I think all movies that look optimized and have had hard work put into them should be published, so I voted yes. But I wasn't entertained enough to watch the whole thing. Someone should do Knights of the Round Table.
How on earth this is a factor for generating appropriate items on DL1 I have no idea, since it seems that you could just brute force starting seeds until you got one you wanted. Difficulty's not relevant. If you whore the RNG enough, you should get more than enough right away.
My questions would be as follows:
-How do you plan to present this TAS? Nethack doesn't really have 'frames' per se, if you input commands as fast as possible, the resulting output would be an unreadable disaster.
-What are your goals? I think the only goal should be fewest number of turns to ascend without Explore Mode or Wizard Mode or Bones Files. All three of these are obviously cheating to me.
-Since you have so much leeway in that you have a lot of turns before you can start the quest to prepare an ascension kit, might I suggest you also go for challenges? No wishes/genocides is probably still easy, but much more entertaining to watch. (I figure a wishful TAS would involve t1 moving onto a square with a WoW 0:2, which seems kind of boring honestly) A lot of the challenges are probably gimmies anyway...
You know there are air combos in this game, right? Outside of the supers, I don't think you even went above a 3-hit combo. Plus, you need to change the dip switches to put the CPU at hardest difficulty.
I want my seven minutes back.
The analysis you guys are doing is awesome. I could be really wrong about an idea I have, but if defending a physical attack (Say, BYAKKO's SWORD) is a problem, couldn't you just pick up a shield from somewhere? I'm sure you could manipulate a full block.
That last Gades fight looked ROUGH. Are you 'just barely' high enough level to make it work thanks to the Green Cores?
Do Courage/Dread slowly lose effect? Seems like you could be casting Courage way earlier in that fight and saving a lot of healing.
What level did Jerin get Mirror?
I know nothing about VBA, but some keyboards may not accept the combination of inputs.
Try remapping buttons to other keys, specifically Ctrl/Alt/Shift should be cross-compatible.
There's probably a lot of cards that aren't necessary, I'd be curious what it ends up doing to your Spirit damage in the final fights. I feel like you could manipulate a lot more ATback too.
I think combats can be improved much more even still. For instance, in fight #2, you manipulate a Strike First, but only take one action to kill the Pakrat - you could save 30 frames or so by not having the extra message as long as you can manipulate being faster than the Pakrat.
For fight #3, could you manipulate fighting a Pakrat instead? The Heliopod only gives you 2 XP, where the Pakrat gives you 3. It sounds really nitpicky right now, but I think you can be manipulating this all over the run even more.
For example, fight #5 is against two Heliopods - can this be against 3 Heliopods, or 2 Pakrats? 2 Pakrats would be exactly the same frames for more reward, where 3 Heliopods would cost an extra 60 or so in animation, but probably still better overall than 2 Heliopods. And so on.
Also, is it just me or are you still not manipulating +6 strength?
I think I got everything I could; the last enemies that dropped it are the girls in Roki.
But, you run away from 3-4 fights in Roki - can you manipulate these fights to be against 3 Girls instead of what you run away from?
Casual notes as I'm watching, per usual:
Is it really worth it to obtain and equip the Fth h? Maybe obtaining it is necessary, but you do so much combat manipulation I'm not sure the two extra speed is worth it. Would you be better off grabbing a new pair of boots somewhere, and equipping both in the same menu series?
I think you can save a combat round vs Renegades if you kill them both in the same round. Since Bmg is going to hit both no matter what, you should try to balance out the damage you're doing to the two of them so the last Bmg hit does ~80 damage instead of ~40.
I'm surprised you don't manipulate Strike First at the first dragon battle around 210K, seems like it wastes more frames taking the damage than not.
Can Midia freeze the Guardian with her Para kn? Not sure if this is desirable since it means Zuran doesn't die, but it's an option.
Ditto freezing the G.Whip at 276K, since it 'attacks' twice. [Okay, you do this at 302K.]
You couldn't have Midia BoltG the Pakgrass group at 283K and save a round of entering commands?
The fight at 285K looks like it would be productive use of time for XP/Gold maybe...
The confusion manip is fantastic, btw.
I wonder if you should be heavily abusing F. Witches for Fire Cds when you get to them - the earlier you gain your magic levels, the more frames it's going to save throughout the run.
i could technically go to the crystal labirythn withoyut buying any magic; I will get what I need to cast spirit.
So I won't take those lengthy detours to get cards. And I suppose I could avoid getting light magic in Jurayn. I hope Midia won't need speed up (which requires Spirit)
You used SPUp a LOT in your old runs, but I always questioned it...
It's a question of frames I guess. You still need to at least buy the magic at some point to qualify for Spirit, right? I doubt air cards will be worth the frame cost to add a few more damage points to Spirit in the end.
are you talking about the jurayn temple? if that's the case, than the whipper cannot be fought.
I'll need to go back and watch the movie again to figure it out. The question is, at what point do you need the last 800 gold to buy the latest magic for C & M? Can you come up with it before then without spending the frames on the Fl dor trip?
Is the Fl dor you pick up in the water temple(?) around 190K really the most efficient path? Does the item shop you pass right by in the town sell them? You fight two extra fights here to grab it, that's a lot of frames. There's added XP, gold, and one card, but you obviously don't need the first two desperately since you run away from a fight around 204K.
this one's tricky. In order to accomplish what I need, I need at leat 1300 gold (I sell the pro ball and the short boots). Not picking it up would mean more fighting inside the caves...
If so, you can still do a better job manipulating fights - there is a clear difference in reward with fights after this dungeon, I would think you could fight an extra Bronza and pick up enough to buy Magic with, especially if you manipulate a Pwr Bmg drop. (If you need more gold before this, there are plenty of fights that drop items too - that Whipper drops Mid ar.)
Is the Fl dor you pick up in the water temple(?) around 190K really the most efficient path? Does the item shop you pass right by in the town sell them? You fight two extra fights here to grab it, that's a lot of frames. There's added XP, gold, and one card, but you obviously don't need the first two desperately since you run away from a fight around 204K.
Really worth it to kill that Whipper for low XP/Gold at 232K? I was expecting a drop, at least. Especially since the Elepsaur fight right after took about as long and seemed way more fruitful.
This Bronza at 329K seems like a good place for Chezni to pump up an affinity other than Fire, since 10 damage is pathetic compared to BoltS, and you're going to max out Fire soon, right?
Also in general, you should ALWAYS be trying to grab cards when you're in areas where you can. When a normal fight gives you +2 affinity and a card gives you +5, you're looking at a huge time versus power difference.
Voted no. Looks extremely unoptimized and sloppy. What's the deal with getting hit by Sniper Joe in Bombman level?
EDIT: This is not my only complaint, so don't think I'm "hating." There seems to be some viable lag reduction (Wily 1's final guts block in particular), I'm not sure why you choose to collect bonus dots (surely these can be manipulated away?), as well as not manipulating clear bonuses to minimum (although I don't know if this is possible in this version.)