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Posted: 12/5/2013 10:14 PM

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RT-55J wrote:

I might take another stab at this, but I would need to have some things in Real Life settle down before I could convince myself to dedicate so much time/effort to such a time-consuming and mentally-wearying hobby. Also, honestly, with how atrociously long the autoscrollers are here, I would be tempted just to use the level-skip code to go past the worst of them. One thing that would really help with the project would be a LUA hitbox display that would allow you to see offscreen enemies/projectiles. I remember that aspect was one of the harder things to optimize when I made that WIP up there (for reference, it has over twice as many rerecords as my Bio Force Ape TAS, if that means anything).

Whoa! Well, clearly I was wrong about you not coming back. Nice to have you here again. :) I had the exact same thoughts about LUA scripting as you. We need a script which tells us mainly three things about enemies: - Their position, to know when and where they spawn outside the screen. - Their HP, to know if our shots are hitting them outside the screen. - The flag (probably there is one) which decides if an enemy needs to be killed to unlock scrolling. I don't think all enemies lock the screen. Feos, I haven't figured out the object structure of this game. I can give you some boss HP adresses, they might be usable in figuring it out: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/11123334719078501 RT-55J, I will PM you and see if we can set up something, when you feel you have the time later.

Posted: 11/27/2013 9:03 PM

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"Mike Tyson: 1:58.xx" Surely the value of xx is only a RAM address away, even though it's not shown to the player?

Posted: 11/24/2013 1:17 PM

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That's a good question! My first reaction was to say yes, but then I realized that punching animation can be canceled as well... so I'm not sure how it works out. So maybe some canceled punch/jumpkick/charge shot pattern can work as well? The only place it comes into effect is the first sub-boss, since you will be fully upgraded for the others. So I guess it needs to be tested there. I guess I should just TAS the game already...

Posted: 11/19/2013 9:57 PM

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netwizard wrote:

I'm excited as well about seeing this game TASed since it has a lot of room for improvement. Here are some of my thoughts: 1) It appears to be some lagging when killing an enemy with a jumpkick. Can't it really be avoided? How many lags does the game contain in general? 2) At 1-3 stage I think it's more convenient to switch to green weapon. It appears to me that the quantity of missed red projectiles on that floating Harley kills the red weapon damage advantage. Anyway, good luck on your work, keep going.

1) The game doesn't exactly lag when hitting an enemy with a jumpkick. Your character stops moving for a few frames, but the rest of the game continues as usual. There doesn't appear to be a lot of lag generally, but it does happen for example with the flying enemies on 1-3, if you spawn a lot of them and then kill them at the same time with a charged shot. 2) You are correct, the green weapon is almost certainly better there. So, I tested how jumping and landing affect the rate of fire now. Normally, you fire once every 12 frames. The projectile appears in the middle of the throwing animation, and jumping or landing cancels the rest of the animation. This means that the throwing animation can be restarted quicker, after just 7 frames. On average you can achieve a rate of one shot per 9.5 frames, instead of 12. (To do this, hold A for 7 frames, then hold A and B for 6 frames, then hold A for 25 frames.) Since you jump around while doing this, you need a big target or constant re-aiming of your shots to hit with all projectiles.

Posted: 11/15/2013 12:09 PM

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According to our guidelines: "Where a game has multiple difficulty levels, it is preferred to play on the hardest difficulty level (for more interesting gameplay) unless the only difference between difficulty levels is enemy/boss hit points, in which case the easiest difficulty levels are preferred in the interest of speed." http://tasvideos.org/Guidelines.html In other words, you should probably set the difficulty to Hard. Did you figure out when and how objects are given from enemies? And also, what method do you use to find your route? If it was me, I would probably run through the level as fast as possible and see how many objects I picked up, and then measure how much time I needed to spend to get groups of objects outside of the fastest route.

Posted: 11/13/2013 9:18 AM

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Rydian wrote:

If you're on an emulator that starts all types of memory in a set state (like Gens), then I hope you like Wolverine or Beast because you'll end up with one of them on each cold reset, depending on if you have a 6-button controller or a 3-button controller set up.

The above is mostly true, but additionally, the buttons you press while the screen is black before the first stage loads also influences which character you get. That is how we managed to get Nightcrawler in our TAS. I don't know how the game randomizes characters on startup on a real Genesis. Uninitialized RAM is a possibility, but we'd have to reverse engineer the game to know for sure. If it is only uninitialized RAM then it is strange that changing the controller type affects it...

Posted: 11/5/2013 12:34 PM

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Dooty wrote:

* walk is faster than belly slide -> slide, get up and power walk

Wow! I was a bit surprised I hadn't stumbled upon this ever when playing this game, but I see that it requires up+down. The movie is looking fantastic, puzzle room skip and viking key trick and all.

Posted: 11/5/2013 11:50 AM

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got4n wrote:

Nice WIP! This game looks like Doom, I don't see any improvements.

Actually, a lot more like Wolfenstein 3D, with 45° walls added. Master of Pigs, what are the differences between the different characters? Why do you choose the one you choose? I was unable to find info online.

Posted: 11/5/2013 11:32 AM

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ars4326 wrote:

First off, I've indeed decided to go with the original Japanese version from this point onward.

Good choice. The text boxes fly by quickly anyway. With some submission notes explaining the strats and spells used, there shouldn't be any problem following it. Looking forward to it!

Posted: 10/31/2013 2:43 PM

Post subject: Re: Input minimization bot (alpha version 0.3)

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Bobo the King wrote:

I would like to try my script out on a game that features some small amount of goofing off and see if it removes the player's fidgeting.

So, in essence you have built a script which removes playing around in movies? How about building a script which adds playing around instead? :)

Posted: 10/31/2013 10:30 AM

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Bisqwit wrote:

I wouldn't have anything against it e.g. Truncated annotated his posts with a few relevant references that help explain who that person is and what he is known for.

I figured that the Russians here would already know very well who he was, and most other people would go "wat who?" like I did. And if they wanted to find out, Google is pretty user-friendly. But OK, a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mstislav_Rostropovich In short, he was a world-class cellist, in the opinion of some the best cellist of all time. But he's also well-known for being a dissident in the Soviet Union, defending human rights. He lived in exile in the US between 1974 and 1990 because of that. I had much the same reaction as Warp to your post, by the way. It's not that talking about Christianity or religion is "banned" or anything, it's that you bring it up when it's not the topic of discussion.

Posted: 10/28/2013 9:33 PM

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I ran into Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich in Saint Petersburg in 2002 (or was it 2003?), but I had no idea who it was at the time. The Russians I was with seemed overwhelmed, though. He knew the Swedish word for Cheers.

Posted: 9/28/2013 8:05 PM
(Edited: 9/28/2013 8:21 PM)

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Tested briefly, seems to still work. One thing: would it be possible to update the info in the Help > About box for new releases? It still says v11a, even though I think this version is 11b. Also, there seem to be different builds for the same version, and it is not possible to differentiate between them other than file size (file names can be changed), and then you still don't know which version is newer. It would be helpful if the build number was also in the About box. (I had a problem previously where I and another person had different results for the same script, even though our emulators seemingly had the same version, 11a. Turns out we had different versions anyway.)

Posted: 9/27/2013 9:47 PM

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CMiller wrote:

I have no experience TASing. I would say in retrospect it may be faster to get the green weapon before the cat boss. You might lose some time in the stage before it, but it's a long boss. However, if as you say 3 red projectiles do more damage than one green one, you could just make sure all three hit the nose. Something hard to do in real time.

Well, noone has any experience TASing before they start... interest and knowledge of the game can be enough. In any case, I haven't gotten this off the ground because of too many other things to do. Still just researching a little now and then. I think the green weapon is the way to go for any boss where you cannot reliably hit with all three projectiles all the time. Damage for green weapon levels (normal/charged): 1. 24 / 80 2. 32 / 92 3. 40 / 112 4. 48 / 120 5. 56 / 128 6. 64 / 136 7. 72 / 144 Damage for red weapon levels (normal): 1. 24 2. 40 (20+20) 3. 48 (16+16+16) 4. 64 5. 64 (32+16+16) 6. 72 (36+36) 7. 78 (26+26+26) So at level 7, every time you hit with all three red, you gain 6 damage over green. That's not a lot. Every time you miss one projectile, you lose 20 damage. During boss fights when it's hard to miss, like the Two-face ship at the top of the scaffold, or the over-head flying stage, it could be better to use the red weapon instead. I have noticed that the firing rate is not constant when you are jumping/landing. I will see if I can figure it out, perhaps it can be used to fire faster.

Posted: 9/20/2013 10:23 AM

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I thank you again, amaurea! In other words, it is just this month which so far has unusually few submissions (3), and there is no reason to think there is a downward trend, yet. Warp: feeling gloomy? I am pretty sure this site will not make a dent in history but that doesn't mean we can't try to make the best of it at the moment.

Posted: 9/20/2013 9:25 AM

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Thanks for that graph amaurea! I could use some help in interpreting it, though. I am guessing the vertical axis is number of submissions, and that the horizontal axis is time. But what is the unit? And is most recent to the left (weeks ago) or the right (weeks since since workbench start)? What is the interval for each red measuring point?

Posted: 9/20/2013 1:15 AM

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IMPblackbelt wrote:

4) it is an archival copy that YOU created for backup purposes (it cannot be a downloaded copy.

Are you sure about this? Is this US law? I am pretty certain it is not Swedish law, at least... Why would it matter how a file was created? And how would anyone know the difference later? The origin of a file cannot be proven, a downloaded ripped file is indistinguishable from a self-made ripped file.

Posted: 9/20/2013 1:03 AM

Post subject: Rate of incoming submissions - decreasing?

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I notice that once again, the queue is empty. It has stayed that way for a few days now. This could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what the cause is. My suspicion is that it is because we get fewer submissions than we used to. But this is just a suspicion. Could someone with database access get the numbers on submissions per month (or similar) and post it here? Then we could determine if fewer TASes are actually being made. It could also be that it just seems like fewer new submissions, because the judging and encoding is more efficient lately, which would be a good thing. I'll hold off further analysis before I know which it is.

Posted: 9/10/2013 8:00 PM

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CMiller wrote:

I'm the one with the SDA record, and in truth the autoscrolling sections of the game are not very fun to watch. If you have a plan to make them interesting, then that's awesome, however I don't know what you'd do to make them more entertaining, much less speed them up.

Hey CMiller, nice to have you here! I don't have any specific plan for the autoscrollers. It will probably be hard to make them interesting, even with two players. My guess is that the run will end up in the vault. I think some of the sections which look like they are autoscrollers in fact aren't. For example the section in Mad Hatter's stage where you have rockets on your back seems to depend on how quickly you kill the enemies. Are there any tricks or timesavers which you didn't use in your run because they are too hard to pull off, or that you have found since you recorded it? Also, want to join in and TAS this? :)

Posted: 9/9/2013 9:32 PM

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ars4326 wrote:

Latest WIP catches up to my previous stopping point, with a total savings of 27,837 frames! http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/157775815

That is a lot of frames! Nice to see that you are beginning to get the hang of the RNG. The movie link though, gives me "Bad syntax" error. Not sure if you pasted it wrong or there is something wrong with microstorage.

Posted: 9/6/2013 9:25 AM

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Here is a small timesaver I saw while watching this game being run on SDA: http://youtu.be/EkYMibrGtEw?t=10m5s In the bird segments, it is possible to dive by pressing down+B. It is also possible to dive upwards, by pressing up directly after pressing down+B. This probably saves a few seconds for these segments. The runner (Blueglass) even mentions that the TAS does not include this trick. There might be other stuff in there too which would help improve this movie.

Posted: 9/1/2013 9:53 PM

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Well, it's been two years, but RT-55J hasn't signed in since early 2012, so I think it's a pretty safe bet he won't be TASing this. I am interested in tasing this. Anyone feel like joining me? I have been researching the game a bit, here is what I have found: - Bosses have more health in 2 player mode. The difference in health is not constant, it varies between bosses. For example the first subboss has (in hex) 2200 health in 1 player mode, and 3200 health in 2 player mode (ratio 1.47), the second subboss has 250 health in 1 player and 450 health in 2 player (ratio 1.86). For all bosses I've checked the ratio is less than 2, so 2 player mode is faster. - After the boss has spawned, the second player cannot join. - There appear to be no differences between Batman and Robin. Weapons: - All weapons have 7 strength levels. There is not always a difference between the levels visually. - For lower level weapons, you get the most damage output by alternating punches and charged weapon. For higher level weapons, just shooting without waiting for recharge is better. - The green weapon is better for small targets than the red weapon. The red weapon only has higher damage output if all the projectiles hit. The blue weapon is weaker in almost all circumstances. - All ground melee attacks do the same damage per hit (64), but the low punches are faster than the others. Jumpkicking does half damage per hit (32), but usually hits 2-3 times. Movement: - Jumpkicking (3 pixels / frame) is faster than walking/jumping (2 pixels / frame).

Posted: 8/28/2013 8:43 AM

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Hey Ploplo. Sorry I missed your topic when you posted it. If you're still around and working on this, I can offer my help. I have played through this game a few times, but like you, that was quite a while ago, so I don't remember any specific tips at the moment. If you want feedback on your work in progress, I can do that, just upload the movie here or talk to me via PM. :)

Posted: 8/27/2013 2:30 PM

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It was nice, perhaps overused the "hit enemies behind you" bug a little too much. Cool to see that someone else also discovered the repeated air throw with Genkai. We already have two other threads about combos for this game, by the way: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4040 http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2998

Posted: 7/23/2013 5:46 PM

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Kabump. Someone should pick this up. Aqfaq has found a method to move a lot faster than the intended maximum speed of the player character. I guess no one watched it or cared enough to comment (unknown game and all), but I think it could make for a good TAS.