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Very nice looking run! Before watching I would have said the same thing about preferring the harder (U) version especially since English is also a plus. But in this case the changes are very small and the text time saved is so much that it is a good case for an exception. Looking forward to seeing more big gems popping out as you work through this gem of a game!
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All RPGs need glitched runs! Yes, though it would be really nice to get a commentary in the video. In addition to the pacifist nature of the boss fights you also get to skip a famous RPG death scene.
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The Force is strong with this one. Yes vote for sure.
While flying in to the Death Star with the Falcon it looks like you bumped into the walls. Does this not slow you down or did you not really bump or is there some other explanation?
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Reviewing this thread, here is Cheez's old run on normal mode.
Also here is a movie that reproduces the glitch! It's a simple matter of touching the armor powerup and an enemy on the same frame. Haven't looked any further into this but there are a few other places where it might be possible. Probably more chances on normal mode where there are more Armor powerups.
Finally, further back in the thread I had already looked into U vs J issue. I totally forgot about this since it was over 10 years ago!
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Whoa, huge! Yeah, we need to figure that out. Next question is whether it works on any level or just that one. Then again it might not be possible in in some levels just because of the placement of the Armor powerups.
Edit: Another thing possibly worth discussing is switching to the J version. It would add time but also a little difficulty in level 6 at least. Plus there is the text at the end.
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Problem is that getting into a state where controller input programs the game is really hard. The bootstrap program for a total control takeover is much more complicated than the credits jump that is the typical ACE goal. If it is possible in FF1 it might require a very long setup. Jumping to status or equipment or item lists are the likely possibilities and all would take a long time to set up from a legitimate start state. In SMW you can tweak a lot of memory much faster and more easily by eating berries and throwing some blocks around. Or Pokemon where you glitch up the item list then move things around and throw away items to set up the memory both arbitrarily and quickly.
Now if we allow for setting up a savegame then I bet we can work something out with either FF1 or FF2 stairs glitch. From a good setup it would only take a few minutes to execute the stairs glitch. The next question is whether or not that savegame state is reachable from a legitimate start. If it is then we could make a verification video (possibly even on console) and post or publish it later.
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This was fun. I had thought I would be too busy but it happened that my schedule opened up enough to use most of the time. Submitted a really crappy test run and then didn't finish my second version before the cutoff. I was a few seconds behind the leaders anyway. Still a pretty neat contest.
I've done quite a bit of lua scripting in FCEUX so let me know if you need help next time.
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Why is Final Fight so awesome? It's basically the funk of late 80s/early 90s manliness distilled in the form of a video game. These days we know someone like Haggar could never be a mayor; pro wrestlers and action movie stars head straight to the governor's mansion. Voting yes but mourning the omission of the spinning piledriver.
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Yay! Finally now that there is a run at this game people will stop asking me to try it. The glitches are pretty well exploited and very well done. Nice.
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Oooh, this is definitely a good choice. I finally got around to playing through this game just recently. For a first pass test run it might not be bad to do each chapter separately but the real run definitely needs to do them all. Good luck and please post the chapter tests results, they should be pretty interesting.
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The glitchiness is pretty cool and the early input end trick too. However, compared to Arc's run the ending actually comes up later because of how many lives need to be lost. Does that matter?
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This doesn't actually look that bad. Sure, it's probably improvable but the author has clearly thought things out a bit. If only he put a little more work into the submission text. He should also use a more recent emulator. With fm2 conversion it does sync on FCEUX 2.2.2.
The label should simply be "pacifist". The pacifism is pretty thorough and not even projectiles are destroyed. Only a few soldiers get squished and they all look necessary. "minimalist" is probably referring to the fact that the weapon isn't powered up. But that would require destroying some buildings so it is sufficient to just say pacifist.
The real question is whether a pacifist run on this game is that interesting. It is kinda neat that it is possible but in a lot of places it becomes very tedious. I vote meh for that reason.
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Do you have the input for that run? I don't see it in this thread or the one linked. It is J version but looks very well done with some tricks I can use. Guess I should ask xipo. I don't see why he hasn't submitted it though I think U version should be preferred.
I think pacifist run looks quite a bit different from any%. Though it's not bad if looks similar to an awesome run. Much better than to look slow and boring.
A big reason for this pacifist definition is that it is a recognized branch for RTA runners as well. They have three branches for each Ninja Gaiden game:
* any%
* low% - basically just no powerups. I don't think this would be interesting for a TAS.
* pacifist - no powerups and no killing normal enemies.
For the first two NGs there are pacifist SDA records and pacifist marathon runs. This game, especially the USA version, is much more difficult. So I thought it would be good for a TAS.
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mtvf1 wrote:
I think a taser should choose the very hard mode.
I saw xipo's pacifist, no-damage run. Sorta neat but:
* He uses the easier J version.
* Going for no damage makes it really long, over 2 minutes longer than this run. Sometimes there are neat tricks but many sections are really slow.
* He ends up killing a few enemies, failing the pacifist goal! Some of them are definitely avoidable. Even more importantly than playing hardest mode a TAS needs to meet its goals. (He did succeed in the first two games)
Though my very old first published run on this game took no damage I don't think it is a good choice. You can't take that many hits anyway.
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Thanks. To answer feos questions:
1. I did notice that there is sometimes an extra frame in between hit detections. Could be the same effect, it's one of the things I need to look into.
2. So I'm not sure about the first two games but the death cheat glitch is a little more than just damage boosting into the door. In the first two games and the Japanese version of this one you get to start in the room where you died. In this version you always start at the beginning of the subsection. So if you die in 2-2C or 2-2D you go back to 2-2A. But if you watch this run you'll see that I enter the door at the top of 7-3A as I die and restart in 7-3B. If you were watching really closely you might also notice that I don't lose a life. In fact what happens is that your life count gets set to 2.
It's not enough to enter the door on your death bounce. You actually have to enter the door at the same frame you take the last hit. If you die and then fall into the door you get the normal behavior. Which is fine if the door took you to a new subsection but not otherwise. Anyway, this is why I say I would die more but not continue.
You might notice that the life bar is totally drained during the act 5 boss fight. What happens there is a non-glitched fall into the door followed by the death flag getting reset by the cutscene. That is only going to work on doors to the last 3 bosses and acts 6 and 7 don't have a good setup for it.
3. Yeah, an actual boost would be nice. No birds but the homing robots and bees have pretty much the same AI. In general they are hard to deal with because you can't just take a hit and go on; they will just keep following you and you won't get rid of them.
XYZ wrote:
7-2B - bullets flying across the screen
Bullets are actually quite interesting in a pacifist run. In 7-2B they make for a better spot to get my damage invincibility. When there are two cannons close together you can set up a situation where 7 shots take up most of the enemy slots and only one more enemy can spawn. This is very tempting in 7-1 but even against the wind you can outrun the bullets pretty easily. You can't fill all 8 slots because there has to be a cannon in existence to fire the last shot. But if you get lucky you can spawn an enemy that runs up from behind to fill the last slot. I should post some outtakes because there are some slow but neat strats that might be interesting for RTA.
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Ah, I'll have to fix that sometime. I also need to fix earlier downloads that were using google code and probably switch to public github. I now have a decent internet connection so I can do it if I find the file.
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Pacifist test run!
I'm surprised that we don't have any Ninja Gaiden pacifist runs yet. Out of the original trilogy this one is least suited for a pacifist run. But it's my favorite and I wanted to TAS it again. It turned out to be a pretty cool run. I think there are at least 10-20 seconds of improvement left that could bring this within a minute of the any% run. Of course I play the USA version because it is much harder and is the only way to go for a TAS.
In a pacifist run the sword stays sheathed except on bosses. No ninja arts on the levels either. No powerups are collected so each boss must be defeated with the little sword and the one windmill star that you start each act with.
Taking damage is both permissible and desirable to speed things up. In fact, dying in the second half of an act to refill life often saves time. I had expected to do this in almost every act and continue twice to get more lives but was happily surprised that I was able to find so many tricks to get through without damage. It turns out that I really need to rethink things because in act 7 I discovered a glitch that allows for cheating death a bit. The next version will probably use that glitch a few more times and definitely not continue.
I studied the internals of the game much more deeply than my first attempts at this game over ten years ago. There are a lot of neat glitches and tricks that come up in a pacifist run simply because the any% run just kills everything in sight. I will update the resource page for this game. There are also a few doubtful claims there that should be clarified or cut.
rum mentioned randomness in his submission text but didn't give many details. With how tightly optimized his run is I suspect he knows all these juicy details:
* There is a limit of 8 enemies on screen at once. If you are at the limit then no more enemies will spawn! This might be common knowledge but important to keep in mind for this run. It becomes quite useful in certain places where there are a lot of enemies. Enemy projectiles count too.
* There is a counter at address 005E that controls quite a few things. It is always counting and never resets so it could cause problems with cutting and pasting input.
* Hit detection between you and the enemies only happens every 4th frame. It is based on that counter. This effectively means that when you slip past the corner of an enemy you may or may not get hit. You can also abuse this to move through the laser beams on the 3 frames between hit detection and only duck every 4th frame.
* The counter value controls how high the little jumping enemies jump. More important in a pacifist run since you can't just pop them.
* The counter also controls the falling debris pattern on the act 6 boss. This is more important in the pacifist run since without powerups there is no way you can take him out before his first charge.
* Enemies get subpixels too. When an enemy spawns the subpixel that the last enemy had does not get reset. This leads to subtle but potentially significant ties between enemies. They do get reset with cutscenes as do your subpixels.
* Shambling walker enemies may move one direction or the other on vertical scrolling sections. They spawn slightly above the ground where they walk. Each frame they fall they switch directions. The number of frames they fall might vary depending on their subpixel; sometimes it is always one frame. This is one of the bigger subpixel issues.
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Wow, this game finally has a TAS! It's much more boring than I thought it would be. I still vote yes. Not only did I play the game in elementary school, I also emigrated from the midwest to the Williamette Valley after finishing college and stopped by many of these landmarks along the way.
Where did you find wild fruit near Boise? There's nothing but sagebrush out there. :)
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Nice. Are the level results screens dismissed as fast as possible? I know Doom community only cares about in-game time but it makes it out sync with the rest of the site.
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I've noticed my TASes used too and always got a pretty prompt response from a friendly message. To be honest I thought it was pretty cool that they used a cut of my TAS for the OC Remix trailer. It turns out that especially for older games our video clips are one of the easiest sources for high-quality video.
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Welcome to tasvideos dxtr! This platformer would be a great game for a new TASer. You should give it a try. Pop back here or the newbies section for advice and feedback.
One note on OCH/cyghfer's comments though. He suspected that the emulator (a now old version of FCEU) has less lag than console or BizHawk. However, the movie is console-verified! Using BizHawk is still a good idea.
