and the game finishes loading at frame 200 still. This might explain why some parts of the game I can hex edit in previous WIPs, but in others I cannot. I am bringing this up because I spent about an hour trying to save 1 frame, and when I finally saved the frame, it actually didn't save time. :(
Back in disc1 when entering the room with the Queen's Grail, something similar happened. If I entered that room on, say, frame 20, then it loaded on frame 30, but if I entered on frame 19, it would load on frame 31. I've only found this door so far that this occurs on, but it is something for future TASers to keep in mind.
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Trying out some HD encodes to see how 1080p looks, but I suck at encoding video.
Link to video
I may or may not have too much money. I don't think I need the rifle, so I sold it. I have almost enough pesetas to buy 3 more rocket launchers; 1 for U-2 and one for Saddler. The one I bought is for the Iron Maiden to get the card key. I might buy one for Krauser, depending on if using one on him is faster than the knife strategy. Well, I'm sure it is a bit faster in the battle, but adding a merchant transaction may be too slow.
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I'd prefer an enhanced encode myself, one which replaces all of Link's weapons with walkie-talkies.
(seriously though, this will be a great tas once finished, so let's worry about encodes later)
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My thoughts on the Japanese TAS so far:
1. It might be faster to grab 2 Goomba nuts (giggity) in the village instead of just 1 from the tree. You can grab 1, leave the village, come back in, and grab another. It would eliminate 2 attack phases in the Red/Blue Goomba fight by eating it mid fight to use the Power Bounce move again for 3x damage. Reentering the village may take too long, but it's just a thought.
2. He should have bought 1 extra fright jar at the shop to deal with the enemies in the sewer to avoid an unnecessary fight. It is only 5 coins, which can easily be earned back from the spinning fire in the fortress. Those things drop 10 coins, which means Mario can avoid collecting 5 coins elsewhere.
3. I hope he collects enough money to buy magic from the wizard Merlee at Desert Outpost. If summoned during battle, she makes Mario do 2x damage, which would make any boss be 1HKOd.
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Doesn't the gamecube use the internal clock as a RNG seed? IIRC, some events in Thousand Year Door are dependent upon the system's date and time. That would make verifications nearly impossible.
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Ilari wrote:
Spikestuff wrote:
So that's basically;
NES/FDS,SNES,Genesis,Gameboy,Gameboy Advance,DS,n64, Windows ;p and that's all I can think of.
AFAIK, handhelds don't work either (unless those have an external controller port, which I don't think any do).
Use the Super Gameboy or Gameboy Player, and connect to the snes/gamecube controller ports. Checkmark Ilari! :P
But seriously, is there is some reference pin on the gameboys to use as the polling rate? And the other two concerns I have are:
1. Would using a GBA/Gameboy player to verify a GB or GBC game be viable, or would clock speeds and different architecture mess up timing? I know the SGB plays games 2% faster than the handheld, but I do know some games on the site use the SGB.
2. Does the appearance of the Gameboy and Advance logos begin effecting the RNG at startup? I don't think the emulators use the startup logos. And correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't gba use 'battery life' as a seed for the RNG?
