Also, I hope to see a separate branch for this run. Every ending shows off a different route and thus different game content, so I don't see problems with entertaining about this.
The record keeping may also be a reason, since the speedrunning community takes note of records for every different ending with same dignity.
Clock Tower is a point and click SNES game. Despite the fact that it was only released in Japan, it got popular worldwide, and has an active speedrunning comunity: http://www.speedrun.com/clocktower
The game features many story routes, but on TASVideos are currently published only the best-ending and the worst-ending ones. This would be already enough for a game that has a low entertaining potential, but in my opinion it's not the case for this game, which has already got in Moons tier (with the exception on the glitched ending, which still was vaultable).
Plus, the Japanese TASing community on Nicovideo is very active too, since they already TASed many game endings that are currently not present on TASVideos.
My point is that having all possible game endings runs published on TASVideos would allow to have a record comparison with the speedruns and the unofficial Japanese TASes.
By the way, I'm not suggesting to bend the rules; I'm rather asking opinions about the value of this game and the idea of putting effort in making submissions for the currently missing game endings. Please tell me what you think about it.
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My story is probably out of place here, but I still feel like joining the discussion, in the hope to give some inspiration.
My life never was harsh, but I still have a huge problem that disables me from living properly: myself.
I'm affected by schizoid syndrome. To make it simple, I have little to no interest in human relationships, despite being perfectly able to interact with others. And over time, I lost more and more interest in living at all.
In the last years, there were times in which I was depressed to the point to be unable to eat. It's kind of strange: you feel hungry but you can't swallow anything. Though, every time at some point something happened that gave me some will to live, for example when I got my first dog.
I'm not scared of death. There was even a moment in my life in which I totally thought to be a goner, but didn't felt scared at all. But I've never tried suicide, because I'm constantly contended between the sense of void and a spark of hope. It's really a torture.
The good new is that during the last year I've started to get better. Now that I think about it, there is one base reason that caused the change: I've started to be less rigid. It's not just being more open-minded, but it's also being more open to new ideas, experiences, and possibilities. But it's not like I've done something in particular... It's just that I've come to understand that being rigid is wrong no matter what. And when I still notice to have some rigid thought or behavior, I call it into question and reconsider it.
By the way... Maybe I'm not qualified to try to help people that had an actual harsh life, but I still want to try my best.
I think that the secret is to never give up. Always believe that you have hope and that you have value, doesn't matter what! Doesn't matter what others say or what happens, keep believing in youself!
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Nach wrote:
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
You should check the density of the water. That's what affects floating.
No kidding!
How much denser would it have to be though to exhibit what I described?
I'm not kidding. Density is the only thing that affects floating.
Nach wrote:
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
If the water is too pure, floating gets harder: that's why floating is easier in salt waters.
Typically pools are filled with local tap, with filtering and additives.
Are you suggesting that every other pool I've been too has added copious amounts of salt, and this one did not? (This one being a bunch of cheapskates wouldn't surprise me.)
It's not just salt, anything can make water densier. In fact, distilled water is the kind of water in which you float the least.
Nach wrote:
In general trying to swim in this pool was much harder than usual, and I felt it took a ton more out of me. Jumping off the floor which I usually find easy was really difficult and slow going.
About this, the only thing that can make swimming harder is the viscosity. Though I have no idea which substances do make water more viscous.
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You should check the density of the water. That's what affects floating. If the water is too pure, floating gets harder: that's why floating is easier in salt waters.
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I want to bring attention to this run that has been recently accepted: [3415] SNES Donkey Kong Country "101%" by Tompa in 41:18.37
In my opinion, it has all the requirements for getting into the Stars tier: game quality and notoriety, goal choice, run lenght, optimization... And it's not just me, other people suggested it in the relative submission thread.
Edit: also note that this run took 10 years to be made.
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I think this run should go in Stars as well. Everything about this run is magnificent, and I can enjoy watching it despite not being familiar with the game.
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
First, I'm still trying to figure what triggers the double jump bug that I use at 4515 and 4543. I already found that it doesn't trigger unless the player is not rising in altitude. This can be checked on value at address FFE4. In other words, this signed value must be equal or greater than zero. This bug may be useful because it can be also triggered in third level.
So yesterday I finally uncovered the mystery!
When the player begins falling by walking off a platform, a 10-frames countdown will begin. during this time, you are allowed to jump even if you aren't actually standing on your feets... The curious fact is that this countdown will pause during the jump and while you're on the monkey bar. It will resume whenever you begin falling again, but you can use it again before it goes to zero so... You can jump again on air. In pratice, you can always jump if FFE4 (signed) is >=0 and FFE3 (unsigned) is non-zero.
This is going to save a lot of time in level 3!
Edit: oh and I almost forgot, here is my new level 1 WIP: User movie #39493171658302538
I saved only 3 frames because the boss got problematic with its timing. Unfortunately, it's probably impossible to fix.
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I understand, but you didn't answer to my question: "wouldn't a full run be perfectly identical to your run when clearing the same stages you did?"
My english is not very good, so I hope I didn't expressed myself in an incorrect or obscure way.
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I've done a very quick and dirty test in which I catch two monkeys and discovered two tricks!
First trick: when a level starts, you can't do anything until you land, except using the sword. And by using the sword, you can turn the character before it lands. This allows to save some time, since the more you have to turn, the more time the character will require to start walking.
Second trick: after you've catched a monkey, you can't move right away, but if you switch to the sword you can resume moving earlier.
By the way, I've yet to figure the best way to move, but I got the impression that both camera direction and character direction are necessary to know, so I've made a pretty script that shows them on screen, along with positions and speed values. Enjoy! https://pastebin.com/tmjAzcRU
Edit: I found a video featuring some RTA strategies:
Link to video
Edit 2: I think I found the base logic for micro optimizations.
The game uses 16-bit values for X, Y and Z values, and since the movements speed consists in very small numbers, the value rounding while walking diagonally can make a difference. For example, walking straight along an axis (0°, 90°, 180°, or 270°) results in a maximum walking speed of 28 space units, but when walking with a different angle, the travelled space (calculated by Pythagorean theorem) can go up to ~30 units. So, by using precise analog input values, we can exploit the game's poor calculations to save some frames there and there.
And in order to make this simpler, I've made a script that shows multiple frames' speed values on screen (just like I did for GBA Crash)! Enjoy. https://pastebin.com/DHtHF0J4
Edit 3: Some videos I found, just for documenting strategies.
Link to videoLink to video
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maglevtrain wrote:
That ending spot is correct. We decided that timer ends when the screen goes black after the final level but I felt weird leaving the TAS to stop right there so took the extra seconds to return to the menu
For any%, games are considered beaten when the credits are triggered, if the game provides. Why stopping playing without clearing the whole game? I don't understand. Also, wouldn't a full run be perfectly identical to your run when clearing the same stages you did?
maglevtrain wrote:
I guess failure on my part, but lower spin decreases control of the beyblade making precision not really work and therefore lowering the entertainment value. It would make the run either be watching a wobbly top or I could do slightly less than perfect and save maybe 2 seconds overall
I'm sorry but I don't think it is a good idea to sacrifice speed for entertaining purposes on a game that has so low popularity. Also, it looks like charging the spin to maximum makes things easier, and thus lowers the technical value of the run.
Also, your idea about full charge spin being more entertaining looks very subjective to me. Most times getting huge handicaps like using a suboptimal character or picking up the highest game difficulty is what is considered a good speed/entertaining tradeoff, because makes the game harder to beat and thus requiring a lot more of work to optimize the TAS.
Edit: thinking again, my argument about the tradeoff being out of place is quite poor, though I still think that it was a very bad one. Though, I'm not sure how much my opinion does matter since I'm not familiar with this game and how it works technically speaking.
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First, have to note tha the correct name of the game is Beyblade VForce: Ultimate Blader Jam.
maglevtrain wrote:
It saves so little time I decided to stick with the "superhuman" perfect launches.
Actually, I would find way more "superhuman" (and entertaining) to use the minimum amount of launch charge necessary for clearing each stage, because that would require to be carefully calculated, in order to get an overall faster completion time.
Tough I'm assuming that the charge does not affect your movement speed or anything, since you didn't mention anything of the sort in your submission text.
Spikestuff wrote:
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lapogne36 wrote:
I am currently on another project, but I will come back at ZX4 after if it's not over yet in the meantime (seriously, I need to take a break from this game...)
Don't worry, I perfectly understand, I also need to have breaks and get to work on different projects very often.
By the way, I have news: as I thought, it was possible to prevent that enemy to spawn in stage 8. This resulted in 7 frames saved, tough due to frame rules this made the boss battle to desync a lot and get 2 lag frames. I don't feel like fixing it right now, so here is the desyncing movie file, just for informational purposes: User movie #38889985897884222
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I just had a conversation with FatRatKnight about lua, and he mentioned that BizHawk used to provide a global GBA memory addresses region like "system bus", that now is no more. I had some uncomfort too because of its lack, so I ask if it would be possible to implement that again in BizHawk.
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FatRatKnight wrote:
Sub-22 looks possible, with all the skips we've been finding. However, it's becoming increasingly apparent that I'm just not getting into the mood to try. So, while I'm still thinking about it, I'll give out all my routing thoughts on every stage before I completely fall off.
Don't worry, you've already provided enough data for making a very good run. I just hope you'll consider picking up this project again later before it's done.
I also want to point out that until now we had less partecipants than what I've expected. I ask to anyone who is reading this, to please consider contributing to this run; every tiny help is welcomed.
And about that, we should beginning to list anyone who is contributing, for authorship referencing. Since this is not a trivial matter, I need FRT to specify every single person from which he got help, strategies, and data that he didn't already had by himself.
Now getting back about the work.
In my opinion, stage 0 is impossible to improve further, except in the eventuality of new glitches or tricks behing discovered.
Then there is level 8, in which I spotted a place that may be improved by preventing an enemy to spawn, by using camera trickery. For this reason, I've written a quick script based on the External Radar by FRK, which only features spawn borders and enemy spawn positions, by using the game screen instead that using a new window, resulting in a very lighter script: User movie #38787806393105666.
Apart from this, I have currently no other things to add to what FRK already said. The route 8-7-1 looks very solid, and there may be changes only about later stages, for very minor time saves.
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gordonX wrote:
question, If I upload the bk2 file, how its possible to watch the movie without the ROM ?
If you want to show a work in progress or a complete TAS, you can upload a quick encode to YouTube. Here is a guide: http://tasvideos.org/forum/t/16971
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This is probably useless, but i want to point out that I noticed something strange in stage 0. Look at the terrain map:
In the right up corner, there are four ceiling tiles to prevent Zook from jumping above screen. It is actually pretty easy to pass through them but still, nothing in particular happens.
I wonder if they did put these four ceiling tiles as a quick workaround to some bad glitch, then later were fixed by an actual improvement of the code: that would explain why they did not implement such ceilings in level 6 as well.
I still hope to discover some way to walk above the screen like in Super Mario Bros.
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Alyosha wrote:
Also, are we sure this game is emulated well enough that all these glitches are valid? Some of the glitches seem to strain the system pretty hard, and debugging utilities are currently pretty limited.
Actually, there is a graphical glitch in E Mo Dao, a GBC game by the same developer, which is visible on Gambatte, and not on VBA. So no, there is no way to be sure that there aren't any emulation inconsistences... The only way would be to replicate the glitches on actual GBA, which could be a bit difficult since the actual cartridge is quite rare.
In the right up corner, there are four ceiling tiles to prevent Zook from jumping above screen. It is actually pretty easy to pass through them but still, nothing in particular happens.
I wonder if they did put these four ceiling tiles as a quick workaround to some bad glitch, then later were fixed by an actual improvement of the code: that would explain why they did not implement such ceilings in level 6 as well.
I still hope to discover some way to walk above the screen like in Super Mario Bros.